KDHX Earthworms

 As schools look toward re-opening amid COVID-19, a new toolkit from Women's Voices for the Earth helps parents talk to  teachers and school officials about harmful disinfectants — while also promoting safer and effective product alternatives and best-practices, aimed to reduce toxic exposures, and help keep not only our kids, but also our educators and school staff, healthy and safe.

Key questions: what is the difference between "disinfecting" and "cleaning" and why does this difference matter? (It DOES.) 

This toolkit promote safety, health, and sensible use of product and their chemicals - and dialogue among stakeholder humans! Maria Ignacia Miranda Santis, WVE Program and Outreach Manager, details this campaign and it's "parent" project, Parents Against Quats, a campaign supporting parental leverage with schools to eliminate products using quartenary ammonia. 

The science based grass-roots organizing power of Women' Voice for the Earth, and WVE's consumer-savvy campaigns, have been taking on corporate and government interests for 25 years. Efforts to amplify concerns specific to women - from moms to workers in nail salons. Successes include pressuring Johnson & Johnson to remove a carcinogenic ingredient from (are you ready for this?) Baby Shampoo in 2011, when Earthworms first met WVE. WVE's Detox the Box campaign takes aim at manufactures of tampons and other menstrual products that harbor toxic ingredients. This is a powerful, focused group!

THANKS to Andy Coco and Jon Valley, engineers for this Earthworms edition.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Applying Eco-Logic to Protect Streams AND Roads with Danelle Haake (July 2018) 

Peoples' Pocket Guide to Enviro-Action with Caitlin Zera (July 2018)

Psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon's life and work took a sharp turn six years ago when she turned own feelings of hopelessness and despair toward action. As a self-proclaimed Climate Warrior, she began leading others through TheClimateMobilization.org, a part of the climate emergency movement working alongside  Sunrise, Climate Strike, Extinction Rebellion and other urgent-action groups.

Salamon's has written a self-help guide to direct more of us into the kind of all-in action she continues. She talks with Earthworms' Jean Ponzi about this new book, Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth (New Society Publishers), and how the necessary urgent climate response is connected to the Covid-19 pandemic and now the global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Music: Balkan Twirl, performed live at KDHX by Sandy Weltman and Carolbeth Trio
THANKS to Andy Coco, Andy Heaslet, Jon Valley - Earthworms team of audio engineers

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Tosha Phonix: Organizing Food Justice, Growing Community (Oct 2019)

Climate Communications from Saint Louis Zoo (Sept 2019)

Leah Clyburn: Organizing to End Environmental Racism in STL (Oct 2019)

Corporations own a lot of land, from workplace campuses to the property under long-run power lines. Wildlife Habitat Council has worked with companies, worldwide and over 30 years, to prompt investment in biodiversity as a benefit to the bottom line.

Margaret O'Gorman, President of WHC, writes and talks about what makes this process work, for the companies and for Nature in her new book Strategic Corporate Conservation Planning, a Guide to Meaningful Engagement (Feb 2020, Island Press). This Earthworms conversation includes stories about collaborations like BEECH (pictured above), an environmental education center created and run by Bridgestone Tires in Warren County, TN.

In the US and 27 countries abroad, this work is moving "beyond regulation," proving that achievement of real conservation goals are and should be part of doing business.

Read: how WHC work is addressing US Sustainable Development Goals.

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Andy Coco and Jon Valley for keeping Earthworms sounding strong!

Music: Aftershock, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case

Related Earthworms Conversations: Envision Charlotte NC with Amy Aussieker (March 2020)

Green America Campaigns for Solutions, with Beth Porter (Nov 2019

Cost, access, lack of info? The incentive program Grow Solar sunsets these barriers to investing in clean, renewable energy for residents of our St. Louis and Metro East communities. 

Grow Solar pools regional buying power to secure significant discounts for residential installations. Offered here by the Missouri Botanical Garden and Midwest Renewable Energy Association, Grow Solar action starts with an informative Power Hour that will immediately advise attendees on feasibility and potential costs. Interest is strong, and growing. Brilliant!

Earthworms welcomes Grow Solar's Jenn DeRose and Kevin McKee to describe the program's process and benefits, for St. Louis area communities in Missouri and Illinois.

Music: Mister Sun performing live at KDHX.

THANKS to Andy Coco, Andy Heaslet and Jon Valley, the actual engineering team bringing you virtual Earthworms.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Drawdown: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (May 2018)

City Energy Project: Powering Efficiency in St. Louis Buildings (January 2018)

Ecologists know health is connected for all that lives. But most humans are not yet hip to this fact. One Health, both title and theme of a globally vital body of work makes this point for elephants, turtles, water, soil, etc. etc. etc.  - and us. 

Dr. Sharon Deem directs the Institute of Conservation Medicine for the Saint Louis Zoo. Her work with animals, here and abroad, gave rise to the research, understanding, philosophy and curriculum called One Health, a collaboration with Drs. Elizabeth Rayhel and Kelly E. Lane-deGraaf, who teach this material at Fontbonne University. One Health draws from many disciplines, shows a way toward many solutions to issues from human to planetary scale.

This Earthworms conversation ranges around One Health implications for our species during this Big Time Out, from a place of deep appreciation for Nature's health commitments and safeguards - for all species, on this 50th Earth Day.

Don't miss hearing Sharon Deem's TEDx talk!

THANKS to Earthworms engineering team, Andy Coco, Andy Heaslet, Jon Valley. 

Music: Main theme from Swan Lake, performed live for Earth Day and Earthworms by Stephen Blake, husband of Sharon Deem, from the shelter of their home.

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

Richard Louv: Our Wild Calling (Dec 2019)

Relatives, Responsibility, Mindfulness with Dr. Daniel Wildcat (Oct 2018)

Bears! with biologist Laura Conlee (July 2018)

Learning Field Botany in Missouri's winter held little appeal for Dr. Kyra Krakos' classes at Maryville U. You just can't do your science easily. This was well before COVID-19 threw a curve into science and all human projects. 

Workaround: Krakos merged her stratae of expertise with her students' digital-native prowess. She "grows" Virtual Reality prairie, glade and riparian outdoor classrooms. She set up systems so advanced students teach beginners the basics (like how pollination works), freeing herself to stay ahead of their voracious learning curves by collecting "skins" on her travels to house new VR explorations of the prairies and glades of Shaw Nature Reserve,  to Ireland's glacial lakes and woodland Berns.

While Virtual rules almost everything for us humans right now, some on-site physical pleasures gnawingly persist. Maryville will soon host Virtual Goat Week, this year's edition of an ongoing Goat Lab study of invasive species removal methods, starring the super-chomping plant control power of Goats.

BIG THANKS to Earthworms engineering crew: Andy Coco, Andy Heaslet, Jon Valley.

Music: Mister Sun, performed live at KDHX by Hunter's Permit

Related Earthworms Conversations - Tech & Green Science

Global Mosquito Alert with Dr. Anne Bowser (Aug 2019)

Dr. Elaine Ingham: Soil Science Rocks Plant Health (Oct 2017)

Drawdown: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018)

Earth Day launched 50 years ago. 2020 is cause for a global celebration, if not for some bits of lipid-coated protein commanding human awareness, planet-wide.

In St. Louis, our Earth Day-365 leaders are rallying to help us  celebrate, learn, and organize VIRTUALLY, at the safe and healthy Social Distance. Over NINE days of eco-logical events, folks here in the Earthworms region will celebrate, while staying apart and healthy. Green learning, music and much more for all, April 18-26!

Dr. Jess Watson and Bob Henkel of Earth Day-365 talk with Earthworms' Jean Ponzi about upcoming events, and how ALL of us can join this semi-centennial of Life On Earth connection.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Earth Day: history of a genius event with Dr. Adam Rome (May 2018)

Music: One Mint Julep, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
Thanks to Andy Coco, Andy Heaslet, and Jon Valley Earthworms tag-team engineers. 

We humans under stress, amazingly, recharge with a You-Can-Do. Especially when the DO gives us breaks from the stressors.

As our entire species copes at once with the impersonal power of non-living bits of protein to separate us in yet more ways, we are choosing to connect in unprecedented, healing ways. Healing for us, and for our super-stressed (by humans) planet.

ECO CHALLENGE is one of these connectors. Available via your preferred tech device for the entire month of April. Which includes the 50th Annual Earth Day, likely to be festival-free. 

Lacy Cagle, Director of Learning for EcoChallenge.org, presents this motivating, multi-focus You-Can-Do. To WHOLE up our Earth relations and habits, while we are HOLED up, hopefully, in anti-viral best practice. 

Thanks to Andy Coco and Andy Heaslet, engineering for Earthworms in our all-remote Social Distanced locales.

Stay Safe - Be Well!

Related Earthworms Conversations:  

Making Green our Normal with Kathy Kuntz (Oct 2019) 

Storytelling, Deep Listening: Antidotes to Toxic Public Discourse (July 2019)

Try Living Plastic Free! EcoChallenge from July 2019

Charlotte, North Carolina, a "city with the best of everything," is making Green a priority! Vision, leadership, and tracking replicable examples have become the norm thanks to efforts of Amy Aussieker and her organization, Envision Charlotte.

From mandating building energy efficiency (which benefits building owners and occupants) to innovating with Circular Economy principles this historic metro area is modeling 21st century sustainability in fiscally and socially beneficial action.

Amy Aussieker talked with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi in advance of her March 10 and 11 presentations to the US Green Building Council-Missouri Gateway Chapter and St. Louis Green Business Challenge. St. Louis is doing some of this too - how can we grow these efforts here?

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Engineer

Music: Butter II, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case

Related Earthworms Conversations: 
Green America: Campaigns for Solutions with Beth Porter (Nov 2019) 

Making Green our Normal with Kathy Kuntz (Oct 2019)

Slow Money's Woody Tasch (July 2018)
Anything else about economics? Slow Money

Bugs benefitting humans? Doug Tallamy's research and reason lays out an eco-logical banquet of ways insect life supports our own - and he calls on each one of us to return the favor, by growing native plants. Tallamy's message is passionate and practical - and clear enough for us ALL to take to heart.

Tallamy's first book, Bringing Nature Home (2007, Timber Press), has become the go-to best bet for inspiring lawn-lovers to switch allegiance to a truly lively (meaning largely NATIVE) personal landscape. His new book, Nature's Best Hope (Feb 2020, Timber Press), jumped onto The NY Times Bestseller List in less than a month. Read Washington Post short essay from 2-12-20

His first midwestern speaking gigs, in St. Louis on March 6-7, sold out in days. This Earthworms conversation is a great chance to hear THE BEST explainer of how we are part of Nature, and how our personal landscapes - from suburban yards to city balconies - CAN turn around catastrophic ecological decline, if we work together and Grow Natives NOW. We can grow what Tallamy encouragingly calls Homegrown National Park. Dig it!

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran

THANKS to Sasha Hay and Jon Valley, engineers for Earthworms

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Nancy Lawson, The Humane Gardener (Feb 2019)

Native Plant Garden Tour: See, Grow, Love! (Aug 2017) - look for this tour again in 2020 - and find St. Louis Audubon's Bring Conservation Home program cited by Doug Tallamy in Nature's Best Hope as a program transforming local plant aesthetics. 

Lawn Alternatives with Neil Diboll of Prairie Nursery (Aug 2017)

In the Company of Trees, Forest Bathing with Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh  Jan 2019)

Promoting growing and ethically gathering herbs, understanding these plants' healing properties, and appreciating Nature. These are the roots of learning and work of Tend & Flourish School of Botanicals.

Longtime organic farmer Crystal Moore Stevens and botanist Alex Queatham have joined friendly forces to teach others how to appreciate and use herbs. Their first (filled!) Herbal Apprenticeship class is working toward completion of study. Their programs at public venues bring their knowledgable love of herbaceous plants to an increasingly receptive audience.

As Crystal eloquently states, this work is Creating Cultivated Ecologies in the minds, hearts and practices of people exploring the potentials of herbs.

Music: Divertimento (k.131) - Kevin MacLeod from WA Mozart

THANKS to Sasha Hay and Jon Valley, our KDHX engineers 

Related Earthworms Conversations: Grow, Create, Inspire with Crystal Moore Stevens (Oct 2016)

Fungus Farming at McCully Heritage Project (Feb 2018)

Kate Estwing Grows, Arranges, Loves . . . Slow Flowers (July 2018)

Labyrinth: Walking Sacred Ground with Robert Fishbone (Sept 2019)

A Cinematic Ode to Seed Savers (Nov 2016)

Lifelong pals Schober and Findlay are funnier than any roomful of humans put together. KDHX fans will recall their weekly escapade avalanche, St. Louis Brain Sandwich, where a Branschweiger Hut, cheeseballs, The Good Fathers, and timeless tunes like "Never Swat a Fly" helped fix the uniqueness bar for this station from our on-the-fly get-go.

When their conjoined brain left (a yawping hole in) the KDHX airwaves in 2015, a new weekly meetup spawned literary ambitions, drenched in laughs. We Never Got To Be Zombies - Fifty-One Years of Fiddling with Fate is the new memoir output of this duo's commitment to making life lighter.

Their curlique'd CV covers time in the military (can you say "Discipline?"), the movies, on the verge of Catholic priesthood, St. Louis Chase Park Plaza's professional wrestling ring and many more looney niches.

How is this environmental podcast content? How Not! Who can't use a hearty ha-ha to lube the works that keep one doing Green Stuff in this era of humankind (sic). THANKS, Jim and Jay!

Earthworms favorite number from the Colin Sphinctor Band:
River Des Peres Song. gives you an earful of Jim Findlay. Jean Ponzi lives in the R des P watershed; this is my neighborhood river. 

Music: Agnes Polka, performed live at KDHX by Chia Band

THANKS to Jon Valley, engineering this Earthworms edition
Related Earthworms Conversations:  

Joe Mohr - Enviro Poet and Cartoonist (Nov 2015)

Community Radio: Purpose, Values, Insider Insights (Aug 2015)

The New Territory: Traversing the Literary Midwest with Tina Casagrande (May 2017)

Cheers to 30 Years of KDHX with Jeff Ritter, First Voice On-Air (July 2017)

In the woods of west St. Louis County, a haven for  birds of prey has been healing injured raptors and forging bird-to-human bonds of caring since 1986. World Bird Sanctuary is one of North America's largest facilities for the conservation of birds.

World Bird takes their talons on the road, generously! For this visit to KDHX, Liberty the Southern Bald Eagle and Jett the Kestral brought along Roger Holloway, WBS Deputy Director, and Field Studies Coordinator Tess Rogers. Liberty didn't have much (that you can hear) to say, yet he contributed splendidly to this Earthworms conversation, focused around our region's annual Eagle Days education events. 

Events in Clarksville, MO, and on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge bring out visitors by the hundreds, despite January cold, but you can enjoy viewing eagles almost anytime during winter months along the Mississippi River. Open water this far south draws Bald Eagles downstream for abundant fishing, giving chill-friendly humans spectacular nature observation time.

Be sure to visit World Bird Sanctuary SOON, and again if it's been awhile. You can catch "Wings Over Water" and other bird shows they provide at events around St. Louis, and beyond. 

Music: Clean Water and Raven Song, performed live at KDHX by The Raptor Project, house band from World Bird Sanctuary.

THANKS to Jon Valley, engineering this Earthworms edition

Related Earthworms Conversations:

St. Louis Legendary Bird Man: Remembering Walter Crawford (Jan 2015)
Wild Bird Rehab: Supporting Songbirds with Joe Hoffman (Sept 2017)

Bluebirds! (June 2019)

Camera Traps: Tools for Conservation (Aug 2016)

It's just before sunset in Forest Park, a nature haven in the City of of St. Louis. A man in a parka, toting backpack full of recording equipment, strides into a wooded copse  he knows well. He listens, waiting, but not for too long. An owl calls.

                       
Mark H.X. Glenshaw has made this kind of trek most days since December 2005. His habits of observation are a personal passion, and a source of inspiration to many who join his Owl Prowls.

The Owl Man of Forest Park shares recent stories of Charles, a male Great Horned Owl he has been observing now for 14 years, and of Charles mates Sarah, Samantha, Olivia and now Danielle. He gives park owls these names, but that's his romantic nod to the Great Horned Owls he loves. His citizen science is meticulous, passionate, persistent and generously shared. You can join him!

Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by Dave Black

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Natives Raising Natives: People and Butterflies (May 2017)

Purple Martins, America's Most Wanted Bird (May 2016)
Bears! with Laura Conlee, MO Dept of Conservation Biologist (2018)

Missouri Coalition for the Environment has celebrated 50 years of environmental advocacy, legal work, education and policy-making in 2019. It's been a gala year of recognition well earned, with plenty more to do.

This conversation with Heather Navarro, MCE Executive Director, caps the year with Heather's perspectives on the work, processes as well as outcomes. Heather's service extended to public life when she was elected Alderwoman of the City of St. Louis 28th Ward in 2017.

Some of what she's proudest of at MCE? The organization's robust capacity-building Internship program and concerted work to integrate racial equity awareness and practices into MCE's everyday action. 

A series of recent KDHX Earthworms conversations salute the work of MCE, with both personal and professional BIG THANKS for opportunities to serve our shared goals. Onward, into a new decade of Green action!

Music: Washboard Suzie, performed live at KDHX by Zyedeco Crawdaddies

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer from Sierra Club

Related MCE Earthworms Conversations: 

Citizens Pocket Guide to Enviro-Action with Caitlin Zera 

Tosha Phonix: Organizing Food Justice, Growing Community

Known & Grown STL: New Brand Grows Capacity for Local Food

Superfund Site, Water Action Updates

Water Issues: Meddling, Muddling, Advocacy

Kay Drey: A Lifetime Engaged on Nuclear Issues

Known world-wide for his science-informed nature writing, Richard Louv has defined Vitamin N (what all humans need to imbibe more of) and Nature Deficit Disorder, what kids today have and can (this matters!) recover from.

Richard Louv's new book is Our Wild Calling, How Connecting with Animals can Transform Our Lives - and Save Theirs. In this anthology of stories, science and solutions, he invites us to dwell in and create Habitats of the Heart, and live a Reciprocity Principle. His work forms a vision alternative to dystopian despair, using poetry and practicality.

Since his landmark publication in 2007 of "Last Child In The Woods," Richard Louv has become an international spokesperson for the value of humans connecting (and re-connecting) to Nature.  Earthworms is honored to share this conversation with you!

Music: Taproom, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran

THANKS to Andy Heaslet from Sierra Club, Earthworms engineer
Related Earthworms Conversations: Ralph Nader on his Fable "Animal Envy" (Nov 2016)
Joe Mohr, Poet and Enviro-Cartoonist (Nov 2015)

Resources: Check out and subscribe to eNewsletters of BiodiverseCity St. Louis and the Missouri Environmental Education Association. Even if you don't live near KDHX, you'll find good stuff you can use in these well-crafted missives. 

Here in St. Louis, few of us deal with is, most of us rarely see it, and hardly any of us have ever been ON it. But the Mississippi River is a force here. And on Earth, as our planet's fourth largest watershed. Missouri Historical Society tell's this river's story in a new exhibit, Mighty Mississippi - that lives up to its name!

Hear the story behind this 5-year exhibit project from David Lobbig, Curator of Environmental Life at MHS. David has lived it, from the tough choice among artifacts to the messages this landmark work aims to convey, Mighty Mississippi conveys a torrent of human and natural history. Then go see the exhibit!

Photos from MHS: (top) Exhibit logo; Harper's Weekly illustration of St. Louis Mississippi River 1800s waterfront; Mississippi River facts; (bottom) David Lobbig and Amanda Bailey, MHS Exhibits Register, install a 1,000 year old salt pan; river trash sculpture by Libby Reuter; frozen Mississippi in 1905. 

Mighty Mississippi is open to the public through April 18, 2021, in Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.
Admission is free.

Music: Cadillac Desert, performed live at KDHX by William Taylor

THANKS to Sasha Hay and Jon Valley, Earthworms engineers

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

Barge-Based Trash Basher Chad Pregracke (May 2017)

River Des Peres Watershed with Theo Smith (August 2018)

Invest in Infrastructure, Nature's and Ours - Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (April 2017)

See Water: Watershed Cairns, Artist Libby Reuter (April 2016)

What's the latest from Climate activist Brian Ettling? He's been at this work since 2012, specifically working toward U.S. legislation through the Citizens Climate Lobby, and speaking up about it!.

Brian catches up on his work as Chair, Climate Reality Project in Portland, Oregon - climate out there  bit different than in STL - with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi. A LOT of interactions, as we plug away at IMPACTS.

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms volunteer engineer, enviro-action professional with Sierra Club

Related Earthworms Conversations: Climate Communications at Saint Louis Zoo (Sept 2019)

Grow Solar St. Louis and Metro East (August 2019)

Ecology is still relatively "new" to circles of scientific respect, but Indigenous peoples world-wide have grown scientific, creative and functional expertise from ecological understanding, as long as humans have been around. What can we learn from this today?

Ecologist Alejandro Frid works and learns in circles of science, Indigenous cultures and environmental activism in British Columbia. Perspectives and experience shared in his new book Changing Tides, An Ecologist's Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene (New Society, 2019) make this Earthworms conversation one worth hearing, sharing and seeding into our world views.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms' audio engineer

Music: Artifact by Kevin MacLeod

Related Earthworms Conversations: Native Science with Dr. Daniel Wildcat (October 2018)

Photographer Neeta Satam: Documenting Himalayan Climate Change (March 2018)

Environmental problems make a lot of news, but solutions are in the works in many places too. Where thinking around a whole system is taking place, ideas-in-action deserve a listen!

Beth Porter, Climate Campaigns Director for the DC based non-profit Green America, digs into making solutions work, toward a green economy. 

The Earthworms conversation focuses on Porter's recent extensive research into recycling - her book Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine sorts out the recycling system - and on Green America's Cool It! campaign to transform refrigerants from climate-whacking HFCs to options that will keep cool both our stuff and our planet.  

Green America works to harness economic power - the strength of consumers, investors, businesses and the marketplace - to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.  

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer

Music: Butter II, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case

Related Earthworms Conversations: Drawdown: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018)

Bin There, Do This! STL Recycling Update (June 2018)