Maine Currents 10/12/16

Producer/Host: Amy Browne
Studio Engineer: John Greenman

Our multi-partisan panel joins us again to discuss the upcoming elections, and Emily Cain, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress for Maine’s 2nd District joins us for the first half hour to answers questions from the panel and callers. (Opponent Bruce Poliquin was invited but declined and did not respond to requests to send a campaign aide in his place). We also discuss referendum questions on Maine’s ballot and recent candidate scandals.

Guests:
Emily Cain, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress for Maine’s 2nd District Congressional. (Opponent Bruce Poliquin was invited but declined and did not respond to requests to send a campaign aide in his place).
Betsy Garrold, Green Party, Dr. Jill Stein supporter
Tim Wilson, former Bernie Sanders supporter now supporting Stein
Ken Gleason, Democrat, Hillary Clinton supporter
Renee Trust, Libertarian, Gary Johnson supporter
Republican Dave Gulya was absent this week.

Maine Currents 8/31/16

Producer/Host: Amy Browne
Studio Engineer: John Greenman

Hal Crowther and Robert Shetterly debate “voting for the lesser of two evils” and listeners weigh in on that, and on recent news about Gov. LePage’s behavior.

Guest bios:

Rob Shetterly graduated in 1969 from Harvard, with a degree in English Literature. He was active at that time in the Civil Rights and the Anti-Vietnam War movements.
He moved to Maine in 1970. For twelve years he did the editorial page drawings for The Maine Times newspaper, and illustrated National Audubon’s children’s newspaper, and more than 30 books.
Rob’s paintings and prints are in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. For the past 10 plus years he has been painting the Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait series. The exhibit has been traveling around the country since 2003. In 2005, Dutton published an award-winning book of the portraits by the same name.
The portraits have given Rob Shetterly an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, US history, and how democracy cannot function if politicians don’t tell the truth, if the media don’t report it, and if the people don’t demand it.
He has engaged in a wide variety of political and humanitarian work with many of the people whose portraits he has painted – including environmental and social justice activists and whistleblowers. Since 1990, he has been the President of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), and a producer of the UMVA’s Maine Masters Project, an on-going series of video documentaries about Maine artists. He has received numerous awards and honors. FMI: www.americanswhotellthetruth.org

Hal Crowther has also received many awards and much critical acclaim for his work. Hal is a critic and essayist who lives in North Carolina and spends summers here in Maine. He is the author of An Infuriating American: The Incendiary Arts of H.L. Mencken which was published 2014. He is also a former syndicated columnist, screenwriter and newsmagazine editor, at both Time and Newsweek. His most recent collection of essays, Gather at the River, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize in criticism. Crowther’s essays have been published in many magazines and newspapers, from Granta to the New York Times, and included in many anthologies, including the 2014 Pushcart Prize volume for The Joys of Obsolescence. Author and scholar Kirkpatrick Sale has praised Hal Crowther as “the best essayist working in journalism today”. FMI: www.halcrowther.com