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)

Grown locally and designed in-season. Using nature's diversity of shapes, textures and hues in pods and leaves as well as vivid blossoms. Keeping plastic and other material waste to a minimum.

The trend in SLOW FLOWERS embraces all of these. Gardener turned floral business owner Kate Estwing makes these ideals (and more) work, beautifully, in her St. Louis enterprise City House Country Mouse.

Floral artistry that can sustainably bedeck a wedding as easily as creating a planter box of succulents adds value to a service that everyone enjoys. And the values at work for Estwing help grow a bouquet of community resources along with her business!

Open House August 16-18 at the new City House Country Mouse studio, 2105 Marconi Avenue on The Hill in St. Louis! Retail hours there are coming soon.

Yes! this is Kate Estwing of Beep Beep Boop Boop, the popular KDHX radio show; Kate has also served as Program Director for KDHX.

Music: Clavinova, performed live at KDHX by Messy Jiverson

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Urban Buds with flower farmers Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack (February 2015)

Missourians, meet our native neighbor: Ursus americanus. And meet Laura Conlee, Furbearer Biologist and Resource Scientist with the MO Department of Conservation, a true appreciator of bears.

Photos from MDC Black Bear Research Cam - 2017

Black bears (who can be brown, ruddy and even sort of blonde) have always roamed the Show-Me State (OK, maybe only after Mastodons), but by the early 1900s their numbers had dived. Introduction of bears from northern populations through an Arkansas Game & Fish program in the 1950s and '60s reinvigorated the Missouri Ozarks with vital black bear roles in healthy forest ecosystems.

By 2010, it was time to count MO bears. The MDC Bear Project now annually evaluates black bear reproduction and survival. Note: the bears in these field work-up photos are FINE! Laura Conlee and her skilled team are taking great care with the animals they're handling.

This research collaboration - among specialists in wildlife and habitat biology, landowner relations, public education and more - is tracking multiple factors to better understand and support the animals. Bear data is one element of a new MDC Research Website, created to share this agency's expert knowledge with colleagues and with all of us!

Check out MDC's new Bear Story Map to get a really cool feel for these beautiful creatures, and the research our state's conservation science teams are engaged in.

Going out hiking or camping into bear territory? Or if you're concerned about recent bear reports near our metro area borders, become BEAR AWARE with important advice from MDC advocates for healthy populations of humans AND bears!

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

THANKS to Anna Holland, engineering for Earthworms, and to Dan Zarlenga, communications maven for MDC.

7.6 billion and growing. Human beings on Earth, that is. But talking Population in enviro-circles is not the topic at top of mind. More like on edge of biases.

          
So the Population Media Center, based in VT USA., marshals Entertainment-Power in societies world-wide (local writers, actors, production companies), to educate through stories of Love, Sex, Triumph, Betrayal and all the kinds of drama-rama that WILL make an impression among our kind. PMC data shows these shows are changing values, and influencing policy. Big work from soaps!

This year PMC celebrates 20 Years of this innovative, globally-partnered service. Joe Bish, PMC Director of Issue Advocacy, returns to Earthworms with a report on how this important work is going.

#RidiculousRight?! is PMC's awareness campaign for World Population Day 2018. The international focus for WPD this year is Family Planning is a Human Right. Throughout July, this hashtag will circulate ridiculous policies and investments contrasted with the value of family planning action and education. Chime in!

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations:
DRAWDOWN: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018)

World Population Day 2017 (July 2017)

Plans and discussions rolled around our town for years. How could we make Bike-Sharing services feasible here in The Lou?

In April, 2018 - just in time for Earth Day! - the cycle-access techno-breakthrough that is Limebike sped past barriers, onto our streets. Today, that first neon fleet of 1,500 Limebikes has multiplied. These Global Cooling Devices and humans of all kinds are moving each other around STL, safely and sustainably, at public attractions and in our city neighborhoods.

David Woronets, Lime Operations Manager, details how Lime is peddling Smart Mobility with great success, and how St. Louis is leading the pack of U.S. Lime markets.

Down the road? Lime electric scooters - and more!

Music: Deep Gap, performed live at KDHX by Marisa Anderson

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

More Earthworms Conversational Cruises:

Trekking Green: Big Adventure, Tiny Footprint (August 2015)
STL Metro Market: Grocery Story in a Bus (June 2015)
Trailnet's New Vision (March 2016)
American Solar Challenge: Local Roadracing Teams (June 2016)

Great Rivers Greenway St Louis Bike Routes (April 2015)

RideFinders: Carpooling Made E-Z (May 2018)

Brothers Jeff and Randy Vines are turning 40 (local-speak sez Farty).

Their upbeat, Ham-on-Wry style  - and their business STL-Style - helps power the ultra-diverse, collaborative renewal of their city 'hood, Cherokee Street.

These sons of STL suburbia, who went into advertising, know how to put their love of City into action. Their choice of digs on Cherokee, in South St. Louis, is a perfect place to invest their prodigious love-work resources. And to hawk the "St. Louis inspired apparel, merch and curiosities" that deck their corner store.

This conversation is a valentine to City of St. Louis life, from these uber-articulate bros and City-dweller Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

New bedazzle on Vines' place is the eye-popping swirly-hue giant mural by daughter-father artist team Liza Fishbone and Robert Fishbone. A Fartieth BD present to themselves gifts big beauty to their City too!

More Art-Related Earthworms: Enviro-Cartoonist Joe Mohr (November 2015)

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

Filmmaker Caitlin Zera: From The Pipeline (January 2016)

Chalk Riot: Woman-Powered Street Art (May 2018)

Music: Cherokee Nights, performed live at KDHX by Messy Jiverson

THANKS to Anna Holland, engineering Earthworms

When a material (like paper) or a container (like a bottle or a can) has served its original purpose and still has useful life remaining, that material will remain in use as ingredients in recycled-content products - if you put it in your recycling bin. But not everything should go in that bin.
              
Bob Henkel manages Recycling On The Go for St. Louis Earth Day. He has BIN there & done that Green thang at hundreds of events, with thousand of humans. He know his recycling stuff. So does Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

This conversation sorts through - literally! - what can and cannot be recycled, and why it's important not to use that Blue Bin as a catch-all for stuff you WISH could continue to be useful, if somebody else does something with it. 

Coming up June 30, 2018: the second Recycling Extravaganza collection this year for hard-to-recycle stuff. Check it out - and remember to ONLY bring what will be accepted!

Global market shifts are puttin' the squeeze on our recycling industry. We need to work together with our recycling service pros to keep this fundamental Green activity functioning, solvent and useful.

Got Sustainable Living questions? Missouri Botanical Garden's Green Resources Answer Service will give you any possible reuse and recycling options for other stuff - plus advice on more, FREE!

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

THANKS to Earthworms engineer, Ms. Anna Holland.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Life Without Plastic? (January 2018 and Barge-Based Trash Basher Chad Pregracke (March 2017)

Artists Chelsea Ritter-Soronen and Liza Fishbone are so down with taking art to the streets. Literally. On the pavement.   

From their home bases in Napa, St. Louis and Austin they meet up in cities everywhere to transform our concrete jungles into vivid works that draw you in. Literally! ChalkRiot's mastery of anamorphic visuals, done in ephemerally dusty chalk or persistent paint, create a riot of art that celebrates special events, delivers a message, and grounds Art-Girl Power in stunning, funny, intentional ways. ChalkRiot work vividly explores themes of Love, Technology, the Environment, Women-Strong, Aliens, Pink Bunnies, Justice and more.

Newest project Pavement Portals is ChalkRiot's ground-busting foray into Augmented Reality: your phone or tablet view of three fantastic Fortune Telling Machines jumps off floor canvas into scintillating, bubbly life. Look for a St. Louis media buzz around this work to amp up in other cities soon!

Photo credits: RJ Hartbeck Basil Tsimoyanis, Art St. Louis

Music: Jingle Bells, performed live at KDHX by CivilTones
THANKS to Anna Holland for Audio-Girl Powering Earthworms.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Artists Take on Plastic Pollution and Invasive Bush Honeysuckle (March 2018)

What stops you from considering a Carpool? Have to know someone who lives near you, who works where you do? Have to do it every day or it doesn't count? How can you get home in an emergency if you don't have your own car?

RideFinders has all this covered, and more - including their database of over 16,000 peeps, living and going to work or school, all over the St. Louis metro area. Some of them can be carpool partners for you!

Joe Wright shares the Carpooling how-to from experience, as well as his job directing RideFinders, our regional ride-sharing agency. This FREE service has been matching commuters in convenient, $$ and personal energy saving everyday travel partnerships since 1994.

RideFinders is supported by federal highway funds designated to help clean up St. Louis air by reducing the ratio of cars to persons traveling around our regional "Airshed." Services include FREE membership for companies, universities and other organizations with many possible RideFinders participants, FREE sign-ups for these individuals, FREE taxi service up to 4 times per year as a Guaranteed Ride Home, and FREE workplace presentations about how easy and beneficial Carpooling is.

Consider Carpooling (or joining a Vanpool) for any number of days of your weekly commute. And encourage your employer - or campus Office of Student Affairs - to join and promote RideFinders options.

Special for this summer's Air Quality season: add a new person to your current carpool, or start a new carpool and you'll be entered to win memberships, free passes and other summer-fun goodies in the RideFinders Museum Mania Carpool Challenge.

In a Carpool or Vanpool the benefits will add up way faster than the miles, as you Get Around Greener!

P.S. Informally carpooling counts too! Make it a habit for workplace meetings and social events.

Music: Lime House Blues, performed live at KDHX by legendary Del McCoury

THANKS to Anna Holland, engineering this edition of Earthworms

On April 22, 1970, a conservative senator from Wisconsin led a diverse, national circle of organizers is bringing public attention to environmental issues of the day. Earth Day has since become the largest civic event on the planet its events strives to protect.

Dr. Adam Rome, Professor of History at SUNY Buffalo, has made a passionate study of this worldwide phenomenon. He shares insights from his 2013 book, "The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation." 

Earthworms host Jean Ponzi swaps Earth Day bits with Dr. Rome from her experience as coordinator of the 20th annual Earth Day Festival in 1990, that helped launch today's vibrant St. Louis Green culture.

Adam Rome will be in St. Louis on May 24 to give the capstone presentation in the 2018 Environmental History Speaker Series. This is a free talk at 7 pm at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.

Music: Modern Andy Down - performed live at KDHX

Thanks to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer, and to Stephen Hanpeter, Sappington Concord Historical Society.

Related Earthworms Conversations: David and the Giant Mailbox, December 2015 - "Climate Walker" David Henry also presented in this 2018 Environmental History Speaker Series.
Earth Day St. Louis, April 2018

Once one of the wildest rivers of North America, some now call it the Missouri Canal. It has been dammed, dredged, cursed as it flooded, pinched between levees, straightened - and yet humans from many walks of life are dedicated to helping this river survive, and even maybe re-wild it a little bit.

Thomas Ball talks with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi as an individual engaged in the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee (he says "Mister RIC"). He's also active in the Sierra Club's Missouri River work  Sierra Club originally filed to get the Pallid Sturgeon, a prehistoric MO River fish protected by the Endangered Species Act.

He brings to our attention two bills moving through Congress that would prohibit citizens from doing this for future threatened species: HB 2134 and SB 935. River lovers: consider action here.

Ball has taken countless humans - youth and adults - out on this river, and on other outdoor adventures. He loves nature, loves the big rivers, and persists in working with his fellow humans to right our actions that have crippled natural forces like the MO, actions which ultimately endanger us. He persists through knowledge, science, collaboration - and that big love. 

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
THANKS and welcome back Anna Holland, engineer & tennis champ

Related Earthworms Conversations: Water Issues: Meddling, Muddling, Advocacy (Dec 2017)

Cooperation for Water Security (Oct 2017)

Invest in Infrastructure, Nature's and Ours (April 2017)

Barge-Based Trash-Basher Chad Pregracke (May 2017)