What’s the Word on Maine Street? 10/25/25

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 10/25/25: The Skull

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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Power for the People 10/24/25: Solar Panels Are One of Your Best Financial Investments

Producer/Host: Steve Kahl

Power for the People: Energy education and solutions for Mainers and Maine communities

This month:
1) The future of the solar industry after federal tax credits expire.
2) Solar PV options in 2026 when the commercial tax credit remains in effect.
3) Why a return of 8 to 9% with NO risk and with NO income tax is a great investment.

Guest/s:
Aaron Cartterfield, Director of Business Development, Maine Solar Solutions.

FMI:
[email protected]
mainesolarsolutions.com

About the host:

Steve Kahl developed and has hosted Power for the People since 2015. He retired after 9 years as Professor of Environmental Science at Thomas College in 2024, where he taught environmental and energy courses and advised the student sustainability club. He is a member of the Friends of Quarry Road Trails board of directors in Waterville where he is the main advocate for a net-zero energy welcome center. Steve advised the board of WERU-FM on making the station studios 100% solar powered and worked with Sundog Solar in Searsport to make it happen back in 2020.

Steve is a career lake researcher in addition to roles in energy and sustainability, and was a founding member of the Lake Stewards of Maine in the 1990s and is currently back on their board. He is past board President of Maine Lakes, the NH Lake Association, and the Lake Winnipesaukee Association.

Prior to moving home to Maine in 2004, he was a member of the Energy Commission in Plymouth NH where he obtained Dept of Energy funding for the renovation of a town office building to net-zero energy as well as the installation of 160 KW of solar PV panels on town properties, including a major PV array at the sewage treatment plant that offsets 40% of its electrical costs.

Steve’s past positions include Sustainability Director at Unity College where he developed a plan for the college to become 100% solar powered and earned the college the prestigious STARS Gold sustainability ranking with the American Association of Sustainability in Higher Education. Before that, he was Director of Environmental and Energy Strategies for the James Sewall Company of Old Town where he led a Maine Technology Institute research project that found that the Maine electric grid could be 100% solar powered if all suitably-oriented rooftops had solar PV panels. His lake research was done while serving as founding director of the Senator George Mitchell Center for Environmental Research at the University of Maine.

His own 1940s-era home is 100% electric, where he has installed two air-source heat pumps to eliminate heating oil, a hybrid hot water heater to reduce his water heating costs by 70%, and insulated the basement and attic to reduce the ‘stack effect’ of cold air coming in the basement and forcing heat out of the attic. He has solar panels on his summer place at the lake and hasn’t paid for any electricity there since 2011. In 2025, he added 6 KW of solar PV on his main home, with the goal to be net zero energy on an annual basis.

Steve has a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the University of Maine.

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Coastal Conversations 10/24/25: Scuba Divers, Part 2

Host: Kristin Zunino

Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program.

This episode of Coastal Conversations is the second episode of a two part series about   Maine’s changing marine ecology from professional certified scuba divers occupying the Mid-Coast and Greater Portland area. We are joined by six divers with a total of 166 years of dive experience in Maine. With jobs in research, marine conservation, and scuba businesses, they all dive as part of their careers. Our local divers tell us their observations and predictions of change within their underwater secondary home.

Coastal Conversations is supported by Maine Sea Grant in partnership with Schoodic Institute and The First Coast.

Guest/s:

  • Richard Wahle, retired lobster scientist at the University of Maine
  • Levi Robbins, manager of Aqua Diving Academy
  • Paul Rollins, the owner of Rollins Scuba Associates
  • Phoebe Jekielek, kelp and shellfish scientist at the University of Maine
  • Emily Drappeau, divemaster for OceansWide
  • Marissa McMahan, Senior Director of Fisheries at Manomet Conservation Sciences and member of Maine Climate Council

Thank you Galen Koch, Zach Soares and Natalie Springuel for editing and production assistance. Thank you Sean Todd for production assistance and support during the interview period.

About the hosts:

Natalie Springuel has hosted Coastal Conversation’s since 2015, with support from the University of Maine Sea Grant where she has served as a marine extension associate for 20 years. In 2019, Springuel received an award for Public Affairs programming from the Maine Association of Broadcasters for the Coastal Conversations show called “Portland’s Working Waterfront.” Springuel is passionate about translating science, sharing stories, and offering a platform for multiple voices to weigh in on complex coastal and ocean issues. She has recently enrolled in audio production training at Maine Media Workshop to dive deeper into making great community radio.

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Around Town 10/24/25: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this week issued a second Notice of Violation to Mallinckrodt US LLC/Medtronic related to the lack of meaningful progress remediating the former chloralkali manufacturing facility located along the Penobscot River in Orrington

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s letter to Trump in response to the demolition of the East Wing of the White House 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.

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 10/23/25: Recovery Coaching and Prison

Host/s: Mackenzie Kelley
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: Mackenzie interviews Niki Merrill, Program Coordinator for the Maine Department of Corrections through the Portland Recovery Community Center, to talk about recovery coaching in prison.

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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Maine Currents 10/23/25: U.S./El Salvador Sister Cities- Strong Connections & Shared Threats to Human Rights

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

The relationships forged between local Mainers and folks in El Salvador have been strengthened over the decades, built on mutual respect and learning from each other. In addition to the PICA/Bangor Sister City relationship with the town of Carasque, WERU has a Sister Station, Radio Sumpul, and MOFGA has built connections with farming organizations there. Today both countries seem to be on the same path to authoritarianism, justified in both places as a crack down on crime. Long-time volunteers and staff from U.S./El Salvador Sister Cities weigh in on where we may be headed.

Guests: Kelly Calles, Jon Falk, Olivia Petipas, Zulma Tobar, and Karen Volckhausen

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 and Maine Currents, she 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 the First Place 2017 Radio News Award from the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

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