Gen Z and Nature: Relations Worth Growing

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 Dining Districts, with work underway in Webster Groves and the Cortex Innovation District to form two more. As theater companies know, more theater offerings generate more theater audiences. GDA proves the Abundance Principle! Next time you make plans to dine, check out www.GreenDiningAlliance.org - and tell your host, chef and server you chose their place because they are GDA Certified. Ben Daugherty spoke with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi on 2-3-24, and announced a career move shortly after. Visit www.EarthDay365.org if you'd like to apply for the GDA position! THANKS to Jon Valley, Production Pro for KDHX. Related Earthworms Conversations: Fair Shares: Abundance, Innovation, Relationships, FOOD (July 2022)

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 to 3.8 million gallons annually - from overloading the urban sewer system. Nee Kee Nee is also reviving culture. Tower Grove Park staff worked with the Osage Nation’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office on design of the stream, the direction it flows and landscaping with pawpaw, arrowwood, and many other kinds of native plants. Physical and interpretive elements embody the Osage People's origin story and elements of Osage community life.  Tower Grove Park is open daily, sunrise to sunset, in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. THANKS to Jon Valley, KDHX Audio Production Pro Related Earthworms Conversations: Artist Jayvn Solomon Envisions Loutopia (Dec. 2021) The Water Defenders with John Cavanaugh (Oct 2021)

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 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.   Links to: Daniel Wildcat Heather Navarro - MCC  

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 the works from University of Missouri St. Louis, look for lively leadership to continue to evolve from among the circles of trees and humans who inspire and teach Jo Pang. From TEDx Gateway Arch, hear Jo Pang share How Mindfulness Transforms Us THANKS to Andy Heaslet for audio-engineering this edition of Earthworms, and to Jon Valley, KDHX production Wiz Related Earthworms Conversations: In the Company of Trees with Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (Jan. 2019)

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 New Earth Farm story inspire you to dig in and support sustainable decay! Thanks to Earthworms audio engineers, Andy Heaslet and Jon Valley.  Related Earthworms Conversations: Fair Shares: Abundance, Innovation, Relationships, FOOD (July 2022) Urban Buds Blooms in St. Louis City (Nov 2021)

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 KDHX production pundit Jon Valley. Related Earthworms Conversations:  Richard Louv: Our Wild Calling (Dec 2019) Don Corrigent on SQUIRRELS (July 2019)  

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 (May 2020) THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, to KDHX Production chief Jon Valley.

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