KDHX Earthworms

Solar costs are going down, while equipment efficiency continues to improve. Even if electric rates are stable where you are, solar provides climate protecting clean, renewable power. Could this be the time you consider going solar?                        

Lisa Cagle of Grow Solar St. Louis and Chris Krusa of Grow Solar Metro East talk with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi about these program offerings for the St. Louis region, and about the benefits of solar in general. Check the program websites for details, including Power Hour presentations around town.

Supported by program contractor StraightUp Solar, and in partnership with municipalities, Grow Solar is bringing discounted costs and convenient, thorough solar option info to STL region communities in both Missouri and Illinois. Residential installs can combine group-buy cost-cuts with federal, local and utility incentives and rebates. At Power Hour events, solar experts will evaluate individual sites for solar power potential, on the roof or on the ground.

Music: Mister Sun's tune Hunters Permit, performed live at KDHX
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, fellow Green Being and audio engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Set The PACE St. Louis: Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency Financing (January 2017)

All Electric America? (August 2016)

American Solar Challenge: Sun-Powered Collegiate Racers (July 2016)

TED Talks bring Ideas Worth Sharing to audiences worldwide, in the legendary live-speaking forums for Technology, Entertainment and Design. In St. Louis, TEDx Gateway Arch proudly features all local voices, in our town's best venues.

                 

CRASH COURSE is the theme when TEDx brings artists, entertainers and revolutionaries to The Pageant on Thursday, September 12 at 6 p.m. This program will feature TWO eco-logical speakers: Sarah Aman, graphic designer at PGAV, and KDHX's own Jean Ponzi. Plus live music, interviews and performance art.

Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and Sierra Club Conservation Specialist, guest-hosts this special edition of Earthworms, where our longtime host gets to be the guest, and both guests encourage us humans to swerve on the course, as well as we can.

Check out the Crash Course program online - and at the show, or when this round of TEDx talks is posted on YouTube.

Thanks to Alive! Magazine for a conversation with Jean, with Negativity coming through as a FUNdamental of Earth Life.

Music: Inferno Reel, performed live at KDHX by Matt Flinner.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Guest Host and Engineer for Earthworms.

Related Conversations: Legendary St. Louis Activist and TEDx Crash Course presenter Percy Green talks with Hank Thompson on Tangazo! (July 2018)

Global Mosquito Alert aims to mobilize professional and volunteer citizen scientists from around the world, using mobile apps, to track and control mosquito borne viruses. Dr. Anne Bowser, Director of Innovation for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, reports on this collaboration involving citizen science associations in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia and the U.S.

Backed by UN Environment, this initiative draws on successes from programs like Barcelona's public engagement Mosquito Alert and the school-based U.S. Invasive Mosquito Project. Because monitoring types of mosquitos and sites where mosquitos are breeding is a significant element in controlling mosquito borne diseases like West Nile and Zika Virus, yellow fever, malaria, chikungunya and and dengue fever.

Could St. Louis marshal this kind of collaboration? Check out this Earthworms conversation!

Music: Public Enemy, performed live at KDHX by Godfathers

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms so green savvy engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Bug Off: Need to Know Mosquito Control from St. Louis County Vector Control (June 2017) Fight the Bite with the 4 Ds from City of St. Louis (July 2016)

PR pro James Hoggan has decoded misinformation campaigns, and researched how humans learn, respond and can be manipulated. He's traveled through the "perfect storm" of climate communications, and explored what spurs us to become aggressively close-minded. These voyages into realms of despair have not dimmed his curious spirit, his determination to do, be, and communicate better.

Photos: Earthworms guest James Hoggan.  Hoggan (right) talking with scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki (left) and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, colleagues referenced in this interview. 

Our conversation draws from Hoggan's book I'm Right and You're an Idiot  - the toxic state of public discourse and how to clean it up (2nd edition 2019, New Society Publisher). We're focused especially on the latter part of the message. May you find this encouraging!

Learn more from James Hoggan's DeSmogBlog.

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms thoughtfully green engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Handprints: Gregory Norris Retouches Human Impacts (March 2019)

Climate - A New Story with Charles Eisenstein (Nov 2018)

Nuclear power plants. Radioactive waste from building the WWII atomic bombs. Low-grade nuclear weapons waste. Nuclear medicine.  These complicated technical issues are hardly citizen stuff, except for Kay Drey. 

Nuclear focused groups here and abroad consider St. Louis "ordinary citizen" Kay Drey as both ally and expert resource in their work. For well over 40 years, Kay has dug into these issues, both vetted researched them with science and policy professionals, and spoken up about them in countless public forums.

More impressive than her own advocacy, according to her longtime colleagues and friends Arlene Sandler (Board member for Missouri Coalition for the Environment) and special librarian Rebecca Wright, is how Kay has empowered countless fellow ordinary citizens to get up and testify, with personal viewpoints and facts, armed with info from Kay's files.

Kay Drey is an untiring opponent for causes she espouses, especially nuclear power, and an enviro Living Treasure in Missouri. Earthworms owes a great debt to Kay: in the show's first year her call to cover nuclear waste transportation issues affirmed for volunteer host Jean Ponzi that these conversations on KDHX were a real and necessary community service. Thank you, Kay Drey!

Kay is also a founding member of Missouri Coalition for the Environment. MCE is celebrating 50 years of achievement in 2019. This conversation with Kay Drey is one in a series of Earthworms tributes to the work of MCE, especially the people who help it grow.

Music: Bitter Root, performed live at KDHX by Matt Flinner
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and Partner-In-Green

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

A Tribute to Leo Drey (June 2015) 

MCE Food Policy Update (June 2019) 

Peoples' Pocket Guide to Environmental Action with Caitlin Zera (July 2017)

As littered plastic from our bottles, bags, straws and more gets swept from streets to creeks to oceans, where the kinds of creatures we eat are eating plastic that passes to us, humans are growing more aware of this Plastic Pollution problem. But what can we do?

EcoChallenge.org leads a friendly competition for teams of people, nation-wide, who want move toward living Plastic-Free. Here is St. Louis, teams are taking this challenge from leading cultural institutions like Missouri Botanical Garden and the Saint Louis Zoo. From a wide range of learning and action options, EcoChallenge participants are tracking their Plastic-Free progress throughout this month of July. The program's goal is to build awareness and habits that persist when this summer's EcoChallenge ends.

 
EcoChallenge Director of Learning Lacy Cagle returns to Earthworms, detailing this initiative's What and Why. Joyce Gorrell, Green Team leader and Sustainability Projects  Manager for the Garden's EarthWays Center, joins Lacy to share what's motivating her, and her Garden EcoChallenge team.  

Listening to this Earthworms edition in July? Check out this Challenge!

Music: Jamie, performed live at KDHX by Yankee Racers

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and partner-in-Green

Related Earthworms Conversations: Life Without Plastic? Jay Sinha says Emphatically YES (Jan 2018)

Lacy Cagle: Learning Green, Living Greener (Oct 2017)

TerraCycle Founder Tom Szaky Rocks Recycling! (Sept 2015)

Joyce Gorrell: How TerraCycle Works (Sept 2015)

Reduce, Prevent and Transform Waste with Kelly Dennings (Feb 2019)

Sometimes, here on Earthworms, we focus our conversation on one unique element of Life on Earth. This time it's Squirrels.

Don Corrigan - respected local newspaper editor, college professor and ranconteur - has done this too, with his new book Nuts About Squirrels, The Rodents That Conquered Popular Culture (McFarland, 2019). His talks on this topic are wildly popular, hear?

Don's research has unearthed nuggets about TV, movie, radio, cartoon, sports, community and Civil War squirrels. He also finds squirrels raising genuine enviro-awareness, right in our own backyards:

• Is climate change causing squirrels in America to migrate north, or move up into mountain elevations?
• Do humans bear any responsibility for disrupting squirrel habitat?
• Are squirrels better equipped than we are to deal with effects of climate change?

Keep your mind open and the holes in your house eaves closed up, to enjoy this salute to SQUIRRELS!

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms fellow-enviro engineer

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

Popular Culture Related Earthworms Conversations: 

Population Media Center: Educating through Soap Operas (July 2017)

Jeff Ritter: KDHX 1st Voice On Air (and Ph.D. in American Culture,  July 2017)

And for those not so nuts about Squirrels: Humane Wildlife Solutions with Garry Guinn (March 2019)

State bird of Missouri and New York, symbol of happiness, poet's inspiration, and indicator of ecological health. All true of Siala sialis, a small thrush found in woodlands, farmlands, orchards - and your yard, if you're lucky and smart enough to offer them habitat.

Ann Earley and Bob Siemer are true friends and helpers of nature - also certified Master Naturalists. Missouri Prairie Foundation recently honored them with the Prairie Volunteer(s) of the Year Award, well deserved. Their knowledge of Bluebirds comes from keen, joyful observation and conserving care.

Ann and Bob are also members of the Missouri Bluebird Society, a feathered fan club about to hold their annual conference in St. Louis, July 12-14, 2019.

As we humans encroach on habitats of others, bluebird lore can inspire a more caring, savvy and careful approach - while singing!

Music: For Michael, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran

Thanks to Andy  Heaslet, Earthworms fine-feathered engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Purple Martins: America's Most Wanted Bird (May 2016)   The Owl Man of Forest Park (2015)

Bears! July 2018

Wild Bird Rehab: Supporting Songbirds with Joe Hoffman (June 2016)

Bluebird songs in the background courtesy of xeno-canto.

What does local food mean? And what do you need to know - and to prove - to grow capacity for local-food producers, and get their foods to an equitable range of eaters?

Missouri Coalition for the Environment is digging deep, strategically, into these questions, and raising a healthy crop of results! Two big ones are the launch of Known & Grown STL, a branding campaign to help progressive farmers working within 150 miles of St. Louis spread the word about their practices, their products and the sustainable principles grounding their work, and a Farm to Institution Feasibility Study.

Rae Miller (left), MCE's Local Food Coordinator, and Food & Farm Director Melissa Vatterott (right) lead a regional effort to better promote local foods and cultivate connections between farmers and consumers, at both individual and institutional scales. Developing data, partnerships and sound policy supporting Healthy Food Access  is one of four areas of priority focus for the Coalition.

This Earthworms conversation is the first in a series that will celebrate MCE achievements and leadership during this 50th Anniversary year.

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

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms green-savvy engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:

The Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide (January 2019) 

The Easy Chicken: Fowl Fun Comes to You (Dec 2018)

Custom Foodscaping with Matt Lebon (December 2018)

Farm on a Building Raises the Roof! (August 2016)

Urban Agriculture Guide: New Tool for City Farmers (June 2016)

Just 7 years back, in 2012, Green-hearted architects Frank and Gay Lorberbaum and woodworker Paul Krautman launched an enterprise for city kids. Into an on-loan school gym space, they hustled wood supplies and sets of tools to empower children to design and build: furniture for their rooms and problem-solving skills for their own bright futures, every single Saturday morning.

Today Building Futures continues Saturday workshop sessions, takes tools and skill-building out to schools, collaborates with neighboring writing and cultural groups, runs very cool summer camps, and more STEAM-based project learning - in their own well-equipped city studio building!

Earthworms talked in 2013 with BF students, one of whom is about to enter Ranken Technical College. Today we welcome back Mister Frank (Lorberbaum), and meet program manager Mister Lawrence (Prograis) and Mister Jay (Reeves), BF's board VP who will take the helm in August of Boat Building Camp. Before this interview, these guys worked with 300 school kids, a normally constructive BF day.      

Building Futures Summer Camps are registering now. Triple Play camp for students entering grades 4-6 fills each day of camp week (July 8-12 and 22-26) with with Design & Build, Printmaking and Caribbean Festival Arts, as BF partners with neighboring arts groups. Boat Building Camp (July 29-August 2), open to children entering grades 4-8. Scholarships are abundantly available.

Congratulations to visionary leaders whose work building futures for urban children is creating structures with wood, in many lives. Could yours be touched too? Volunteer help is WELCOME!

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms deep-Green engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: The Big Book of Nature Activities (June 2016)

We love good food, and going out to eat it. Thanks to the St. Louis Green Dining Alliance, food and restaurant culture here is sustainably vibrant!

               
Jenn De Rose, Program Manager for our town's GDA, supports Green efforts of chefs, owners, managers and staff of over 110 restaurants, food trucks and catering companies, currently certified by GDA. Earthworms reviews the menu of options these food pros use to guide their integration of Green efforts into the demanding, glorious business of Food.

Joining De Rose and Earthworms host Jean Ponzi is Hamish Bahrami, owner of Cafe Natasha - certified with 4 Stars in their first GDA year - whose efforts have helped her culturally rich South Grand neighborhood become a Green Dining District.

KDHX connection: Jenn De Rose has DJ'd on FM-88 and GDA Program Assistant Victoria Donaldson serves on the KDHX Program Committee. THANKS for music contributions, too!

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

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, engineering Earthworms, working for Sierra Club
Related Earthworms Conversations: Custom Foodscaping with Matt Lebon (Dec 2018)

Kakao Chocolate: Best of the Bitter and the Sweet (Dec 2017)

Farmer Girl Meats: Pasture to Porch, Sustainably (June 2016)

Yes, Nature can probably get along without us, but we are here and we're part of Nature, our nature creates as well as whacks. How can we renew this connection? To heal and protect Nature - and us!

           

Andres Edwards - educator, media professional and welcomed returning Earthworms guest - brings ideas and heart to this conversation from his new book Renewal - How Nature Awakens Our Creativity, Compassion, and Joy (2019, New Society Publishers). 

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer

Music: Brandenburg No.4, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Kevin MacLeod

Related Earthworms Conversations: In the Company of Trees from Forest Bather Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (January 2019)

Handprints: Retouching Human Impacts with Gregory Norris (March 2019)

The Big Book of Nature Activities (January 2016)

Can we humans be "good" when our collective and individual actions contribute to environmental crises like climate change, habitat loss and species extinction? What does "good" mean? And how do we proceed in the face of consequences of our impacts?
                          
These are deep questions. Philosopher and environmental spirituality scholar Roger Gottlieb explores the ambiguities, challenges and opportunities we face, in his new book "Morality and the Environmental Crisis," and in this conversation with fellow enviro-advocate and deep thinker/feeler, Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

Give a listen. Your thoughts and responses will not disappoint. And you may well come away motivated and encouraged.

Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by STL's own Dave Black

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms techno-sustainable engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Handprints: Retouching Human Impacts with Gregory Norris (March, 2019)

Native Science: All Our Relations (Oct 2018)

Community Radio: Purpose, Value and Insider Insights (Aug 2015)

Listening to: the thread of a tale, voice music, history, mystery, action conveyed through words direct into heart and ears, eyes and mind. Teller and Audience merge in the story exchange.

     

The St. Louis Storytelling Festival is the largest free storytelling festival in the world. Celebrating its 40th year, for all ages of humankind, the alchemy of this event strikes sparks around our Big River town. Tellers of international to local renown will take their tales to public and special venues April 25 - May 4, 2019.

Current and former festival directors Lisa Overholser and Nan Kammann-Judd bring their love of this interaction to the Earthworms studio - and the festival brings a night of Irish tales to The Stage at KDHX on Tuesday, April 30.

Throughout time, people have preserved their culture, values, and beliefs through storytelling. Giving voice to the human experience, storytelling allows families and communities to pass on their history to succeeding generations, and it remains an evolving, dynamic art form.

Music: Butter II, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case
Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Green-savvy audio engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

The Patterning Instinct in Human Nature with Jeremy Lent (June 2017)

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

Mid-way along his marathon cycling trip from CA to MA, Tim Oey is educating humans of all ages about: Oceans, Plastic, Climate Change and Kids. His two wheeling fleet travel mode packs everything he needs, with (as is his life practice) ZERO WASTE.

Tim's stop here with KDHX Earthworms followed three talks this morning at our neighboring Performing Arts Academy. He's on track for his goal of 180 talks in 95 days. Some are presentations, many are conversations. All are likely - as you can hear - thoughtful, encouraging, and gently intense about serious stuff.

Music: Magic 9, performed live at KDHX by Infamous Stringdusters
Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Green-living engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: David Henry, Climate Walker (Dec 2015)

Brian Ettling's Climate Change Advocacy Marches On! (Oct 2018)

Climate: A New Story with Charles Eisenstein (Nov 2018)

American Hemp, the new book from Earthworms guest Jen Hobbs (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019), details "how growing our newest cash crop can improve our health, clean our environment, and slow climate change." 
                     
Hobbs details these claims for a plant brought to North America by British colonists, banned and pressed into service and banned again, and now legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill. Its seeds are a superfood. Its stalks house you in "HempCrete." Its oil, the substance CBD, can calm anxiety, control seizures, and more.

With real potentials for this flowering plant to earn as much as $30K per acre, its story is growing fast.

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

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms green-savvy audio engineer

You say you've got squirrels in your attic. Garry Guinn says you've got a hole in your house, and works with you to secure a fix that benefits both the critters and you. 

               
Garry's business, Humane Wildlife Solutions LLC runs on eco-logic with super Green cred: this St. Louis enterprise endorsed by all the wildlife agencies in town! His practices like "exclusion and eviction" apply his deep understanding of animal behavior, including the animals (us) who call him to deal with their "pests." Note that "extermination" does not need to be on this action list, for a company that gives a multi-month guarantee of problem-solving success!

Meet Garry Guinn and Humane Wildlife Solutions LLC at the Green Living Festival - Saturday June 1 - Missouri Botanical Garden.

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

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms podcast engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Nancy Lawson, the Humane Gardener (Feb 2019)

Bears! (July 2018)

Bug Off! Mosquito Control Need-to-Know (June 2017)

Camera Traps: Tools for Conservation (Aug 2016)

A power plant burns coal to produce electricity. As with any other combustion, ash remains. This ash is typically stored in "ponds" near the plant. What do ponds do? The fill up, they overflow, they leak into groundwater. With coal ash in this flow, toxics like Arsenic, Lead, Molybdenum, Mercury and more get into our water supplies.

                            
LEO, the Labadie Environmental Organization, has been tracking and acting on Missouri coal ash issues for more than 11 years. LEO organizers Patricia Schuba and Janet Dittrich bring to this Earthworms edition research, observations and an urgent request to YOU to weigh in as MO-Dept of Natural Resources develops a plan to present to US EPA.

Groups like LEO across the country are working to hold power plants responsible for cleaning up coal ash ponds, and managing coal combustion waste responsibly. In Missouri, a public comment period through March 28 gives citizens the chance to comment on MO-Dept of Natural Resources proposal to regulate coal ash.

You can sign a LEO petition through March 21.

Check out related coverage by Eli Chen of St. Louis Public Radio.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Green-savvy enineer

Music: Stomp Hat, performed live at KDHX by Matt Flinner

Related Earthworms Conversations: Value of Water Coalition (Oct 2015)

A lot of enviro-info dis-credits our human species for the impacts of our "footprints" on Earth's systems, and on beings other than ourselves.

Scientist and public health advocate Greg Norris was inspired, while working with Life Cycle Analyses, to look up from Footprints and focus on the human part that can collaborate, create and restore. "Handprinting" has become a vehicle to encourage and measure our capacity to be a benefit on Earth.

Beneficial actions - and the ripples of influence they create - can now be measured through a key piece of Norris' work-in-progress, the app Handprinter.org.

This tool and idea aim to ensure that Earth is better off because of human beings, than without us.

Gregory Norris will presents "Handprints and Footprints" in St. Louis on Tuesday evening, March 12 for the U.S. Green Building Council-Missouri Gateway Chapter

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms net-positive impact engineer

Music: Trambone, performed at KDHX by Brian Curran

Related Earthworms Conversations: Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Dr. Daniel Wildcat (October 2018)

The Patterning Instinct in Human Nature with Jeremy Lent (June 2017)

You too can BEE one! Or Taconite Fly or Opossum or Golden Ragwort one, gardening on an eco-logical team with critters and plants you've overlooked, or maybe even maligned. 

Nancy Lawson invites us to understand more of the habits and roles of species around us, to bust the dualistic myth of Pest vs Beneficial. Her book The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife is a long love note to relationships we can all enjoy. Such as with Tachinid Flies.

Coming to St. Louis Friday March 8: Nurturing Backyard Habitat, a talk-and-mingle with Nancy Lawson and local native plant professionals, 5-8 p.m. at Powder Valley Nature Center. Click here to learn more and register. Thanks to STL Audubon, Greenscape Gardens, Missouri Department of Conservation and Grow Native! for bringing Nancy Lawson to us.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and listening buddy.
Music: Divertimento k131, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Kevin MacLeod

Related Earthworms Conversations: Relatives, Responsibility, Mindfulness with Dr. Daniel Wildcat (Oct 2018)

Bears! (July 2018)

The Owl Man of Forest Park (July 2015)