KDHX Earthworms

In 2015, Pope Francis message about Climate Change called on people of faith world-wide - not only Roman Catholics - to take action to protect Earth's resources.

A St. Louis consortium of Catholic parents, students and leaders is calling this community to convene, learn, strategize and respond. This edition of Earthworms talks about why, and how, this response is growing.

Sacred Earth: Our Call to Action Conference, Saturday March 9 9 am - 2:30 pm, hosted by Nerinx Hall High School. 

Guests Jamie Hasemeier of Holy Redeemer Parish, Mark Etling from St. Nicholas Parish, and Maggie Hannick of St. Joseph's Academy are conveners, with other partners, of this conference.

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

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms so-green engineer, on loan from Sierra Club

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

Drawdown: Solutions to REVERSE Global Warming (March 2018)
Brian Ettling: Climate Change Advocacy Marches On (Oct 2018)

On Care of Our Common Home: Exploring Pope Francis' Message (Jan 2016)

Zero Waste Fish Fry: Holy Redeemer Parish is Hooked on Green (Feb 2018)

So you know the "Three Rs," right? Recycle is the famous one, but #1 in this trio (REDUCE) deserves more creative attention and - use!

                    

In a recent blog post, recycling professional Kelley Dennings considered why the recycling community may be ditching out on waste reduction. Dennings serves as Advisor to NewDream.org, one of Earthworms' favorite educational orgs.

When Dennigs added a degree in Public Health to her credentials and influence potential, she framed the sort of off-putting Reduce idea of in the human-centered focus of Prevention. Could this be a way to get our species to explore more New Dream's territory? Their motto: More Fun - Less Stuff!

  Resources that come up in this Earthworms conversation include New Dream's So Kind Alternative Gift Registry, an E-Z online way to request and give day-of-event help, shared experiences, homemade and secondhand gifts - and more. Plus references to Zero Waste, Scrap Exchange, Product Stewardship Institute and other Reduce-Reuse activity in the Waste Space.

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

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms so-Green engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Zero Waste Fish Fry Hooks Holy Redeemer in STL (Feb 2018)

Life Without Plastic? (Jan 2018)

TerraCycle's Rockin' Founder Tom Szaky (Sept 2015)

Getting modern humans out of our house-car-school-work boxes is no small feat. But whenever that may occur, our tall, spreading, leafy neighbors have what it takes to help our kind be more of our best selves. Potentials are TREE-mendous!

                       

Writer Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh enjoys "Forest Bathing" and researching good stories, facts and quotes. She has composed a gorgeous new book In The Company of Trees - Honoring Our Connection to the Sacred Power, Beauty and Wisdom of Trees (Adams/Simon and Schuster, Jan. 15 2019).  Each tree tale is illustrated with a color photograph, print or woodcut - in a work of art published in accord with Sustainable Forestry Initiative guidelines.

Earthworms is proud to host the first interview for this book!

If you are hearing this podcast in St. Louis before February 12, mark that date to learn about Calculating Tree Benefits in a free program at Missouri Botanical Garden in the BiodiverseCity STL Wild Ideas Worth Sharing Speaker Series. Tree Data is MOTIVATING!

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms True-Green Engineer

Music: Bitter Root, performed live at KDHX by Matt Flinner

Related Earthworms Conversations: Urban Forests: Seeing the Benefits from Trees - Oct 2016

PawPaw: Reviving America's Forgotten Fruit (Tree) - Sept 2015

Renegotiated by Congress every 5-7 years The Farm Bill impacts food production, nutrition assistance, habitat conservation, international trade, and much more. But try digging into its 1,000+ pages! 

Christina Badaracco, a registered dietician, dug deep into this topic  for her new book (with researcher and author Daniel Imhoff) The Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide (Island Press, Jan 2019). She brings perspective from this accessible, graphics-rich book to this Earthworms conversation. 

With a new farm bill just signed into law, we all need to understand the implications of food policy. What’s the impact of crop insurance? How does SNAP actually work? What would it take to create a healthier, more sustainable food system? 

Eaters, taxpayers, sustainable food system advocates: listen up!

Music: Who Gives, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, warmly welcomed back this week as Earthworms' engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

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

Citizenship: Responsibility is our Civic Ability to Respond (Nov 2018)

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

Kirsten Lie-Nielsen lives her dream of self-sufficiency in rural Maine - and shares the experience in her new book, So You Want to be a Modern Homesteader? (New Society, 2018). 

From finding the home place to prioritizing work and funds to enjoying the community flow when neighbors drop in, Kirsten covers options with practicality and a smile in her voice. Her goats are never far from the phone! Check out Kirsten's blog at hostilevalleyliving.com. 

Music: Cuttin' at the Point, performed live at KDHX by The Freight Hoppers. 

Special THANKS tonight to Anna Holland, Earthworms audio engineer for the past year+. We say farewell with this edition, Anna, appreciating the media professional you already are, and wishing you the BEST in your next round of College work. It was especially fun to have your perspectives on Citizenship on the show we produced right after the 2018 Election. 

Related Earthworms Conversations: Green Finned Hippy Farm: Purpose, Passion, Perspective, Hogs (Aug 2018)

Keeping Geese with Kirsten Lie-Nielsen (Nov 2017)

Crystal Moore Stevens: Grow, Create, Inspire (Oct 2016)

In their super-service quarter-century, Forest ReLEAF of Missouri has moved over 200,000 native species trees from seedlings to nursery transplants to solid ground in communities around the Show-Me-State.

ReLEAF works with Seniors to Young Friends to community folks. This intrepid non-profit trains and supports volunteer powered efforts to grow, track and maintain healthy Urban Forests. Community Forester Tom Ebeling talks with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi (some of her best friends are Trees) about this work, in a conversation celebrating ReLEAF's 25th anniversary and the many benefits of urban trees. 

If this interview inspires you to check out ReLEAF volunteer opportunities, don't resist! The work will grow on you. 

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms Engineer

Music: Magic 9 performed live at KDHX by Infamous Stringdusters

Related Earthworms Conversations: Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape with Jill Jonnes (October 2016)

Want to eat your home landscape? Want to work with Nature in some of the most efficient, effective and - Yes, EASIEST ways? Farmer and Permaculture practitioner Matt Lebon will set up your place to grow a feast for you - and for your bug-bird-nature neighbors.

Matt recently parlayed his five years of deep experience as manager of our town's EarthDance Organic Farm (home of the Farmer Training School) into his innovative enterprise Custom Foodscaping. He can design and plant a custom edible landscaping package for home or business customers, or work with you hands-on to help develop your own Herb Garden, Food Forest or profitable Vegetable Farm.

Matt's enthusiastic skills can produce Edible Schoolyards to Chef's Gardens to Taste-Full Home Gardens. As he says, "Have your landscape and eat it too!" Photos of Foodscape at VICIA Restaurant, Permaculture Orchard at Principia College, Chicken Food Forest at a private home.

         

Learning Opportunity: 2-Day Foodscaping Course - Feb 16-17 2019

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms audio engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

St. Louis Food Policy Coalition Grows Health & Environmental Resources (Dec 2015)

Farming on a Downtown Roof: Urban Harvest STL (June 2015)

Permaculturist Tao Orion Goes Beyond the War on Invasive Species (March 2016)

Urban Flower Farming with Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack (Feb 2015)

Social philosopher and mathematician Charles Eisenstein takes on the issue of our time, in terms that may give humankind another way to get our minds, hearts and action around Climate Change.

Drawing from Eisenstein's new book Climate, A New Story, this conversation with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi offers perspective, options and much-needed hope for our species capacity to course-correct relative to the systems that support life on Earth, including us.

Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by Dave Black.
THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms audio engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Drawdown: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018) 
Carl Pope: Creating A Climate of Hope (April 2018)

Joan Lipkin: Theater Takes on Climate Change (October 2017)

 What does "Citizenship" mean - and how can we revive, revitalize and re-energize it in society today?

Earthworms host Jean Ponzi explores Citizenship ideas and options with guests David Wilson - longtime regional sustainability professional who has led Citizenship Education Clearinghouse, MO Coalition for the Environment, and the OneSTL Regional Sustainability Plan process for East-West Gateway Council of Governments - and Anna Holland - student at Lewis & Clark College, volunteer for the  2018 Illinois Congressional campaign of Betsy Londrigan - and Earthworms audio engineer!

Citizens - Listen Up! Thank you!

Music: Balkan Twirl, performed at KDHX by Sandy Weltman and Carolbeth Trio

Missouri Coalition for the Environment's Ed Smith, Policy Director, and Water Policy Coordinator Maisah Khan present a report on current energy, water and pollution-related issues from the St. Louis Region.

This update covers potential EPA Superfund resolutions to the radioactive-material contaminated West Lake Landfill, clean-up proposals for lead contamination in the Big River, and more fine work from MCE.

As MCE approaches their milestone 50-year anniversary of service in 2019, Ed and Maisah and the MCE staff, interns, board and allies continue hard at work protecting Missouri's water and air quality, open space and food access. This is exemplary work - worth hearing!

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

THANKS to Jon Valley, engineering this week's Earthworms

Daniel Wildcat, Ph.D., proffers Traditional Ecological Knowledges as antidote (literally) to destruction. His scholarship and teaching at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, is rooted in the relationships of Indigenous knowledge, technology, environment and education - elements related to each other, and to us.

What can each of us learn from an Indigenous cultural and ecological perspective? And how can we apply ourselves as individual antidotes to destruction along this kind of path?

Dan Wildcat directs the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, and is a founder of the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group. 

Dr. Wildcat comes to St. Louis on November 8 as guest of the Harris World Ecology Center, and one of three speakers about Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This event is free, but registration is required.

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

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms diligent engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Plants, Indigenous People and Climate Change with Ethnobotanist Dr. Jan Salick (December 2015)

The Patterning Instinct in Human Nature (June 2017)

Our minds and bodies are powerful healers, and strong in maintaining well-being for each of us, overall. But do we use these inner tools?

The profession of Therapeutic Horticulture brings together plants and people, to explore and promote well-being in both profound and simple ways. Jeanne Carbone and her colleagues on the TH team at Missouri Botanical Garden offer a new program to help us explore and strengthen well-being, in partnership with Nature.

The setting for this exploration is Seiwa En, the Japanese Garden of Pure, Clear Harmony and Peace, at Missouri Botanical Garden in the City of St. Louis. Pathways and reflection points provide many opportunities to cultivate personal well-being.

This new program, Journey to Well-Being, includes three guided visits to Seiwa-En and prompts to experience and reflect on your own, in a series of weekly walks. Self-guiding options make this journey as convenient as it is powerful, especially in relation to a jewel of nature in the St. Louis region.

Registration is open for the winter session, with additional sessions coming in 2019.

Music: Bitter Root, performed live at KDHX by Matt Flinner

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

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

What's possible when we humans talk to each other? Brian Ettling believes a talk can turn the tide of harmful changes to Earth's climate. He's been acting on this conviction since 2012, when he joined the Climate Leaders Network, and became an active force in the Citizens' Climate Lobby.

Brian returns to Earthworms with an update on his interactions with legislators and fellow citizens - and an emphasis on key solutions each of us has the power to achieve:

• Communicate with elected leaders about climate issues
• Get involved with a group to "make your voice louder"
• Invest in clean energy and energy efficiency in your life
• Vote!

Coming to St. Louis October 17 - Brian Ettling and Fred Miller present "How to Speak about Climate Change with Confidence" hosted by St. Louis University - AND teaching a 3-hour adult class on Climate Change at St. Louis Community College, October 13. 

Music: Jamie, performed live at KDHX by Yankee Racers

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms Audio Engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:
David & the Giant Mailbox: Walking and Talking Climate, Nation-wide (December 2015)

DRAWDOWN: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (May 2018)

Climate of Hope with Sierra Club's Carl Pope (April 2018)

Brian Ettling for the Citizens Climate Lobby (December 2016)

In a downtown office building, entrepreneurs work side by side with a visiting group of Tibetan monks. Business ideas are taking shape and a brilliantly vivid "painting" with sand is, literally, making peace. It's all in a week's work for innovation culture in St. Louis!

Earthworms' guest Geshe Monlam Gyatso and his fellow monks of the Drepung Gomang monastery are on a Sacred Arts Tour to U.S. cities. Earthworms' friend (and fellow guest) Patty Maher is hosting this group, as she has with groups of monks for several years. The T-Rex incubator welcomes their creation of a World Peace Mandala, Sept 25-30. On Friday Sept 30, the monks'  Dissolution Ceremony will transform this beautiful work into a blessing of the waters of the Mississippi River in a ceremony everyone is welcome to attend.

Namaste!

Music: Balkan Twirl, performed live at KDHX by Sandy Weltman and the Carolbeth Trio

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms' ace audio engineer.

Related Earthworms' Conversations: Photographer Neeta Satam Documents Himalayan Climate Change (March 2018)

Patty Maher's Historic Green Home Rehab (August 2017)

Batteries. We rely on them, we burn through them - some of us want to recycle them. The national Product Stewardship partnership Call2Recycle works with battery manufacturers to support "circular economy" management of resources in batteries, for us all.

      Tim Warren, Earthworms host Jean Ponzi's longtime recycling colleague, shares a thorough report on the what-why-how of battery recycling for the U.S. today.

If you use power tools, a mobile phone, a laptop, a wristwatch or hearing aid, or drive a hybrid vehicle - or simply continue to use a flashlight - this update will be useful!

The Call2Recycle Locator can help you find a battery recycling option near you. Check it out - and recycle your batteries, of all kinds!

Music: Rear View, performed live at KDHX by Belle Star
THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms' intrepid engineer

City of St. Louis and near-suburb residents might think "our" watershed is nothing more than a concrete drainage ditch. Theo Smith, coalition chair, and other members of the River Des Peres Watershed Coalition, see this urban waterway differently.   

River Des Peres drains over 115 square miles in the City of St. Louis and nearest suburbs, before it joins the Mississippi River. A coalition of Water quality and biodiversity advocates are joining together again this fall to raise awareness of the vital role of River Des Peres - and to pull out the trash that compromises its capacity in our regional watershed, overall. The River Des Peres Trash Bash will mobilize dozens of volunteers to support this waterway, on Saturday October 20, 2018, from 8 am to 2 pm.

Results from  2017: Hardworking Trash Bash volunteers cleared 6.6 tons of trash from the rivers and creeks in the River des Peres watershed in just 3 hours! This tally includes 2.2 tons of scrap metal and 1.8 tons (101) of tires that were recycled!

See yourself  this year in this cadre of water quality champions!

Music: Giant Steps performed live at KDHX by Dave Stone Trio

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms' audio engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Eco-Logic Applied to Road Salt Application Protocols (July 2018)

When a chance college dorm meeting prompts parlay about urban ag and life's design, can a live/work partnership based on decay, and inspired by nature, be far behind?

In the everyday and enterprise of Tim Kiefer and Beth Grolmes-Kiefer, for sure YES.

                   
These two purposeful young sustainably-focused city residents are putting their ideals to work, raising and selling the outputs of hens, and transforming vacant property from poison-ivy infestation to rich-soil productivity. How? Primarily by collecting to rot the kitchen and garden scraps of others.

Perennial City Composting is a novel subscription service, providing St. Louis City and central-county area customers with regular organic waste pickup. Their on-the-road amenity feeds abandoned lot soil toward Tim and Beth's near-term goal of NOURISHing their subscribers with veggies from the composted scraps these same folks pay them to haul away.

This Earthworms conversation spotlights the Kiefer's unique, hard-working and visionary efforts, while also enlightening Beth and Tim to options host Jean Ponzi knows from her STL work and previous shows.

Listeners: Be ready to Rot & Roll!

Music: Jingle Bells - played live at KDHX by the Civiltones

Earthworms is honored by engineering this week from Andy Coco, host of KDHX Rhythm Section and station Production Director. THANKS!

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Elaine Ingham: Soil Science Rocks Plant Health (Nov 2017)Fungus Farming for Food & Fun - McCully Heritage Project (Feb 2018)

Food Policy Coalition Grows Health & Resouces (Dec 2015)The Easy Chicken - Fowl Fun Comes to You (Dec 2016)

Alicia and Josh Davis are farmers (and both are, by training, engineers) on a plot they call Green Finned Hippy Farm, near Pocohontas, Illinois.

They started life together, and their farming ambition, aquaponically raising ("green," finned) Tilapia fish. That was 2010. Today their rural 18 acres support hens in pasture, their family of three (son Bean was born there), organic veggie beds, and herds of goats and of the endangered heirloom American Mulefoot Hog.

Resourceful and determined, Josh and Alicia are figuring out farming as they go - helped by the Internet and their family-farming heritage. Innovations like their chicken truck and egg-washing apparatus continue to sprout, making their hard work more efficient. Farm events like Goat Yoga, Sips & Snuggles Baby Goat Happy Hour, and the truly sacramental Swine and Dine are growing their network of customers and friends.

Where there are now is inspiring. Where they aspire to be in 10 years, Josh sums up: "I envision a community where we're Their Farmer, like someone is Their Doctor." Alicia adds: "Our hog program is a conservation effort. We selectively breed to produce excellent genetics. Our hope is that by humanely bringing this animal back to the table, we can remove it from the critically endangered list."

Having this Earthworms conversation - and reading Josh and Alicia's blogs - I am in awe. These beautiful humans are working so hard to preserve and restore both a species of fellow living creature, and an essential way of life. Enjoy their story - and try their food!

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

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Slow Money: Woody Tasch on Investing in Food and Soil (July 2018)

Fungus Farming for Food & Fun (February 2018)

A Climatic Ode to Seed Savers (November 2016)

Alpacas of Troy: Sustainable Farming on the Hoof (July 2016)

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

The Easy Chicken: Fowl Fun Comes to YOU (December 2017)

Winter weather brings out fleets of vehicles working to keep roads clear and parking lots free of icy hazards. But run-off of the salt and chemicals used will harm the life in creeks and streams.

      
Biologist Danelle Haake has researched options to treat slippery pavement without compromising her ecological focus, water quality. "Brining" uses conventional road salt, dissolved, in much smaller quantities.  Her findings are informing local decisions with data on salt concentration in streams during icy-road treatment periods.

Her perspective can help officials and citizens alike care for aquatic critter health.

This Earthworms conversation affirms the importance of urban and suburban streams and supports transportation safety efforts.

Local presentations on this topic are open to the public. Summer is the time to consider ecological winter road maintenance..

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms audio engineer.

Music: Inferno Reel, performed live at KDHX by Matt Finner

Investment pro Woody Tasch is evolving his own field.

Profoundly inspired by the nature of soil - yes, that BROWN stuff we typically march right over - his work serves its loamy muse by plowing, so to speak, "Nurture Capital" directly into the Local/Sustainable Food movement, yielding ROI of healthier soil and stronger local community economics and culture. He calls this prophet-able enterprise Slow Money.

Woody Tasch's turns of phrase and process grew an investment movement from his publication a decade ago of the now-classic Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money - Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered. 

Now he is structuring SOIL, Slow Opportunities for Investing Locally. He articulates how and why the transformative aim of this economic system works in his mytho-poetic and colossally detailed new book SOIL 2017 - Notes Toward the Theory and Practice of Nurture Capital.

Tasch is the bard of a new economic saga, the story of bringing our human relations with money soundly back to Earth. His work is surely, slowly meeting a "lively serious," planetary-scale human need.

Music: The Exotic Future of Money, performed live at KDHX by Kinetics
THANK YOU Anna Holland, engineer for Earthworms

Related Earthworms Conversations: The Genuine Progress Indicator with Dr. Eric Zencey (March 2015) 

2% Solutions for the Planet, Courtney White's Super Stories of Green Innovation (Oct 2015) 

Slow Food St. Louis Project Garlic (October 2015)