Earthworms

See the forest, see the trees - and appreciate woodland resources of the Show-Me State. From those that tower in the canopy to those that lightly shade ground-level wildflowers, Missouri's native trees are treasured by folks with interests of all kinds.     Carol Davit, Executive Director of Missouri Prairie Foundation, is also a lifelong student and advocate of native plant ecology in the woods. She describes two related but distinct wooded ecosystems, and the services they provide to humans and many other species. Grow Native! - the flagship program of MPF - invites interested citizens to professionals to a day-long workshop on October 6, where ecological experts will showcase wooded resources at Shaw Nature Reserve, and teach the important how-and-why of removing invasive species, especially Bush Honeysuckle. Registration is requested by Sept 26. Thanks to Josh Nothum, Earthworms Engineer Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by Dave Black Related Earthworms Conversations:  Urban Forests: Seeing the Ben

Songbirds! Our spirits fly with them, their twitterings rise with the sun; we watch 'em, we feed 'em, we love their gentle presence in our lives. This dedicated organization gives 'em a Wing Up when they get hurt, since 1993.  Wild Bird Rehabilitation is powered by flocks of volunteers who provide care for injured, ill and orphaned songbirds, toward releasing them back into their natural habitat. Could this volunteer gig launch you into a new love?             This month Wild Bird gets a new Flock Leader (aka Exec. Dir.) in Earthworms' guest Joe Hoffmann. Joe brings to Wild Bird over 30 years experience with wildlife health and conservation, and public education. Joe is a beloved returning guest! He brings SONGS, to his new job and this conversation with Jean Ponzi. Opportunity to Support Wild Bird: Trivia Night November 11. Music: Divertimento K 131, performed by Kevin MacLeod THANKS to Josh Nothum, returning Earthworms Engineer Related Earthworms Segments: Joe  Hoffmann performed with The Raptor Project,

Houses built to last a hundred years are getting another century's lease on life from Patty Maher, a specialist in super energy efficient restoration of homes in historic neighborhoods around St. Louis. Patty got into the home-work biz in the 1970s, after getting degrees in philosophy and comparative religions - and building carpentry skills at technical college. Her first building rehab was Cloverleaf Dairy. She transformed it into her own wood shop. Today Cloverleaf General Contracting is one of three enterprises she maintains. Among other regional and state recognitions, Patty (wearing green) was honored with a Growing Green Award by the US Green Building Council-Missouri Gateway Chapter in 2013.          A Patty Maher rehab gets high ENERGY STAR ratings. One of her historic homes typically uses 50% or less energy than a comparable, conventional residence. Her work restores city neighborhoods, generates and sustains jobs, sells houses, and eloquently makes the case for the value of historic renovation tax

In 1967, the Meramec River had not yet flowed to the edge of a dam proposal controversy that would not end until 1981, but trash and debris from river users and "clubhouses" built along the Meramec's course was a problem that caught the attention of river lovers and enviro-advocates. Half a century ago, the first Operation Clean Stream began a concentrated process to clean up the Meramec.         After FIFTY years, there is still a need for this annual river clean-up event, held the fourth weekend of August. However, hundreds of hours and thousands of volunteers have made a huge difference in the health of the entire Meramec watershed.  Operation Clean Stream now works on the Meramec and its tributaries: Big, Courtois, Bourbeus and Huzzah rivers in the region of the Missouri Ozarks closest to the St. Louis region. This Earthworms conversation celebrates Operation Clean Stream's 50th anniversary, talking with Kat Dockery and Caitlin Zera, who are Executive Director and Office Manager for the Open Space Counc

OK, so maybe "No Mow" is a seedy fiction, but there ARE alternatives to conventional turf that can save water and work, turn down the Lawn Boy's carbon emissions - even support the lives of pollinators. All while keeping that sweet green place to play for our kids and dogs. Today's needs have evolved, somewhat, from the country's original No Mow situation:               Neil Diboll, president of Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin, returns to Earthworms to elucidate the what-why-how of Lawn Alternatives. His No Mow Lawn Mix is proving popular in central Wisconsin's sandy, loamy soil. And his youth in University City, MO, gave Neil a healthy appreciation for our heat-loving Zoyzia grass. Of course he encourages transformation of areas in your turf into flowering prairie-like pollinator islands. Move over, John Deere - there are turf alternatives here!                              Could a local, creative plantsman develop a "No Mow" mix for our St. Louis area's hot summers and clay soils? Working with na

Earthworms home turf is the Show-Me State - where ecological gardening ideas and practices are growing like . . . plants with WEED in their names. So it follows that getting to see the plants of this place, the ones that are our Natives, is a great way to explore this Nature Thang that's benefiting critters, people, water quality, and more.                   St. Louis Audubon hosts their third annual Native Plant Garden Tour on Saturday, September 16, 9 am to 4 pm. Ten homes will open their gardens to visitors using a self-guiding map that describes each site. Volunteers supporting home hosts and a limit of 300 tickets sold will ensure that each visit can include conversations about the environs on view. Personal connections are a hallmark of the Native Plant Gardening movement in the St. Louis region, in many ways, not the least is the opportunity for everyone to connect with Nature's beauty and surprises.                                             Earthworms guests are Mitch Leachman, Executive Directo

October 14, 1987. They gathered in the shack, on the grassy knoll in Arnold, MO.  A small group of volunteers who'd been digging and wiring and building and raising money for - well, probably felt like forever. A switch got flipped. A needle dropped. Static transformed to the ragtime riffs of "Radio" sung by Banu Gipson. KDHX was ON THE AIR! Jeff Ritter (front row, left) was the only one of those ten weary, cheering folk who didn't have to go to work the next morning, so he camped out in the shack, spun records and hosted the very first KDHX airshift ever. First of just about 88,000 at this year's 30-year anniversary point, and all contributed by volunteers. Jean Ponzi - one of several notable Ritter recruits to the KDHX team - got to show the guy who's now Dr. Ritter around our spiffy new Larry J. Weir Independent Media Center when he cruised through The Lou on a summer motorcycle trip. This Earthworms special edition celebrates that tenacious KDHX Person-Power, has a bit o' KDHX history fun, and affirms

We've heard the statistics: seven point something BILLION and growing. What do those "billions" mean, what's at issue for Earth's capacity to support human life - and what about the rest of the species living here? World Population Day was designated in 1987 by the United Nations to educate and advocate on population-related issues. This Earthworms' conversation takes place on July 11, 2017, the 30th annual round of focus on these global concerns.                     Joe Bish, Director of Issue Advocacy for the Population Media Center, explains some of these issues, especially from an environmental viewpoint. He also describes how PMC is changing the public population education game in countries where these issues are major stressors, with significant taboos. PMC produces Soap Operas! They collaborate with local talent to create stories based on local culture, supporting the work of writers, producers and actors and impacting community values and practices. Who doesn't love a juicy serial drama?  Music: Abd

We too often hear how out society is checked-out, apathetic, overwhelmed. There is a LOT of keep track of and cope with in the news today - in no small part because there's so much news coming at us constantly. But keeping engaged as citizens is IMPORTANT. The Missouri Coalition for the Environment has a new tool to help us be active, responsive, inquiring. It puts efficient, effective potentials in our pockets.                   Caitlin Zera, Community Engagement Manager for MCE, leads the team developing The People's Pocket Guide to Environmental Action. A pdf version is available now. MCE staff and volunteers are distributing (pocket sized!) print copies at community outreach events, and will be offering citizen action trainings starting this fall. An interactive online Pocket Guide is in the works, giving MCE and many partner organizations the capacity to illustrate the basic action measures with community issue examples.  As Caitlin talks through the action process with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi, we

They stand around us, enrich our lives in countless ways - that are increasingly well-documented with compelling data. They embody cooperation in many ways that humans could emulate. And they give us shade. When we tune to their frequencies, what's on the Great Tree Playlist for us? Plenty!               Biologist David George Haskell has been listening to trees in very different Earth locales. His new book The Songs of Trees - Stories from Nature's Great Connectors (Penguin 2017) features trees in an Ecuadoran rain forest, on Broadway in Manhattan, in a middle-eastern olive grove, and other unique spots. His observations and perceptions combine scientific precision with a philosopher's expansive take on life, told in a troubadour's voice. Trees have MUCH to teach our kind, about dancing between competition and cooperation, toward the vision (Haskell says it's an attainable goal!) of regenerating and benefiting all we touch. David Haskell will speak on July 25 in St. Louis, for the Wild Ideas Worth Sharin

Our human culture shapes our human values, which in turn makes us more (or less) of how we see ourselves and who we "really" are, as individuals and as the societies we form. Writer and thinker Jeremy Lent has explored the connecting, shaping forces in the context of human history - to help us see and hopefully direct ourselves.                                  This conversation lights on topics from Agriculture - and how it cultivated Hierarchies - to Truth, with and w/o the capital emphasis, to Love being our realization of connectedness, at the heart of human-kind-ness. We think you'll dig these deep thoughts, seasoned with Earthworms' sense o' humus about what it means to be Human - in the past, now and in possible futures.  May this podcast prompt you to pick up Jeremy Lent's new book, The Patterning Instinct - A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning (Prometheus, 2017), and check his work through the non-profit Liology Institute, where connection is appreciated as a universal organizing princ

Consider money: abstract medium of exchange representing all human and natural creativity and productivity. Could money evolve through human ingenuity - motivated by human love - to restore, protect and cultivate the human and natural resources it stands for? Investment expert Joel Solomon says, emphatically, YES! and expounds on how in his new book The Clean Money Revolution - Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism (New Society, 2017; written with Tyee Bridge).                              This revolution means that we who have monetary privilege can and will use the energy of money for the good of the whole, for the long term. Visionary - and practical, advocating from 30+ years investment experience that proves doing well can do good, in major ways.  This Earthworms conversation explores the options, as it affirms the urgent necessity of transforming how money works, and how to realize changing it. Music: Giant Steps, performed live at KDHX by the Dave Stone Trio THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engine

The bug us. They bite us. Some of them carry a dread disease. Mosquitoes are a fact of summer life that WE can and must actively control.                         Jim Sawyer, Vector Control Supervisor for St. Louis County Department of Public Health, covers the details about mosquito biology, disease concerns, and County mosquito control protocols. Earthworms host Jean Ponzi gets the facts to help us all work together with public health officials to minimize mosquito breeding (dump and prevent standing water!) and to identify sites where mosquito species of concern may be proliferating. Hear how Integrated Pest Management by a local government uses surveillance, conservative and strategic applications of adulticide and larvaecide chemicals, and plenty of public education to protect human health while also protecting beneficial insects. If you are gardening for bees or butterflies, learn how you can opt out of street spraying.                         For specific information about mosquito controls where yo

Across the tribal lands of Oklahoma, indigenous people are supporting Monarch butterflies and other pollinators by learning about and restoring the area's indigenous plant communities.             Jane Breckinridge - herself a Butterfly farmer! - co-directs this initiative, Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM), a collaboration of seven sovereign native nations. TEAM is growing a living stream of plants and butterflies, the Monarch Migration Trail, in partnership with the international initiative Monarch Watch.  Jane also founded the project Natives Raising Natives (2013), which is teaching rural tribal members to cultivate butterflies with goals to (1) reduce unemployment, (2) promote STEM education for Native youth and (3) promote conservation of native butterflies and the ecosystems that support them.  Evolving on the wings of cultural and environmental purpose, this is a new model for conservation as community action. that is working in accord with the partners' diverse tribal values. Healthier

The operation's name affirms its goal: Living Lands and Waters, and it's founder is a powerhouse of encouraging experience for humans along many shores. As Chad Pregracke proudly reports, LLW has worked on 23 Rivers in 20 States, mobilizing 98,000 Volunteers to pull more than 9.2 million pounds of Trash OUT of U.S. waterways. Right livelihood, on a barge. Since this guy was 17.                 Chad is a Green Giant - and his LLW crew and circles of helpers and supporters are doing some of the most amazing, effective and necessary work around. Including connecting people of all political persuasions to our land's big rivers, in ways that enable us all to experience being good citizens of our nation and our Earth. This Earthworms is a rockin' good listen! Music: Extremist Stomp - performed live at KDHX by Pokey laFarge and Ryan Spearman THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms' Engineer Related Earthworms Conversations: Missouri River Relief (March 2017) Mississippi Watershed Mayors take Infrastructure Plan to Wash

Now five issues old, The New Territory celebrates culture and views of the Lower Midwest in a quarterly anthology of writing, art and photography.                     Founder, publisher, Ed-in-Chief Tina Casagrand took her vocational step into magazine-making to amplify voices of the region she unhesitatingly calls a Center of the Universe. She talks with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi about the spirit and workings of her literary venture, and the region it portrays. Visit online at NewTerritoryMag.com   Let us know how you experience it! THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer.

Earth's atmosphere can safely sustain a concentration of 350 parts per million carbon dioxide (or less). That number, 350, now stands for the world-wide work of climate protection activists (350.org), who also advocate for human stuff like a livable minimum wage - and for office-holders in accord with 350 goals.         350STL launched in November, 2016, on a wave of local affiliates to 350.org. 350STL organizers John Shepherd, Stephanie Sturm-Smith and Elizabeth Ward talk with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi about this group's purpose and activities - most recently coordinating the April 29 Peoples Climate March in St. Louis - and about their personal motivations and experience doing this work.  You'll hear a climate of thoughtful purpose, working toward local and global change. Music: Butter, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer Related Earthworms Conversations: Citizens Climate Lobby - Dec 2016 Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change - Nov 2016                    

Digging into food values - while exploring her own - author Marissa Landrigan journeyed from her Italian family roots to vegetarian and PETA activism - and on into the realm of modern food production, especially Meat. Her new book, A Vegetarian's Guide to Eating Meat (Greystone Books, 2017), chronicles her quest for dietary and personal identity. Even if you can expound on Food Issues in your sleep, you'll be nourished by Ms. Landrigan's  perspective on the importance of eating local, voting for instead of protesting with your fork, becoming aware of your food connections - plus participating at a steer slaughter and in an elk hunt. This Earthworms conversation with Marissa Landrigan serves a menu of food consciousness, most eloquently.  MUSIC: Deep Gap - recorded live at KDHX by Marisa Anderson THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer, and to Kathlene Carney Public Relations. RELATED Earthworms Conversations: Farmer Girl Meats: Pasture to Porch, Sustainably (June 2016) Grow - Create - Inspire with Cr

The Miller family had been farming acreage in Ferguson, Missouri for over a century when Molly Rockamann, a visionary who loves to dance, came home from service overseas, met Mrs. Miller and launched - in 2008 - the enterprise EarthDance Farms. Today, this extraordinary human-nature partnership includes an Organic Farm School; hands-on working and learning opportunities for teens to elders; productive, nutritious, delicious and LOCAL public interactions through the Ferguson Farmers Market - and much more.                             Most recently, the principles of Permaculture have taken root on the contours of EarthDance fields, guided enthusiastically by Farm Manager Matt Lebon. Matt describes the Permaculture way of working with nature to produce food while supporting whole ecosystems (way more than just crop rows) on agricultural lands.  This summer, plan a Saturday morning trip up to Ferguson. Shop the Ferguson Farmers' Market starting at 8 am, then at 10:45 hop on the new Jolly Trolley (put your veggi

Kat Makable, a financial analyst, was living in Japan in 2011 when the tsunami resulting from the Tohoku earthquake shut down the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  His experience of the effects of power outages and shutdowns motivated him to research nuclear power options.                                His book "Buying Time: Environmental Collapse and the Future of Energy" makes the case that current generation nuclear energy technology must be included in a mix of energy production sources to support human needs and demands in the age of Climate Change - and beyond. Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by Dave Black THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer!