Around Town 8/8/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

More from Searsport – upcoming events on Sears Island, and a public meeting next week with the Searsport Selectboard and the Maine DOT.

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

Healthy Options 8/7/24: Conversation with Jess Mauer, Executive Director of The Maine Council on Aging

Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-Producer:
Petra Hall
Technical assistance: Joel Mann & Amy Browne

Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well

This month:

– What does it mean to have purpose in our lives and why is that important for healthy aging?
– What steps can all of us take- at any age- to stay healthy?
– How does the language we may use to describe getting older, reinforce (or dispel) stereotypes of aging in our society?
– How can we dispel the rampant use of negative stereotypes of growing older?  What can we do in our own lives to create a positive image of getting older?
– What can we do in our communities to support each other’s needs as we age? What kind of work is needed to empower those supportive resources in our communities?
– How does our health care system discriminate against older people?
– What are the financial & economic realities of growing older? Do negative stereotypes of aging affect older people in these concerns?
– How do systemic attitudes about sex, gender identity, race, & disability affect us as we grow older?

Guest(s): 
Jess Maurer, Executive Director of the Maine Council on Aging.

FMI:
Maine Council on Aging
mainecouncilonaging.org
agefriendly.community
www.agefriendly.community
Age Positive Maine:
mainecouncilonaging.org/agepositiveme/

Previous Healthy Options Programs on related topics:
Healthy Options 6/5/24: The Gift of Aging: Growing Older with Purpose, Planning, and Positivity
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2024/06/healthyoptions-6-5-24-the-gift-of-aging-growing-older-with-purpose-planning-and-positivity/
Healthy Options 3/6/24: Advocating for the care needs & rights of elders in nursing homes & assisted living facilities
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2024/03/healthyoptions-3-6-24-advocating-for-the-care-needs-and-rights-of-elders-in-nursing-homes-assisted-living-facilities/
Healthy Options 12/6/23: Brain Health and Aging Well
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2023/12/healthyoptions-12-6-23-brain-healthand-aging-well/
Healthy Options 8/2/17: The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2017/08/healthyoptions-8217/

About the host:
Rhonda Feiman is a nationally-certified, licensed acupuncturist practicing in Belfast, Maine since 1993. She primarily practices Toyohari Japanese acupuncture, using gentle and powerful non-insertion needle techniques, and also utilizes Chinese acupuncture and herbology. In addition, Rhonda is a practitioner of Qi Gong and an instructor of Tai Chi Chuan in the Yang Family tradition.

Around Town 8/7/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Allie Williamson from Next Step Domestic Violence Project is here today with an invitation to a free family fun event this weekend.
 
FMI:

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

Outside the Box 8/6/24: “Our Chaotic World”

Producer/Host: Larry Dansinger

About the host:
Larry Dansinger (no pronouns) of Bangor came to Maine in 1974 and has been here ever since. Some of Larry’s activities since then: Done community organizing on numerous issues through INVERT and then Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), committed civil disobedience several times, grown a garden yearly since 1977, joined various food cooperatives and two men’s groups, refused to pay federal income taxes for war, lived on a community land trust for 23 years, and met a wonderful partner whom Larry has loved for over 40 years. Larry has produced Outside the Box features on WERU since 2007 and continues to look for unique ways of seeing almost any problem or situation.

Around Town 8/6/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Ashley Megquier from Friends of Sears Island with an update on the events and activities happening on the island this month.
 

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

Around Town 8/5/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

An update on the Penobscot River mercury remediation project.

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

A Word in Edgewise 8/5/24: More or Less a Normal Month in Maine . . .

Producer/Host: R.W. Estela

Hi, I’m RW Estela: Since 1991, I’ve been presenting A Word in Edgewise, WERU’s longest-running short feature, a veritable almanac of worldly and heavenly happenings, a confluence of 21st-century life in its myriad manifestations, international and domestic, cosmopolitan and rural, often revealing, as the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same — though not always! Sometimes in addressing issues affecting our day-to-day lives, in this age of vagary and ambiguity, when chronological time is punctuated elliptically, things can quickly turn edgy and controversial, as we search for understanding amid our dialectic. Tune in Monday mornings at 7:30 a.m. for an exciting journey through space and time with a few notable birthdays thrown in for good measure during A Word in Edgewise . . .

About the host:
RW Estela was raised as a first-generation American in Colorado by a German mother and a Corsican-Basque father who would become a three-war veteran for the US Army, so RW was naturally a military brat and later engaged in various Vietnam-era civil-service adventures before paying his way through college by skiing for the University of Colorado, playing Boulder coffeehouses, and teaching. He has climbed all of Colorado’s Fourteeners; found work as an FAA-certificated commercial pilot, a California-licensed building contractor, a publishing editor, a practitioner of Aikido, and a college professor of English; among his many interdisciplinary pursuits are the design and building of Terrell Residence Library (recently renamed the Terrell House Permaculture Living & Learning Center at the University of Maine), writing Building It In Two Languages (a bilingual dictionary of construction terminology), aerial photo documentation of two dam removals (Great Works and Veazie) on the Penobscot River, and once a week since 1991 drafting an installment of A Word In Edgewise, his essay series addressing issues affecting our day-to-day lives — and WERU’s oldest continuous short feature. When pandemics do not interfere, he does the Triple Crown of Maine open-water ocean swims (Peaks to Portland, Islesboro Crossing, and Nubble Light Challenge) and the Whitewater Downriver Point Series of the Maine Canoe and Kayak Racing Organization. RW is the father of two and the grandfather of three and lives with his partner Kathleen of 37 years and their two Maine Coons in Orono.