KDHX Earthworms

Renewable energy Return On Investment is booming, across the U.S. and worldwide. With uber-real concerns about this trajectory on environmental minds, Earthworms reviews how a powerful coalition of advocates - in a timely turn of events - moved Illinois state lawmakers to achieve results for people, planet and economics.

Consider what we can learn and apply from this story, as the Fossil forces go for every last greenhouse gasp.

           Andy Heaslet, Earthworms' esteemed audio engineer, dug into the details of CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act enacted into Illinois law in September 2021. He shares the story from his research for Masters' level coursework at Southern Illinois University, which was one nexus of collaborative activism that make this landmark policy a law both powerful and replicable.

Give a listen - be inspired!

Thanks, Andy, for how Earthworms sounds - with BIG THNX as well to Jon Valley of KDHX Production.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Diversifying Power: Energy Democracy with Jennie C. Stephens (Sept 2020)

Rule of Five: the Supreme Court and CO2 (July 2020)

Leah Clyburn: Organizing to Act on Environmental Racism in St. Louis (Oct 2019)

Drawdown: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018)

"What's going on in that bucket," wrote the great enviro-spiritual guy Wendell Berry in The Work of Local Culture, "is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth.” Here in St. Louis, New Earth Farm brings that moment right to you - as an affordable, convenient, sustainability service. 

John and Stacey Cline are growing New Earth Farm as a neighborhood-based enterprise serving the greater STL area. If you can't compost in your yard, your subscription to New Earth Farm will regularly collect your kitchen and garden waste and bring you, in spring and fall, a bucket of super-plant-food compost. Waste gets reduced and soil is nourished, in a system helping all parts flourish. For an even more modest fee, you can drop off your organic waste for New Earth Farm to compost. Options serve both homes and businesses - even special events!

This kind of "valet service" composting is a vital niche in the spectrum of St. Louis Green practice. Let the New Earth Farm story inspire you to dig in and support sustainable decay!

Thanks to Earthworms audio engineers, Andy Heaslet and Jon Valley. 

Related Earthworms Conversations: Fair Shares: Abundance, Innovation, Relationships, FOOD (July 2022)

Urban Buds Blooms in St. Louis City (Nov 2021)

Sustainable farming is both lifestyle and full-time job for Holly Evans, Randy Buck and their three children. Holly and Earthworms host Jean Ponzi "tour" this young family's 15+ acre Rosy Buck Farm on a hillside property in Leasburg, MO, where Randy digs circular vegetable beds!

Third in Earthworms' series featuring local farmers certified by Known & Grown STL, our regional sustainable food brand, this conversation explores Rosy Buck's search for land, learning process, and joyful commitment to farming, overall.

Rosy Buck Farm brings their bounty to Sol Market (Maplewood), Wednesdays 3:30-6:30, to Point Labadie Thursdays 4:30-7:30 (through Sept 26) and Wildwood Saturdays 8-noon (through Oct 6). Check the farm's websiite for 2025 CSA subscription info. They proudly hold Golden Beet Certification from Known & Grown STL. 

Thanks to Jon Valley, KDHX Production Stalward, and to Andy Heaslet, audio engineer for Earthworms On The Farm series.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Nancy Lawson, the Humane Gardener (Feb 2019)
Kate Estwing Grows, Arranges Loves . . . Slow Flowers (Jan 2018)

Earthworms' late, dear, zany friend Jay Schober was one hemisphere - with he dearest friend Jim Findlay - of the St. Louis Brain Sandwich, in the early glory DAZE of KDHX. 

Honoring Jay, we serve up again this interview, recorded in January 2021, promoting Jay and Jim's memoir, We Never Got To Be Zombies (yet) - 55 Years of Friendship and Fiddling with Fate.

Jay was a kind, gentle, big-hearted bear-hug BIG guy. Missed and beloved by many who knew him, and MANY more who heard him and Jim carry on, on-air, while snacking on braunschweiger and cheeseballs. Rest in Love and Laughter, Jay.

Would you like to learn to: Sew from a pattern? Customize a thrift-store find? Replace a busted zipper? You can do all this and more in a lively, well-stocked compound on St. Louis' near-south side. Welcome to City Sewing Room!

Creative Director Rita Hunt shares the what-why-how of this non-profit community sewing center, where adults and kids can take classes and create in professional-grade studios, and you can score great deals on fabric, notions and sewing machines donated to their Makers' Mart. A new Quilting Studio features a state-of-the-art longarm quilting machine and skilled quilter volunteers ready to help you craft your vision in fabric.

Many hands give an ancient art a DIY revival at City Sewing Room and sister locations, like Sew Hope in Florissant, MO. Well-lit parking and day, evening and weekend hours make fun at City Sewing Room accessible for walk-in and class-registered sewists  at all skill and interest levels.

Earthworms host Jean Ponzi discovered this maker-culture gem through the Missouri Recycling Association. We bet you'll take a notion to check it out yourself - and pin it to your activity faves.

Thanks to St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste District for grants augmenting members' support for City Sewing Room.

THANKS to Jon Valley, Earthworms valued Production Pal.
Related Earthworms Conversations: St. Louis Story Stitchers: Artists' Collective Stands Strong (May 2023)

Experienced Goods: Beneficially Circulating GREAT STUFF (November 2022)

Reclaiming Gaia: Artist Jenny Kettler Tangles With ... Plastic (October 2020) 

ALAN - Artificial Light At Night - is surging. Light pollution disrupts health for humans and wildlife, wastes energy and money, and blocks out awe-some Universe views. How to flip the switch on this issue? Dark knights arose in 1988 to challenge and turn this offense to Quality of Earth Life.

Today the International Dark Sky Association mobilizes over 193,000 members and supporters through 70+ chapters in 24 countries, who educate and advocate for protecting and restoring nighttime darkness. Dark Sky Missouri is the IDA chapter formed in 2018. Earthworms welcomes chapter founder and former chair Don Ficken, a retired business person, amateur astronomer and ardent nocturnal darkness champion.   

Dark Sky MO operates state-wide to measure and report night sky   light levels, build awareness, and grow support for light pollution controls, with the public and policy-makers. Lights Out Heartland, one key initiative specific to our region, works to protect migrating birds in ecologically critical months of May and September. 

Why should we care about night-light issues? How can we have  outdoor lighting that's responsible, healthy, functional and beautiful? You tell it, Don Ficken!

THANKS to Sasha Hay, Earthworms audio engineer and to KDHX Production Pro, Jon Valley.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Illinois Clean Energy Policy - Andy Heaslet on making of a legislative model (January 2022)

To champion grassland soil health in Missouri, where conventional grazing practice is practically enshrined in state law, Amy Hamilton's family enterprise has dug in as deep as roots of the native plant species whose seeds they sell. 

Hamilton Native Outpost has been led since 1981 by Amy and her husband Rex. They are passionate, expert advocates for the Diverse Native Grassland species and practices that sustained human to microbial communities across the vast mid-continent region for centuries. They support native landscaping in general, though this Earthworms conversation is focused on their grazing-grassland work.

Plenty of color blazes through this tale, from vibrant summer-prairie blooms to seed mix names (Wildlife Chuckwagon, Firebreak, Buck's Hangout) to commentary on what it takes to change grazing practices and minds, even with bushels of data-backed experience ("Double the hay with none of the fertilizer using native warm season grasses!"). 

The 60-page Hamilton Native Outpost catalogue is packed with clear, specific guidance to upgrade land management with native plants. Their website is a storehouse of articles and videos ("This Savannah restoration paid for itself" "Healing a small stream with native plants"). Novel research the works, like deploying grazing bison for weed control, demonstrates this team's constant learning commitments. And their rural Sho-Me State site hosts Pasture Walks and other events so soil health wannabes and skeptics can see Outpost successes for themselves.

You've heard about native plant benefits plenty of times in Earthworms interviews. This one steps a new hoof forward.

THANKS to Sasha Hay, Earthworms audio engineer, and KDHX production stalwart, Jon Valley - and to Ed Spevak of the Saint Louis Zoo for introduction to Amy Hamilton.

Related Earthworms Conversations:  -------

If you have a library card or not, St. Louis County Library welcomes you into their multi-verse of learning.

Earthworms' Jean Ponzi has been hosted as a speaker many times by SLCL's Sarah Kunz Jones, Adult Programs Coordinator. This conversation returns the favor, spotlighting myriad SLCL offerings to all ages, from webinars to community garden beds, from author events to loans from SLCL's Library of Things, from free lunches for children to computer access for anyone - and much more from a public library system geared to educate, engage and serve, powered by the dedicated creativity of LIBRARIANS.

St. Louis County Library is at your super-service, in branch locations around the area and online at www.slcl.org. 

THANKS to Sasha Hay and Jon Valley for audio tech expertise.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Seed Bank with Meg Englehardt (March, 2022)

Terrain Magazine (December 2020)

Hungry for new dining thrills? Need a place to meet and eat in an area of STL you don't know well? Align your fork, dollars and values by heading to a restaurant certified by the Green Dining Alliance, a program of our town's EarthDay-365.

As program manager, Ben Daugherty whisks his love of restaurant energy and culture into GDA audits that have helped over 80 restaurants, catering enterprises and food trucks earn 2-5 Star ratings for Green practices in seven categories of food service operations. Recommendations included in GDA evaluation reports advise participants with detailed options to improve. Three pre-requisites for certification are practicing recycling, eliminating Styrofoam, and having or phasing in LED lighting. Restaurants give GDA access to utility bills, purchasing records and other relevant documentation. 

GDA's work with restaurants in Maplewood, MO, established the nation's first Green Dining District (led then by Jenn DeRose); today the Grove and University City Loop are Green Dining Districts, with work underway in Webster Groves and the Cortex Innovation District to form two more. As theater companies know, more theater offerings generate more theater audiences. GDA proves the Abundance Principle!

Next time you make plans to dine, check out www.GreenDiningAlliance.org - and tell your host, chef and server you chose their place because they are GDA Certified.

Ben Daugherty spoke with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi on 2-3-24, and announced a career move shortly after. Visit www.EarthDay365.org if you'd like to apply for the GDA position!

THANKS to Jon Valley, Production Pro for KDHX.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Fair Shares: Abundance, Innovation, Relationships, FOOD (July 2022)

In a south St. Louis city park created in Victorian times, Indigenous culture, native plant ecology and 21st century engineering are newly united in a southwesterly flow. Tara Morton, Community Engagement Manager for this project's urban someplace, Tower Grove Park, shares the story of Nee Kee Nee, a riverine revival.

Named Nee Kee Nee, or “revived water” in the language of the Osage People who once inhabited the land, the East Stream captures stormwater from 43 Park acres and provides a naturalized play area for many of kinds of nature relatives, including humans young-to-old. 

East Stream’s headwaters are fed by a user-activated potable water source. Stormwater from intakes on adjacent Arsenal Street rejoin the stream 300 feet below the headwaters and flow through a system of weirs and rain gardens. Shunted underground for more than 100 years, East Stream is now a biodiverse, living partner in the Park's nature stewardship: a waterway working with human needs, designed to divert stormwater - up to 3.8 million gallons annually - from overloading the urban sewer system.

Nee Kee Nee is also reviving culture. Tower Grove Park staff worked with the Osage Nation’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office on design of the stream, the direction it flows and landscaping with pawpaw, arrowwood, and many other kinds of native plants. Physical and interpretive elements embody the Osage People's origin story and elements of Osage community life. 

Tower Grove Park is open daily, sunrise to sunset, in the City of St. Louis, Missouri.

THANKS to Jon Valley, KDHX Audio Production Pro

Related Earthworms Conversations: Artist Jayvn Solomon Envisions Loutopia (Dec. 2021)

The Water Defenders with John Cavanaugh (Oct 2021)

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) offers indigenous wisdom to "conventional" society, where responses to issues like climate change and biodiversity loss need all hands to work together.

Cathy “Cat” Techtmann serves as a University of Wisconsin-Extension Environmental Outreach State Specialist. She weaves together indigenous science, place-based knowledge, and academic science to “decolonize” climate education. Cat coordinates the UW- Extension Climate Leadership Team and is a member of the UW-Extension Native American Task Force. She lives and works in the homeland of the Lake Superior Ojibwe people and works out of the Iron County UW-Extension Office in Hurley, WI.

Cathy “Cat” Techtmann, University of Wisconsin-Extension Environmental Outreach State Specialist. She weaves together indigenous science, place-based knowledge, and academic science to “decolonize” climate education. Cat coordinates the UW- Extension Climate Leadership Team and is a member of the UW-Extension Native American Task Force. She lives and works in the homeland of the Lake Superior Ojibwe people and works out of the Iron County UW-Extension Office in Hurley, WI.

Links to: Daniel Wildcat

Heather Navarro - MCC

From his personal relationships with the organizations we know as Forests (where Collaboration AND Competition thrive), Jo Pang helps good health flourish in human orgs, specifically those focused on "social good." 

The work of Culture Wise, Jo's enterprise, supports organizations who envision a more compassionate and just world, to develop capacity for leadership in ways that can turn around society's dominant and colonizing modes. This work can take groups out of doors in activity at once super-purposeful and playful. When Earthworms host Jean Ponzi joined one of these experiences, she felt wake-up-genuinely inspired by Jo's approach to "consulting and facilitating" - and wanted to share Jo's perspective with you.

Around the grounds of Kindred Forest, the nature retreat Jo Pang and family are cultivating (near Bourbon, MO, about an hour from St. Louis), individuals and groups can experience Forest Bathing, with Jo as your certified Forest Therapy Guide.

With a Doctorate in Strategic Management in the works from University of Missouri St. Louis, look for lively leadership to continue to evolve from among the circles of trees and humans who inspire and teach Jo Pang.

From TEDx Gateway Arch, hear Jo Pang share How Mindfulness Transforms Us

THANKS to Andy Heaslet for audio-engineering this edition of Earthworms, and to Jon Valley, KDHX production Wiz

Related Earthworms Conversations:

In the Company of Trees with Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (Jan. 2019)

Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing, Richard Louv

St. Louis journalist Don Corrigan storms the American Popular Culture Association with his books exploring way more than journalistic topics - like ROAD KILL.

Corrigan's book American Roadkill: Animal Victims of our Busy Highways  is in the great animal rights tradition of Joseph Grinnell of the 1920s, who was alarmed at the animal carnage on America's new highways. Corrigan tells the squashed sad tales, and shares some positives:

• The Saint Louis Zoo enlisting “citizen scientists” to identify high casualty frog and turtle crossings.

• St. Louis Kinship Circle raising awareness of road accidents with pets and how to avoid such heartbreaking meet-ups with cars.

• Sierra Clubs of the southeast, championing endangered pumas.

• Possum Pouch Pickers, down south, rescuing baby possums from marsupial mothers mashed on roadways.

Don Corrigan is Editor Emeritus of the Webster-Kirkwood Times, a weekly newspaper for St. Louis suburban communities.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to KDHX production pundit Jon Valley.

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

Richard Louv: Our Wild Calling (Dec 2019)

Don Corrigent on SQUIRRELS (July 2019)

This idea seeks not to uproot every shred of living carpet - "just" the (humongous, sterile, resource-intensive) areas we don't use.

         Owen Wormser is an ecological landscape designer who sees restorative potential in our acres of compulsive turf. His Nautilus Award-winning book's practical and visionary approach to ecological restoration can bring your place to life! Converting areas of lawn to meadows gives us back precious time and money while super-charging food webs and vital pollinator supports. 

Here in the KDHX listening area, the very tidy suburb of Webster Groves made it through No Mow April with reputation intact. Look for other local communities to adapt Webster's process in the early growing season of 2024. In May you can mow some paths through those plantings, and sow more life in the areas spared from tortuous trims. 

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Legacy Circle Farms Strong Soil, Specialty Crops (May 2021))

Biodiversity for Corporations? Where Business Works WITH Nature (May 2020)

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, to KDHX Production chief Jon Valley.

The wild world of Milkweed plants is populated by aphids who suck the plant's life, beetles who suck the aphids dry, ant lion babies who will eat each other - and sometimes the Monarch butterflies whose caterpillars gotta eat Milkweed or starve.

         APHIDS!

Native gardening specialist Besa Schweitzer guides this conversational tour through the realm of Milkweeds - and the bugs to bug them! Her Wildflower Garden Planner is a book everyone can use to welcome Nature's Wild Child plants into your place. 

Congratulations, Besa, on this summer's recognition of your work from the native plant advocate botanists of Missouri Native Plant Society! Honor well deserved. Earthworms listeners: read Besa's take on this topic in The Healthy Planet July 2023 edition.

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and Green colleague in Sierra Club - and to KDHX production ace, Jon Valley

St. Louis is the first U.S. city using the app Mosquito Alert,  developed in Barcelona, Spain, and in use across Europe. This Citizen Science project combines support for our Public Health pros with rich opportunities for eco-logical messaging:
We CAN Control the Pests AND Protect our Pollinators!

The Mosquito Alert STL project team is promoting use of this smartphone app around our community - and taking the work an important academic step further: researching the power of Citizen Science to boost the capacity of our Public Health agencies, as they work to track and control the kinds of mosquitos that carry serious diseases like West Nile and Zika virus.    

MASTL team members Jeanine Arrighi (St. Louis Academic Health), Alexis Bingham (SLU Masters candidate and MASTL student partner), and Dr. Ricardo Wray (Saint Louis University School of Health Communications and Social Justice) talk with Earthworms host (and fellow MASTL team partner) Jean Ponzi about this exciting, locally evolving work. 

Find Mosquito Alert STL resources online and read more about this project.  Download the Mosquito Alert app and join the SWAT Team! 

Learn more about the global value of Citizen Science in dealing with mosquito-born disease from the Wilson Center for Science (and in Earthworms' archived edition).

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to KDHX Production Pro Jon Valley.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

One Health: People, Animals, Earth with Dr. Sharon Deem

Global Mosquito Alert with Dr. Anne Bowser, Wilson Center for Science (August 2019)

Fight The Bite with the 4-Ds - Mosquito Squad, City of St. Louis (July, 2016) (where we WERE with mosquito education before Mosquito Alert STL)

"Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the Play?"

In his new book I Want a Better Catastrophe, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd navigates the Climate Crisis with grief, hope and gallows humor. Earthworms host Jean Ponzi chimes in (leaving Boyd the best lines, as a gracious host would do). 

Boyd's leadership of the global CLIMATE CLOCK campaign blended art, science and grassroots organizing. His writings ask eight diverse climate thinkers "Is it really the end of the world? If so, now what?" From his own broken-open heart, he walks with our climate angst toward living with climate reality - and staying open-hearted. 

Related Earthworms Conversations: Midwest Climate Collaborative with Heather Navarro (May 2022) 

Diversifying Power: Jennie C. Stephens Advocates Energy Democracy (Sept 2020)

Facing the Climate Emergency with Margaret Cline Solomon (June 2020)

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms steadfast friend and audio engineer, and to KDHX production powerhouse, Jon Valley.

Thanks to New Society Publishing! www.newsociety.com

Creating from The Center in midtown St. Louis, youth artist Story Stitchers collect stories, reframe and retell them through art, writing and performance to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships and literacy. 

Story Stitchers Branden Lewis and Chris BlueBeatz Pendleton are both artists and staff. Their collaborative crew mainly targets ending gun violence as content focus, not surprising for urban youth in the U.S. today. Time experiencing Prairie environments surprised them: growing deep-rooted perspective and creative expression that connected KDHX Earthworms host Jean Ponzi to these vibrant humans. Nature is a bond we share, expressed in Peace in the Prairie, a big body of award-winning Story Stitchers work. 

This conversation grew from a meetup this spring at the Midwest Climate Summit. Jean gets to guest this summer at Stitch Cast Studio Live on June 6, for another Nature-inclusive exchange. 

Pick up Story Stitchers podcasts!

Related Earthworms Conversations: Midwest Climate Collaborative with Heather Navarro (May 2022)

St. Louis Environmental Racism Report with Leah Clyburn (October 2019)

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio wiz, and to KDHX Production Power, Jon Valley.

As flowers bloom, bees rev up their pollinating rounds, and a host of Community Scientists are helping local pros explore key bee-health questions: what promotes bee diversity and bee-plant interactions in residential and community gardens? 

This is Shutterbee! Backyard bee photography to improve conservation practices. Nina Fogel, Ph.D. co-leads this multi-year project from the Billiken Bee Lab at Saint Louis University with founder and Webster U professor Dr. Nicole Miller-Struttmann, and a team of fellow academics, students and community partners.

Shutterbee is a "standardized survey." Volunteers observe strict protocols - as they strive to photograph bees on the move! Participants commit to taking their smartphone in the same hours on the same day of every month for the same walk around their gardens, and uploading photos of bees they observe into the Shutterbee project on the app iNaturalist. Project leaders identify bees and plants in these photos to evaluate how bees behave in urban, suburban, and rural environments. Next time you're out in your yard, try it. Happily - and essentially - training is provided.

Shutterbee enrollment is filled for 2023, but you can tap into studying bees using the project's vivid resources, pollinator info and bee identification guides.  

Congratulations Nina! Achieving her Doctorate this spring with her study of the patterns of bee diversity in home gardens enrolled in Bring Conservation Home, the native plant program of St. Louis Audubon - and for finding, through her work in 2022, a native bee so rare it had only been documented once before in Missouri.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to KDHX production potentate, Jon Valley.

Related Earthworms Conversations:
Wires Over Wildlife: power lines as biodiversity connectors (August 2020)

VR Botany: Dr. Kyra Krakos brings the outdoors waaaaay in (April 2020)

Naturalist: graphic novel updates Rockstar Biologist memoir (November 2020