Earthworms

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 g

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

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

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, Manager of Adult Education. This conversation returns the favor, spotlighting myriad SLCL offerings to all ages, from webinars to community garden beds, from author events to loans from the library's Internet 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 Di

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

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 For

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

Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing, Richard Louv  

"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 N

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 K

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 (M

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 Mo

"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 Pu

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: 

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 be

Missouri Green Schools enriches learning and lives! Work through three pillars of a Green School - Environmental Impact, Health and Wellness and Sustainability Education - is drawing on the strengths of two terrific partners and their organizations:       Hope Gribble, Green Schools Manager for Missouri Gateway Green Building Council; and Lesli Moylan, Executive Director of Missouri Environmental Education Association. These two leaders and friends have grown a statewide program from St. Louis roots in the Green Schools Quest - with national recognition through U.S. Dept. of Education's Green Ribbon Schools.       This May, teams of students, teachers and professional volunteer mentors are presenting accomplishments in school gardening, gardening, energy efficiency - and more. Their story is a learning experience listeners will love. www.MissouriGreenSchools.org Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms' audio engineer, and to Jon Valley, KDHX production wiz.  

Woody Tasch thinks like a root vegetable grows: slow, sure, mostly underground, deeply nourishing.                 From this perspective, in collaboration with a rainbow circle of fellow evolutionists, comes the investment structure Tasch and friends call Beetcoin: small local donations generating Zero interest, locally-made loans supporting local sustainable food systems and the community economics they feed to flourish - aiming to work on a global scale.            A mission-focused investment strategist since the 1990s, Tasch keeps FUN in focus, in his serious business of transforming systems: food, funding, social values. Since 2010, the Slow Money movement he has fronted has channeled $80 million to over 800 organic farms and local food enterprises via volunteer-led efforts in dozens of communities. Beetcoin taps the Internet, grounding your way to chip in, no matter where you live. Dig into this idea! www.Beetcoin.org Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley, KDHX Production