Talk of the Towns 11/9/22: Breaking Bread

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard and Liz Graves Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme music for Talk of the Towns is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording. Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities This month: A conversation about Breaking Bread, Essays from New England about Food, Hunger and Family, published in 2022 by Beacon Press, to benefit Blue Angel, a food bank in Hancock County, Maine How do our stories about food connect us to our families and our heritage? How was Blue Angel food bank, created? How did the book, Breaking Bread, come about? What has been the response, both from those who contributed essays, and from those who have come to book talks or who have read the book? Guest/s: Deborah Joy Corey, Novelist, co-Editor of Breaking Bread, founder of Blue Angel, Castine Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine Poet Laureate, author of several books of poetry, including Things Seemed to be Breaking, Deerbrook Editions, Deer Isle Kim Ridley, science writer, children’s book author, including Wild Design & The Secret Pool, Brooklin Margery Irvine, lecturer in English at UMaine, Scholar/Facilitator for the Maine Humanities Council, Brooklin Carl Little, poet, author of William Irvine: A Painter’s Journey, and other books, Mount Desert, Maine About the hosts: Ron Beard is producer and host of Talk of the Towns, which first aired on WERU in 1993 as part of his community building work as an Extension professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant. He took all the journalism courses he could fit in while an undergraduate student in wildlife management and served as an intern with Maine Public Television nightly newscast in the early 1970s. Ron is an adjunct faculty member at College of the Atlantic, teaching courses on community development. Ron served on the Bar Harbor Town Council for six years and is currently board chair for the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, where he has lived since 1975. Look for him on the Allagash River in June, and whenever he can get away, in the highlands of Scotland where he was fortunate to spend two sabbaticals. Liz Graves joined Talk of the Towns as co-producer and co-host in July 2022, having long admired public affairs programming on WERU and dreamed of getting involved in community radio. She works as the Town Clerk for the Town of Bar Harbor, and is a former editor of the Mount Desert Islander weekly newspaper. Liz grew up in California and came to Maine as a schooner sailor.