Conversations From the Pointed Firs

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Gary Lawless, poet, bookstore owner, book editor, publisher, and educator. He has published many books of poetry and co-owns Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and owns Blackberry Books Publishing in Nobleboro. He has run writing residencies in Newfoundland, Alaska, Italy, and Maine, and community writing workshops for adults with disabilities, unhoused, refugee and immigrant populations, and veterans groups.

Our guest this first month of 2024 on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is LAUREEN LABAR, recently retired curator at the Maine State Museum and author of "Maine Quilts: 250 Years of Comfort and Community", published in 2021 by Down East Books. She and Peter discuss quilts and quilting in Maine, as an example of unique craft, history, and social engagement invoking the spirit of Maine.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Sarah Alexander, Executive Director of MOFGA (the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.) Sarah has been in her position since, 2018, and has over 20 years of experience advocating for sustainable, local and fair food systems. This year MOFGA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding. Peter and Sarah discuss the historical moment of MOFGA's inception, the state of farming in Maine, and what MOFGA might become over the next 50 years. 

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors, artists and innovators discussing books, art and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Online at pointedfirs.org

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Joan (Jo) Radner, of Lovell, Maine, professor emerita of literature at American University, holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and is enjoying a second career as an oral historian, writer, and professional storyteller in her family’s home region of western Maine. Jo has been studying, teaching, telling, and collecting stories most of her life, and has performed from Maine to Hawaii to Finland. Past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network, she has published books and articles on subjects ranging from early Irish historiography and Anglo-Irish drama to women’s folklore, Deaf culture, and New England social history. Her new book (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) is Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages. She has also published two award-winning CDs grounded in New England history, Yankee Ingenuity: Stories of Headstrong and Resourceful People and Burnt Into Memory: How Brownfield Faced the Fire 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Steve Tatko, Vice President of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Steve is a lifelong Mainer, born in Monson, graduate of Colby College, shaped by the Maine woods, and now dedicated to its preservation for all of us to use and enjoy. In the past years, Steve and his colleagues have increased the AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative lands to 100,000 contiguous acres, and helped to advance the state’s 30×30 goal (a national project aiming to conserve 30 percent of each state’s natural resources by 2030). Steve and his colleagues have also determined to remove every barrier to pass of sea-run Atlantic salmon and eastern brook trout on AMC land and to work with partners to conserve the entirety of Maine’s One Hundred Mile Wilderness. In recognition of his work, the Maine Northeaster Loggers Association presented him its award for “Outstanding Management of Natural Resources” for 2022.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is JOHN BUNKER, Homesteader, farmer, orchardist, author, apple historian, co-founder of FEDCO Trees, and founder of MOFGA's Maine Heritage Orchard, 10-acre preservation and educational orchard located in Unity Maine home to over 360 varies of apples and pears traditionally grown in all 16 counties of Maine dating back to 1630.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is TOMMY CARBONE, author of both fiction and non-fiction, outdoorsman, photographer, publisher, and collector of Maine lore and the work of forgotten or over-looked authors who invoke the spirit of Maine. Tommy is a son of Brooklyn, New York but has found another life in northern Maine, exploring the trails, ponds, mountains, streams and bogs. He has also found many of the authors who preceded him, reissuing the books of Dr. Lucius Lee Hubbard, Thomas S. Steele, and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, whose book "Exploring the Maine Woods", first published as articles in Field & Stream Magazine in 1891, has been edited and annotated by Tommy in a new edition by Burnt Jacket Publishing, Greenville, Maine.

Our guests this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee, musicians and musicologists, who for many years have been researching their personal heritage by exploring the traditional music connections between the Celtic lands, the Canadian Maritimes and Maine. In this Conversation from the Pointed Firs episode we explore the early music of Maine, and our cultural heritage through story and song. Through Castlebay, as their musical home, they have released more than two dozen recordings. Their new book, "Bygone Ballads of Maine-Songs of Ships and Sailors", contains many of their findings including lyrics, tunes and relevant lore.

This month we are rebroadcasting a July 2021 conversation with Rob McCall, who passed away in April. We, and many in Maine and beyond, are mourning the loss of this great man: minister, fiddler, writer and creator of the Awanadjo Almanack. Rob and Peter discuss the tradition of Nature writing in Maine, the characteristics of the genre, and the various methodologies and principles that underlie this special means by which to evoke and understand the natural world that surrounds us. 
 
 Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly interview podcast where Peter Neill talks with authors and artists who live in Maine, work in Maine, or otherwise derive their creativity from the essence of Maine.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Peter Beckford, Maine farmer and storyteller who will introduce the work of the late Holman F. Day, journalist, poet, and raconteur, whose accounts of neighbors and friends, often in dialect, are classic evocations of the spirit of Maine.