The Cosmic Curator 9/3/22

This is your Cosmic Curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for today Saturday September 3rd as seen through the lens of Vedic astrology

Yes, folks, we are into a new month. Is not the light of September simply glorious Down East?..

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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Conversations from the Pointed Firs 9/2/22: Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

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.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, poet, fiction writer, teacher and non-profit leader. Gibson’s first collection of poems, “Death of a Ventriloquist”, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book, “Deke Dangle Dive” was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. Gibson’s poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Tin House, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, and his prose in Kenyon Review online, Portland Magazine, and Slice. He has taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family.

Guest/s:
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, poet, fiction writer, teacher and non-profit leader
Maine Writers & Publishers AllianceGibson Fay-LeBlance
Maine Lit Fest 2022

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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Awanadjo Almanack 9/2/22: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

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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Change Agents 9/1/22: Hate Crimes & Training Police

Producer/Host: Steve Wessler

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

This month:
My two guests advocate for reducing hate crimes and for training police on how to respond to hate crimes. Nadia Aziz is the:
Senior Program Director for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, in Washington DC. Dawn Collins became a human right advocate at after her son was murdered on the campus of the University of Maryland. The assailant was white and a white supremacist. 2nd Lieutenant was Black. Dawn and Nadia work to reduce hate crimes and to provide police with information and understanding of the impact of hate crimes. We discuss these issues.

1. Can we reduce the amount of hate crimes in the USA?
2. Why do hate crimes impact victims and families?
3. What works to reduce hate crimes?

Guests:
Nadia Aziz is the Senior Program Director for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, in Washington DC.
Dawn Collins became a human right advocate at after her son was murdered on the campus of the University of Maryland. The assailant was white and a white supremacist. 2nd Lieutenant Lt. Richard W. Collins III, 23 was Black.

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 9/2/22: Update on Missing Person Graham Lacher

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week: We’re back in Belfast for an update on the search for missing person Graham Lacher from his mother, Tammy Lacher Scully. Correction: The facebook page is Missing Graham Lacher, not “Finding Graham Lacher”. Photos and more information about the search can be found there.

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 9/1/22: Encryption Explained 2022

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

We’re hearing a lot about encryption these days. Some in law enforcement think it is a bad thing. Others think it is the best way to protect personal communications and privacy. But what is encryption and why are there such different perceptions of encryption in today’s digital world? Here’s a start of an answer.

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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Outside the Box 8/30/22: “Floss”

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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