Earthworms

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

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

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 Mosquito Alert STL resources online and read more about this project. Download the Mosquito Alert app and join the SWAT Team!

Learn more about the global value of Citizen Science in dealing with mosquito-born disease from the Wilson Center for Science (and in Earthworms' archived edition).

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to KDHX Production Pro Jon Valley.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

One Health: People, Animals, Earth with Dr. Sharon Deem

Global Mosquito Alert with Dr. Anne Bowser, Wilson Center for Science (August 2019)

Fight The Bite with the 4-Ds - Mosquito Squad, City of St. Louis (July, 2016) (where we WERE with mosquito education before Mosquito Alert STL)

"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 Publishing! www.newsociety.com

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: Midwest Climate Collaborative with Heather Navarro (May 2022)

St. Louis Environmental Racism Report with Leah Clyburn (October 2019)

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio wiz, and to KDHX Production Power, Jon Valley.