What’s the Word on Maine Street? 1/3/26

What’s the Word on Maine Street?, hosted by Sarah Pebworth, is a weekly short feature Saturdays at 9:30am looking at local literary and visual arts events and offerings!

About the host:
Sarah Pebworth leads the steering committee for Word—a Blue Hill Literary Arts Festival, founded in 2017 and held each October. She serves on the boards of the Cultural Alliance of Maine and Lawrence Family Fitness Center YMCA. Since February 2023 Sarah has written “Shared Seas and Common Grounds,” a column published in the Penobscot Bay Press’s Weekly Packet. She and her wife Julie Jo Fehrle live in Blue Hill.

Theme music: Ross Gallagher is a bassist who grew up in East Blue Hill, ME, and currently lives between Bath, ME and Brooklyn, NY, where he works with a wide variety of musical artists. Infinite Blues is a cut from his recently released neon night, an excursion into an ambient/electronic musical world built around rhythmic bass ostinatos, clouds of processed looping electronic atmospheres, and melody. By turns both subtle and unapologetically noisy, the songs are a collection of luminous constellations, roved between by a band of texturally minded instrumental improvisers.

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Earthwise 1/3/26: Moon Walking

Producer/Host: Anu Dudley

About the host: Rev. Dr. Anu Dudley is an ordained Pagan minister and a retired history professor. She continues to teach classes, including the three-year ordination curriculum at the Temple of the Feminine Divine, and others such as History of the Goddess, Paganism 101, Ethical Magic, and Introduction to the Runes. Currently she is writing a book about how to cast the runes using their original Goddess meanings. She lives in the woods off-grid in a small homesteading community in Central Maine.

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Conversations from the Pointed Firs 1/2/26: Richard Parsons

Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Spencer Albee
Music by Casey Neill (Mock Turtle Music)

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. Airs the first Friday of every month from 4-5pm. Online at pointedfirs.org.

Peter has a conversation with Richard Parsons, author of the book Storm Warriors of the Maine Coast: Stories of the Life-Saving Station at Biddeford Pool.

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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Around Town 1/2/26: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

LD 287- “An Act to Require and Encourage Safe and Interconnected Transportation Construction Projects” will have a public hearing at 10:30 Tuesday morning in the Maine Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee On Housing and Economic Development

On Wednesday the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee will hold a round of public hearings starting at 1pm. One of the proposed bills they’ll be taking comments on is LD 1671, “An Act to Establish Disclosure Requirements Regarding Law Enforcement Officer Credibility Information” The bill’s summary reads in part: “This bill requires that a law enforcement agency disclose to a prosecuting attorney’s office when a law enforcement officer who is a potential witness in a criminal prosecution has engaged in certain specified conduct that calls into question the credibility of the officer as a witness, including, but not limited to, knowingly making untruthful statements of material facts, tampering with evidence, other dishonest acts or admissions of dishonesty, demonstrated patterns of bias against protected classes and facts reflecting an officer’s impaired ability to perceive or recall the truth of a matter. Law enforcement agencies must notify the law enforcement officer when disclosing the credibility information to a prosecuting attorney’s office”

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

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The Maine Monitor Radio Hour 1/1/26

Host: Stephanie McFeeters, Deputy Editor at The Maine Monitor.

The Maine Monitor Radio Hour is a collaboration between WERU-FM and the Maine Monitor, the nonpartisan, independent publication of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

This month: We discuss Monitor Local, a new reporting initiative from the The Maine Monitor focused on what’s happening in towns across Western and Downeast Maine — how the idea came to be and what its coverage has looked like so far.

Guests:
Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, Executive Director of The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting — [email protected]
Judith Meyer, Editor of Monitor Local — [email protected]

FMI:
themainemonitor.org/monitor-local/

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Around Town 1/1/26: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

The regular schedule of public hearings and work session for proposed legislation resumes in Augusta next Tuesday. Here’s what the Joint Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology will be tackling first — and some ways you can listen in or participate

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

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World Ocean Radio 12/31/25: At the Fishhouses

Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In celebration of the New Year, here is a special reading of “At The Fishhouses” by poet Elizabeth Bishop. It offers a distillation of Bishop’s seaside meditations and an evocation of the clarity of meaning contained in personal encounters with the ocean.

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 730 episodes offering perspectives on global ocean issues and solutions, and celebrating exemplary projects. Available for RSS feed and broadcast by college and community radio stations worldwide via Exchange.prx.org and Audioport.org. Visit WorldOceanObservatory.org for the full catalog, searchable by theme.

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Around Town 12/31/25: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Kids’ Noon Year’s Eve Party today, 11:00AM – 12:00PM at the Ellsworth Public Library

Family friendly New Year’s Eve celebration in Blue Hill at the Shaw Institute, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm today. Space is limited, so registration is required

The Carver Memorial Library in Searsport family/kids mid-day New Year Eve event, today at 11 with “countdown” to noon. FMI: Carver Memorial Library’s facebook page

Rockland Public Library kid’s new year party, starts at 11 this morning.

Rockport’s Holiday on the Harbor festivities will begin in the village as the sun sets at 4:30 p.m

The Maine Outdoor School’s 5th Annual New Year’s Eve Sunset Hike starts at 2:30 this afternoon. Free, but registration is required

Eastport’s 21st annual New Year’s Eve Great Sardine and Maple Leaf drop at midnight (will also be live streamed through Tides Institute & Museum of Art’s Facebook and Instagram pages– starting a little before midnight in the Atlantic time and Eastern time zones.)

The Winter Harbor Music Community Opera and the Downeast Chamber Orchestra perform Johann Strauss II’s Opera die Fledermaus at 7:00 tonight at Hammond Hall, 427 Main Street, Winter Harbor

Last Night Belfast kicks off at 3:30 in locations around the downtown area.

Bangor’s annual “Downtown Countdown” is one of Maine’s largest, free public New Year’s Eve celebrations. The beach ball drops at midnight. Associated activities throughout the day and an afterparty.

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

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