Awanadjo Almanack 9/16/22: “Natural, Wild and Free”

Producer/Host: Rob McCall
Production Assistance: Rebecca McCall

About the host:

Rob McCall: Born in the Black Hills of South Dakota, grew up in Oregon and Illinois. Father was a Scots-Irish preacher, mother a Yankee Congregationalist tracing her ancestry back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Father taught him about Scripture, mother taught him about Nature.

Bachelor of arts in philosophy, bachelor of divinity in American religious history, graduate studies in education, doctor of ministry in congregational studies, certified in elementary education, tree fruits and entomology.

Worked as an elementary school teacher, tree and landscape contractor, church sexton, orchard manager, chimney sweep, ambulance driver, musician. Began second career as a preacher at age 40. Served as minister of the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill, Maine 1986 – 2014. He is currently chaplain of the Brooklin Fire Department.

Since 1992 has published the weekly Awanadjo Almanack which is broadcast to midcoast Maine and on the web at WERU-FM and appears in a number of publications. His writing has also appeared in Yankee, Down East, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Island Journal and elsewhere.

His first book, Small Misty Mountain, was published in 2006 by Pushcart Press and distributed by W.W. Norton. Publisher’s Weekly called it “by turns inspiring and infuriating.” His second book, Great Speckled Bird, followed in 2012. His third book, Some Glad Morning, was released in October 2020.

Passions include wild plants and animals, and traditional fiddle tunes. Married for 53 years to Rebecca Haley, artist and singer. Father of two, grandfather of two.

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Dawnland Signals 9/15/22: Legislation to Identify & Remove Offensive Place Names in Maine

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’s show features Dr. Meadow Dibble, Director of Community-Engaged Research at the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations and founder of Atlantic Black Box.
Dr. Dibble will share with us the work surrounding LD 1591, the law to identify and remove offensive place names in Maine and how each of us can be involved.

– Life experience as a white person discovering her New England family profited from the slave trade
– Project to identify and change remaining offensive place names in Maine
– How does the name of a place reveal or obscure its real human history?

Guest/s:
Dr. Meadow Dibble, Director of Community-Engaged Research at the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations and founder of Atlantic Black Box. Contact: [email protected]

Links FMI:
Links:

LD 1591 Report to the Maine Legislature – “RESOLVE, DIRECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, CONSERVATION AND FORESTRY TO IDENTIFY PLACES WITH OFFENSIVE NAMES AND METHODS OF CHANGING THOSE NAMES”:
LD 1934 – “Resolve, Changing the Identifying and Reporting Responsibilities and Extending the Reporting Deadline for the Identification of Places in the State with Offensive Names”:

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 9/15/22: Defending Maine’s Dark Skies

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week: We talk with Nancy Hathaway, President of Dark Sky Maine, and “Defending the Dark: The Story of Preserving the Dark Skies in Maine” film maker Tara Roberts Zabriskie about their upcoming film tour. Also, this weekend Dark Sky Maine will host their annual “Stars Over Katahdin” in Staceyville, near the entrance to Katahdin Woods & Waters, featuring astromony educators, a campfire, and telescopes – on what is predicted to be a clear weekend. More information about that, and the Defending the Dark film tour, are available at darkskymaine.com, or by emailing [email protected]

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 9/15/22: September ’22 Headlines

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

There is a lot going on in the digital world these days. We can’t cover all of it in these short programs but we can at least summarize the stories behind a a selection of very recent headlines that some folks may have missed in the switch from summer time to school time. Here are a few.

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 9/14/22: A Conversation with Esperanza Stancioff

Producer/Host: 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:

We profile Esperanza Stancioff, Emeritus Professor, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant, about her work to expand community science in aid of better policies and practices for water quality and adaptation to climate change.

What were some of the key elements in your career with University of Maine?
Where did you develop your love of the sea?
Describe the intersecting space between the science developed in the academy, those charged with protecting the environment, and citizens, who might appreciate the benefits of our ecosystem in their personal lives or in pursuing their livelihoods.
How did you discover the importance of engaging citizens to to contribute to scientific knowledge.
What did you learn from bringing together citizens, scientists, historians, policy makers and people making their living on the water to celebrate Penobscot Bay as a place, and to identify the gaps in our knowledge that might help us better protect and manage our shared ecological resources.
More recently, you have worked with citizens and networks of people to respond to growing threats of climate change. Talk about what motivated you to take up this work and some of the
results.

Guest/s:
Esperanza Stancioff, Emeritus Professor, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant

About the host:
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.

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BoatTalk 9/13/22

Producers/Hosts: Alan Sprague, Jon Johansen

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

This month: new book about bar harbor ferry disaster, boat yard report, lobster boat racing final, talk with giffy, mike’s celebration

Guest/s:

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 9/13/22: “What’s the Economy for, Anyway?”

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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