Podcasts about Mount Desert Island

Journey with Johnny Mac to the rugged coast of Maine, where granite mountains rise dramatically from the sea. Discover Acadia National Park's unique character as the first place in America to see the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, explore historic carriage roads built by the Rockefeller family, and find hidden coves along the park's dramatic shoreline. Get insider tips on the best lobster shacks, scenic hiking trails, and how to experience "the quiet side" of Mount Desert Island like a local. From thundering ocean waves to peaceful forest paths, Acadia proves that sometimes the most profound wilderness experiences come in compact packages.

Matt McInnis is a co-founder of North Spore and serves as the Creative Director. Matt developed his passion for fungi on Mount Desert Island where he frequently supplied restaurants with wild-foraged mushrooms. Which is what he talks about with TJ on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, the FAQ is: “What is air travel like these days, and what is different? Today's Destination is Acadia National Park Today's Mistake- My own car crash in parking garage   Travel Advice:  Travel pillows FOR SLEEPING on planes   FAQ: “What is air travel like these days, and what is different?   AARP is offering some airline travel tips that may answer this question. First, some facts. In 2019, the FAA reported 146 cases of bad behavior on planes, but in 2021, that number grew to more than 1,000. That was out of nearly 6,000 cases of unruly passengers.  Airplane etiquette is more important because we are all hyper-aware of those around us. Some people get to the airport these days, forgetting basic kindness. The first rule of respectful travel is to accept the rules: Observe mask mandates, boarding processes, and carry-on restrictions. Beyond that, there are steps you can take to make travel a little more pleasant for everyone and avoid conflict. Here are five tips: Don't hog the overhead bins Greet your flight attendant Prepare yourself ahead of time. Don't escalate a conflict. Don't bring stinky food on board. Source: https://www.aarp.org/travel/travel-tips/transportation/info-2022/flying-etiquette.html?intcmp=DC-TRV-MAIN-BB Destination: Acadia National Park, Maine Woodland Rocky beaches and Granite Peaks mark Acadia. It's a good destination for a Solo Traveler or with a friend. ALL seasons have something to offer. At 4 million visits a year, it's one of the top 10 most-visited national parks in the United States. Visitors can explore 27 miles of historic motor roads, hike 158 miles of trails, and explore 45 miles of carriage roads. A shuttle service runs through the park from late June through late October, so you don't need a car during those times. The weather is temperate due to the ocean climate, and it rains often. You may also see morning fog in the summer.    What is significant about the geography at Acadia National Park?    The highest point on the United States East Coast is Cadillac Mountain. You will find Wildlife such as moose, bears, seabirds, and Wales. You are close to Bar Harbor, where restaurants, shops, and entertainment are popular after your visit. You will like the smell of the salty air as you walk through the national park and along the streets of Bar Harbor. My favorite time of year is the fall, when the Fall colors are magnificent. I had trouble finding a hotel nearby on Columbus Day weekend. I had to drive quite a ways to find a hotel when I didn't make reservations that week.  Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island's largest community, is a five‐hour drive from Boston and 50 miles from Bangor International Airport. It is the second largest on the eastern seaboard behind Long Island. https://www.visitbarharbor.com/ The springtime is lovely and cool. Do not expect to be in a very hot area this time of year. It is a bit of a drive to get there, but it's worth it. I suggest flying to Boston and driving 5 hours, or about 50 miles from Bangor, Maine. https://www.nps.gov/acad/planyourvisit/faqs.htm https://acadiamagic.com/   https://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm   https://acadiamagic.com/schoodic/map.htm   Today's Travel Advice-Travel neck pillows reviewed.  Neck pillows are foam,  some with straps around the headrest, to help you sleep on the plane. I did a TWITTER POLL to discover your favorites.  TRTL pillow won.         It has a cushioned foam section that you can adjust to be anywhere around your neck, whether you like to fall asleep forward or to the side. The next favorite is the launch of the Trtl Plus. The new version has adjustable neck support, allowing Goldilocks-style comfort and the fabric wrap is vented with a breathable mesh.  https://www.travelandleisure.com/style/travel-accessories/best-travel-pillows   Connect with Dr Travelbest Website Drmarytravelbest.com Mary Beth on Twitter Dr. Mary Travelbest Twitter  Dr. Mary Travelbest Facebook Page Dr. Mary Travelbest Facebook Group Dr. Mary Travelbest Instagram  

What do all great brands have in common? They create a meaningful experience for their customers–something Stu Synder is an expert in. Stu is the Founder and President of Snyder Media Group, LLC., creating content and providing strategic guidance to media, live entertainment, and start-up companies.  Chances are, you're already familiar with Stu's work. Maybe you watched Cartoon Network or Adult Swim during his long tenure at Turner Broadcasting System. Perhaps you've seen a film he helped bring to screens, such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day or Reservoir Dogs. Or maybe you've attended Disney on Ice or a Ringling Brothers show. Most recently, Stu is the co-owner of Beal's Lobster Pier, an iconic restaurant and lobster pier on Mount Desert Island, Maine. The one thing that all of Stu's projects have in common is that they offer people memorable experiences. Exceed Your Customers' Expectations Stu lives by the rule of over-delivering. When someone walks into his restaurant, he aims to put a smile on their face–whether that's with great customer service, decorations on their takeout box, or an extra gift with their order. It might even involve taking the customer for a walk to show them where the lobsters come in.  It's all about the experience and making them feel connected to your brand. When you exceed expectations, that's what turns customers into advocates.  Equally important is how you deal with customers when things go wrong. Stu personally responds to every review of his restaurant, positive or negative. If it's positive, he thanks them for coming in. If it's not, he uses it as a learning opportunity and lets the customer know how he plans to correct the issue. The most important thing is to make your customers feel heard and taken care of. Building an Entrepreneurial Team As any business owner knows, building a team comes with its fair share of challenges. It can be difficult to keep everyone on the same page moving toward your vision. Stu takes a unique approach, encouraging his team to think like entrepreneurs–to look for out-of-the-box solutions, be creative, and take calculated risks.  If you're the leader, it's your job to give your team direction. But you should also listen to their input on that direction. Set targets together so everyone stays accountable. In the hiring process, Stu recommends focusing on personality just as much (if not more so) than their work experience. Get to know the person, their communication style, and their interests. Would they get along with the other people on your team? Does their communication style work well with yours? Look for people who want positive relationships with their professional peers. Strong connections within your team make for a healthier business. Enjoy this episode with Stu Snyder… Soundbytes 17:13-17:37 “If someone comes in expecting this, I want to over-deliver and exceed their expectations, whether that is the time that they hit Beal's or they get a little thing, someone orders from deals a box of lobsters, or Lunchable kids. How do we over exceed that expectation and put a smile on their face? What do we put in the box? How is the box decorated? How do we deliver on that experience?” 18:47-19:01 “You're not going to take care of 100% of the people and satisfy everyone. It's also when things go wrong or they're not perfect, how do we respond to them? How do we take care of them? Because that's critical to me.”  24:13-24:35 “I like to keep growing. I like working with different teams and learning, because I personally feel that if you if one stays too long in one place, you're only learning one set of disciplines. This is the way we did it. Well, what I wanted to learn was different ways of doing things and then apply it to my overall skill set. “ Quotes “Making people feel special, making people become advocates for your show or advocates for your brand is very important.”  “Over-delivering is critical.” “How do we make people feel special, especially in a world that we're living in, where I think people are looking for that.” “Being a leader was encouraging my team to think as entrepreneurs.”  “Never take yourself too seriously.” “Your team needs direction. They need to know where they're headed.” “If I'm making a hiring decision after one hour, I'm not doing my job.” Links mentioned in this episode: From Our Guest Visit Stu's website: https://stuartsnyder.com/  Connect with Stu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartsnyder/  Connect with brandiD Download our free guide to learn 16 crucial website updates that attract more leads and convert visitors into clients: https://thebrandid.com/website-tweaks/ Ready to elevate your digital presence with a powerful brand or website? Contact us here: https://thebrandid.com/contact-form/

To garner as much attention for your books as possible, it's important for independent publishers and author publishers to connect with audiences outside their network.  Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Campaigns Manager Matty Dalrymple joins “Inside Independent Publishing (with IBPA)” to share expert advice about how to land interviews on podcasts, blog sites, and with reviewers, including whether to pitch yourself or hire a publicist, how to best craft your pitch, how to promote the interview to get the most out of it, and much more!PARTICIPANTSMatty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with ROCK PAPER SCISSORS; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with THE SENSE OF DEATH; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including CLOSE THESE EYES. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.Matty also podcasts, writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage as The Indy Author. She has written books on the business of short fiction, podcasting for authors, and how to succeed as an author speaker, and her articles have appeared in Writer's Digest magazine. She serves as the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).She lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and in Sedona, Arizona, and these locations serve as the settings for her novels.Independent Book Publishers Association is the largest trade association for independent publishers in the United States. As the IBPA Director of Membership & Member Services, Christopher Locke assists the 3,600 members as they travel along their publishing journeys. Major projects include managing the member benefits to curate the most advantageous services for independent publishers and author publishers; managing the Innovative Voices Program that supports publishers from marginalized communities; and hosting the IBPA podcast, “Inside Independent Publishing (with IBPA).” He's also passionate about indie publishing, because he's an author publisher himself, having published two novels so far in his YA trilogy, The Enlightenment Adventures.LINKSLearn more about the many benefits of becoming a member of Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) here: https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/membershipMake sure to check out Matty's books at https://www.mattydalrymple.com/aboutYou'll find more information on her non-fiction platform at https://www.theindyauthor.com/Also, check out ALLi at:https://selfpublishingadvice.org/author-awards-contests-rated-reviewed/https://selfpublishingadvice.org/best-self-publishing-services/Follow IBPA on:Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/IBPAonlineX – https://twitter.com/ibpaInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/ibpalovesindies/

Emma Mary Murray (she/her) works as an environmental artist and teacher. She creates slow-crafted heirloom art pieces that honor the landscapes they depict. Her favorite materials include embroidery thread, up-cycled fabrics, and paints.  Emma also teaches art workshops for kids and grown-ups, and teaches all subjects part-time at a place-based school on Mount Desert Island in Maine. We chat about: Emma's transition from an art hobby to creative business Weaving together her passions of art and teaching Managing multiple income streams and avenues of work The beauty of creating a tactile, tangible, beautiful product Minimizing social media use in business Figuring out the building blocks of her year's schedule Using art to support advocacy efforts Resource mentioned: Off The Grid Podcast,  www.offthegrid.fun Connect with Emma: Website: www.emmamarymurray.com IG: instagram.com/emmamarymurray Connect with Justine: Website: https://www.justawildthought.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justawildthought    Was this episode helpful? Screenshot this and tell a friend to go to justawildthought.com/podcast! Please rate and review Creatives in the Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard and Liz Graves Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording. Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities This month: – A bit of history of public housing in the US. – Recent trends that led to Maine's current picture. – Review of available public housing in Bangor and Mount Desert Island and Ellsworth, voucher programs and ancillary support. – Who is served by local housing authorities and by Maine State Housing? – Where is the “cutting edge” in housing, what are some of the challenges? Guest/s: Weston Brehm, Executive Director, MDI – Ellsworth Housing Authorities. Michael Myhatt, Executive Director, Bangor Housing. FMI: www.emdiha.org bangorhousing.org www.mainehousing.org www.affordablehousing.com/mainecwl 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. The post Talk of the Towns 10/10/24: Housing Authorities in Maine first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

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What used to be called 100-year floods are now annual occurrences. Summer 2023 was the wettest ever in Vermont, with 2 feet of rain falling on the state. One storm submerged the capital of Montpelier. This July saw towns such as Plainfield ripped apart by raging rivers. In Connecticut this month, a storm dropped more than a foot of rain, leading to deadly and destructive flooding.Author Porter Fox says the source of these deluges — as well as heat waves, fires, and floods — is the ocean, where about 90% of global warming is occurring. This is the inexorable consequence of human-caused climate change. The top layer of the ocean has warmed about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is “large enough to transform marine biodiversity, change ocean chemistry, raise sea levels, and fuel extreme weather,” reports the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.Fox explains the connection between oceans, climate change and extreme weather in his new book, “Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them.”Fox has a personal connection to the ocean. He grew up on Mount Desert Island in Maine, home to Acadia National Park. His father was a renowned boat builder, and Fox learned the craft of ocean sailing by trial and lots of error. He later attended Middlebury College and wrote about skiing adventures all around the world as an editor of Powder Magazine but has now returned to his first love, the sea. Fox's other books include “The Last Winter” and “Northland.”In “Category Five,” Fox captures the awesome power of the ocean by profiling a legendary storm sailor, a mapmaker and a maker of sailing drones, among others.“The ocean is the mother of all weather. It's like a battery that is getting charged up by this excess heat that we have,” Fox said. This is creating squalls and hurricanes with “metrics that we've never seen before.” These monster storms are “traveling farther while moving slower, thus dumping more water and the ferocity of their winds has more time to wreak havoc as they go,” Fox said.“A full throated ocean gale is absolutely terrifying,” he said. These storms have an “explosive sound and shrieking and raging wind and waves that are so powerful they can toss around a 30,000 pound boat like it's a little toy.”Even landlocked places such as Vermont are experiencing the power of the ocean. “Most of the rain that you see in Vermont comes off of the ocean and evaporation. So we have a hotter climate over the ocean. We have more evaporation. We have more energy being infused into the atmosphere,” Fox said. “So every front, every thunderstorm, every squall, every rainstorm is directly connected to the ocean.”The warming ocean has transformed how and when storms occur. “Hurricane season used to be roughly from June to November,” Fox said. Hurricanes have recently occurred in January and May. "Now there is no off season,” he said.What would it take to fix what is broken? “It's kind of an obvious answer: just a little bit of everything,” Fox said. That includes “changing how we create and consume energy around the world, closing down coal-fired power plants, changing from gas cars to electric cars or hydrogen batteries.”“Without the ocean, we'd be gone by now," Fox said. "That 90% of the heat that it is absorbed (by oceans) would be right up in the atmosphere. Temperatures would be unbearable. Storms would be so much more powerful. And yet the ocean is this buffer.”“There's a lot of checks and balances, and it's perhaps the reason that this little blue ball of a planet has maintained life for so long,” he said.“If we can just be aware of that and kind of nudge some of those balances," Fox said, "you could bring the planet back to the way it was pre-1800s.”

From Maine to Florida, coastal units of the National Park System are being impacted in various ways by the changing climate. Some of the impacts affect wildlife, some natural resources, and some the human populations who either live in or come to visit these beautiful areas. At the National Parks Traveler. We've been working on a series of stories looking at these changes that are showing up. In recent shows we've discussed impacts to manatees that live in the waters of Everglades and Biscayne national parks as well as Cumberland Island National Seashore, and how sea level rise is impacting salt marshes that are vital for wildlife and which serve as buffers to hurricanes and tropical storms. At Acadia National Park in Maine, the impacts are materializing in various ways.  Rainstorms are becoming heavier and more damaging, invasive species such as the Asian shore crab are showing up in the waters of Frenchman Bay, and the number of bird species that winter on Mount Desert Island have decreased. To take a closer look at these changes, we're joined by Nick Fisichelli, the president and CEO of the Schoodic Institute, a nonprofit science center based on the national park's Schoodic Peninsula to discuss some of the impacts that have arrived and the research being done to better understand them. 

Two major seasonal jobs have just one director: Brett Gaede. From his first ever, post-college professional position at the renowned Nantucket Yacht Club, Gaede has made New England and Florida his seasonal homes, and follows his members, and the sun, up and down the East Coast. With his two director roles, he lives with water views year-round, and has views over the Atlantic almost two thousand five hundred miles apart, depending on the calendar. Gaede is the director in the summer in Maine on the remote Mount Desert Island at The Harbor Club. A very private club, hidden in the gem of a village called Seal Harbor, made famous by the ultra-private Rockefeller family back in the early 1900s. At his winter post, where he serves the membership as director at the elite Hillsboro Club, just outside Ft. Lauderdale, Gaede works with an older demographic and a club that is etched in tradition with its tennis and croquet professionals in all-white clothing from head to toe. Pine Trees In The Summer, Pine Trees In The Winter Famed Testa's Restaurant in Palm Beach, Florida in the winter had a sister restaurant also on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Nick Testa Senior formed a motto: Pine trees in the summer, palms in the winter. That's exactly how Gaede thinks as he spends evenings enjoying the scenery of Acadia National Park in the summer and views of Hillsboro Inlet in the Broward County, Florida through the winter months. Gaede could have used that motto to describe his life over the past 15 years. Funnily enough, Testa's in Bar Harbor is just minutes away and in Palm Beach just about 30 miles from his winter nest, as the proverbial crow flies. As the director that has "racquets, and will travel," Gaede takes us through his tips of creating a great seasonal program. Housing is crucial to help find and retain great instructors and assistants at such "destination" clubs. Second is the meal plan or benefit. Third comes, perhaps, the commission as the millennial employees look for comfort in not only their food, but their life and living and having a work/life balance. Tournaments Are Losing Popularity - Clinics The New Club Competition Gaede has seen trends away from tournaments to live ball and pro-fed clinics, especially at Seal Harbor. With an older demographic at Hillsboro and a more transient membership in Florida with rooms at the inn as part of the club, he feels that the trend will soon arrive in Florida too. It may already have. He is packing all courts at both clubs each morning with Cardio, Liveball and 105 and attendance over 40 on a daily basis. Tournament entries are weaker each year, and he explains his thinking as to why pro-fed clinics are here to stay as the leading weekend entertainment. Have a listen to perhaps one of the best seasonal directors in the country. He says he's happy where he is now. We aren't surprised: he has two of the best seasonal jobs in the nation. Brett Gaede on the Beyond The Baselines Podcast.

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording. Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities This month: Interview with Roxana Robinson author of Leaving, published by W.W. Norton and Company, 2024 – What is the context and overall plot for Leaving? – Leaving, like your other novels, explores bonds that hold within families, and the forces that test those bonds…. What is your curiosity about families that keeps you returning to them in your writing? – The main characters Sarah and Warren are late middle age, each with claims made on them by life, family, jobs… as they reconnect after more than 30 years, they each contend with these claims, providing the major tension in the story – Sarah and Warren also have strong connections to place… Sarah to her home outside of New York City, Warren to his summer home on Mount Desert Island… what is the nature of the claims that these places have on Sarah and Warren – You are known both as a writer of fiction, and as the biographer of Georgia O'Keefe. That book was recently republished with a new foreward … what led you to research and write O’Keefe's story? Guest/s: Roxana Robinson www.roxanarobinson.com 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. The post Talk of the Towns 2/14/24: Roxana Robinson, author of Leaving first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Cornelia Cesari Maine's Baker Island is about four miles southeast of the much larger Mount Desert Island. A lighthouse was established on the highest point of the island in 1828. The early history of the light station is very much tied into the history of the family of William and Hannah Gilley. The Gilleys had taken possession of the island in the early 1800s, and William was appointed as the island's first lighthouse keeper. The original tower was replaced in 1855 by the 43-foot-tall cylindrical brick tower that still stands today. The keeper's house has been unoccupied since the light was automated in 1957. Baker Island Light Station. Photo by Howie Motenko, courtesy of Keepers of Baker Island Baker Island Light Station is now owned by the National Park Service as part of Acadia National Park, while the Coast Guard maintains the navigational light. There are Acadia National Park ranger-led tours of the island from Bar Harbor in the summer. Keepers of Baker Island is a nonprofit that was formed to support the National Park Service with the care and upkeep of the island's natural and cultural landscape. Cornelia Cesari, our guest in this episode, is an island resident and the president of the board of directors of Keepers of Baker Island. Cornelia is also the author of the book Baker Island, released in 2018 by Arcadia Publishing.

This episode features Sam J. Foss, Vice President of Nursing & Chief Nursing Officer at Mount Desert Island Hospital. Here, she discusses key insights into her organization & the role of Chief Nursing Officer, what staffing looks like at a critical access hospital, the importance of partnering with schools in order to create a pipeline for the future, and more.

JCO PO author Dr. Jens Rueter Chief Medical Officer at The Jackson Laboratory and Medical Director of the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative, shares insights into his JCO PO article, “The Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative: Implementing a Community Cancer Genomics Program Across an Entire Rural State.” Host Dr. Rafeh Naqash and Dr. Rueter discuss this successful initiative for patients and its implementation for access to precision oncology in rural settings.  TRANSCRIPT Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Hello and welcome to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations, where we bring you engaging conversations with authors of clinically relevant and highly significant JCO PO articles. I'm your host, Dr. Rafeh Naqash, Social Media Editor for JCO Precision Oncology, and Assistant Professor at the OU Stephenson Cancer Center. Today we are joined by Dr. Jens Rueter, Chief Medical Officer at The Jackson Laboratory and Medical Director at the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative. Dr. Rueter is also the Associate Director for Regional Translational Partnerships at the Jackson Cancer Center and the lead author of the JCO Precision Oncology article titled “The Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative: Implementing a Community Cancer Genomics Program Across an Entire Rural State.”  Full disclosures for our guest will be linked in the transcript and can be found on the article's publication page.  Welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us today, Dr. Rueter.  Dr. Jens Rueter: Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: For the sake of this podcast, we'll refer to each other using our first name if that's okay with you. Dr. Jens Rueter: That's great. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: So this article that your group published in JCO Precision Oncology has significant implications. It has broad outreach. It incorporates an aspect of Precision Oncology that is very important for not only academia but also from a community outreach perspective, which is one of the reasons why I chose this as one of our podcast highlights. So to start off, I would really be interested to know what are the current barriers to the implementation of Precision Oncology, especially in rural settings versus urban settings, that can impact cancer mortality. Dr. Jens Rueter: Yeah, that's a great question. Let me just go back a little bit in time here. When we first started with the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative back in 2016, the problems were actually even more significant than they are today. Back in those days, I would say even access to testing was a problem in rural areas. And I think that is still the first thing to consider when thinking about barriers. Back in 2016, there were only a handful of testing companies. There were issues with reimbursement or patient out-of-pocket costs. So I think that's the first barrier. I would say that that has significantly changed in the last six years. There are more testing companies available. It appears that the out-of-pocket expenses for patients have dramatically decreased or the systems programs have improved. There are still some barriers, but I think it's a much smaller part of the population.  The second barrier to implementation, though, which remains to this day, and in fact, I would argue has actually become more complicated, is a quick and comprehensive, yet fast and deliverable interpretation of the test reports. The test reports contain a lot of information. It's often 20 to 30 pages long, multiple sections, and really understanding how to utilize that information for clinical care is a very significant issue for clinicians to this day. So that's the second barrier.  And I think then the third barrier that is still ongoing and I think, especially in rural areas, is the access to treatments through either a clinical trial or even through off-label prescriptions, that both of those require a lot of infrastructure, and that still remains a significant issue to this day. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: You touched up on some very important aspects and one being understanding of genomic reports and this has been something that I talk to fellows all the know. I finished fellowship a few years back. At that time, NGS testing was becoming more and more prevalent, even though, as you mentioned in your paper, CMS coverage for this didn't start until 2018, 2019 approximately. And from a phase one trial standpoint, which is what I do, I have probably a little more exposure to genomics and precision medicine than perhaps some of our community colleagues. But it does come up often when we get referrals from outside sites. We're trying to look through the report and see something that stands out, whether it's a varying allele frequency that's high enough to warrant testing, germline testing, or some other targets that were identified a few years back but probably were not acted upon.   So you had this very interesting approach, a three-pronged approach is what I understood, of how you tried to tackle this within your main precision oncology program. Before we go there, could you tell us what was the idea behind establishing something like this? Because I imagine bringing it to fruition is something much more complicated, but the idea is where it starts. So I imagine, like, you probably had a conversation with some of your colleagues or somebody else noticed this as a barrier in the clinic and came up with this sort of an approach. Could you touch upon that for the sake of our listeners? Dr. Jens Rueter: Yes. So back in 2016, or actually in 2015, when we started conceptualizing the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative, the idea was to look at Maine as a state, as a very rural state. The Jackson Laboratory is an NCI-designated basic science cancer center in the state, the only NCI-designated cancer center in the state. And we feel like there is an obligation, if you will, to the state to do good for all of Maine. So it's a community approach that we felt was important. And we realized then at the time that, again, that testing genomic tumor testing, or NGS testing while available, was not being used effectively in the community. So I think those two ideas essentially made us think and believe that we should take the lead in starting such a program.  We felt that we had actually one significant advantage in that we are a non-patient care organization. So the Jackson Laboratory, even though we have an NCI-designated cancer center, we don't see patients at Jax. So we were not a competitor, if you will, for patients in the state. So we were an honest broker. We were sort of a neutral Switzerland, if you will, in Maine, and were able to convene the entire community around this concept. Even though Maine is a small state, there are a number of healthcare systems that are actually competing with each other for patients in certain areas. And when we sort of started this program, we said, look, we want to work with everyone, and it's important for us to work with everyone, and we want to include even the smaller, truly rural critical access hospitals that have small, very small oncology practices. They're just as important to us as the larger centers. So I think that was sort of the community idea behind this and this is what really started it all. And then also, again, the fact that testing was such an issue, it also happened that at the time, Jax had just started we had just started our own clinical laboratory, our own CLIA certified laboratory. So we felt like we actually had the expertise to bring a test to the community that would then engage them to utilize the technology more effectively. And that's how we proceeded with this.  Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Excellent. And I totally agree that this inclusive stakeholder approach that you had was probably one of the elements for success in this kind of an approach and led to a significant impact in the lives of patients. You mentioned three things that you targeted or three things that you identified and tried to implement as part of this Precision Oncology program. Could you tell us about those briefly, what they were, and why they were important to be included in this approach? Dr. Jens Rueter: Yes, absolutely. So the first and most important one and most impactful one was that we developed a genomic tumor board program through this initiative, which again we had a centralized yet hub-and-spoke type approach where we said, “Okay, we are going to organize these for all of the practices, for all of the studies. The patients that are enrolled in our study protocol, we will organize these and basically create an environment where we call on national experts from around the country and, in fact, around the world at this point, that call in and provide input on the different cases that the physicians had enrolled.” We left it up to the physicians to decide which cases they wanted to present because they had some patients that they enrolled where they felt like they didn't necessarily have to present the case. So there was a lot of buy-in for these genomic tumor boards because we really discussed cases that were probably the most challenging ones and the most relevant ones.  So I think the genomic tumor board program was really the most significant development and the most significant infrastructure that we built. And in fact, the work that we did in Maine actually enabled us to design a cluster randomized study that we're now running through the SWOG Cancer Research Network. I'm leading that effort with a collaborator from Columbia in New York, actually, Meghna Trivedi. And so that was really a great success, and we will hopefully in a few years know if this approach actually leads to changes in some patient outcomes. We have some indication that it does from our own work, but we will see that in a more rigorous fashion.  The second pillar, if you will, the second part of the approach was that we have a dedicated clinical education group at JAX. So JAX Laboratories, as I said, a basic science cancer center,  but we also have essentially an entire group dedicated to genomic education. And part of that group is focused on clinical genomics education. So we have a modular online program that clinicians can access, not just the physicians, but also the nurses and other people, other members of the patient care team. And in fact, in addition to the online program, we ran a few virtual educational sessions specifically for nurses, which we actually found was, nurses and clinical research coordinators were really one of the most important keys to success as well, that we get them on board and enable them to better understand the complexities of testing.  And then the third aspect, of course, was that we did provide the testing as well as part of this initiative, which we saw as kind of a method to really engage clinicians and take the pressure off the clinicians. “What if I order this testing? Are patients going to come back with significant out-of-pocket expenses?” Again, that was particularly relevant back in 2016, 2017, before the CMS coverage decision. So those three aspects were really what drove this program. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Excellent. Now what I gather is for something like this to come to a full functional state, you need a team and you need funding. So how did you define or identify the core group of people that were most important for this initiative? And what was the funding source? Because these days, nothing gets done without the appropriate level of funding. So I wanted to ask you and see how you manage some of those logistical issues.  Dr. Jens Rueter: Great question. So this whole program was really enabled by a large philanthropic grant, or donation, if you will, from a foundation called the Harold Alfond Foundation. It's a very large philanthropic organization in New England, and they're very Maine-focused. They have historical or family ties actually to Maine, and it's very important to them to bring Maine sort of to the forefront, sort of out of the rural disadvantage, and turn that into an advantage, which is why they agreed to provide funding for this program. And I agree with you that that is a critical step. This program was always in between a traditional research program that could be funded by an NIH grant, for example. I think that initially you need some startup funding first to get this going, and then later on, as you can develop more concise research questions, I think you can also apply for NIH funding for something like this. But certainly, philanthropy goes a long way here. So that was sort of the funding source, and, I think, very important.  Now, in terms of the team, that's actually a great question. You need a few different functions represented here. So I think, first of all, having some clinical expertise is important. So I was actually specifically hired to JAX for this program. I'm a medical oncologist. I actually still have a small practice in Maine as well, but I was in full practice before I joined JAX. And I was hired specifically for this purpose so I could engage with the community and sort of understand my colleagues over the state. You need a very good and rigorous program manager, someone who can really– It's a complex project that there are many aspects you need to consider and you really need someone that kind of keeps track of all the different activities and makes sure that things are moving in the right direction.  Since we are a research organization, we decided to roll this out on a study protocol. So we hired a clinical research manager that would basically disseminate and enable the study protocol and make sure that it's actually done correctly. Even though it was a low-risk observational study, we still wanted to make sure that we collect good data on the patients and the number of publications that we've been able to produce from this initiative, I think, speak to the quality of the data. And then as the program has evolved, we have actually added on a couple of other key functions within the program, and actually one of them pertains specifically to the genomic tumor boards, which again, I think are really critical to this. So you really need one dedicated person to organize these and coordinate these. It's a lot of scheduling. There's a lot of, as you know, from your own clinical practice, clinicians have very specific schedules, and if you really want to make this successful, you really need to make sure that everyone's schedules are accounted for.  And then we also recently added another function to our program, another individual who is a genomic navigator. Actually, we call it the genomic navigator. And I think that this individual, her job is if there are additional questions, for example, after genomic tumor board, or if there are just some very specific about a test report from the entire- it could be from anyone on the team, the physicians, the nurses, the research coordinators, she can help identify some additional answers to some additional questions. She can also help clinicians if they're interested in finding a clinical trial for the patient or find some supporting evidence for off-label drugs, for example, she can provide them with additional references. We have crafted documents that basically summarize the available evidence that exists for using a specific drug in association with a genomic marker. So I think genomic navigators are also very important, and I think there are some other individuals on my team now, but I think those are the core functions that you really should consider. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you for giving us a detailed explanation of the team that I'm pretty sure has expanded over the last few years as you've tried to expand this program concurrently.  Now, going from the team to the platform, I was kind of interested to know a little more about the sequencing platform generally, as from my clinic, I do FoundationOne, or ERUS testing, or Tempus testing, etc., and I'm not very well versed with some of the platforms used. Could you tell us a little bit more about what these platforms are? How big the panels are from a DNA standpoint? And I see you did test for some RNA fusions as well. So could you tell us how that came about? Dr. Jens Rueter: So when we first started the initiative, we started with a single assay that we ran through the Jackson Laboratory, and it was at the time a fairly contemporary test. It looked at both SNVs, insertions, deletions, and so forth on the DNA level and on copy number variants as well. And it was 212, at the time, 212 cancer-related genes. It was a homegrown panel if you will. This was back in 2017, 2018, and we also had a fusion assay that looked at RNA already at the time. So we were already kind of ahead of the curve at that point because, at the time, many assays were still just looking at DNA for fusion. So we already figured that it would be better to look at the RNA level. And then we sort of grew the panel from there.  The last panel that we used specifically for this first phase of the initiative had grown to 501 genes. It was already done on a specific platform. I think it was one of the Illumina platforms at the time. So we figured the off-the-shelf solutions weren't necessarily the right approach. We also added in tumor mutational burden. We added in MSI. We did not yet have at the time LOH or HRD assessment, but we certainly offered TMB and MSI. And we had the usual sort of commodity testing for PDL-1, which we actually sent out because it wasn't necessarily what we do in-house. So that was during the program as it is described in the manuscript. I will say we continue this program. We're continuing the genomic tumor boards now. We've never stopped. We just continued after the study was over. We offer it essentially as a service now to the community, as an educational service if you will, and we now actually work with any test reports that the physicians provide. Again, I think the landscape has shifted dramatically and the testing itself doesn't seem to be as much of a barrier anymore. So we look at a lot of Tempus reports, KRAS foundation, every now and then we'll have something that's a little bit more unique, I would say.  There are obviously many other sequencing companies out there and we've actually found that this is– For our genomic tumor boards, we actually developed a template that is non-branded, that is just trying to put every test into the same table, front table, which I think has actually been very helpful for the clinicians because, again, sometimes you just can't find all of the relevant information on the front page. And we comb through every report and try to find every addendum that may have been generated and all kind of collate it in one single slide if you will, so that the clinicians have it right there and then we kind of talk it through as well. So that's essentially the evolution of the testing over the last six, seven years. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: So this more or less sounds like a very state-of-the-art, contemporary approach that was available more or less to other clinicians at that time. 200 gene panel seems pretty extensive for 2018, 2019 and, as you probably know, things have gone to whole exome at this point, but I think you seem to be doing what was most appropriate at that time.  Now, going to the results between 2017 to 2020, your precision oncology program enrolled around 1600 people. The results were simple but very impactful, is how I describe it. Could you tell us some of the highlights from the results, what you identified, both from an implementation standpoint, participation standpoint, and from an impact at an individual patient's level?  Dr. Jens Rueter: Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So, I think the most important for us, the most important metric was that we were able to, over time, engage all practices and engage all– When we finished with the initiative, at that point, every physician, every oncologist in the state had actually been enrolled in our program as a study participant, which was actually one of the unique features, by the way, of our program: we said we were going to study both the physicians and the clinicians. So we had enrolled on our study 100% of the oncologists. It took us about 18 months to get to all the practices, which I think is an important metric for anyone who wants to pursue something similar. You have to always keep in mind that, even if you come in with a fairly solid proposal and something that is clearly of benefit to patients, every institution that you work with, it's going to take a while before you can get all the agreements signed and the IRB issues settled.   So it took us about 18 months, which I think is still fairly quick actually. And we listed the enrollment as well, the enrollment curve of patients in the paper. And it certainly did take some ramp-up in the very beginning, but then we really very quickly sort of ramped up to a steady state after about a year or so. We discussed about a little bit less than, about a third of the cases actually, at our genomic tumor boards. Almost three-quarters of the physicians actually participated in the genomic tumor boards as well. We ran around 200 GTBs throughout the initiative, and we're currently looking at the clinical outcomes of these patients. It's currently under review what the clinical outcomes were, but I can already say that we are sort of, I would argue, in about the same place in terms of patients that actually went on a genome-match therapy as many other publications in that venue. And it is actually, as you can probably imagine, rather complicated to define what a genome-match therapy actually is. And that will be coming out soon, hopefully soon.  So the other findings are also quite interesting and they have been published in other publications over the last few years. So at baseline, for example, we actually asked the patients, “What are your expectations? What are you expecting from this enrollment, from the tumor testing?” And we actually identified that the patient expectations were very high, which I think is important, an important finding -  can be explained partially by precision oncology, it's a buzzword right now, and patients have certainly picked up on this and there are a lot of very high expectations in that it's going to change your outcomes. And physicians also at baseline felt quite confident, actually. There was a fairly good spread, but most of them felt quite confident that they would be able to utilize the information and actually explain it to their patients. They felt mch less confident, very on-point, in my opinion, that they would be able to put the patients on a targeted therapy or that their practice would have the infrastructure to support putting patients on therapy. So those are some of the other findings that we've identified over the last few years overall. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you. And just on a side note, I was looking at Figure 4, which shows the number of cases per physician, and one physician particularly stands out with 120+ cases. Dr. Jens Rueter: Yes. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Did that individual physician get any kudos after doing this excellent job? Dr. Jens Rueter: Yes, actually this physician did. That's actually a really good point that you're bringing up. That's another important finding that I found quite fascinating, actually, that everyone is kind of the same at baseline. We offer the same thing to everyone. And you can see in Figure 4 in the paper that there is a significant spread in terms of how many patients each physician enrolled and also how many they presented at a genomic tumor board. And certainly that one physician is a very engaged member. We have a steering committee that we implemented very early on. That physician is also on our steering committee. And this really has contributed a lot of insights into what has worked well and maybe what hasn't worked so well. So it is a rather fascinating statistic, I agree. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: One of the things I also noticed from your summary was that the uptake of the genomic testing and being part of this initiative was more for rural areas than for urban areas. And I was trying to understand why perhaps one of the reasons could be that it does help the community physicians in that setting. Was that what you saw, or was there another side to it that perhaps may not necessarily be explained in this manuscript? Dr. Jens Rueter: Yeah. So, first of all, just to be very clear that the highest enrollment in rural areas was per capita so that's an important distinction in my opinion. So, it obviously goes that the more rural areas are more densely populated. And what's actually behind this is that the physicians that were working in those rural areas also just happen to be really engaged in the program and find a lot of value, especially, in the genomic tumor boards. So it was really very much a personable motivation. I would say, though, that the larger issue behind this, or the larger interpretation of these findings is that, especially at that time, I would argue that the– In Maine, you can always see that everything kind of moves from the south all the way to the north. It takes a little bit of time and it's the same in pretty much anything, but in medicine as well. And so, I think at that time, the NGS testing just wasn't really used all that much in the more rural areas. So I think the fact that we provided it– And again, there's also less infrastructure at these smaller hospitals or smaller practices. So running through the hoops of getting prior authorizations and still managing potential out-of-pocket expenses just aren't there and these were things back in the day for sure that were barriers. So I think us coming in and saying, “Look, all you have to do is you mention to your patients that there is this program called the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative, and if you're interested, someone will contact you from the Jackson Lab and talk to you more about the study and see if you want to participate.” That's all they needed to do. And then everything else kind of went from there. I think that is really probably one of the reasons why we had such a significant accrual in those more rural areas. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Amazing. And one of the things that I am very dreadful of is ‘tissue being the issue' where, despite the biopsy, despite everything you do, the pathologist comes back. Or you send the tissue to the sequencing company, they come back saying, not enough tumor cells. What were some of the things that you did or your group did to help the people involved in this process understand why tissue matters? Because that can add to further delays in treatment. So I'm very curious to know what some of those things were that you tried to help everybody understand from an educational perspective. Dr. Jens Rueter: We noticed that very much in the beginning, especially, of the program, so after about two or three months, we realized that there were a significant number of tissue failures and we realized we needed to address that. And we did that both by internal as well as external processes. So we actually looked back at our assay and said, "Look, maybe our requirements for DNA input are just too high. We need to rethink that and maybe there's a way to improve the laboratory processing so that we can actually work with less DNA." So I think that's a very important lesson.   And interestingly enough, I think this is still an issue to this day in a certain way with any of the testing laboratories, and we can get back to that in just a second. But I think the other aspect that was important here was, again, getting on the phone or on a Zoom call or whatever it was at the time, and really talk to the pathologist, talk to the clinicians, talk about, when you order a test, for example, think about beforehand as you're identifying the right specimen. Is this actually potentially enough tissue? If it's an FNA, maybe it's not enough. But if it's a good core biopsy, that's probably the better specimen. So that's certainly on the ordering physician side, but then also on the pathologist side, it was actually quite interesting. And one of the larger pathology practices in the state actually implemented something very smart, I think, as they sign out cases, and I think they do this universally on any case, as a pathologist signs out the case, he will actually indicate on the report which block should be used for sequencing. And they will actually indicate a tumor cell percentage, which I think is an excellent small step, but very impactful because it will reduce frustration on the side of the clinician, if a block is sent with not enough tissue, it will facilitate the workflow between the place where the tissue is stored, for example, and where it's cut, and it makes everything a lot simpler. And I think those are the kinds of things that you really have to think about. I think in the contemporary times now where it's become quite common for testing companies to weed out samples that have 20% or 30% neoplastic content. What's interesting there, though, is that I feel like sometimes they're almost a little bit optimistic. They're always very clear on the disclosures in the report. They will say that there was a low tumor cell purity and some of the results should be interpreted with caution. But again, I'm not sure that clinicians are actually reading the fine print. So the example has kind of flipped a little bit that nowadays you're getting a lot more information than you did six, seven years ago. But you have to understand better as to how the information was derived. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: I couldn't agree with you more as far as noting down in the pathology specimen which specimen is the most appropriate for NGS. It's a small thing to do, but I think it makes a huge impact when the research team or the nurses are actually trying to identify what specimen to send.  So now, Jens, coming to the last portion, I'd really like you to summarize in 30 seconds what are the future directions from this program? Where does it stand right now? And what are some of the things that you're trying to add on to the current format? Dr. Jens Rueter: Where we stand is we're continuing to run our genomic tumor boards in the state of Maine. And as I mentioned earlier, we're also running a national study where we're running an additional GTB per week just to really see how impactful it is on patient outcomes. In the future, we need to improve the processes. We need to streamline the processes with genomic tumor boards, involve more technology to scale it, essentially, and make it more broadly available. And lastly, what's really important is we also need to think more closely about treatment options and enabling rural areas to have more access to clinical trials. And I hope that with the current post-pandemic thinking, that we can actually enable that with technologies, with virtual visits, with virtual consent, and so forth. And then, one other point, we also need to educate patients so that they know what to ask for when they're meeting with the oncologist.  Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you so much.  Now the last portion, a minute or two is going to be dedicated to you specifically. So, Jens, tell us a little bit about your career trajectory. Where did you start? You mentioned earlier that you did or currently do practice clinical oncology. And how did you get into the field of precision medicine that culminated into developing such an impactful program? Dr. Jens Rueter: We moved to Maine in 2010 after I completed my Hem/Onc Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, where I'd actually done quite a lot of translational and bench research. We came to practice. We moved to Bangor, and practiced here. And the Jackson Laboratory is really just on the road from where we are. We're at Mount Desert Island, right next to Acadia National Park, and I started collaborating with some of the scientists. Actually, early on, we built a tissue bank at the Northern Light Hospital here to facilitate translational research. And then when the funding became available, I received a call from the then CEO of Jackson Laboratory, and h, Ed Liu, and he said, "Jens, we're thinking about running this program and would you be interested?" And so that's how I joined JAX. And that's really when I started. I saw at the time already this gap that was widening and I saw how complicated it is to practice rural oncology. And I really saw this as a great opportunity to bring the field forward, to bring Maine forward, and to really address one of the major disparities that still exist to this day.  Prior to that, I spent quite a bit of time doing, as I said, bench research at the University of Pennsylvania. I also did my internal medicine residency at Tulane, and I always thought I was going to be a traditional physician-scientist. I actually feel great about this opportunity because I think it's addressing one of the major issues in contemporary oncology. So that's sort of how I got here. I'm originally from Germany, I went to medical school in Germany, did some research there, and then came to the United States about 20 years ago now for my postgraduate training, and I've stayed here ever since.  Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Excellent. Sounds like you're the right person for this job, with both a clinical translational bench kind of experience and having worked in different settings.  So thank you once again, Jens, for being a part of this conversation. I think at least I learned a lot. Hopefully, our listeners will find it equally interesting, intriguing, and perhaps implement some of the things that you have accomplished as part of this initiative.  Thank you for listening to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all ASCO shows at asco.org/podcast.  The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.   Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Guest Bio: Jens Rueter, M.D. is the Chief Medical Officer of The Jackson Laboratory and Medical Director for the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative.  Guest COIs: No Disclosures

Robin Hood: I cannot find the version of the legend of Robin Hood that I read on my grandfather's shelves when I was young. The book was old, maybe over a hundred years. The glue in the binding had long since crumbled. I remember that the one that I read was written in verse. But you know how memory is. All of this information is suspect. Anyway, if you're interested in this older version of the story, it made its way into the popular novelization of the story written by Howard Pyle called The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood which was published in 1883 and can be found here in both print and audio. Park History: I highly recommend The National Parks: America's Best Idea, which includes the story of Acadia as well as many other iconic parks. Tourism and Rolf Potts: My thoughts on travel, tourism, and tourists has been greatly influenced by a small but remarkable book by Rolf Potts called Vagabonding. If you are a traveler, you've got to read this book. If you aren't, this book will make you one. Public Piano: Here's some pics.

Tim Garrity has served as a hospital administrator and the director of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, from which he recently retired. We have talked to Tim before about his organization, but this time we discuss his view of the liberal arts in general, what liberal arts degree holders bring to various industries, and what liberal arts students should learn to market themselves better for different career paths. For more information on Tim and the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, listen to our earlier conversation here and learn more about the Society here.   This episode was originally broadcast on Southern New Hampshire University's Passion and Practicality podcast feed.

Audrey Ryan, the daughter of a fisherman, grew up in Mount Desert Island, Maine. She knew her father worked on a fishing vessel pulling up scallops, but she didn't know he was also pulling up “sea hash” left on the ocean floor by drug smugglers until she was an adult. Ryan joined Dan to tell the secondhand story of how struggling Maine fishermen saw an opportunity hauling “sea hash.”

Last summer, I had the pleasure of brunching with Matty Dalrymple, where we bonded over the fact that she put up with three wild and wooly Hutchins dogs, regaled me with stories of her own, and shared some about her writing with me. I went home and started reading the Ann Kinnear and the Lizzy Ballard series immediately, and I've been hooked ever since. I cannot wait to have her on the show and share her latest, BE WITH THE DEAD, with you. I think you're going to love her and her writing. Join us! About BE WITH THE DEAD: An invitation to speak at the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference draws Ann Kinnear into a mystery within a mystery, where the stakes are not just reputation and riches--they're life and death. ★★★★★ "A riveting, fast-paced, intriguing read with a colorful cast of characters who pull you in and don't let go!" —Lisa Regan, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Crime Fiction Author Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on "Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel," but she isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing. Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, has problems of his own. His client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and Darren is despairing of being able to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards. Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, provide the money she needs to buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: thriller novels. When Marilee is attacked at an author event and refuses to leave her Ocean City, Maryland, condo, the couple entertains guilty visions of a life without her disparaging comments and unreasonable demands. As Ann's involvement in Darren and Jeanette's dilemmas deepens, she finds the cases have more in common than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death. About MATTY DALRYMPLE: Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, SNAKES AND LADDERS, and THE IRON RING; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels THE SENSE OF DEATH, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, THE FALCON AND THE OWL, A FURNACE FOR YOUR FOE, A SERPENT'S TOOTH, and BE WITH THE DEAD; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including CLOSE THESE EYES and WRITE IN WATER. Matty lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Arizona, and these locations provide the settings for her work. Matty is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.

Last summer, I had the pleasure of brunching with Matty Dalrymple, where we bonded over the fact that she put up with three wild and wooly Hutchins dogs, regaled me with stories of her own, and shared some about her writing with me. I went home and started reading the Ann Kinnear and the Lizzy Ballard series immediately, and I've been hooked ever since. I cannot wait to have her on the show and share her latest, BE WITH THE DEAD, with you. I think you're going to love her and her writing. Join us! About BE WITH THE DEAD: An invitation to speak at the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference draws Ann Kinnear into a mystery within a mystery, where the stakes are not just reputation and riches--they're life and death. ★★★★★ "A riveting, fast-paced, intriguing read with a colorful cast of characters who pull you in and don't let go!" —Lisa Regan, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Crime Fiction Author Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on "Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel," but she isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing.Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, has problems of his own. His client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and Darren is despairing of being able to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards.Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, provide the money she needs to buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: thriller novels. When Marilee is attacked at an author event and refuses to leave her Ocean City, Maryland, condo, the couple entertains guilty visions of a life without her disparaging comments and unreasonable demands.As Ann's involvement in Darren and Jeanette's dilemmas deepens, she finds the cases have more in common than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death. About MATTY DALRYMPLE: Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, SNAKES AND LADDERS, and THE IRON RING; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels THE SENSE OF DEATH, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, THE FALCON AND THE OWL, A FURNACE FOR YOUR FOE, A SERPENT'S TOOTH, and BE WITH THE DEAD; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including CLOSE THESE EYES and WRITE IN WATER. Matty lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Arizona, and these locations provide the settings for her work. Matty is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/crime-and-wine/support

Last summer, I had the pleasure of brunching with Matty Dalrymple, where we bonded over the fact that she put up with three wild and wooly Hutchins dogs, regaled me with stories of her own, and shared some about her writing with me. I went home and started reading the Ann Kinnear and the Lizzy Ballard series immediately, and I've been hooked ever since. I cannot wait to have her on the show and share her latest, BE WITH THE DEAD, with you. I think you're going to love her and her writing. Join us! About BE WITH THE DEAD: An invitation to speak at the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference draws Ann Kinnear into a mystery within a mystery, where the stakes are not just reputation and riches--they're life and death. ★★★★★ "A riveting, fast-paced, intriguing read with a colorful cast of characters who pull you in and don't let go!" —Lisa Regan, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Crime Fiction Author Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on "Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel," but she isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing. Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, has problems of his own. His client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and Darren is despairing of being able to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards. Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, provide the money she needs to buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: thriller novels. When Marilee is attacked at an author event and refuses to leave her Ocean City, Maryland, condo, the couple entertains guilty visions of a life without her disparaging comments and unreasonable demands. As Ann's involvement in Darren and Jeanette's dilemmas deepens, she finds the cases have more in common than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death. About MATTY DALRYMPLE: Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, SNAKES AND LADDERS, and THE IRON RING; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels THE SENSE OF DEATH, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, THE FALCON AND THE OWL, A FURNACE FOR YOUR FOE, A SERPENT'S TOOTH, and BE WITH THE DEAD; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including CLOSE THESE EYES and WRITE IN WATER. Matty lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Arizona, and these locations provide the settings for her work. Matty is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Dean Lunt, Editor-in-Chief, Islandport Press on the writings of Ruth Moore.DEAN LUNT is founder and the editor-in-chief at Islandport Press, an award-winning publisher of books and other media that strives to tell stories that are rooted in the sensibilities of Maine and New England. An eighth-generation native of downeast Maine, Dean Lunt was born and raised in the island fishing village of Frenchboro. His ancestors arrived on Mount Desert Island in the late 1700s and many of them moved across the bay to settle Long Island in the early 1800s. In 1999, Lunt founded Islandport Press, an award-winning independent book publishing company that produces books with New England themes. The company published its first book, Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island, in the spring of 2000. Lunt has edited dozens of books as is the author of Here for Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City. Later this year he will release an anthology of Ruth Moore's work for which he is writing a lengthy forward describing the ways in which their lives intersected, and the encuring importance of Moore's work. 

Host:Peter Neill Producer: Trisha Badger Music by Casey Neill Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. This month: Dean Lunt, Editor-in-Chief, Islandport Press on the writings of Ruth Moore. Guest/s: DEAN LUNT is founder and the editor-in-chief at Islandport Press, an award-winning publisher of books and other media that strives to tell stories that are rooted in the sensibilities of Maine and New England. An eighth-generation native of downeast Maine, Dean Lunt was born and raised in the island fishing village of Frenchboro. His ancestors arrived on Mount Desert Island in the late 1700s and many of them moved across the bay to settle Long Island in the early 1800s. In 1999, Lunt founded Islandport Press, an award-winning independent book publishing company that produces books with New England themes. The company published its first book, Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island, in the spring of 2000. Lunt has edited dozens of books as is the author of Here for Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City. Later this year he will release an anthology of Ruth Moore's work for which he is writing a lengthy forward describing the ways in which their lives intersected, and the enduring importance of Moore's work. SAMAA ABDURRAQIB is the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council, a position she has held since 2021. Before MHC she taught in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program for three years at Bowdoin College, teaching courses on Muslim memoir, Islam and feminism, and representations of violence against women in literature and film. Samaa left Bowdoin in 2013 and, after teaching a semester at the University of Southern Maine, left the academia to begin a career in Maine's nonprofit world. From 2013 through 2015, Samaa joined the staff at the ACLU of Maine as a reproductive justice organizer. After that grant funded position ended, Samaa joined the staff at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, where she worked for five years supporting domestic violence advocates across the state through training, technical assistance, and policy work. Since March of 2021, Samaa has been working at the Maine Humanities Council and serves as the organization's Executive Director. Samaa's love of Maine's natural landscape is what inspired her to shift careers and root herself in Maine. She tries to spend as much time as she can outside birdwatching, hiking, and kayaking. One of the most fulfilling roles Samaa has held is being a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a national organization committed to (re)connecting Black people to the outdoors and connecting Black people to each other through the outdoors. Samaa received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's English Department in 2010. She is a published poet and nature writer. About the host: Peter Neill is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. In 1972, he founded Leete's Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, the environment, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world. He holds a profound interest in Maine, its history, its people, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. The post Conversations from the Pointed Firs 2/3/23: Dean Lunt, Editor-in-Chief, Islandport Press on the writings of Ruth Moore first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

In this episode, we speak with the bubbly and passionate Sara Wyatt, Owner and licensed Painting Contractor of The Trusted Brush. Sara shares her story, what people should know about preparing for wallpaper and some of her small business advice! Heres's a bit about Sara:Sara Wyatt of, The Trusted Brush, is a California C-33 Painting and Decorating Contractor specializing in the art of wallpaper hanging. In 2019, she came upon the craft when she met her soon-to-be wallpaper mentor at a paint color event and it was like a light bulb went off. This is what she had been waiting for. It wasn't until 2020 that she really went after it, starting with immersive, on the job training with her mentor. By 2021 she was traveling up and down the Central Coast of California and to Mount Desert Island, Maine for installs of all sizes.Sara installs primarily in residences, where she can create a connection with the space, the clients, the designers and other contractors. She installs everything from traditional papers to custom one-of-a-kind designs. You can follow her wallpaper journey on Instagram @TheTrustedBrush with daily fun, humor, art, and creativity. Find her contact info at www.thetrustedbrush.com

On the first day of January, people all over the world dive into the water as a way to start the new year fresh. It's often referred to as a “polar plunge”. But cold water dipping is different.It's not a breathless in-and-out plunge, but a slow submersion: lingering in the cold water for 5 or 10 minutes. No wetsuit. This fall, Outside/In producer Justine Paradis got to know a community of dippers along the coast of Maine. Many of them described something happening once they're in their water.. Something which they say changes their relationship to the cold, the ocean, and themselves. In this episode, we're ringing in the new year by sharing a little more from those conversations.Featuring Kelsy Hartley, Caitlin Hopkins, Puranjot Kaur, Betsy Dawkins, and Judy Greene-Janse. Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for winter surthrival. We featured ideas from James in Bend, Oregon; Kyra in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and Annie in Portland, Maine. Thanks also to Gin Majka, Guenola Lefeuvre, and Annie Ropeik. A word on the risks of cold water immersionPeople engage in cold water dipping and swimming around the world. Many claim health benefits, like a boosted immune system and reduced inflammation. But it's not a risk-free activity. "I'm not sitting here as the fun police stopping people doing what they want to do. It's just we would encourage them to do it safely,” said Mike Tipton, a professor of Human and Applied Physiology at the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth. He shared a couple risks to consider before jumping in.Cold shock response, which occurs as you enter cold water and lasts a couple minutes. This prompts an involuntary gasp and hyperventilation – bad news if you're underwater or in choppy water.Cardiac triggers. Cold water shock sends a signal to your heart telling it to beat faster, but face immersion tells your heart to slow down. These competing signals to your heart can potentially cause cardiac arrhythmia, especially when plunging and breath holding. On top of that, the cold water constricts your blood vessels, pushes up blood pressure, and makes your heart work harder.Swim failure, the result of direct cooling of the superficial nerves and muscles (especially in the limbs). This can occur before other effects of hypothermia. “This is where we see people swimming out to sea offshore, turning around and finding they can't get back because they become physically incapacitated… one of the obvious bits of safety advice is don't swim out of your depth and swim parallel to the shore, not away from it,” Mike said.A few basic safety tips: Don't go alone.As one cold water swimmer put it, “Keep your feet on the ground.”Get yourself checked for any pre-existing conditions that might be triggered by a sudden change in blood pressure. SUPPORTOutside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter.Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook LINKSCaitlin Hopkins and Kelsy Hartley are also known as Ebb and Flow, the founders of Two Maine Mermaids. Puranjot Kaur is a member of Cold Tits, Warm Hearts on Mount Desert Island. There's also another group in midcoast Maine called Wicked Nippy Dippahs.In addition to dipping, many of the women featured are open water swimmers. Puranjot Kaur wrote this account of her second attempt to swim around Mount Desert Island, fueled by congee and community.Check out these gorgeous photos by Greta Rybus of a community dip in an ice-hole in York, Maine, and these photos of some of the dippers in our episode.A good interview with a “wild swimming” scientist on both the risks and benefits of immersion  CREDITSReported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor QuimbyThe Outside/In team also includes our host Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, and Jessica HuntExecutive producer: Rebecca LavoieMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Quesa, and AutohackerTheme music: Breakmaster CylinderOutside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Thank you to Joanna Logue for a fabulous chat - we so enjoyed talking with you and could not wait to get back to the studio to paint, you were so inspiring and generous.You can find out more about Joanna's art practise on her website https://www.joannalogue.comor her instagram https://www.instagram.com/joannalogue/?hl=enYou can see Joanna's work at https://kingstreetgallery.com.auHer show Echo is on until 22 December at Kings Street Gallery in Darlinghurst Sydney. Congratulations Joanna on a beautiful show. 

Southwest Harbor is located on the “quiet side” of Mount Desert Island. A town of multiple maritime industries, Southwest Harbor boasts a tradition of superior boatbuilding and, for the past two years, has emerged as one of the top ten highest grossing lobster ports in the state. With more than four million visitors at Acadia National Park in 2021, the pressures on this side of MDI are mounting. Increased summer visitorship means business is booming, but commuter traffic, dwindling resources, and a lack of a seasonal and year-round workforce incite questions about how to sustain and support this working town. In this episode, we examine the history of Southwest Harbor's decision, as a community, to maintain and support its commercial fisheries through zoning and regulations. Visiting two iconic Southwest Harbor businesses, Hinckley Yachts and Beal's Lobster Pier, we explore the push-and-pull of Maine's seasonal economy, and the challenges and opportunities where commercial fishing, maritime industries, and recreation meet.Resources:MCP website: Maine Coastal Program | Department of Marine ResourcesShore and Harbor Grant: Shore and Harbor Planning Grants | Department of Marine Resources (maine.gov) – the program statement for the current year's grant can be found on this pageShore and Harbor Case Studies: Case Studies | Department of Marine Resources (maine.gov) This page has a map showing the locations of towns MCP funded, a list of funded projects, some write-ups about previous projects, and a story map highlighting last year's MCP projects.Resources for preserving commercial fishing access: Coastal Access | Department of Marine Resources (maine.gov) This document has a list of state grants that could be useful for improving and protecting shore access, as well as grants that can be used for waterfront construction.Penobscot Bay Study: Penobscot Bay_Summary Report 12 23 19.pdf (maine.gov) This study by MCP took a really detailed look at a number of working waterfron

Drumroll please... the results are in. Join our hosts Katie and Duante as they discuss the MDI marathon experience. Also hear from another MDI runner, Shuva, as she details her experiences and reasons for running.

Oreos, ice cream, and mason jar lids at the Mr. Softee-Oreo 5K race. Join our hosts as they discuss the ins and outs of the Mr. Softee 5k and the looming cloud that is the Mount Desert Island marathon.

Producer/Host: Amy Browne This week: We’re on Mount Desert Island talking with Jasmine Smith, Founding Director of The Community School of Mount Desert Island about a partnership with Maine Coast Heritage Trust that successfully preserved a “learning forest” for students and the wider community. About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU's News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. The post Around Town 9/8/22: Learning Forest on MDI Preserved by Community School & Maine Coast Heritage Trust first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Matty Dalrymple, member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers, writes suspense, thriller, and mystery. Matty is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers (Book 1 published in 2017), “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” “Snake and Ladders,” and “The Iron Ring.” She also writes the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels (Book 1 published in 2013), “The Sense of Death, “The Sense of Reckoning,” “The Flacon and the Owl,” “A Furnace for Your Foe,” and “A Serpent's Tooth;” as well as the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including “Close Your Eyes” and “Write in Water.” Matty lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pa. She enjoys sailing and visiting Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Ariz., providing the settings for her work. Host Patricia Mclinn talks with Matty about the writing process, finding inspiration, and building a new story from just a scene. In Matty's words: “I think you have to not fight against what your natural tendency is. You have to find ways of managing this (writing) as sufficiently as possible.” [1:09:12] You can find Matty at: Her website Facebook Twitter Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast enough to want to support us for future episodes. You can do that with as little as $1 a month by pledging at Patreon. It's vital to Authors Love Readers to have your support. Another way to contribute is through Buy Me a Coffee, a one-time "tip" with no ongoing obligation. Thank you!  Please also consider rating/reviewing the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks to DialogMusik for the instrumentals that accompany this podcast.

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. Today our show is about the Mount Desert Island-based project called a Landscape of Change. Landscape of Change is a collaborative project with the goal of compiling and publishing historical records of natural history observations on Mount Desert Island, dating back to the late 1800s, and comparing these with contemporary data to document change over time. While the project focuses on the science of environmental change, it also explores how every-day people can collect meaningful scientific data, and how people might choose to respond to ecological change, as individuals, as artists, as natural resource managers, as activists or even as a society as a whole. 1. What are the historical records that provide the baseline from which your are able to document ecological change on Mount Desert Island? 2. What are the modern methods of data collection that citizens are involved in collecting? 3. What are the changes you have found in MDI's natural environment in the past 100+ years 4. How can citizens and visitors become involved and learn more? Guests: Raney Bench, Executive Director of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society Johanna Blackman, Executive Director of A Climate to Thrive Jennifer Steen Booher, Artist-in-residence with MDI Historical Society. Seth Benz, Director of Bird Ecology at Schoodic Institute at Acadia Nation Park Catherine Schmitt, science writer with Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park Kyle Lima, Data Analyst, also with the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park About the host: Natalie Springuel has hosted Coastal Conversation's since 2015, with support from the University of Maine Sea Grant where she has served as a marine extension associate for 20 years. In 2019, Springuel received an award for Public Affairs programming from the Maine Association of Broadcasters for the Coastal Conversations show called “Portland's Working Waterfront.” Springuel is passionate about translating science, sharing stories, and offering a platform for multiple voices to weigh in on complex coastal and ocean issues. She has recently enrolled in audio production training at Maine Media Workshop to dive deeper into making great community radio. The post Coastal Conversations 7/22/22: Landscape of Change first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. Today our show is about the Mount Desert Island-based project called a Landscape of Change. Landscape of Change is a collaborative project with the goal of compiling and publishing historical records of natural history observations on Mount Desert Island, dating back to the late 1800s, and comparing these with contemporary data to document change over time. While the project focuses on the science of environmental change, it also explores how every-day people can collect meaningful scientific data, and how people might choose to respond to ecological change, as individuals, as artists, as natural resource managers, as activists or even as a society as a whole. 1. What are the historical records that provide the baseline from which your are able to document ecological change on Mount Desert Island? 2. What are the modern methods of data collection that citizens are involved in collecting? 3. What are the changes you have found in MDI's natural environment in the past 100+ years 4. How can citizens and visitors become involved and learn more? Guests: Raney Bench, Executive Director of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society Johanna Blackman, Executive Director of A Climate to Thrive Jennifer Steen Booher, Artist-in-residence with MDI Historical Society. Seth Benz, Director of Bird Ecology at Schoodic Institute at Acadia Nation Park Catherine Schmitt, science writer with Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park Kyle Lima, Data Analyst, also with the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park About the host: Natalie Springuel has hosted Coastal Conversation's since 2015, with support from the University of Maine Sea Grant where she has served as a marine extension associate for 20 years. In 2019, Springuel received an award for Public Affairs programming from the Maine Association of Broadcasters for the Coastal Conversations show called “Portland's Working Waterfront.” Springuel is passionate about translating science, sharing stories, and offering a platform for multiple voices to weigh in on complex coastal and ocean issues. She has recently enrolled in audio production training at Maine Media Workshop to dive deeper into making great community radio. The post Coastal Conversations 7/22/22: Landscape of Change first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

All Comes Down to This - Theresa Anne Fowler Meet the Geller sisters: Beck, Claire, and Sophie, a trio of strong-minded women whose pragmatic, widowed mother, Marti, will be dying soon and taking her secrets with her. Marti has ensured that her modest estate is easy for her family to deal with once she's gone––including a provision that the family's summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold, the proceeds split equally between the three girls.  The Patient Doctor - Ben Bravery A powerful and inspiring memoir about how one man's cancer diagnosis led to him becoming a doctor and advocate for change in the healthcare system. At the age of twenty-eight, with his Beijing-based science communications business doing well and a new relationship blossoming, Ben Bravery woke from a colonoscopy to be told he had stage 3 colorectal cancer. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (Bruselas, Bélgica; 8 de junio de 1903-Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine, Estados Unidos; 17 de diciembre de 1987), conocida como Marguerite Yourcenar (primero seudónimo, inventado con las letras de "Crayencour" menos la "c", y luego de nacionalizarse, nombre oficial), fue una novelista, ensayista, poeta, dramaturga y traductora francesa nacionalizada estadounidense en 1947. Sobresale por sus novelas históricas escritas con un tono poético y rasgos de erudición. Fue una de las escritoras más respetadas en lengua francesa y la primera mujer en entrar en la Academia de este país (Francia). Publicó novela, ensayo, poesía y tres volúmenes de memorias familiares que tuvieron una gran acogida por parte de la crítica y los lectores. Su obra más famosa es la novela histórica Memorias de Adriano (1951). (Fuente: Wikipedia)

'How differently the Geller sisters' lives would have turned out had C.J. Reynolds not been released from prison that February....' Marti Geller is going to die soon, and she's hoping to take her secrets with her. To do this, Marti has stipulated in her will that the family's summer home on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold as soon as possible. This request comes as a shock to her three daughters, a trio of strong-minded women who are each hiding a secret of their own. For the eldest daughter, Beck, the Maine cottage is essential to her secret wish to write a novel, and selling is the last thing she wants to do. But recently divorced Claire is privately too preoccupied with an unrequited love to be concerned about the sale, while the youngest daughter, Sophie, would never admit to her sisters that she desperately needs the sale in order to survive. While the sisters argue over the fate of their late mother's property, enigmatic Southerner C.J. Reynolds, with his own troubled past, is released from prison and begins to travel to Mount Desert Island. As this seemingly unconnected group all head for the coast of Maine, nothing is as it seems. And everything is about to change.... The new novel from New York Times best-selling author Therese Anne Fowler follows three sisters in the aftermath of the death of their matriarch, whose last request might change everything.... Perfect for fans of Celeste Ng, Mary Beth Keane and Jodi Picoult.

Episode 59: Today I sit down with Maine-based landscape and nature photographer, John Putnam, to chat about:How his background in filmmaking led to how he approaches still photography todayDocumenting nature in an artistic wayHis decisions around opening a gallery on Mount Desert Island and the pros and cons of having a galleryHow he balances his creative work with family life, running the gallery, and leading workshops and photo toursConnecting deeply with an iconic location and finding original compositionsKeeping the carbon footprint of his photography business smallA glimpse into his forthcoming photography book on Acadia National ParkAnd more!LINKS MENTIONED:Website: jkputnamphotography.comWorkshops: jkputnam.comFollow John Putnam on: InstagramTwitterGeorge Eastman MuseumFrans LantingFull Show Notes***HAVE A QUESTION?Record a Question for Tidbit TuesdayLOVE THE OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY PODCAST?Ways you can support the show:Buy Me a CoffeeLeave a Rating and ReviewSign up for the Outdoor Photography School NewsletterShare the show with others!CONFUSED ABOUT WHERE TO FOCUS?Download my FREE Hyperfocal Distance Made Easy EbookABOUT BRENDA PETRELLA (host)Learn more about meVisit my online portfolioConnect with me on Instagram

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to educate and reduce the stigma of mental illness.Camp Beech Cliff (CBC) on Mount Desert Island is a traditional Maine day camp, offering classic camp  activities for ages 6-18, from swimming and boating to rock climbing and crafts. But what happens when a child is experiencing big emotions that prevent them from enjoying the day? CBC has implemented a series of mental health supports, including hiring a camper support specialist and offering Youth Mental Health First Aid training to the community.Camp Director Matt Cornish and Corrie Hunkler, youth engagement coordinator at Healthy Acadia, talk about the importance of mental health services for young campers and offer practical tips for caregivers on how to support children's mental health this summer.

Maine News on May 6: COVID hospital patients top 200; Farmington schools close due to elevated lead levels in water; Federal land could be used for affordable housing on Mount Desert Island

Baron Poutrincourt returns to Acadia to find the great Mi'kmaq Chief Membertou, true to his word, preserved Port Royal for the French. Now he and his son Biencourt, without Champlain, de Mons, or Pont-Grave seek to rebuild Acadia all on their own. However, funded by a headstrong Noblewoman, the Jesuits mean to take Acadia for themselves and a rival settlement on Mount Desert Island (in present day Maine) splits Acadia in two. Both factions are in for a surprise from Virginia, and here a now the epic colonial wars between England and France begins. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/osoa/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/osoa/support

Producer/Host: Ron Beard Local groups throughout Maine are bringing climate work from individual to local action. A Climate to Thrive, based on Mount Desert Island, Maine has recently convened community-based climate groups across the state to learn from one another, focusing on strategic planning and how to engage local citizens, young and old, and elected leaders. This program highlights the work of A Climate to Thrive, Green Ellsworth, Freeport Climate Action Now and Blue Hill Peninsula Tomorrow Climate Coalition. -Each guest highlights what they feel is one or two significant outcomes, so far, of their organization's work -Each guest shares what their organization is working on currently -A Climate To Thrive's statewide work to bring community groups together to focus on strategic planning at the local level -What is climate justice? What does climate justice “look” like on the ground? -What does it take to organize for climate action at the community level—what have you learned Johanna Blackman, Executive Director, A Climate to Thrive Mary Blackstone, Community Liaison, Green Ellsworth Kathleen Sullivan, Acting Lead, Freeport Climate Action Now Allen Kratz, Blue Hill Peninsula Tomorrow Climate Coalition About the host: 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. The post Talk of the Towns 4/13/22: Maine Climate Action Groups first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Ron Beard Local groups throughout Maine are bringing climate work from individual to local action. A Climate to Thrive, based on Mount Desert Island, Maine has recently convened community-based climate groups across the state to learn from one another, focusing on strategic planning and how to engage local citizens, young and old, and elected leaders. This program highlights the work of A Climate to Thrive, Green Ellsworth, Freeport Climate Action Now and Blue Hill Peninsula Tomorrow Climate Coalition. -Each guest highlights what they feel is one or two significant outcomes, so far, of their organization's work -Each guest shares what their organization is working on currently -A Climate To Thrive's statewide work to bring community groups together to focus on strategic planning at the local level -What is climate justice? What does climate justice “look” like on the ground? -What does it take to organize for climate action at the community level—what have you learned Johanna Blackman, Executive Director, A Climate to Thrive Mary Blackstone, Community Liaison, Green Ellsworth Kathleen Sullivan, Acting Lead, Freeport Climate Action Now Allen Kratz, Blue Hill Peninsula Tomorrow Climate Coalition About the host: 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. The post Talk of the Towns 4/13/22: Maine Climate Action Groups first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producers/Hosts: Jim Campbell and Amy Browne With assistance from Ann Luther and Matt Murphy This series is made possible in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission: In a previous program, we began looking at the effects of Climate Change on life in Maine, now and in the future, a topic that almost everyone mentioned who participated in our interest gathering efforts. Maine is the oldest state in the country, both in median age and in percentage of those over 55, but the people who are going to be dealing with the effects of Climate Change the longest are younger people. And climate change seems to be affecting many of them already. In December of 2021, The Lancet Planetary Health journal published the results of a survey of 10,000 people ages 16 to 25 year in ten countries. The authors found that “Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried). More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change (eg, 75% said that they think the future is frightening and 83% said that they think people have failed to take care of the planet). Respondents rated governmental responses to climate change negatively and reported greater feelings of betrayal than of reassurance.” On today's program, we talk with several younger people in Maine about their attitudes and expectations of the effects of climate change on their future. We spoke with two pairs of high school students. We will hear first from Joey and Edge, who are from two different schools in Washington County. We'll follow that conversation with one with Grace and Sophia, who are from the Mount Desert Island area of Hancock County. Finally, we hear from Hazel Stark, a Millennial, Registered Maine Guide, naturalist educator and cofounder of the Maine Outdoor School. She also hosts the Saturday morning short feature, The Nature of Phenology, here on WERU, co-produced with Joe Horn. The resources Hazel mentions include: iNaturalist , eBird , and Budburst She also recommends UMaine’s Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program and the USA National Phenology Network FMI: Maine’s Climate Future 2020 – a University of Maine report authored by Ivan Fernandez, Sean Birkel, Catherine Schmitt, Julia Simonson, Brad Lyon, Andrew Pershing, Esperanza Stancioff, George Jacobson, and Paul Mayewski. Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and Its Effects in Maine, by the Maine Climate Council Scientific and Technical Subcommittee Inaction on Climate Change is Taking a Toll on Young People's Mental Health, Brennan Center for Justice Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey, The Lancet, Caroline Hickman, MSc, Elizabeth Marks, ClinPsyD, Panu Pihkala, PhD, Prof Susan Clayton, PhD, R Eric Lewandowski, PhD,Elouise E Mayall, BSc et al. About the hosts: Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon's words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station's sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage. Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU's News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. The post Maine: The Way Life Could Be 4/5/22: Climate Change in Our Lifetime, Part 2 of 2 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Marguerite Yourcenar, original name Marguerite de Crayencour, (born June 8, 1903, Brussels, Belgium—died December 17, 1987, Northeast Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine, U.S.), was a novelist, essayist, and short-story writer who became the first woman to be elected to the Académie Française (French Academy), an exclusive literary institution with a membership limited to 40. Crayencour was educated at home in French Flanders and spent much of her early life traveling with her father. She began writing as a teenager and continued to do so after her father's death left her independently wealthy. She led a nomadic life until the outbreak of World War II, at which time she settled permanently in the United States. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1947. The name “Yourcenar” is an imperfect anagram of her original name, “Crayencour.”Yourcenar's literary works are notable for their rigorously classical style, their erudition, and their psychological subtlety. In her most important books she re-creates past eras and personages, meditating thereby on human destiny, morality, and power. Her masterpiece is Mémoires d'Hadrien (1951; Memoirs of Hadrian), a historical novel constituting the fictionalized memoirs of that 2nd-century Roman emperor. Another historical novel is L'Oeuvre au noir (1968; The Abyss), an imaginary biography of a 16th-century alchemist and scholar. Among Yourcenar's other works are the short stories collected in Nouvelles orientales (1938; Oriental Tales), the prose poem Feux (1936; Fires), and the short novel Le Coup de grâce (1939; Eng. trans. Coup de Grâce). Her works were translated by the American Grace Frick, Yourcenar's secretary and life companion. Yourcenar wrote numerous essays and also translated African American spirituals and various English and American novels into French.Membership in the Académie Française requires French citizenship. Yourcenar had become a U.S. citizen, however, so the president of France granted her a special dual U.S.–French citizenship in 1979, and she was subsequently elected to the Académie in 1980.From https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marguerite-Yourcenar. For more information about Marguerite Yourcenar:Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:Casey Gerald about Yourcenar, at 24:30: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-133-casey-gerald“Marguerite Yourcenar, The Art of Fiction No. 103”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2538/the-art-of-fiction-no-103-marguerite-yourcenar“Becoming the Emperor”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/becoming-the-emperor“Passion and Patience: On the Timeless Virtues of Marguerite Yourcenar's Hadrian”: https://lithub.com/passion-and-patience-on-the-timeless-virtues-of-marguerite-yourcenars-hadrian/

We speak to Steve Powell, who runs the Bar Harbor Book Shop on Mount Desert Island in Maine. He sells as the Mystery Cove Book Shop on AbeBooks. Steve's been selling books for 40 years and is an expert in collectible mystery and crime books. Learn about his most expensive sale, a couple of bookshop dogs called Simon Templar and Lord Peter Wimsey, and life in this corner of the United States.

Meet Sirohi Kumar, 17, an MDI High school student who will share her story about growing up as a brown girl on Mount Desert Island. Sirohi is a climate activist and a founding member of the CEAC in Bar Harbor. She serves as the Youth Representative on the Bar Harbor Climate Emergency Task Force. She is also a racial justice organizer and directly contributed to the formation of the AOS 91 Anti-Racism Task Force, upon which she currently serves as a student representative.

Matty Dalrymple is a thriller and suspense author who lives with her husband and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Arizona, and these locations provide the settings for her work. Matty is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Brandywine Valley Writers Group.Matty's author websiteThe Indy Author PodcastShow notes:00.00 – Introductions 01.30 – Personal update03.10 – Interview with Matty Dalrymple05.25 – Why did Matty start a podcast?07.50 – What is the hardest part about podcasting? 18.20 – What is the most surprising thing about podcasting?23.20 – The A, the B, and the three C's of indie publishing.25.45 – How to come up with podcast and interview topics.31.00 – What types of writers benefit the most from podcasting?32.40 – What has podcasting taught Matty about herself and her writing?40.50 – Should you write first thing in the morning? 45.45 – Does podcasting have an impact on writing? 48.45 – Which book changed Matty's life?50.35 – Where can you go to find out more about Matty?MentionsListen to the interview with Patreon CEO, Jack ConteListen to Kristina talk writing myths on The Indy Author

While working through some photos taken a few years ago at Long Pond on Mount Desert Island in Maine, I realized how little I explored that area. The photos I have are nice, they are of good quality. Yet my repeated visits to this pond did not push me artistically. I stopped to reflect on why that was.I think it is because I didn't give myself permission to spend time at the location, explore the area, think about additional photos that might not be the “killer landscape” image. And that is so critical for artistic growth. Embarking on experiments for the sheer purpose of learning and growing. I share more thoughts in today's episode.Also, I am adding an additional workshop to the 2021 calendar. The Oregon Coastal Adventure in November 2021. Check the workshops page on my main website for details. The workshop will open for public registration very soon. More details in the podcast.Rate & ReviewIf you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser.com. Fresh, current ratings help other photographers find out about the show.Supporters Of The Show - Thank You!Thanks to everyone that supports this show, through comments, reviews, and shares. Sharing this podcast with your photo friends and camera clubs is one of the many zero-cost ways you can support the show. If you wish to support the show financially, you can also make a one-time donation.Affiliate LinksProduct links in this post may contain affiliate tags. Depending on the purchase, Scott Davenport Photography may receive compensation if you purchase a product via one of those links. There is no additional cost to you. The use of affiliate links never influences the content or opinions of the episodes.

This week, cruise down Highway 3 with our hosts to majestic Mount Desert Island and take in bewitching views of Bar Harbor. After enjoying food and brew by the ocean, Laken and Chance discuss the circumstances surrounding the unsolved murder of Leslie Spellman, in 1977, and examine the haunting history of Acadia National Park. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theplacesyg/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theplacesyg/support

The Land of Beulah In his classic allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, Christian life depicted by John Bunyan, he captures various aspects of the Christian pilgrimage from the City of Destruction, unregenerate, being lost, with a burden of guilt and unforgiven sin pressing on his back through the narrow gate, to the cross where at last that burden falls away into the empty tomb, and then many adventures and dangers that follow until at last, Christian and his companion, Hopeful, reach the River of Death, and they cross the River of Death, and go up finally at last to the celestial city, Heaven. And so every aspect of the allegory captures some aspect of the pilgrimage from being lost, dead in your transgressions and sins, beyond death into Heaven. But at one point, very fascinating point of this, allegory Christian and Hopeful come on this side of the River of Death, and that's the key, to a place called “Beulah Land.” The Hebrew word Beulah means beautiful, comes from the Book of Isaiah. And Bunyan describes an experience that these pilgrims have in Beulah Land. I want to read that to you, "The Pilgrims were entering Beulah Land, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it. And they solaced themselves there for a season. Yeah, here they heard continually the singing of birds and heard the voice of the turtle dove in the land. And in this country, the sun shines night and day. Therefore, this was beyond the valley of the shadow of death, it was out of the reach of giant despair, and neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here, they were within sight of the city they were going to. Also here, met them some of the inhabitants thereof, for in this land, the shining ones commonly walked because it was on the borders of Heaven. Now, as they walked in this land, Christian and Hopeful, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound, and drawing near to the city, they had a yet more perfect view thereof. It was built of pearls, and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold, so that by in reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sun beams upon it, Christian, with desire, fell sick. Hopeful, also had a fit or two of the same disease. But being a little strengthened and better able to bear their sickness, they walked on their way and came yet nearer and nearer, where were orchards, vineyards, gardens, and their gates opened into the highway. Now, as they came up to these places, behold the Gardner stood in the way to whom the pilgrims said, 'Whose beautiful vineyards and gardens are these?' The answer, 'They are the king's, and they are planted here for his own delights and also for the solace of pilgrims.' So the gardener had them into the vineyards and bid them refresh themselves with delicious fruit. After that they fell into a rich sleep, and they talked in their sleep about the celestial city to which they were going, and after they woke up, they saw the reflections of the sun upon the city, for the city was pure gold, and the reflections were so glorious that they could not as yet with open face behold it but only through an instrument made for that purpose. After that Christian and Hopeful resumed their pilgrimage to the city." Now this is on this side of the River of Death. An experience, a foretaste of heavenly glory. What in the world is Bunyan talking about? Everything in Christian's journey in Pilgrim's Progress connects with some aspect of the pilgrimage from being lost ultimately to Heaven. All this foretaste of heavenly glory before they've crossed the River of Death, something that happened ahead of time. And a vision of the celestial city, clearer than they had ever had before, so glorious, they couldn't look on it full on, but only, as Bunyan says, through an instrument made for that purpose. You know how it says in 1 Corinthians 13, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face." Also how it says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." And how it says in Timothy, that God dwells in, “unapproachable light.” So they couldn't look full on at the glory of the city, but just through an instrument, I think the scripture, prayer appointed for that purpose, they had a glimpse of Heaven. Is there a Beulah Land experience in the Christian life? Is that even possible? Can we have such a vigorous, overwhelming foretaste of heavenly glory, that our hearts are overflowing with it, peace and love capturing our hearts at that moment, something we can experience now, and that we'll never forget the rest of our lives? Is that even possible? If so, should we seek it, what should we do about it? Is there something we can do to pursue such a foretaste of heavenly joy? I think that Ephesians 3:14-21, at least in part, addresses these questions. That Paul is actually praying for the Ephesian Christians to have precisely that kind of an encounter with God. I believe it's part of our birthright as Christians, to have a lively, vigorous sense of Christ's love for us poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and that that pouring, that sense, that experience can be so great that we can hardly know if we're awake, or asleep, alive or dead. I also believe that most Christians never experience 1/100th part of this, that it's possible to go to Heaven, never having had anything like this at all. That the ordinary ministrations, the workings of the spirit in our lives are amply sufficient to bring us through a fruitful wonderful prayer life, Bible study life, Christian life, using our spiritual gifts right up until we cross the river of death and go into Heaven. I believe all of that's true, but I think the language of Ephesians Chapter 3:14-21, seems to go far beyond any of those things. Knowing the Unknowable: A Mystical Connection with Christ Look again, this time, beginning of verse 16, Paul prays for these Ephesian Christians, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen." Ascending the Mountain of Christian Experience So we've been working our way through this incredible prayer and we've reached this point of seeking to know the unknowable, some kind of a mystic connection with Christ, far beyond anything that we have experienced. To some degree, as you read this, we're ascending the mountain of Christian experience, of sensing, of feeling that Christ loves us. Most Christians, I believe, live most of their Christian lives down on the smog-covered plains. They're alive, they're not “dead in their transgressions and sins,” they are serving God, but they are with heads down, breathing in noxious fumes from the world, becoming increasingly sickly in some sense spiritually, barely able to be mindful of such a mountain of Christian experience that's even possible, perhaps questioning whether it's even possible. Most Christians I think, live there. But Ephesians 3:14-21 speaks of Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Christians. He gets on his knees before the Heavenly Father, and he prays for them and he prays that God, through the Spirit, would strengthen their hearts. The focus is on the inner man, on the inner being, the heart, the soul, and a strengthening work, a buttressing work going on through the Spirit because something massive could come upon you. And I think that that strengthening is necessary in two senses, for the journey up the mountain above the haze through the self-denial, the prayer, the turning away from worldliness, the turning away from sin, it's hard. Christ suffered when he was tempted. And so, we suffer when we resist temptation and say no to the things of the flesh. And nothing's come back yet, there's been no feedback loop, no elevation yet. And we wonder if there's even anything in all this and you have to be strong to persevere and not give up as you seek Christ in new ways, ways you haven't before. And so he prays that there might be a strengthening through the Spirit, according to the riches of God's glory, in the inner man, in the inner being. To the end, and we talked about this last week, that Christ would settle down and dwell in your hearts through faith, that you would be able to have, in some sense a continual feast with Christ. We talked about those meals that Jesus continually was eating with his disciples and the conversations he would have and the fellowship. It just seemed to be one meal after another with Jesus, from beginning to the end of His ministry, and how we can have a continual feast through the Spirit with Christ, a sense of Christ's love for us in fellowship with us, which is really, the consummation of the whole Immanuel, God with us, Christ dwelling with us, making his tabernacle with us, walking with us through the day, that “Christ would dwell in your hearts through faith.” Christian Mysticism: A Supernatural Experience But more than that, based on certain testimonies from saints, from Christians that have had overwhelming experiences, overwhelming foretaste of Heaven, that you're going to need strength just to survive it, that it's so massive, so overwhelming that like D.L. Moody said, "Alright, that's enough. I can't take any more. I'm only flesh and blood. There's only so much of this I can take, I’ve reached the limit." So there's that dual sense of strengthening necessary in all of this, through the Holy Spirit. Now, I know that Christians are leery of these kinds of things, some leery ones have talked to me in the last couple of weeks, that's fine. I love those discussions, "All right, where are we going, what are we doing? Are we going to become charismatic?" Is that what's going to happen here at First Baptist Durham? Is that what we're talking about? Friends, I am trying my best to be faithful to Ephesians 3:14-21, and I read extreme language here. Extreme. Far beyond things that most of us, that I myself have experienced. And I yearn for that. I yearn to have that happen at our church, I yearn for that in my life. I would like to have an encounter with God that I would never forget. Something that would happen to me that I would say years later, "That was one of the days of Heaven, something happened to me that day, I don't know if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead, whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know, God knows, but I saw things, heard things, experienced things that I can scarcely put into words." And as I look at Ephesians 3, at this prayer, I think it lines up with a healthy Christian mysticism, if you want to use that language. A healthy experience of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, a triune working of a sense of His love that is so great and so empowering that it will have a great impact on you in terms of your own personal holiness, your internal journey and our church's external journey, evangelism and missions in this community unto the ends of the earth. And I yearn for that. I'd love to see God do that in this church. So that's what I've been praying for. Evidence in the Text: Not a Common Experience So look at the language. Look at verses 17-19, "I pray that you're being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints," he says, "to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." So we're grasping at the infinite dimensions of Christ's love as though your soul is just soaring over the vast expanse of the infinite universe of Christ's love and you're probing the dimensions, and you're probing the limits of the universe and you soon come to realize there's no boundary to this. There's no limit to Christ's love for me, I never realized how great it was. He's praying in paradoxical language of you knowing something that transcends knowledge. To know the unknowable. And you need power in order to do it, and you need to know love, to know, to sense love. That's what he's talking about. To experience it more fully, more deeply than you've ever done before. And the end of all of that is that you would be filled, so filled that you could be said to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That something like that could happen to you. Not the emptiness of Eastern mysticism or Buddhism or any of those kinds of things or the weird kind of some of the medieval Catholic mystics that focused over-much on odd aspects of theology, and were not well-grounded in truth, who focused on the Virgin Mary and did some other things, not talking about those things. I'm actually talking about a more orthodox experience than you've ever had in your life, saturated with truth flowing from scripture, to the point where you didn't realize there was all that there. That's what I'm talking about: Fullness, not emptiness. And then in the doxology, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably infinitely more than all you ask or think." Seems like extreme language don't you think? Something far beyond anything you ever thought was possible. Talk about that more next week. It's not a common place feeling, not an everyday occurrence. And if you think so, then you just haven't read the words of Ephesians 3 carefully, and that's why I'm trying to go through it carefully, going through these phrases, so you realize there is far more in terms of your sense of Christ's love for you than you have ever known before, and that it's a good thing for you to have that, for you to know that Jesus loves you, far more than you ever did before. John Owen put it this way, "There is a light that cometh and overpowerth a man's soul, and assureth him, that God is his and he is God's. And that God loveth him from everlasting. It is a light,” listen to this, this is John Owen, “a light beyond the light of ordinary faith." For All Christians, Not Just Some These Ephesians Were Already Converted Did you hear that? It's beyond saving faith, it's beyond that and that's the very thing we get, as we've been saying, Paul is praying this for Ephesian Christians. They're already converted, they've already heard the “word of truth, the Gospel of their salvation, having believed they were already marked in Him with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,” that's already happened, and yet here he is praying. Not "and yet", because of that he's praying that they would go far beyond what they've already experienced in their Christian lives. And this isn't just for some specialist Christians. These Experiences Are For Every Christian This is for anybody, this is for ordinary people, so he prays for all the saints. See that in verse 18? "That you may have power together with all the saints." And we talked about that last time. Saints is not like the Catholics say. The special ones, the Hall of Fame ones. This is anybody that God could do this to, “pouring out His love into your heart by the Holy Spirit.” And in the doxology, to Him be glory in the church, he's praying for the whole church, for everybody to glow radiantly with glory. That's the sense of it. This is for everybody. Now, many Christians are going to beg out, they're going to opt out. They’re going to say a lot of things, "Too hard, don't really think it can happen, don't really need it, don't really want it." What? "I don't really want a foretaste of Heaven." Well, "Do you want Heaven?" Let's start there. "Yes, I want Heaven." "Would you like a foretaste of it?" "No, I have no interest in that." "Huh, explain that to me, help me with that." "I want heaven but no foretastes." "Okay, I like a little foretaste." "How about a bigger one?" "Well, that's... No, I don't want a big one, I want just a medium foretaste." See, the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you want Heaven, I would think a foretaste would be good. If you want a little foretaste, why not a big one? God is able to do immeasurably more than you ever thought was possible in this whole area, talk about that more next week. Now, toward the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, there was an American congregational minister, named Edward Pason, and he talks about Beulah Land. He talks about the experience that I began this sermon with. Pason had been a Christian for many years, he'd lived out a very fruitful ministry for Christ as a pastor, but then God took him to a whole new level of experience of Christ's love for him. And he wrote to a fellow pastor, he said, "When I read Bunyan's description of the Land of Beulah where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night, I used to doubt whether there even is such a place on this side of the River of Death. Does it even exist?" But then he said this, "Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter that I'm writing from the Land of Beulah of which I have been for some weeks now a happy inhabitant." Wow, I wouldn't mind spending weeks in Beulah Land, but Edward Payson was spending weeks. He said this, "The celestial city is full to my view. Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odors waft to me. He fills the whole hemisphere pouring in a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze upon this almost excessive brightness and wondering with unutterable wonder why God would deign to shine upon a sinful world as this. A single heart and a single tongue seem altogether inadequate to my wants. I want a whole heart for every separate emotion I'm feeling and I want a whole tongue to express that emotion." Four Concentric Circles of Christian Experience Wow! What in the world is he experiencing? And could there be some of that for me? Could I experience something like that? Well Payson, who's a pastor, started to diagnose Christians and their experiences in his shepherding, in his ministry. And he came up with what he would call, four concentric circles of professors of faith in Christ, people who claim to be Christians; Christians. He said this, "Suppose people who claim to be Christians arranged in different concentric circles around Christ as their common center. Some value the presence of their Savior so highly they cannot bear to have even a moment's separation from Him. Even their daily chores and their employment. They will bring up and do as best they can constantly in the light of His countenance, and while engaged in it will be seen constantly raising their eyes to Him as they're fearful of losing even a single beam of his light." Continually focused. I don't want anything to come between me and the Savior. That's how they live, all the time. Circle number two: "Others, who to be sure would not be content to live out of His presence, are yet less wholly absorbed by it than these, and may be seen a little further off, engaged here and there in their various callings, their eyes generally upon their work, but often looking up for more of that light that they love." Circle two. Circle three: "A third class beyond these, but yet still within the life giving rays, includes a doubtful multitude, many of whom are so much engaged in their worldly schemes that they may be seen in some way standing sideways to Christ, looking most of the time away from Him to their tasks and their employments, but then, occasionally looking back to Jesus and being refreshed." And then circle four: "Yet further out among the last dimly scattered rays, so distant that it's often doubtful whether they come at all within their influence, is a mixed assemblage of busy ones, some with their backs wholly turned to Him, wholly turned upon the Son, and most of them so worried and troubled about their many things as to spend, but little time for their Savior." All of these claiming to be Christians. So… Where Are You? So where are you? Where are you? Are you able to find yourself in there somewhere? It has to do with a sense of continual focus on the love of Christ, a sense of dependence on Him, reliance on Him, and of feeding back from Him through the Spirit of sense of His love for you. Do you live your life in continual focus on Jesus, sensing His presence, knowing His love, filled with his peace? Or are you further? Or further and further? Or further and further and further away from a warm, vigorous sense of Christ's love for you? Now, Payson said, "It's not hard for any of these to be reclaimed or strengthened. All you have to do is turn and face Christ." That's it, and how do you do that? Well, by the means He's ordained, by the scripture, by prayer. And the turning is two-fold. You're turning away from worldly pursuits, away from the “sin that so easily entangles you,” away from an over-focus of God's good gifts in the world that can become idols, a turning away from that to Christ in the scripture and in prayer, until you feel your heart warmed and empowered by the Spirit and a sense of joy and love filling you. That's what it takes. And then, once that starts to come, you become zealous and jealous of that and protect it from anything that would encroach. That's how you become one of those inner circle people. They're not intrinsically different than anyone else. It just has to do with how they're living. Rooted and Established in Love Paul Continues His Prayer Now, I've been following the text; Payson's insights are helpful, but let's look a little more carefully at Ephesians 3. Look at Verse 17. That's where we're at as we move through this. He says, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Rooted and established in love. I have a strong kind of dual image here; one of them living, one of them not. Rooted in love, I picture a huge maple tree, let's say, or some oak, some mighty tree, with this deep root system. And you've got these roots subterranean and probing down, and you're able to find subterranean rivers of water, and it doesn't matter what the conditions are above ground, you have a continual sense of the love of God for you in your heart, a sense of right doctrine, you're rooted in the scripture, established and living like a vibrant tree that's rooted in love. And then, established in love, more of a building image, like a building with its foundation upon the rock and it's unshakable, and there's a depth to that foundation, and it's not going to be “blown and tossed by every wind of doctrine,” like it says in the next chapter. But you're rooted in truth, rooted and established, but it says, "In Love." Power to Comprehend Going beyond that, he then prays for power to comprehend, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp the dimensions of Christ's love." So again, we have power language. Some of the translation just have, “may be able,” but it really does speak of power, and since Paul earlier mentioned power just a moment ago, let's stick with the power theme, that you would be empowered to understand, empowered to grasp; empowered to grasp. To comprehend. So, it begins as mental, it begins as intellectual. So, there's a thought aspect, but it's going to go beyond that. I know, but I know. I started out just knowing, but now I know. "What are you doing with your voice there?" I don't know, I can't put it into words. I'm knowing what's beyond knowledge, but it started with knowledge. It always starts with knowledge, as every love relationship does. Necessities: Knowledge and Emotion I mean, think about a couple that's working their way toward maybe engagement and toward marriage, and they're trying to figure it out, and there's an attraction there and they're spending some time, and they start giving tokens to one another of increasing feelings, right? It could be notes, it could be little gifts, they go out on a date together, spend some time, and then they each go back and ponder the events of the evening; ponder the events. And they're thinking about what happened and what was said and what it meant. And so, that's what I mean, there's a truth behind the things that were said, the notes that were written, the gifts that were given. But then there is something beyond that. There's feelings that go with it. And so, in every love relationship, there's a knowledge aspect, and then there's a feeling that goes beyond it. And you can't sever the two. You can't say, "I just want the feelings. I don't want knowledge. So, I'm going to tell you what, I will just buy for you a precious note from someone and you can take it home and read it. You won't know who it's from, but it's for you." Completely severed from anything. It has no meaning. It's a precious love note. You can buy them at Hallmark. I often wonder about the card people. I mean, can you imagine spending your whole day writing love notes to people you don't know? I often think about the work week. I should just change this subject quickly, but I'm going to say one thing. Ever read a card that you think was written late on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend? Like, "Didn't put a lot into this one, I guess." Alright, back on topic. There is a knowledge that then flows into emotion, and the two can't be disconnected. So, you're going to know Christ's love doctrinally. You're going to know who He is who loves you. Who are we talking about? This is the long-expected Jesus. This is the one that was predicted through the prophets. This is the Son of God and the Son of Man, fully God, fully man, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who lived a sinless life, who did all these incredible miracles, who walked on water, fed the 5,000, who raised the dead, Lazarus after he'd been in the tomb four days raised to life! That's who we're talking about. The one who died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me. This one who died, who was our substitute, who was raised to life on the third day in a resurrection body and ascended to Heaven and now sits, we're told in the Bible, “at the right hand of Almighty God and rules over Heaven and Earth.” This Jesus loves you. That's incredible. Think about that. So there's a doctrinal base. He said, "I want you to know what is beyond knowledge." Far more than just mental but it begins intellectual. And then he goes into this dimensional language, "To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." So, one of my fellow scientific, geeky people, came up to me a few weeks ago and said, "Why do you think four dimensions? Wide, long, high, deep." I said, "I don't know. Usually we think in terms of three dimensions. I said, "I think of it maybe in terms of perspective. You stand and you're looking at something beautiful. And you look left and right, and you look as far as the eye can see, and look in the foreground, and you look up and you look down. It's your perspective maybe. I don't know." But he talks about the dimensions, a sense of Christ's love for us. Like it says in John 15:9, "As the Father has loved me even so have I loved you." Now, ponder that. And we could never fully comprehend the amount of love the Father has for the Son, but Jesus says, "That's how I love you." To love that surpasses knowledge. And so, I want you to ponder. I want you to have a sense of the dimensions of this. How Wide? So I pictured this, and I thought about one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, along the coast, the rocky coastline of Maine. The highest mountain there on Mount Desert Island is called, Cadillac Mountain. You can drive up to the top. So I imagine taking a friend who's never been out of the city, like we talked about C.S. Lewis, he's used to making mud pies in the slum. So you're bringing him out and you're taking him through the night; through the dark of night. And it's a very dark night, and you drive and you get to Cadillac Mountain and you go all the way to the top, but it's still pitch black. And you get out of the car and you just stand there. And it's about an hour before sunrise, and then little by little, some of the light starts coming over the Atlantic Ocean and you start to see what there is in the foreground and in the distance. And as more and more light starts to spread, you start to see what there is up the rocky coastline, and you start to see Bar Harbor, the fishing boats down in the bay, the trees that come right up, the trees that are close are huge right in your face and then there's some that are further away. You see rocky cliffs. You see Eagle Lake, and other things behind you. You're looking behind you. There's the inland area of Maine, and more and more and more light as the orange and the reddish light of the dawn and the sunrise comes until it's full light of day. And I have a feeling that that's what Paul wants you to do in terms of the dimensions of Christ's love for you. Now, I don't know that he meant for us to parse it out, but I'm going to just do a little biblical meditation in front of you. This is what you do on your knees. You get the Bible and you say, "Okay, how wide is your love for me, Christ?" And I don't know that we could do this, but I think of it in terms of the breadth of Christ's saving purpose around the world, that we have been adopted into a royal family of brothers and sisters “from every tribe and language and people and nation;” the diversity being staggering. It's a broad work of Christ that He's done here. How Long? And then, how long? I think of the time axis there, that if you look back behind you, you're looking as far as your eye see and even farther to eternity past, before the creation of the world, God the Father set His love on you by name and chose you “before you were born or had done anything good or bad, chose you in Christ.” As it says in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." And so, he set an everlasting love on you, knowing full well you would sin and what sins you would commit, and how Jesus at that point in eternity past covenanted to shed His blood for you, in effect, dying for you convenantally and in the mind of God, before you were even born, or before the world was even created. As it says in Revelation 13:8, "Our names have been written in the Book of Life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." And how it says in Ephesians 1:4-5, "For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted." So, you're looking behind you, and that's as far as the eye can see, Jesus has been loving you by name, right up until the time you were converted. Now, when you look forward you say, "Okay, for the rest of my life, He's going to keep loving me. He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. He's going to filter all of my temptations. He won't let the Devil have at me. No temptation will seize me, except what is common to man, and He will be faithful and will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can bear. And if I should fall into sin, He will restore me. “He will, when I confess my sin, cleanse me from all unrighteousness” and restore me and make me strong, firm and steadfast. And I'm going to continue running this race until I die. And after that, then things get really awesome because after I die He's going to raise me up. He's going to give me a resurrection body and He's going to put me in a resurrected world surrounded by other resurrected people and it's going to be awesome. That's how long is the love of Christ for me." How Deep? Let me switch it and talked about how deep is His love. How far down would He go to save you? Picture that. How deep the descent? I was reading a story about a American submarine, the Squalus, that sank off the coast of New Hampshire. And it was in 243 feet of water on the seafloor. And a diver dove down with a cable, 243 feet down, and fixed it to the submarine so that a diving bell could go down and rescue those people. I'm thinking, "That's a lot of commitment. That's a lot of courage." How deep would Jesus go down to save you? And I think about that in terms of Philippians 2, "Jesus being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness,” down. Born of the Virgin Mary, and being “found in human likeness he humbled himself and became obedient, a life of a servant even to death, even death on a cross.” And even that's not enough, because two others were crucified with Him. We have to see in the spiritual realm how He was our substitute and the wrath of God was poured out on Him. That's how deep He went to save you and me. How deep were you? How far down were you in degradation and wickedness and sin? He went that far down to save you. How High? And then, how high? How high will you bring you? How exalted are His purposes for you? Well, we've already seen that somewhat in Ephesians 2:6-7, "God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." So much more exaltation yet to show you. You underestimate how high He wants to bring you and how glorious is that going to be for you, how wide and long and deep and high is the love of Christ. "That," verse 19, "you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." We're going to talk more about that next week. But just foretaste, a little bit of foretaste, that you would be, in some sense mysteriously, as full as God is, filled with God, filled with all the fullness of God. That's what we'll ponder next week. Application Seeking Christ’s Love So applications. What do we do about all of this? Well, for two weeks now, this is the third week, I've been making a very simple plan appeal to you, and that is that you would turn away from the entices of this world into extraordinary prayer. By extraordinary I mean something different than you've been doing, and that you would be seeking in God, through God, through Christ, a sense of Christ's love for you. You would be asking for it directly. Say, "Lord, I'm not satisfied with my mediocre Christian experience. I'm not satisfied with what's been happening in my soul. I want to know your love more than I've ever known before, and I'm willing to run a race here. I'm willing to deny myself. I'm willing to fast, not just from food, but maybe from electronic entertainment, fast from worldly things. I'm willing to turn my back on the world until you will pour out in my heart a sense of the love of God. I want that. And I don't just want it for myself, I want it for this person or that person." You name them. Somebody, a spouse, a friend, a church member. That you would do that, and that you would be willing to think deeply about these things and "gird up the loins of your mind." 1 Peter 1:13 KJV says it that way. That you'd be willing to think about these things and ponder and go over, and assess yourself and say, "Where am I in that concentric circle? Am I like Pluto? Am I like in the orbit? I'm a Christian, but it's just so cold and dark out here." Or are you closer and closer? Where are you? Meditate on these verses and don't make excuses. Don't be satisfied with less, and don't make excuses. Don't come up short of all the fullness of what God intends for you. Don't live like a pauper when you could live like a prince, and don't make excuses. Don't say, "I'm too busy to spend time doing that." I've thought about, let's say, a 30-year-old businessman who is an entrepreneur, successful business, single, but his business consumes his life and all that, but he feels lonely. He goes home to a darkened place, and lots of material possessions, but he's just alone. And he feels like maybe it's about time that he might find a wife. And you look at, what is he willing to do for that? And if the answer is nothing, he probably won't find one. But as he continues increasingly to acutely feel that loneliness, he's going to start making time in his life. He's going to do what's necessary. Well, I just want to say, how much more could you make time for Christ? Say, "I feel cold. I feel distant and I need to make time to seek Him." And don't think it'll be simple. He's not a vending machine. You pour in two or three quarters and then you get it. He tests us. He's jealous. He's a person. And if you're doing things that offend him, He won't pour out that blessing. And even if you're not, he will stretch you and test you and make you persevere. So persevere. Be single-minded. Remember, it's not impersonal. It's not a thing we're seeking. We're not seeking a thing. We're seeking a person. Turn Away From Sin And be willing to turn aside from sin. It says in James chapter 4, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that scripture says without reason that the Spirit,” I think the Holy Spirit, “that He caused to live in us envies intensely?” Is jealous over us? That's why Scripture says, “He gives us more grace. That's why scripture says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ Submit yourself then to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.” Now listen to this, "Come near to God and He will come near to you." So that's what I'm urging. “Wash your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded.” Don't be double-minded. Be single-minded after Christ, and persevere as it says in Jeremiah 29:13, "You will seek me, and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Praying for the Spirit of God Now, I want to give an invitation to the church. For the last two months I've been praying here at 6.00 AM, praying for God to pour out His Spirit on our church, specifically praying for evangelistic fruit, but also praying for these things, these themes. Recently, some people have heard about this and have joined me in praying, and I'd like to invite the whole church. I come here, so if it were at my house I would not invite the whole church. But I'm inviting any of you that would be willing to make a sacrifice, who would have time to come 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM this Wednesday. And I'm planning on doing this through the end of January next year 2016, so I don't know, for about eight weeks. And if the Lord wants to extend it, He can do that. But I just feel called on by God to call on you to join me in praying. If you're not able to come, then pray on your own during that time for God to pour out His Spirit on our church. Pray specifically for evangelistic fruit. Wouldn't you love to see in 2016 a river of baptisms, of outreach here in the community and really to the ends of the Earth to hear about that as an answer to extraordinary prayer. That's what I'm praying for. But I'm also praying internal journey for extreme experiences with God resulting in holiness; yearning for both of those things. So, if you're able to come, join. If you can't do it this week, God willing, I'll be doing it next week and just come. Start in my office, and if there's too many we'll come in here and we'll pray. Prayer So, close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the things that we've been learning in Ephesians and we pray that you would pour out your Spirit on this church, pray that you would oh Lord work in this church, give us fruit, oh Lord, give us a sense of your love for us in Christ greater than we've ever had before. And then Lord, give us powerful inducements toward evangelism and outreach. Help us to reach out with the Gospel and to see lost people come to faith in Christ. Help us to know you and to follow you better than ever before through the power of the Spirit in Jesus' name, Amen.