Conversations from the Pointed Firs 3/3/23: Martha White

Host:Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
Music by Casey Neill

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.

This month:

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Martha White, writer, editor and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White.

Martha White is a writer, editor, and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White. She is a graduate in English from Mount Holyoke College; has been a longtime contributing editor to Yankee Publishing and The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and compiled two weekly columns for United Feature Syndicate for many years. Her articles, book reviews, short stories, and essays have been published in The New York Times; The Boston Globe; Christian Science Monitor; Early American Life, Country Journal, Down East; Garden Design, Maine Boats Homes and Harbors, and numerous other national magazines and small presses. In 2006, white edited the revised and updated Letters of E. B. White (HarperCollins) and, since then, she has compiled three more collections of E. B. White’s work: In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (Cornell University Press, 2011) and E. B. White on Dogs (Tilbury House, Publishers, 2013). Her most editorial endeavor is Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship, The Correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith (DownEast Books, 2020.

About the host:
Peter Neill is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. In 1972, he founded Leete’s Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, the environment, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world. He holds a profound interest in Maine, its history, its people, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.

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Justice Radio 3/2/23: Ending the War on Drugs in Maine

Producers/Hosts: Charlotte Warren and Zoe Brokos
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits:TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Emma Reynolds | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

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

This week:
Hosts Charlotte Warren and Zoe Brokos continue the discussion and explore the actions we can take towards Ending the War on Drugs in Maine.

Guest/s:
n/a

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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Change Agents 3/2/23: Issues affecting LGBTQ people in Maine.

Producer/Host: Steve Wessler

Change Agents: Conversations with Advocates and Social Justice Advocate on WERU FM

This month:
This program focuses on changes in the climate for LGBTQ people, both students and adults. Schools, parents and students are affected across the USA and Maine by efforts of conservative groups to take books off the shelf that relate to transgender students.

Guests:
Gia Drew, executive director of Equality Maine. Gia leads the of the largest organizations in Maine protecting the rights of LGBTQ people in Maine.
Tracey Hair is the executive director of HOME. Tracey sees issues in their work that affect LGBTQ people in Maine.

About the host:
Steve Wessler will soon will be starting his 28th year of working on human right issues. He founded the Civil Rights Unit in the Maine Attorney’s Office in 1992 and led the Unit for 7 years. In 1999 he left the formal practice of law and founded the Center for the Prevention of Hate. The Center worked in Maine and across the USA. He and his colleagues worked to reduce bias and harassment in schools, in communities, in health care organization through workshops and conflict resolution. The Center closed in 2011 and Steve began a consulting on human rights issues. For the next 5 years much of his work was in Europe, developing and implementing training curricular for police, working in communities to reduce the risk of hate crimes, conflict resolution between police and youth. He has worked in over 20 countries. In late 2016 he began to work more in Maine, with a focus on reducing anti-immigrant bias. He continues to work in schools to reduce bias and harassment. Wessler teaches courses on human rights issues at the College of the Atlantic, the University of Maine at Augusta and at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in northern Virginia.

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Around Town 3/2/23: Gov. Mills’ “Offshore Wind Roadmap” – What Does it Mean for Sears Island?

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week:
Steve Miller, Executive Director of Islesboro Islands Trust and member of Maine’s Offshore Wind Port Advisory Group, joins us with an update after Governor Mills’ recent release of a “Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap” that may contain a clue about the state’s intentions regarding developing Sears Island.

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 3/2/23: Informed Consent 2

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

As we move around the web and use different web sites, we are constantly asked for our “informed consent” for the sites to know how to collect and use personal data about us. But can most of us actually give our “informed consent” in response to those demands? Some recent studies suggest the answer may be no.

Here are links to the documents mentioned today:

“Metrics for Success: Why and How to Evaluate Privacy Choice Usability”
“Americans Can’t Consent to Companies’ Use of Their Data”

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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Healthy Options 3/1/23: Brainspotting

Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-Producer: Petra Hall

Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well

This month:

Rhonda Feiman speaks with Kim Austin, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, & Brainspotting practitioner. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy which uses the eyes and the field of vision to treat trauma, anxiety and more.
1. What is Brainspotting & how does it work?
2. What is the difference between Brainspotting and the EMDR eye movement technique?
3. What do we mean by a “brain spot”? What do we mean by one spot being stuck or activated?
4. What is the connection between the eyes and the brain and why is that so important in this technique?
5. When is it appropriate to use this technique?
6. How does Brainspotting help in the treatment of trauma ?
7. How would Brainspotting help with creativity?
8. Why is music used in Brainspotting treatments?
9. Is there a special type of music used?

Guest/s:
Kim Austin, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and certified Brainspotting therapist with a private practice based in Atlanta, Georgia & online in Maine & NY. She specializes in the treatment of trauma, having first trained in EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which is used as an effective technique to help clients dealing with trauma. She then trained in the modality of Brainspotting, a brain-based psychotherapy which also uses the eyes and the field of vision to identify where a person is holding trauma or negative experiences.

Websites of Interest:
Kim Austin
Brainspotting

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.

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Wabanaki Windows 2/28/23: Isolation, Control and Elimination series #1

Producer/Host: Donna Loring
Other credits: Technical assistance for the show was provided by Joel Mann WERU Orland Maine and Jessica Lockhart of WMPG Portland Portland Maine.
Music for the show was from the CD Dream Walk by Rolfe Richter

Wabanaki Windows is a monthly show featuring topics of interest from a Wabanaki perspective.

This month:

This is the first show in a series on 1942 Legislative Transcripts on the Indian Problem

Host Donna Loring and her guest Attorney Joseph Gousse discuss the 1942 Legislative Transcripts that were found during research for a new book. The Transcripts outline the State’s Long-range strategy to deal with the Maine Tribes through Isolation, Control and Elimination. The Transcripts are comparable to the Nixon Tapes.

-Background of the time 1942 WWII
-The formation of the Legislaltive Research Committee and its purpose
-Profile of the Committee members
-First 17 pages of the MacDonald Transcript before the LRC

Guest/s:
Attorney Joseph Gousse, Legal researcher and writing specialist. In addition to his private practice he has served as professor of legal Research and Writing and professor of Business Law in the Maine Community College System. Prior to practicing law he worked as a Legislative Researcher for the Maine Wabanaki State Child welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commissiion.

About the host:
Donna M Loring is a Penobscot Indian Nation Tribal Elder, and former Council Member. She represented the Penobscot Nation in the State Legislature for over a decade. She is a former Senior Advisor on Tribal Affairs to Governor Mills. She is the author of “In The Shadow of The Eagle A Tribal Representative In Maine”. Donna has an Annual lecture series in her name at the University of New England that addresses Social Justice and Human Rights issues. In 2017 She received an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Humane Letters from the University of Maine Orono and was given the Alumni Service Award. It is the most prestigious recognition given by the University of Maine Alumni Association. It is presented Annually to a University of Maine graduate whose life’s work is marked by outstanding achievements in professional, business, civic and/or Public service areas. Donna received a second Honorary Doctorate from Thomas College in May of 2022

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Outside the Box 2/28/23: “Not Forgotten”

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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