Civil Conversation, Bright Color, and Late-Winter Maine
On creativity, community, and speaking plainly across differences
The always-on world rewards fast reactions and simple certainty. Reconnection asks for a slower skill: gathering ourselves long enough to understand what feels true, then speak it with care.
Maine March: snow days and sharper noticing
Last week in Maine brought multiple storms, including a few that delivered more snow than predicted to Littlejohn Island. Plows left tall banks along the roads. At times, the precipitation turned to mist and gentle rain. We kept our boots by the door and checked the forecast before heading out for our morning trail runs.
Between storms, a few clear hours opened up. The hush after the snowfalls made everything more audible.
One morning the bright notes of two cardinals lingered outside our window as the sun rose over the channel. Their crimson plumage caught the first light. Their duet soon expanded into a full avian chorale. Both the paucity and cacophony of birdsong held beauty.
The month of March, said to “come in like a lion and go out like a lamb,” holds two truths as we attempt our return to warmer weather. Sometimes it feels familiar and easy. Sometimes it feels different and more challenging. We never know quite what we are going to get.
“Return is not always a rewind.”
Similarly, we never know quite what we are going to get when we chose to show up.
Visibility asks something of us, even when we choose it. The cardinals make themselves visible in late winter, red against snow and audible in the hush. Artists and creatives make themselves visible when they share their work.
This week, I practiced a quieter skill related to visibility: pause, listen, then choose what I will say out loud.
A new Sunday role: speaking plainly on WGAN
I recently stepped into a new role as co-host of A Healthy Conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Barkin at Newsradio WGAN. The show airs locally Sundays at 11:00 a.m. (AM 560, FM 98.5). It is also available via streaming and podcast platforms.
I know radio studios well. I spent years broadcasting regularly on WLOB. I also recorded intermittently at WGAN.
A Healthy Conversation feels different than the typical video podcasting I do because the format asks for something more immediate: reflection on current events, and real-time clarity.
Our first Healthy Conversation felt both natural and new. We touched on topics that pull people toward strong conclusions. As a family physician, I speak with people across the political spectrum every day. In clinical work, I rarely share opinions on current events. I ask questions, I look for context, and I try to find common ground. Common ground matters. Without it, people stop listening and the path forward disappears.
On A Healthy Conversation I will do my best to hold complexity, speak plainly, and keep dignity in the room.
Radio Maine continues to bring a different kind of social energy, as we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. One guest at a time. One focused conversation.
This week, we recorded five Radio Maine conversations that will air in upcoming episodes:
Annie Kloppenberg — choreographer and professor at Colby; inaugural director of the Lyons Arts Lab; Affiliate Artist with Portland Ballet. We talked about curiosity as a creative engine and what changes when choreography enters dialogue with music and visual art.
Victoria Zurkan — Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and painter, on the overlap between emotional insight and image-making, and what art can offer people doing hard inner work.
Natalie Miller — writer and disability advocate, creator of Eat. Stay. Wheel., on accessibility, joy, and building a life that successfully navigates and frames challenges.
Kim Case — painter, on Northern New England landscape, intuition, memory, and the unseen parts of place.
Cameron Kelly Rosenblum — young adult author (HarperCollins / Quill Tree), on writing toward grief and resilience with honesty, especially for teen readers.
“One conversation can wake up a different part of the brain.”
Radio and podcasting work keeps me close to the human voice. It keeps me curious. It keeps me honest. It also trains me to choose words with care, without turning every topic into a verdict.
Radio Maine: Dr. Eric Brown and dissolving borders
This week on Radio Maine, we have a conversation with Dr. Eric Brown, executive director of the Maine Irish Heritage Center.
Eric described a preference that stayed with me: not simply combining disciplines, but dissolving the borders between them. He also spoke about discomfort as a sign of growth, and about the power of real conversation to humanize what feels stuck.
“I always kind of preferred… dissolving those borders.”
Dr. Eric Brown
I left our conversation thinking about tables, not podiums. A table invites questions. A table makes room for another person’s story.
Off the Wall: Sarah Ingraham and color that keeps moving
This week’s Off the Wall feature highlights Portland Art Gallery artist Sarah Ingraham, a Maine-raised Brooklyn painter whose bold still lifes and patterns feel like a study in disciplined exuberance.
Sarah starts with shapes, recomposes for color, and lets invention guide the palette. She works across paintings, murals, rugs, and wallpaper. She shows up daily, even when she doesn’t feel like it.
“Wallpaper printing taught me how colors stack. One pass at a time, the image arrives.”
Sarah Ingraham
Her practice reminds us that craft can carry brightness without forcing cheer. The work can stay honest and still choose color.
Bountiful Path Solo: The Listening Bench
On this week’s Radio Maine solo episode, The Listening Bench, we explore how pausing changes what becomes visible.
Benches show up across my weeks: along running trails, behind clinics during brief breaks between patient visits, and in places of personal meaning, including a bench dedicated in honor of my father.
A bench makes stopping easier. That small shift changes what I notice.
“Clarity rarely comes when we are rushing.”
Why this may matter to you
Lately I’ve been thinking about the cost of being visible. Artists feel it when they show their work. Leaders feel it when they speak “from the heart.” Clinicians feel it when they try to be real and steady inside hard conversations. Even social media asks for a version of us that stays ready for judgment. Courage isn’t the problem. The question is how we make courage sustainable.
Many of us live inside a constant demand for opinion: react now, pick a side, post the takeaway, move on. Over time, that pressure can shrink our capacity for nuance. It can also shrink our capacity for relationship, because it trains us to speak at people instead of with them.
In medicine, I watch what happens when someone feels unheard. Bodies tense. Stories shorten. Trust thins. The solution rarely comes from one more fact. The solution comes from a different quality of presence: slower listening, cleaner language, a willingness to name what’s true without humiliating the other person.
This is why the arts matter in weeks like this. A gallery opening asks you to look longer than you planned. A radio interview asks you to stay curious. A bench asks you to pause long enough to feel your own nervous system settle. None of these practices fix the world, but they do something quieter and more powerful: they keep you human while you live in it.
Closing reflection
When we finished the first taping at WGAN, I stepped outside into cold air and a parking lot edged by snowbanks. My takeaway this week is that return does not always feel smooth. It can feel awkward, honest, and a little exposed. The practice is to show up anyway, gather ourselves at the threshold, then speak in a way we can respect later.
Visibility will keep asking for a version of us. Some days it will feel like song, and some days it will feel like exposure. Either way, we get to choose how we show up: what we share, what we hold close, and when we step back long enough to hear ourselves again.
Pause + Reflect
Where do you need to speak more plainly right now, and what helps you do that without hardening?
Related to visibility, I’m truly grateful to each person who takes the time to connect, whether by leaving a comment, sending an email, speaking with me directly, or simply reading along and thinking about topics that we bring forward. Your caring and support make this work meaningful.
If you like having a simple cadence to follow, here’s ours: Solo episodes on Monday, Radio Maine on Tuesday, Off the Wall on Wednesday, Books on the Boat on Friday, and The Bountiful Path Foundational Posts on Sunday.
We appreciate your welcoming us into your world.
✨ Thank you for walking this bountiful path with me.
Lisa
The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.
❤️🙏 - I felt this article on deep level - thank you
“A bench asks you to pause long enough to feel your own nervous system settle. None of these practices fix the world, but they do something quieter and more powerful: they keep you human while you live in it.”
Thank you so much for this piece, it so closely aligns with many things that have been swirling around for me lately— the unspoken power of pause and reflection, how adjusting the lens of view can change perspectives and how the share of art/color can change us. 💕