Voices 4/21/09

Producer/Host: Amy Browne
Contributors: Linda Washburn, Anneli Sundqvist
Segment 1: Making Every Vote Truly Count: A States’ Compact For Electing The President By National Popular Vote. What is it? Will it Work? Can the Electoral College process be replaced by a truly popular vote for President and Vice-President? Can a compact among States authorize a popular vote for President and Vice-President and will this means be more successful than a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the Electoral College? What would be the pros and cons for having an Interstate Compact for the National Popular Vote?
Guest: Ann Luther, Co-President of the League of Women Voters Maine
For more information about a national popular vote:
www.lwv.org
www.nationalpopularvote.com
Cato Institute http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9708
Common Cause
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1695007 and
Fair Vote http://www.fairvote.org/?page=1950.
(This segment originally aired on Women’s Windows, a program that airs every Sunday evening from 8-10pm)
Segment 2: Anneli Sundqvist, now the manager of the Deer Isle hostel, embarked on an overland journey from the middle east to her childhood home in Sweden a few years ago, and along the way she recorded her observations. These segments originally aired on public radio in Sweden, and we’ve been re-airing them here on Voices with Anneli’s permission

Weekend Voices 2/07/09

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Contributors: Anneli Sundqvist, Carolyn Coe, Robert Skoglund, aka “humble Farmer”

Segment 1: Anneli Sundqvist is the manager of the new Deer Isle Hostel which will be opening in June 2009.   She is also a reporter for Swedish Public Radio.  In the spring of 2007 she made an overland journey from Libya through the Middle East and the Balkans and up through eastern Europe to her childhood home in the north of Sweden.  She recorded her observations in a “letters home” style in several installations.  We start Weekend Voices today, with some of them.
Anneli says “The texts are partly to be seen as actual reports from countires where many would never set foot, or even consider doing so, and partly about the life as a solo traveler in such places. About the people I’ve come across, the small every day events and the culture clashes I encountered out there, about living in a backpack and living on the road. About the language difficulties, the unreal situations and my absent husband, about falling in love and out of fear.  The word needs to be put out there, even more so I think in America; the Middle East is more than suicide bombers and fanatic Muslims. Balkan is more than a former war-zone. We shouldn’t trust what we hear, and should question what we known. The world isn’t as distance as it might seem”

Segment 2: WERU volunteer Carolyn Coe traveled thru Syria and Jordan in December 2008 and January 2009 and interviewed Iraqi refugees and the people who are working with them.   Today she reports on the Iraqi Student Project.  FMI: www.iraqistudentproject.org

Segment 3: A few words from the humble Farmer: