The Nature of Phenology 10/15/22: Nannyberry

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn
Host: Hazel Stark

There is an obscure Viburnum that is ripe right about now across our area in moist edges and bottomlands whose flavor and texture is completely unique among our wild foods: nannyberry.

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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Earthwise 10/15/22: The Ghost Cat

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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Let’s Talk About It 10/14/22: Effect of Domestic Abuse on the Children

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

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

Guests:
Gail and Natasha talk about lingering control and abuse of the children once you physically escape the abusive partner, and 83-year-old Mary Lou reads poems documenting her growing understanding of the 43 years of abuse she and her children endured.

Topics Include:
Post-separation abuse, the impact of domestic abuse on children, how domestic abut impacts the mother/child relationship.

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

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Around Town 10/13/22: Big Step Forward for Penobscot River Mercury Clean Up

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week: After decades of work on the issue, the Maine People’s Alliance (MPA)and the Natural Resources Defense Council have a big announcement this week. Jesse Graham, Co-Director of MPA fills us in..

Read more here and here

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 10/13/22: Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Artificial Intelligence is used widely in our digital world affecting our everyday lives. Although it can affect everything from making credit decisions to reading x-rays, it is also completely unregulated in the US. That is why this White Paper, “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” is worth a very good look.

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 10/12/22: Childcare

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:
We talk with child care providers, and the leader of a program to support new child care businesses, about the essential elements of good child care. The wide-ranging conversation includes early childhood learning and socialization; fees, subsidies, and regulations; and family and employer perspectives.

What child care options are there for parents to consider in Downeast Maine?
What challenges do child care providers face?
How do state subsidies help families pay for care?
What role can employers play in helping their employees find child care?

Guest/s:
Courtney Wood, Beechland Road Early Learning Center, Downeast Family YMCA
Sarah Hinckley, Mount Desert Nursery School
Cynthia Murphy, CEI Maine Child Care Business Lab

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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