What’s the Word on Maine Street? 11/8/25

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 11/8/25: Winter Robins

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 11/7/25: Jane Crosen

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.

In this episode, host Peter Neill speaks with Jane Crosen, a self-taught mapmaker who has spent four decades making and interpreting maps, and exploring Maine’s landscape. She found her niche in maps and editing working at DeLorme Publishing in Yarmouth, where she compiled the Gazetteer listings for the all-new 1981 edition of the Maine Atlas and began discovering the natural and historic treasures of her home state. Returning to her roots in Downeast Maine, she moved to the Blue Hill Peninsula where she found further opportunities to explore and grow as an editor, working for WoodenBoat and other publishers. Meanwhile her affinity with maps, Maine, and design inspired her to create a series of hand-drawn maps of Maine coast and lake regions. Along the way she began sharing her passion for map-reading and landscape interpretation through “map-sleuthing” slide talks and workshops. 

With a growing interest in Downeast Maine’s mapping history and heritage landscape, she discovered George N. Colby’s historic 1881 atlases of Hancock and Washington counties and found them a fascinating source. Since the original and facsimile editions were out of print, she decided to publish new editions of both atlases, arranging the maps in a more geographically consistent layout. Pairing Colby’s archival maps with period photos and excerpts, with an introduction and captions for context, her Coastwise Geographic Edition atlases capture Downeast Maine in the age of sail, in the last glow of a 19th-century coastal economy. For more about Crosen’s work and product line, visit www.mainemapmaker.com.

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 11/7/25: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

“Standing in Solidarity: Educating for Justice in Palestine,” forums in Orono (Friday, November 7, 6:30-8 PM, Wilson Center) and Bangor (Saturday, November 8, 3-4:30 PM Public Library), sponsored by the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine and UMaine Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Maine Equal Justice update on the SNAP crisis (more on Monday’s AT)
Ellsworth Clean-upE-Waste Disposal Day

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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Justice Radio 11/6/25: Black Travel Maine

Host/s: Cuba Jackson
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Aaron Pyle and Sarah Johnson | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production.

Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine.

This week: Guest host Cuba Jackson interviews Lisa Parham Jones, founder of Black Travel Maine, about why justice reform is essential in a state where the legal system continues to disproportionately impact communities of color.

About the hosts:
The Justice Radio team includes:

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.

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.

The Young People’s Caucus (YPC) builds pathways for young people who have been directly impacted by systems involvement and systemic oppression to have a genuine voice and power in decision making in Maine. We create opportunities and connect young people, agency partners, and policy makers to work together to create public systems that support and empower all young people, with a focus on youth who have experienced the juvenile justice and foster care systems.

MIDC: Maine Indigent Defense Center is a criminal defense firm accepting only court-appointed cases in primarily Cumberland and York counties. We bring a holistic approach to every criminal case, collaboratively addressing our clients’ problems outside the courtroom, which are the problems that often bring them into court in the first place. By addressing these issues we believe our clients are able to achieve better outcomes in and out of court. MIDC was formed in December of 2007 amid cuts to funding for court appointed attorneys. Today, MIDC splits time between representing individual clients, working with students, collaborating with other professionals in our community to work towards a fully holistic defense model, and advocating for reform by providing a critical voice at the legislature and other forums.

Robert J. Ruffner: Robert Joseph Ruffner, Director of MIDC. grew up in New England and is a graduate of Clark University (’92). Rob attended Washington University in St. Louis School of Law (’96) where, to no one’s surprise, he was Managing Editor of the Devil’s Advocate. After a short stint as a defense attorney Rob worked as a prosecutor in St. Louis, Missouri and Portland, Maine. In 2001 Rob returned to his true calling, criticizing the State Criminal Defense, forming his own practice to focus exclusively on criminal (almost entirely indigent) defense. A Life Member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Rob is also member of the Maine State Bar Association and Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and was the recipient of the 2009 MACDL, Unsung Hero Award for “highest level of commitment, passion and tireless pursuit of justice in the representation of indigent defendants”. Rob is never far from his three senior Labrador Retriever partners, Luke (8), Gideon (3) (featured on Our Team page) and Flynne (6 months). When he isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking the Commission during public comment or poking the State in the eye with a stick, Rob spends as much time as possible with Luke, Gideon and Flynne in a tent in the remote woods of Vermont, from where he “Zooms” back to court in Maine … and pokes the State a little more.

Emily Goulette: Emily is a Maine native and 2019 graduate of Colby College. Emily then earned her J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law (2023) where she worked in Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic’s Youth Justice Clinic representing youth in criminal and education matters. Emily assisted in re-instituting Maine Law’s chapter of the Student Animal League Defense Fund while working for the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland. Emily also interned for Webb Law Firm during law school, assisting on misdemeanor and felony cases. Before joining the Maine Indigent Defense Center, Emily advocated for Maine’s homeless population supporting youth and their families through Homeless Youth Services at the Opportunity Alliance in South Portland, ME. Emily (alongside her service dog Finley) now serves as the Director of Policy and Development for MIDC, creating new MIDC initiatives, running the robust student programming, and kick-starting Maine’s newest non-profit – The Center for Indigent Defense Studies. Emily lives in Hollis, ME with her horse (Chevy) and problem-causing dog and cat (Stanley and Lennie, respectively).

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The Maine Monitor Radio Hour 11/6/25

Host: Stephanie McFeeters, Interim 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 hear from Report for America corps member Daniel O’Connor about his reporting on the budget crisis in Washington County and the Maine school districts that have voted to change policies around transgender students.

Guests:
Daniel O’Connor, [email protected]

FMI:
themainemonitor.org/washington-county-11m-bond-rejected/
themainemonitor.org/groups-pushing-schools-change-transgender-policies/

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Climate & Community 11/6/25: Global Impacts and Local Solutions with Gianluca Nehuén Yornet (Part 1)

Host: Wilson Haims

Description: Today, Climate and Community discusses the importance of local action to global challenges with former Maine Service Fellow Gianluca Nehuén Yornet. We learn about what motivates Gianluca to participate in community-based action and about his host organization Center for Ecology Based Economy in Norway, Maine.

About the Host:
Wilson Haims is from Portland, Maine and earned her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College in 2023. Upon graduating, Wilson contributed to climate and conservation-related field work, policy and community engagement work in New England and the Pacific Northwest. Now, Wilson is the Manager of Community Engagement and Resilience at A Climate to Thrive and spends her time hiking, running, making art and cooking on Mount Desert Island.
 
Johannah, Beth, Wilson, Gus, Alison and Angie are the team at A Climate to Thrive, a nonprofit working to build a model of community-driven, solutions-focused climate action. Since its origins around a potluck table as concerned neighbors gathered to take action on climate change, A Climate to Thrive, or ACTT, has been supporting solutions on Mount Desert Island and beyond since 2016. Learn more at www.aclimatetothrive.org.

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