The historic Treat Peirce house is for sale again. When I interviewed the real estate agent who last sold it around 2013, she said, "Maybe the story ends here." Will there be a next chapter for this storied home?

Listen to a live broadcast with One Small Step Facilitators Chris Battaglia and Michele Christle, and Station Manager Matt Murphy, recorded 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.

As part of our ongoing blog series about the One Small Step (OSS) Radio Station Hubs Program, we talked to WERU-FM in Maine—the most rural station in in the 2023 Hubs cohort. Last year WERU was selected as one of five Hubs stations, who helped raise awareness of the initiative and facilitate OSS conversations in their local community. OSS brings two strangers with opposing political beliefs together for a conversation—not to debate politics—but to get to know each other as people.

Jodi Hersey from FOX22 WFVX Bangor covered a One Small Step recording at the Belfast Free Library, with Katie McMurtry and Rick Kirkpatrick (listen to their full conversation here).

Sneak peek of what happens when you press play on this video: I look really tired and am missing an "h" in my last name but still appear very enthusiastic about this project (because I truly am).

Call it Meet the Press and Oprah, rolled into one. A programming decision at the national level has given two independent media contractors working for WERU, Michele Christle and Chris Battaglia, a unique opportunity. The two will embark on a series of interviews with people who hold opposing political beliefs in an effort to uncover their humanity and to help reveal the common threads they share.

Bangor has grown leaps and bounds in recent years in terms of the number of arts and cultural events happening in the city and UMaine has had longstanding literary programming with the New Writing Series, but Christle and Dowling wanted more. So, with the help of several other area writers and educators, they decided to make their own literary scene.

The Norumbega Collective, a group of area writers and poets founded by Christle, Dowling, UMaine English professor Gregory Howard and Husson educator Clinton Spaulding, was founded in early 2014 to promote the literary arts in the Bangor region.

by Emily Burnham

I spent a few years working for Legacy International, coordinating the US State Department’s TechGirls program. It was a lot of logistics (mind-boggling logistics!) coupled with the dynamic and unparalleled opportunity to live alongside two cohorts of teenage girls from across the Middle East and North Africa while they navigated coding camp, homestays, and Ramadan in Times Square. Plus, I got to be on TV sometimes!

My father is a retired merchant mariner. In 2011, I sailed across the Pacific with him, following the sailors when they went ashore and interviewing most of the crew. This led to me seeking out the Seamen’s Church Institute Oral History Project, interviewing a number of merchant mariners across who sailed in WW2 for their oral history project, and eventually, helping to organize an oral history storytelling day for merchant marine veterans at the Penobscot Marine Museum.