What’s the Word on Maine Street? 3/14/26

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 and held each October. She serves on the boards of the Cultural Alliance of Maine and Lawrence Family Fitness Center YMCA. 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.

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Coastal Conversations 3/13/26: Place-Based Science: The Freshwater Wetland

Host: Julia Rush
Editorial Help: Natalie Springuel
Theme Music: Paul Anderson – A Following Sea

Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program.

Ecology, natural history, Indigenous ecology, scientific research.

Guest/s:
Dr. Suzanne Greenlaw.
Lauren Gibson.
Dr. Chris Nadeau.

FMI:
Sea to Trees – Season 4, episode 1 – schoodicinstitute.org/sea-to-trees-season-4-episode-1/

About the hosts:

Natalie Springuel has hosted Coastal Conversation’s since 2015, with support from the University of Maine Sea Grant where she has served as a marine extension associate for 20 years. In 2019, Springuel received an award for Public Affairs programming from the Maine Association of Broadcasters for the Coastal Conversations show called “Portland’s Working Waterfront.” Springuel is passionate about translating science, sharing stories, and offering a platform for multiple voices to weigh in on complex coastal and ocean issues. She has recently enrolled in audio production training at Maine Media Workshop to dive deeper into making great community radio.

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Around Town 3/13/26: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Maria Girouard, co-founder of the Sunlight Media Collective, stops by to invite you to a showing of two of their short documentaries [Environmental Justice: An Age-Old Saga: Penobscot Nation Takes a Stand Against Juniper Ridge Landfill (2025), and It’s Not Just Us: Penobscot Nation Puts Environmental Justice to the Test (2026)] on the battle to protect the Penobscot watershed from the Juniper Ridge landfill, just upriver from Indian Island. The event will take place tomorrow (Saturday 3/14) at 2pm at the Sockalexis Arena on Indian Island. No tickets required.

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

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Common Ground Radio 3/12/26: Seed Saving with Will Bonsall

Host: Holli Cederholm

Common Ground Radio is an hour-long discussion of local food and organic agriculture with people here in the state of Maine and beyond.

This month:
This month on Common Ground Radio, we’re discussing how and why to save seeds — from annuals like your favorite heirloom tomato to the more complicated biennials, like carrots and beets. Saving your own seed can be cost-effective, and also allows you to select for traits specific to your tastes, like sweetness, as well as gardening conditions and climate. Host Holli Cederholm talks with seed saving legend Will Bonsall, author of “Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical Self-Reliant Gardening” and the director of the Scatterseed Project, a project dedicated to preserving thousands of genetically diverse crops well-suited to Maine’s seasons and soils.

Guest/s:
Will Bonsall

FMI:
MOFGA’s Seed Swap & Scion Exchange — www.mofga.org/trainings/annual-events/seed-swap-and-scion-exchange
“Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical Self-Reliant Gardening” by Will Bonsall — www.chelseagreen.com/product/will-bonsalls-essential-guide-to-radical-self-reliant-gardening
Seed Saving resources — www.mofga.org/trainings/gardening/seed-saving

About the hosts:
Holli Cederholm has been involved in organic agriculture since 2005 when she first apprenticed on a small farm. She has worked on organic farms in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Scotland and Italy and, in 2010, founded a small farm focused on celebrating open-pollinated and heirloom vegetables. As the former manager of a national nonprofit dedicated to organic seed growers, she authored a peer-reviewed handbook on GMO avoidance strategies for seed growers. Holli has also been a steward at Forest Farm, the iconic homestead of “The Good Life” authors Helen and Scott Nearing; a host of “The Farm Report” on Heritage Radio Network; and a lo0ng-time contributor for The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, which she now edits in her role as content creator and editor at MOFGA.

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Around Town 3/12/26: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Big changes to LD2176 as the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee holds a second public hearing

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

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Talk of the Towns 3/11/26: Positivity Bias… a new anthology of Maine Writers

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard and Liz Graves
College of the Atlantic provides help with production. Engineering by Joel Mann of WERU Community Radio.
Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording.

Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities

This month:
What is “positivity bias”?
What was the hope in creating this new anthology short fiction by Maine writers?
Sharing some examples of the writing, how did authors answer the call for “defiantly happy endings”?

Guest/s:
Gillian Burnes, editor and contributor to Positivity Bias, from Gardiner.
Madison Ellingsworth, contributor, from Portland.
Robert Diamente, contributor, from Bangor.

FMI:
littoralbooks.com/product/positivity-bias-maine-writers-defiantly-happy-endings-isbn-979-8-9917891-5-8/
robertdiamante.com
madisonellingsworth.com
littoralbooks.com/product/soft-features-by-gillian-burnes/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNzJ48MYexM

About the hosts:

Ron Beard is producer and host of Talk of the Towns, which first aired on WERU in 1993 as part of his community building work as an Extension professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant. He took all the journalism courses he could fit in while an undergraduate student in wildlife management and served as an intern with Maine Public Television nightly newscast in the early 1970s. Ron is an adjunct faculty member at College of the Atlantic, teaching courses on community development. Ron served on the Bar Harbor Town Council for six years and is currently board chair for the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, where he has lived since 1975. Look for him on the Allagash River in June, and whenever he can get away, in the highlands of Scotland where he was fortunate to spend two sabbaticals.

Liz Graves joined Talk of the Towns as co-producer and co-host in July 2022, having long admired public affairs programming on WERU and dreamed of getting involved in community radio. She works as the Town Clerk for the Town of Bar Harbor, and is a former editor of the Mount Desert Islander weekly newspaper. Liz grew up in California and came to Maine as a schooner sailor.

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