The Cosmic Curator 2/18/23: A Look at the Stars for the Week Ahead

This is your cosmic curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for today Saturday February 18 th and the week ahead.
The day begins with the moon, the significator of our emotions in the ever practical sign of Capricorn, the cardinal earth sign rules by Saturn. Capricorn is not one to indulge in sentiment, maudlin emotions, or wearing one’s heart on their sleeve. They are too practical. The downside is, emotions are best expressed and regulated. Capricorn moon tend to bottle them up…

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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Earthwise 2/18/23: The Chickadee

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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Democracy Forum 2/17/23: Small-state bias in the federal government: is this democracy?

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Starr Gilmartin,
Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, Pam Person, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, Linda Washburn

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
Compared to their population, rural states are over-represented in the federal government, from the U.S. Senate to the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and possibly even the U.S. House.
How has the come about; how far can it go?
How does this affect Maine?
Where is this heading, and what can or should be done about it?

Guest/s:
Mark Brewer, Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine
Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

To learn more about this topic:
U.S. Senate: Origins and Foundations | Senate.gov
The Senate: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock – UVA Press
The Senate: Threat or Backbone of American Democracy? | Divided We Fall June, 2021
The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide – The Aspen Institute, February, 2021
Two Senators per State: A Recipe for Minority Domination | Second Rate Democracy, 2020
The history of the Electoral College and our national conversation about race | Harvard Kennedy School, August, 2020
Alexander Keyssar — Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? | Politics and Prose, November, 2020
The Stubborn Survival of the Electoral College – WSJ, August 2020
American democracy’s Senate problem, explained – Vox, December, 2019
Here’s How to Fix the Senate – The Atlantic, January, 2019
The Founder’ monumental constitutional mistake; 2 senators from each state | NationofChange, October, 2018
Misrepresentation in the House of Representatives | Brookings, February 2017
The electoral college badly distorts the vote. And it’s going to get worse | The Washington Post, November, 2016
As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power – The New York Times, November, 2016
Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation, Lee, Oppenheimer, 1999
When Adding New States Helped the Republicans – The Atlantic, September, 2019

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

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Justice Radio 2/16/23: From Our Perspective: Voices of the Directly Impacted

Producers/Hosts: Marion Anderson and Craig Williams
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:
Any Sentence is a Life Sentence
What is freedom? What is liberation? Join co-hosts Marion Anderson and Craig Williams with special guest Nikki Butler, Recovery Coach at SaVida Health, as they talk about how Any Sentence is a Life Sentence.

Guest/s:
Nikki Butler, Recovery Coach at SaVida Health

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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Dawnland Signals Finale 2/16/23: Indian Child Welfare Act

Producers/Hosts: Maria Girouard, Esther Anne
Jeffrey Hotchkiss, Zoom recording technician

Dawnland Signals highlights indigenous topics not immediately represented in mainstream media and is meant to share, inspire, and inform. Join co-hosts Maria Girouard and Esther Anne as they engage in critical conversations of truth, healing, and change in the Dawnland.

This month:
This month our guests are Norma Saulis, ICWA Director and Tribal Court Administrator for the Mi’kmaq Nation located in Presque Isle, Maine, and Xi Chen, Maine Assistant Attorney General, Child Protection Division. They talk with us about the Indian Child Welfare Act, its history and recent news.

– the history and purpose of ICWA
– ICWA’s history and changes in Maine
– ICWA Workgroup
– Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission
– Supreme Court case Brackeen vs. Haaland
– ICWA as the gold standard for child welfare; permanent guardianship and kinship care

Guests:
Norma Saulis, Penobscot/Kiowa/Maliseet/Irish, ICWA Director and Tribal Court Administrator for the Mi’kmaq Nation located in Presque Isle, Maine
Xi Chen, Maine Assistant Attorney General, Child Protection Division

About the hosts:
Esther Anne, is a Passamaquoddy from Sipayik who lives on Indian Island and serves on the Wabanaki REACH Board of Directors.

Maria Girouard, Penobscot from Indian Island, is Executive Director of Wabanaki REACH, a statewide organization working toward truth, healing, and change in the Dawnland. Maria is a tribal historian with a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Maine and a special interest in the Maine Indian Land Claims. Maria has devoted years to community organizing, environmental stewardship and activism, and growing food in tribal communities.

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Around Town 2/16/23: How To Participate in the Legislative Process in Maine (& some bills under consideration this week)

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week:

One positive thing to come from the pandemic is a new system that makes it easier to participate in public hearings held by the state legislature. Those who are interested have been able to listen via web stream for years, but to speak out on a proposed bill you had to travel to Augusta and often wait hours for your turn.

The state is now offering the option of testifying via zoom, opening up a channel for feedback to far more members of the public. Those who are interested must register at least 30 minutes prior to the meeting, at mainelegislature.org/testimony

If you’d like to listen in without commenting, there are links to live streams of the committees and the full legislature at legislature.maine.gov

It’s easy to find out what bills are coming up for a public hearing or work session by going to legislature.maine.gov and clicking on committees. You can also search by bill number or text.

Written and verbal comments are accepted from the public at public hearings. Following the public hearing – usually at a later date – the committees hold work sessions where only committee members and any experts they’ve invited are allowed to speak.

Here are some of the bills coming up for discussion this week..

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 2/16/23: AI Thoughts We Aren’t Hearing

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us today, and that is going to be even more true – and more obvious – in the near future. Simply put, AI is going to change the world we live in every day. So who should decide how those changes will happen? It’s a good – and critically important – question that we all would do well to think about, and then make our opinions known.

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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BoatTalk 2/14/23: ‘Round the World Sailors & more

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

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

This month:
A discussion with Lecain Smith and Shelia Moir, round the world sailors, about many places and happenings. Also discussed Kirsten Neuschaefer taking the lead in the Golden Globe round the world race. Plus three calls in.
-boatyard report
-golden globe update
-sailing around the world stories
-what happened with the school bus

Guest/s:
LeCain Smith and Shelia Moir sailed around the world in six and a half years.

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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