Education Program for Prisoners -- well done MPBN!

I caught Maine Things Considered last night on MPBN radio while waiting in my car for my dinner companion. I'm so glad he was late. Susan Sharon did an amazing job on her story about the prison education program College Guild that it prompted me to see how I can be a volunteer reader. Ok, so I haven't done it yet but I will as soon as I'm done this post.

The entire story was well researched with tons of great interviews. It's so nice to see that there are people out there with big hearts and an open mind who want to help some of the most helpless people in the country.

Want to be inspired? Listen for yourself.

Maine Bear Cubs via MPBN

My friend Annie covers a lot of interesting stories for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, but her recent story on Maine bear cubs is my favorite so far. Annie went out into the wilderness of Maine with State Wildlife Biologist Randy Cross and his crew to check on mama bears and her cubs. The monitoring program helps determine the health of Maine's black bear population and determine how many bears can be hunted during bear hunting season.

I didn't even know Maine had a bear hunting season. You learn something new everyday!

Every winter, pilots fly over the woods of northern and eastern Maine to detect radio-collared female adult black bears. The bears' den locations are given to State Wildlife Biologist Randy Cross, who heads into the woods to find them. Today's trip involves driving, snowmobiling, and snoweshoeing into the woods of Edinburg, about 50 miles north of Bangor.

Annie took a short video of the process of weighing the cubs and their zonked-out-on-tranquilizers mom. There were three female cubs who screamed bloody murder as they were taken from their den, but calmed down when held close to the biologists warm bodies. So cute!

Annie has a fun job. And she's good at it! Check out the video and story here.

Maine Public Broadcasting Network pisses off public

Due to cutbacks in public broadcasting in Maine, kids in Eastern and Northern Maine will only get to watch Sesame Street for half the year. The radio towers in both Calais and Fort Kent are also going to be taken down. No more NPR. No more public radio. No more news. No more educational programming.

“These changes will allow us to keep our local focus on news and public affairs while maintaining the cultural, science and children’s programming provided by our partners at NPR and PBS. It will also allow us to continue to develop and expand our new media capabilities and engage the communities we serve with timely and relevant content, which we believe will ultimately put us back on sound financial footing,” said Dowe.

If by "local" you mean Portland than maybe this statement makes sense. There's just so much more to Maine than the southern tip. And I'm not convinced that cutting off a majority of the state to programming really outweighs developing and expanding their new media capabilities. Public broadcasting means broadcasting for everyone. They're going to have to re-brand themselves I'm afraid.

Our tax dollars go towards public broadcasting and the communities that need it most aren't going to be getting it anymore. If this isn't a thumb to the nose of rural Maine and the Canadian Maritimes I don't know what is.

Read the press release here or listen to the story here.

What Mimi Heard: Teen Birth Control

My friend Anne Ravana covered an interesting meeting the other night in Bangor about teens and birth control. Last year a middle school in Portland began doling out birth control to their students which caused quite a stir.

One good point: teens need a parent with them to get their ears pierced but their parents don't even have to know if their child gets an abortion.

Kids don't want to talk to their parents about their sex lives any more than parents want to talk about their sex life with their kids. Teens are going to have sex no matter what. Better to do it with protection than without.

Listen to Anne's story here.