MacArthur “genius” award-winner Ted Ames, of Stonington, Maine, will be featured this Friday October 19th at 7pm on the NPR documentary series, Stories from the Heart of the Land, on Maine Public Radio. The program is based in part on interviews Ames conducted with other fishermen and recently deposited in the Maine Folklife Center Archives. MFC provided copies of the recordings to documentary producer Neenah Ellis.
As the MacArthur Foundation noted, Ames “fused the roles of fisherman and applied scientist (UMaine M.S.1971 in biochemistry) in response to increasing threats to the fishery ecosystem resulting from decades of over-harvesting.” He recorded interviews with long-time fishermen from the Penobscot Bay region to help chart historical patterns of the fishery.
In 2000, Neenah Ellis produced a year-long series of profiles of centenarians, One Hundred Years of Stories, for NPR’s Morning Edition.