The Cosmic Curator 6/8/24: Two Weeks in One

Good Morning, People! This is your cosmic curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for the week of June 8 and the days ahead…

About the Host:
Tom Yaroschuk is a Vedic Astrologer. His intention is to help people understand their karma and the issues they may confront to cultivate more fulfilling lives. Tom is writing a memoir of the spiritual lessons derived from his work in a Homeless Day Center in between a career as an award winning television and documentary producer.

Around Town 6/7/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

The 2nd annual Maine Ocean Festival – tomorrow, Saturday, June 8th, from 9 am to 3pm at the Oceanarium and Education Center on Rt 3 in Bar Harbor.

For more information or to buy tickets: www.theoceanarium.org (click on “news”)

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

Justice Radio 6/6/24: Are Prisons the Answer? – Hidden Histories of Trans Women, Part 2

Host/s: Leo Hylton
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 Part 2 of Leo’s conversation with tyler redskye and Ebony Harper on the hidden histories of trans women. Both tyler and Ebony share deeply personal, painful, and joyful experiences, gifting Leo (and you!) with a powerful and visceral look into a world of violence, mutual aid, and community-based safety that too many of us hide from or are too afraid to ask about. This episode is both engaging and informative.

Guests:
tyler redskye and Ebony Harper

About the hosts:
The Justice Radio team includes:

Leo Hylton is currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison, yet is a recent Master’s graduate, a columnist with The Bollard, a restorative and transformative justice advocate and activist, a prison abolitionist, and a Visiting Instructor at Colby College’s Anthropology Department, co-teaching AY346 – Carcerality and Abolition.

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.

Zoe Brokos (she/her) is the executive director of the Church of Safe Injection, a comprehensive harm reduction program that operates in Southern and Central Maine. Zoe is a person who uses drugs, a mom, a wife, and has led harm reduction programs in Maine for 15 years. She is part of the Maine Drug Policy Coalition, sits on the board of Decriminalize Maine and joined Justice Radio to promote compassionate conversations and drug user-led advocacy efforts that focus on evidence-based, public health responses to the housing and overdose crises in Maine.

Marion Anderson: Before joining The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in January of 2022, Marion worked as a harm reductionist, housing navigator, certified intentional peer support specialist, CCAR recovery coach, and a re-entry coach for a diverse range of non-profit organizations.

Charlotte Warren is a former State Representative. She served on the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee for eight years – six as the house chair. Warren previously served on the Judiciary Committee and as the house chair of Maine’s Mental Health Working Group and the house chair of the Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole. Previous to her time in the legislature, Charlotte served as Mayor of the city of Hallowell.

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 Maine Monitor Radio Hour 6/6/24

Producer/host: Amy Browne
Other credits: Audio segment, Kate Cough interviewing Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, courtesy of The Maine Monitor
 
Emily Bader, Emmett Gartner and Josh Keefe, reporters for The Maine Monitor, join us to talk about the stories they have been working on (links below), including Emily Bader’s piece on how various agencies in the state are spending their share of opioid settlement funds, Emmett Gartner’s series on dam removals in Maine, and Josh Keefe’s series on the child protective system in Maine.  Also an excerpt from Editor Kate Cough’s recent interview with Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows

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

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Jane Blum with all the details on the Belfast Pride parade, celebration and film festival coming up on Saturday, and headlines from Maine newspapers 100 years ago today.

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 6/5/24: The Gift of Aging: Growing Older with Purpose, Planning, and Positivity

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

Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well

This month:

– What is aging? Why is having a positive view of aging good for our health?
– How can we stay healthy while aging?
– What are “normal” or usual, stages of aging as we get older?
– What is brain plasticity? How does the brain create new pathways and why is that important?
– How are ageism and age-based stereotypes harmful?
– How would we define elder vs. elderly? What is the difference between being an “elder” and being seen as “elderly”?
– Is frailty inevitable?
– What role does attitude and positivity play in staying well?
– How does diet, exercise, creativity and a sense of purpose assist us in aging well? 
– What is a “life span” vs. a “health span”? How can the two be combined for better outcomes? 
– Why is isolation so detrimental to us? Why is it important to engage with others, and of all ages? Why might helping others be important for our own health?
– Why is learning something new every day important, and why is being in nature good for us?
– Are there risks to taking multiple medications?
– What are the financial and legal aspects of aging well? How do we plan for a successful aging (life) experience?
– Regarding grief: what is natural and expected after losing a loved one or experiencing loss in difficult situations?
– Why is resiliency vital to our well being, no matter our age?

Guest(s): 
Marcy Cottrell Houle, MS., wildlife biologist and author of seven books including “The Gift of Caring- Saving our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare”, co-authored with Dr. Elizabeth Eckstrom.

FMI:
In 2016, Rhonda Feiman interviewed Marcy Cottrell Houle, MS., about “The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare,” about how the current health care delivery model is ill-equipped to provide comprehensive, person-centered care to seniors, and how many treatable conditions and symptoms are dismissed as “just old age.” The discussion highlights specific tools that we can use to help prevent these mistakes and what we need to know to achieve healthy aging.
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2016/10/special-edition-of-healthyoptions10616/
www.thegiftofcaring.net

Healthy Options 3/6/24: Advocating for the care needs & rights of elders in nursing homes & assisted living facilities
Elder Advocate Jack Halpern, founder and chairman of MyElder.
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: Interview with Susan Wehry, M.D., geriatric psychiatrist and director of AgingME
archives.weru.org/healthy-options/2023/12/healthyoptions-12-6-23-brain-healthand-aging-well/
www.susanwehrymd.com
agingme.org

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.

World Ocean Radio 6/5/24: What is World Ocean Day Meant to Do?

Host: Peter Neill
Producer:
Trisha Badger

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
On June 8th each year we come together as a global community to celebrate World Ocean Day, a date set aside to recognize our relationship with the ocean. Public awareness of ocean issues in the United States barely advances year on year, despite consistent efforts by conservation, ocean, and other environmental organizations like World Ocean Observatory whose mission it is to inform and educate. What is World Ocean Day meant to do? Do we have the will to coalesce around a single issue, to be informed and changed into a voice for change?

World Ocean Day is June 8th. Learn more at worldoceanday.org.

WORLD OCEAN RADIO
5-minute weekly insights dive into ocean science, advocacy and education hosted by Peter Neill, lifelong ocean advocate and maritime expert. A catalog of more than 700 episodes offer perspectives on global ocean issues and viable solutions, and celebrate exemplary projects. Available for RSS feed and for broadcast by college and community radio stations worldwide. You will also find this week’s World Ocean Radio episode at Exchange.prx.org, at Audioport.orgWorldOceanObservatory.org where the full catalog of episodes is searchable by theme, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Around Town 6/5/24: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Excerpts from an MDI Historical Society event with Brent Richardson telling historic family stories.

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