What’s the Word on Maine Street? 5/9/26

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.

Earthwise 5/9/26: In Honor of Mother’s Day

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.

Around Town 5/8/26: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Justice Radio 5/7/26: Mental Health changes and Peer Support for Maine

Host/s: AJ Stash, Kage Johnson, and Hawo Mohamed
Editor: 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: Tyrique, Mags, and AJ discuss how Mental Health program changes and Peer Support can help Mainers.

Guest: Tyrique and Mags

The Maine Monitor Radio Hour 5/7/26

Host: Kate Cough, 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: On this episode of the Maine Monitor Radio Hour, government accountability reporter Josh Keefe, elections and government reporter Matt Junker, and senior reporter Rose Lundy, who covers health care, join editor Kate Cough in discussing their most recent stories.

Guests:
Josh Keefe, Matt Junker, and Rose Lundy.

FMI:
themainemonitor.org/

Healthy Options 5/6/26: Update: Lyme disease, tick-borne illnesses & how to avoid tick bites

Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-Producer:
Petra Hall
Technical Assistance: Joel Mann

Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well

This month:
– The spreasd of new tick species and diseases in Maine & the Northeast
– Prevention is the best medicine! Keep ticks from attaching. Create a barrier with clothes. Using permethrin on clothes & gear (embedded commercially, or sprayed on carefully).
– Use repellants on skin (deet, picaridin, lemon-eucalyptus)
– Essential oils not effective for very long & may cause skin irritation
– Symptoms of tick infections for Alpha-gal syndrome, Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, Borrelia miyamotoi, Powassan virus & which ticks carry them
– When doxycycline is used & most effective, & other treatments for tick illness
– How soon can disease be transmitted after a bite (Powassan virus within 15 minutes!)

Guest(s):
Dr. Beatrice Szantyr
on Lyme disease & other tick-borne illness, for an update on tick diseases & new tick species which are spreading here in Maine (& beyond), how we need to be tick-conscious to try to prevent tick bites, & the challenges in identifying and treating tick-borne illness.

FMI:
EPA info on effective repellents
www.epa.gov/insect-repellents?

EPA tool to find the repellent that is right for you
www.epa.gov/insect-repellents/find-repellent-right-you

EPA info on repellent-treated clothing
www.epa.gov/insect-repellents/repellent-treated-clothing?

University of Maine Tick Lab?- Protect Yourself from ticks & tick-borne diseases?(Identify a tick for free; $20 to ID diseases the tick may contain)
extension.umaine.edu/ticks/

Tick testing Amherst MA. (tests for more diseases):
www.tickreport.com

Maine Tracking Network- Tickborne Diseases?Improving public health with better information:
data.mainepublichealth.gov/tracking/home

Columbia University Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center
www.columbia-lyme.org/

Powered by patients. Home of Lyme Times and My Lyme Data:
www.lymedisease.org/

TickEncounter  The University of Rhode Island Tick-borne Disease prevention Education
web.uri.edu/tickencounter/

This article is brief enough for a patient to bring to a doctor’s visit for them to consider:
The Management of Ixodes scapularis Bites in the Upper Midwest
wmjonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/110/2/78.pdf

ESPECIALLY FOR MEDICAL PROVIDERS:
VectorWise CME: “Empowering clinicians through vector-borne disease education – free, virtual, accredited CME”
vectorwisecme.org/

LymeCME: “Free, Evidence-based, AAFP-Accredited Courses that Physicians Can Trust”
lymecme.info/

About the host:
Rhonda Feiman is a nationally-certified, licensed acupuncturist practicing in Belfast, Maine since 1993. She primarily practices Toyohari Japanese acupuncture, using gentle and powerful non-insertion needle techniques, and also utilizes Chinese acupuncture and herbology. In addition, Rhonda is a practitioner of Qi Gong and an instructor of Tai Chi Chuan in the Yang Family tradition.