What roles can obsessions play in our creative process? How can identifying, exploring, and naming our obsessions help us understand our connections to places, people, and phenomena?

Torchlight Media is hosting an Open House on Saturday, April 6 from 4–6 p.m. at 158 High Street in downtown Belfast. Come meet the people behind Torchlight (Chris Battaglia, Eli Kao, Tiffany Wolff, and myself) and share your hopes for how this new community media organization can meet the needs of our communities. Tour Torchlight’s headquarters, check out recent and upcoming projects, enjoy refreshments and pop-up photography/storytelling activities, and meet students from Torchlight's pilot mentoring program and community members. Free and open to the public.

Dorothy Odell asked me to facilitate the next Soup + Circle at Restorative Justice Midcoast, on Tuesday, March 4, at noon—a conversation with two veterans who served in recent conflicts. This is all the info I have at the time of this writing. More information coming soon. I hope you can come.

Join Tara Reese and Rose Friedman from the Civic Standard in Hardwick, Vermont, Ashton Allen and Phil Mercier from Hardwick American Legion Post #7, Dale Rowley from Waldo County Emergency Management Association, and local storytellers/community organizers Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle of Torchlight Media/WERU for an informal discussion about unlikely collaborations in small towns/rural places. Coffee/tea and pastries/fruit will be provided.

This Community Supper is open to veterans, families, friends, as well as the general public. It will be an opportunity for members of the Belfast American Legion to meet members of the Hardwick, Vermont American Legion as well as for community members to meet the veterans in their communities who operate one of Waldo County's largest community gathering halls. Supper will be served for $10 a plate. Community members are invited to come enjoy a meal, play pool, spin a tune on the jukebox, and meet people from their community. (Cash bar available at the canteen down the hall.) For more info email torchlightmaine@gmail.com.

Chris Battaglia and I will be talking about our work with One Small Step and beyond over soup at the Restorative Justice Project Maine’s bi-weekly soup circle, hosted by Dorothy Odell. Come a bit before noon, says Dorothy.

This program was a live broadcast with One Small Step Facilitators Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle, and Station Manager Matt Murphy, on January 31, 2024, from 4–5 p.m. Participants and community members joined the conversation by phone, and joined in discussing experiences with the project, personal takeaways, and how the project has affected them since.

We're hosting an interactive event at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport on November 15, 2023, at 6 p.m. to showcase our partnership with national organization StoryCorps through One Small Step. The event is free and open to the public. Come eat some popcorn, enjoy a beverage, bring a friend, meet a stranger!