Common Ground Radio 5/11/23: A Conversation About Herbalism with Emily Springer of Meeting House Farm

Producers/Hosts: 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:

Topics this episode include:
– Herbalism, including herb growing techniques, harvesting and processing methods and uses.

Guest/s:
Emily Springer, Meeting House Farm, Scarborough, Maine.

FMI Links:
Meeting House Farm Instagram
Meeting House Farm Facebook
Deb Soule of Avena Botanicals
Book- Making Plant Medicine

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 5/11/23: Bill Nemitz on the Maine Journalism Foundation

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week we’re talking with award-winning long time Maine journalist Bill Nemitz.  He’s been a reporter, editor and columnist for newspapers in Maine since 1977, and now he’s embarking on a new project with a goal of keeping media independent – but he and his partners will need public support to make it happen.

FMI: Maine Journalism Foundation

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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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 5/11/23: Understanding AI 6

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

 

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

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Talk of the Towns 5/10/23: Take it Outside: Maine educators teaching out of doors

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard
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:

  • What happens to students when they are engaged to learn out of doors?   (Tell some stories!)
  • Do you incorporate learning beyond “science”?    (literature, history, art?)
  • What have been the responses to bringing education out of doors—from students, from other teachers, from parents?
  • What are the challenges you face in offering/promoting education outdoors?  (e.g. costs, transportation, insurance, resistance, hesitation from teachers who feel they do not have adequate experience or skills? Note 2022 Census of Community-Based Outdoor and Environmental Learning?)
  • Where do you get support for teaching out of doors?  Teach ME Outside and other educational resources and networks, philanthropy, etc.
  • What else would you advise for teachers, school leaders and parents about making the most of educating out of doors?

Guest/s:

Hazel Stark, Maine Outdoor School, Milbridge (and producer of The Nature of Phenology on WERU)
Tiara Woods, Middle Level Classroom Teacher, Lamoine Consolidated School
Landere Naisbitt, Education Coordinator, Blue Hill Heritage Trust

Other links:

Maine Outdoor School
Creative STAR Learning

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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BoatTalk 5/9/23: Giffy is back, along with Maritime Pets

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

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

This month:
Busy boatyards. Kirsten Neuschafer wins Golden Globe 2022 round the world race beating 15 men. Giffy Full, frequent past BoatTalk guest returns with more stories. We talk with Pat Sullivan of the Museum Maritime Pets in Rockland.

Guest/s:
Giffy Full
Pat Sullivan, The Museum of Maritime Pets, Sharpes Wharf, Rockland, ME

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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Outside the Box 5/9/23: “Bee Democratic”

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.

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A Word in Edgewise 5/8/23: Of the Emergent Garden . . .

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.

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The Nature of Phenology 5/6/23: Broad-Winged Hawks

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn
Host: Hazel Stark

Our smallest, most common hawk, the broad-winged hawk, has returned from its winter haunts as far away as Central or South America.

Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com.

About the host/writers:
Joe Horn lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder of Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide and Carpenter. He is passionate about fishing, cooking, and making things with his hands. He has both an MBA in Sustainability and an MS focused in Environmental Education. Joe can be reached by emailing [email protected]

Hazel Stark lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder and Naturalist Educator at Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide. She loves taking a closer look at nature through the lens of her camera, napping in beds of moss, and taking hikes to high points to see what being tall is all about. She has an MS in Resource Management and Conservation and is a lifelong Maine outdoorswoman. Hazel can be reached by emailing [email protected]

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