The Cosmic Curator 7/15/23: Venus on Steroids

Good Morning, People, this is your Cosmic Curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at what’s happening in the stars for Saturday, July 15th and the days ahead.
Someone once said, the Zodiac is like a celestial symphony. Each planet sounding off in its own way…

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.

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Let’s Talk About It 7/14/23: Abuse by a Father – Updated Version of 6/11/21 Episode

Producer/Host: Patrisha McLean
Production assistance: Tammy Oropesa
Music: Jackie Lee McLean

Let’s Talk About It: Conversations with Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Guests:
Sue Garrett, Elizabeth Garber, Karin Spitfire, and Kathleen Robinson Weston

Topics include: 
Child abuse, how domestic abuse impacts the family, healing through art and writing

About the host:
Patrisha McLean is the founder/president of Finding Our Voices, the grass roots survivor-powered non profit organization breaking the silence of domestic abuse one conversation and community at a time all across Maine.

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Justice Radio 7/13/23: Are Prisons the Answer? Towards Hope and Renewal

Host/s: Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Lucas Brown | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

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

This week: Can we move toward hope and renewal? Find out with hosts Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman and special guest Reverend Jane Field, Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches, as they explore why faith groups support LD 178, a parole bill considered by Maine lawmakers.

Guest/s: Reverend Jane Field, Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches

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.

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Common Ground Radio 7/13/23: Farming and Parenting

Host: Caitlyn Barker
Editor: Clare Boland

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:

Farming while parenting, childcare, farm business planning, farming and stress, safety on farm, resources for farming families.

Guest/s:
Meg Mitchell, Southpaw Farm, Freedom, ME
Sam Gerry, Ramble On Farm, Know, ME
Polly Shyka, Villageside Farm, Freedom, ME

FMI Links:
Farm Coaching
Maine Farmland Trust
Mano en Mano
Cultivating Community
Childcare Infrastructure Grant Program
MOFGA Farmer Resources

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 long-time contributor for The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, which she now edits in her role as content creator and editor at MOFGA.

Caitlyn Barker has worked in education and organic agriculture on and off for the last 17 years. She has worked on an organic vegetable farm, served on the Maine Farm to School network, worked in early childhood education and taught elementary school. She currently serves as the community engagement coordinator for MOFGA.

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Around Town 7/13/23: 3rd Annual Ashley Bryan Honorary Lecture Tonight at Jesup

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Lila Miller, Director of Advancement at the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor with all the details of tonight’s event, and this year’s speaker, artist Keith Morris Washington.

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.

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Talk of the Towns 7/12/23: Preview of Reimaging Exploration, College of the Atlantic’s Summer Institute July 31-August 4 2023

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard and Liz Graves
Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme music for Talk of the Towns is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording.

Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities

This month:

  • Overview of College of the Atlantic’s Summer Institute, in collaboration with the National Geographic Society
  • Reflections on what “exploration” means in the 21st century
  • Preview of sessions led by Nadia Rosenthal on the science of viruses and implications for global health
  • Preview of session led by Kim Stanley Robinson, on Space: Our Last Great Commons

Guest/s:
Darron Collins, President of College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor
Nadia Rosenthal, Scientific Director, The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor
Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future, science fiction writer

Other links:
Summer Institute at College of the Atlantic
Can Science Fiction Wake Us Up to Our Climate Reality? – The New Yorker, January 24, 2022

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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Around Town 7/11/23: Our Town Belfast Events

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Amanda Cunningham, Executive Director of Our Town Belfast fills us in on all of this week’s events — and how you can sign up to be notified about their upcoming events.

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.

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BoatTalk 7/11/23: Call-In Show with No Phone

Producers/Hosts: Jon Johansen and Alan Sprague
Engineers: John Greenman, Amy Browne

BoatTalk is the call-in show for people contemplating all things naval

This month:
Graphene, next boatbuilding material, Tom Robinson rowing across the pacific, other crazy rowers. Mike Joyce’s interview with a fisherman who spent the night on a bouy in the middle of winter.

Guest/s:

About the hosts:

Alan Sprague is a retired boat carpenter and a volunteer at WERU for over thirty years. He and the late Mike Joyce started Boattalk in 2003 and Alan carries on.

Jon Johansen is the editor and roving reporter for the Maine Coastal News. He is Chairman of the Board of the Penobscot Marine Museum, President of Maine Built Boats, President of Maine Lobster Boat Racing, and Director of the International Maritime Library in his spare time.

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