Conversations from the Pointed Firs

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.

This month:
Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Sarah Alexander, Executive Director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA). This year MOFGA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding. Sarah and Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sit down to discuss the historical moment of MOFGA’s inception, the state of farming in Maine, and what MOFGA might become over the next 50 years.

Sarah has been in her position since, 2018, and has over 20 years of experience advocating for sustainable, local and fair food systems. A native of rural Ohio, she attended Northwestern University, where she became interested in fixing our food systems, protecting the environment, and in fighting for the rights of Indigenous people. It was there that she began working with the White Earth Land Recovery project, first leading a trip of students to work in the maple sugar bush during spring break. After college she completed a year-long environmental organizing fellowship with Green Corps, working on campaigns in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago. When she completed that program, she moved up to the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, where she spent three years continuing her work with the White Earth Land Recovery Project, helping to restore traditional food systems and stopping the genetic engineering of wild rice.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:
This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Joan (Jo) Radner, of Lovell, Maine, professor emerita of literature at American University, holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and is enjoying a second career as an oral historian, writer, and professional storyteller in her family’s home region of western Maine. Jo has been studying, teaching, telling, and collecting stories most of her life, and has performed from Maine to Hawaii to Finland. Past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network, she has published books and articles on subjects ranging from early Irish historiography and Anglo-Irish drama to women’s folklore, Deaf culture, and New England social history. Her new book (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) is Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages. She has also published two award-winning CDs grounded in New England history, Yankee Ingenuity: Stories of Headstrong and Resourceful People and Burnt Into Memory: How Brownfield Faced the Fire.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:
This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Steve Tatko, Vice President of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Steve is a lifelong Mainer, born in Monson, graduate of Colby College, shaped by the Maine woods, and now dedicated to its preservation for all of us to use and enjoy. In the past years, Steve and his colleagues have increased the AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative lands to 100,000 contiguous acres, and helped to advance the state’s 30×30 goal (a national project aiming to conserve 30 percent of each state’s natural resources by 2030). Steve and his colleagues have also determined to remove every barrier to pass of sea-run Atlantic salmon and eastern brook trout on AMC land and to work with partners to conserve the entirety of Maine’s One Hundred Mile Wilderness. In recognition of his work, the Maine Northeaster Loggers Association presented him its award for “Outstanding Management of Natural Resources” for 2022

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:
This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with John Bunker, homesteader, farmer, orchardist, author, apple historian, co-founder of FEDCO Trees, and founder of MOFGA’s Maine Heritage Orchard, 10-acre preservation and educational orchard located in Unity Maine home to over 360 varies of apples and pears traditionally grown in all 16 counties of Maine dating back to 1630.

John Bunker grew up in Massachusetts and California, moving to Maine in 1968. He has lived in Palermo on Super Chilly Farm for the past 51 years, where he and Cammy Watts grow vegetables, woody and herbaceous ornamentals, small fruits and tree fruits. They also run a rare-apple CSA together. For thirty-five years, he coordinated nursery sales for Fedco Trees, the co-op nursery company in Clinton. His passion is tracking down heirloom fruit varieties, particularly those originating in Maine. In 2012 he established the Maine Heritage Orchard at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association -MOFGA’s- Common Ground in Unity. Currently the orchard is home to 350 historic pears and apples. He is the author of two books: “Not Far from the Tree: A Brief History of the Apples and the Orchards of Palermo, Maine” and “Apples and the Art of Detection.” He speaks and teaches regularly in the New England area. You can learn more about what John and Cammy are up to by going to their website: outonalimbapples.com

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:

Our guests this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee, musicians and musicologists, who for many years have been researching their personal heritage by exploring the traditional music connections between the Celtic lands, the Canadian Maritimes and Maine. In this Conversation from the Pointed Firs episode we explore the early music of Maine, and our cultural heritage through story and song. Through Castlebay, as their musical home, they have released more than two dozen recordings. Their new book, “Bygone Ballads of Maine-Songs of Ships and Sailors”, contains many of their findings including lyrics, tunes and relevant lore.

For more information about their CDs, books, and performance schedule, go to their website at castlebay.net.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:

The guest for this month is Julia Bouwsma, poet laureate of Maine and author of “Midden”, an award-winning collection of poems published by Fordham University Press in 2018, an intimate and raw set of poems addressing a dark and important piece of Maine history that transpired on Malaga Island in Casco Bay in 1912.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Peter Beckford, Maine farmer and storyteller who will introduce the work of the late Holman F. Day, journalist, poet, and raconteur, whose accounts of neighbors and friends, often in dialect, are classic evocations of the “spirit of Maine.”

Peter Beckford lives in Liberty, Maine where he runs Rebel Hill perennial farm with his wife. Peter is also a piper, a box maker, history buff and collector of old things.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

This month:

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Martha White, writer, editor and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White.

Martha White is a writer, editor, and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White. She is a graduate in English from Mount Holyoke College; has been a longtime contributing editor to Yankee Publishing and The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and compiled two weekly columns for United Feature Syndicate for many years. Her articles, book reviews, short stories, and essays have been published in The New York Times; The Boston Globe; Christian Science Monitor; Early American Life, Country Journal, Down East; Garden Design, Maine Boats Homes and Harbors, and numerous other national magazines and small presses. In 2006, white edited the revised and updated Letters of E. B. White (HarperCollins) and, since then, she has compiled three more collections of E. B. White’s work: In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (Cornell University Press, 2011) and E. B. White on Dogs (Tilbury House, Publishers, 2013). Her most editorial endeavor is Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship, The Correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith (DownEast Books, 2020.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download