What’s the Word on Maine Street? 2/8/25

What’s the Word on Maine Street?, hosted by Sarah Pebworth, is a weekly short feature Saturdays at 9:30am looking at local literary and visual arts events and offerings!

About the host:
Sarah Pebworth leads the steering committee for Word—a Blue Hill Literary Arts Festival, founded in 2017. She serves on the boards of the Cultural Alliance of Maine, Lawrence Family Fitness Center YMCA, and Colloquy Downeast. Since February 2023 Sarah has written “Shared Seas and Common Grounds,” a column published in the Penobscot Bay Press’s Weekly Packet. She and her wife Julie Jo Fehrle live in Blue Hill.

Theme music: Ross Gallagher is a bassist who grew up in East Blue Hill, ME, and currently lives between Bath, ME and Brooklyn, NY, where he works with a wide variety of musical artists. Infinite Blues is a cut from his recently released neon night, an excursion into an ambient/electronic musical world built around rhythmic bass ostinatos, clouds of processed looping electronic atmospheres, and melody. By turns both subtle and unapologetically noisy, the songs are a collection of luminous constellations, roved between by a band of texturally minded instrumental improvisers.

Around Town 2/7/25: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.

Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Conversations from the Pointed Firs 2/6/24: Avery Yale Kamila

Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
Music by Casey Neill

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Airs the first Friday of every month from 4-5pm. Online at pointedfirs.org.

Avery Yale Kamila, long-running food columnist with the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, author of 300 Years of Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History, an American journalist/food writer and community organizer in the state of Maine. Kamila has written a vegan food column for the Portland Press Herald /Maine Sunday Telegram and its affiliated newspapers since 2009.

About the host:
Peter Neill is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. In 1972, he founded Leete’s Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, the environment, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world. He holds a profound interest in Maine, its history, its people, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.

Justice Radio 2/6/25: Frenchie Davis, The Abolitionist

Host/s: Catherine Besteman and Linda Small
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Aaron Pyle and Sarah Johnson | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine.

This week: Don’t miss Catherine and Linda’s interview with sexologist, Frenchie Davis, host of The Abolitionist radio show on WBAI in New York City, as they talk about the relationship between love, sexuality, oppression, and repression for survivors of sexual violence and those who cause sexual harm. And the difference between an abolitionist feminist and carceral feminist.

About the hosts:
The Justice Radio team includes:

Catherine Besteman is an abolitionist educator at Colby College. Her research and practice engage the public humanities to explore abolitionist possibilities in Maine. In addition to coordinating Freedom & Captivity, she has researched and published on security, militarism, displacement, and community-based activism with a focus on Somalia, post-apartheid South Africa, and the U.S. She has published nine books, contributed to the International Panel on Exiting Violence, and received recent fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

MacKenzie Kelley is a formerly incarcerated woman in long term recovery. She is a teachers assistant for inside-out courses through MIT. MacKenzie works at the Maine Prisoner Reentry Center as a reentry specialist, peer support and recovery coach. She is the program director for Reentry Sisters, a program designed to assist women reentering the community from prison.

Linda Small is the founder and executive director of Reentry Sisters, a reentry support organization specializing in a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach for women, serving Maine and beyond. She is a Project Coordinator for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. Linda serves on the Maine Prison Education Partnership board at UMA and the New England Commission for the Future of Higher Education in Prison through The Educational Justice Institute at MIT.

The Young People’s Caucus (YPC) builds pathways for young people who have been directly impacted by systems involvement and systemic oppression to have a genuine voice and power in decision making in Maine. We create opportunities and connect young people, agency partners, and policy makers to work together to create public systems that support and empower all young people, with a focus on youth who have experienced the juvenile justice and foster care systems.

MIDC: Maine Indigent Defense Center is a criminal defense firm accepting only court-appointed cases in primarily Cumberland and York counties. We bring a holistic approach to every criminal case, collaboratively addressing our clients’ problems outside the courtroom, which are the problems that often bring them into court in the first place. By addressing these issues we believe our clients are able to achieve better outcomes in and out of court. MIDC was formed in December of 2007 amid cuts to funding for court appointed attorneys. Today, MIDC splits time between representing individual clients, working with students, collaborating with other professionals in our community to work towards a fully holistic defense model, and advocating for reform by providing a critical voice at the legislature and other forums.

Robert J. Ruffner: Robert Joseph Ruffner, Director of MIDC. grew up in New England and is a graduate of Clark University (’92). Rob attended Washington University in St. Louis School of Law (’96) where, to no one’s surprise, he was Managing Editor of the Devil’s Advocate. After a short stint as a defense attorney Rob worked as a prosecutor in St. Louis, Missouri and Portland, Maine. In 2001 Rob returned to his true calling, criticizing the State Criminal Defense, forming his own practice to focus exclusively on criminal (almost entirely indigent) defense. A Life Member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Rob is also member of the Maine State Bar Association and Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and was the recipient of the 2009 MACDL, Unsung Hero Award for “highest level of commitment, passion and tireless pursuit of justice in the representation of indigent defendants”. Rob is never far from his three senior Labrador Retriever partners, Luke (8), Gideon (3) (featured on Our Team page) and Flynne (6 months). When he isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking the Commission during public comment or poking the State in the eye with a stick, Rob spends as much time as possible with Luke, Gideon and Flynne in a tent in the remote woods of Vermont, from where he “Zooms” back to court in Maine … and pokes the State a little more.

Emily Goulette: Emily is a Maine native and 2019 graduate of Colby College. Emily then earned her J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law (2023) where she worked in Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic’s Youth Justice Clinic representing youth in criminal and education matters. Emily assisted in re-instituting Maine Law’s chapter of the Student Animal League Defense Fund while working for the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland. Emily also interned for Webb Law Firm during law school, assisting on misdemeanor and felony cases. Before joining the Maine Indigent Defense Center, Emily advocated for Maine’s homeless population supporting youth and their families through Homeless Youth Services at the Opportunity Alliance in South Portland, ME. Emily (alongside her service dog Finley) now serves as the Director of Policy and Development for MIDC, creating new MIDC initiatives, running the robust student programming, and kick-starting Maine’s newest non-profit – The Center for Indigent Defense Studies. Emily lives in Hollis, ME with her horse (Chevy) and problem-causing dog and cat (Stanley and Lennie, respectively).

The Maine Monitor Radio Hour 2/6/2025

Host: Stephanie McFeeters, Deputy Editor at The Maine Monitor
Production Assistance: Amy Browne

The Maine Monitor Radio Hour is a collaboration between WERU-FM and the Maine Monitor, the nonpartisan, independent publication of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

This month: The Maine Monitor’s senior health reporter Rose Lundy discusses proposed staffing regulations for assisted living facilities in Maine, as well as other aspects of her investigative and accountability reporting on the long-term care industry.

Guests:
Rose Lundy, [email protected]

FMI:
themainemonitor.org/care-facility-staffing-proposal-amended/
themainemonitor.org/door-knocking-context/
themainemonitor.org/residential-care-growing-need/
themainemonitor.org/maine-proposes-care-facility-staffing-changes/

One Small Step Short Feature: Eric and Donna

WERU One Small Step Moderators: Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle.
Produced by Chris Battaglia.

Created by StoryCorps, One Small Step is an effort to remind the country of the humanity in all of us, even those with whom we disagree. The initiative brings strangers with different political beliefs together for a conversation—not to debate politics—but to get to know each other as people.

This WERU project was in partnership with StoryCorps, and made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

One Small Step Short Feature: Darby and March

WERU One Small Step Moderators: Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle.
Produced by Chris Battaglia.

Created by StoryCorps, One Small Step is an effort to remind the country of the humanity in all of us, even those with whom we disagree. The initiative brings strangers with different political beliefs together for a conversation—not to debate politics—but to get to know each other as people.

This WERU project was in partnership with StoryCorps, and made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

One Small Step Short Feature: Achaia and Beverly

WERU One Small Step Moderators: Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle.
Produced by Chris Battaglia.

Created by StoryCorps, One Small Step is an effort to remind the country of the humanity in all of us, even those with whom we disagree. The initiative brings strangers with different political beliefs together for a conversation—not to debate politics—but to get to know each other as people.

This WERU project was in partnership with StoryCorps, and made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.