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.  

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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.

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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 Wiz!

Related Earthworms conversations:  Slow Money's Woody Tasch on Culture, Poetry, Imagination, SOIL (July 2018)

Heru Urban Farming - January 2021 

In Illinois communities along the mighty Mississippi, Sierra Club members are advancing enviro-policy and awareness. The club's Piasa Palisades Group, named for a fierce bird in lore of the Illiniwek people and the stone bluffs towering over river and towns,is active locally and in their state.

Chris Krusa, the group's Program Chair, and Outings Chair Craig Heaton share purpose, projects and some big river paddling upcoming program highlights. Check out this south-central Illinois group of fierce protectors and lovers of Nature!

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer and a national Sierra Club staffer - and to Jon Valley, production wiz on the KDHX staff.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Making of Illinois Clean Energy Policy with Andy Heaslet (Jan 2022)

Sierra Club St. Louis Environmental Racism Report with Leah Cluburn (Oct 2019)

Carl Pope, former Sierra Club national president: Creating a Climate of Hope (April 2018)

Charmin Dahl, conservation educator and nature-loving mom, shares her experience and perspective relating to Nature with her digital native kin.  Explore with her - and head on out-of-doors, with your young friends.

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More from Dahl in The Healthy Planet Magazine and in blog.org/2017/09/06/who-we-are-charmin-dahl-allison-davis/"> her blog for Villa Montessori School.

Find nature connection resources from MEEA, the Missouri Environmental Education Association.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing with Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (January 2019)

The Big Book of Nature Activities (June 2016)

Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley, KDHX production team.

Thrift stores, tag sales, rummage piles. They may be everywhere, but some rise above the jumbled fray with grace, circulating our castoff human-made stuff as beacons of beneficial reuse.

One of these is Experienced Goods, supporting free Community Hospice care in Brattleboro, Vermont. Gemma Champoli is a force at the heart of this experience - and lifetime kindred spirit with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi. Jean and Gemma share deep Love of Stuff, and talking about it.

As resale geared for profit proliferates online, the story of Experienced Goods affirms the power of in-person, local exchange - deeply appreciated, presented with flair. In the legacy (and pandemic era) chapter of this tale, Gemma builds EG a new home that honors character of the goods and ensures ongoing benefits for all those this her enterprise delights and serves. A must-visit when you are in Vermont. Happy listening, happy shopping from two bosom friends.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley of KDHX Production team.

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Watch a Brattleboro Community TV interview with Gemma Champoli of Experienced Goods (November 2018) Reduce, Prevent and Transform Waste with  Kelley Demmings (Feb 2019)

Journey to Wellbeing with Jeanne Carbone (Oct 2018)

Great Rivers Environmental Law Center defends and protects Nature: places, creatures, plants and US.

Celebrating two decades of this worthy work, GREC President Bruce Morrison recalls triumphs, challenges and how collaboration with community is changing they way his team practices enviro law. Preview: the recent WIN for children's health thanks to Madeline Semanisin's work to secure passage of Get Lead Out of Drinking Water Act, through the MO Legislature, on July 1, 2022.

October 23, 2022  - join the celebration at World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park, featuring presentation of the Lewis C. Green Award for outstanding environmental work to Dan and Connie Burkhardt, founders of Magnificent Missouri. Click here for details.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley, potentate of production at KDHX.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Illinois Clean Energy Policy: Andy Heaslet on making of a legislative model (January 2022)

The Rule of Five: Supreme Court Climate History (July 2020) When the US Supreme Court defined CO2 as an air pollutant, climate regulations took a huge and critical turn. Lawyer, author and scholar Richard Lazarus told this landmark story, in another era for national rule-making.

Elizabeth Fournier always wanted to work in funeral service. She was drawn to the service in this profession, and fascinated by its technical skills. Today she works "for a better living" - with Nature's tech - and she's proudly known far and wide as The Green Reaper.

Fournier is a national advocate for Green Burial, practices that are changing her profession's enviro impacts, and helping her fellow humans better connect Life to our Earthly nature, at Life's end.

She compares the importance of ecological funerals to our society's everyday efforts to decrease human impacts - by supporting renewable energy, by driving hybrid or electric cars, by eating healthy foods, by promoting sustainable agriculture, by using their own cloth bags at the grocery store, and so on. Fournier celebrates how the ideas of a green lifestyle are carrying over to how we handle the dead.

Fournier's Cornerstone Funeral Services, outside Portland OR, makes her the Undertaker of Boring (OR), her tiny rural town. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Green Burial Council, and lives on a farm with her husband, daughter, and many rescue goats. Her 2018 Green Burial Guidebook details the practical changes she champions. 

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley of KDHX Production.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Greenwood Cemetery: History, Community, Profound Restoration (Jan 2018, - update April 2022)

Walking Sacred Ground with Robert Fishbone, artist of Labyrinths (Sept 2019)

In the Company of Trees with Forest Bathing advocate Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (Jan 2018)

Earthworms Host Note: After years of learning and talking about these sustainable options, I attended a Green Burial this summer. Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum, a venerable St. Louis historic site, is a national leader in advancing Green Burial. Their service for a dear friend's sister, Mary Ann, was simple and moving. Her body was wrapped in a linen shroud, so her physical form was right there with us. She was a tall woman.

Gracie, one of Bellefontaine's staff I know through Green work, led her crew in bringing Mary Ann's body to the grave site, drawn on a wooden cart with big metal wheels. A wreath of flowers lay over her heart. The open grave was shallow, maybe only three feet deep, lined with a profusion of plant matter! In the center of the mass of pine boughs, prairie grasses and all kinds of flowers was a circle of sunflower blooms. 

After the simple service, Bellefontaine staff lowered Mary Ann's body into the grave with long fabric straps. No machinery, no concrete, no elaborate box. Simply a human body, laid gently into Earth. Three huge urns of flowers and leafy branches were waiting by the grave.

Everyone joined in covering Mary Ann with these beautiful plants, and then we could take turns adding shovels from the pile of soil removed from the grave. The stuff of Earth will energize Earth's processes of decomposition, over time. No chemicals, nothing toxic. Everything formerly living, returning to Earth.

I noted the trees around the gravesite Mary Ann had chosen. Oaks, the mightiest hosts of insect life, supporting and restoring bonds in the Web of Life our species works so hard to break. Elements of Body, Mind, Feeling and Spirit - all there, in a quiet and simple way. What a gift to be there on that summer day.   - Jean Ponzi

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Links: Greeenwood, Forest Bathing, previous Green Burial?

It's a sister-rooted family scene at Fair Shares. The resourceful twist of this CCSA - Combined Community Supported Agriculture - nourishes St. Louis with produce and value-added products, a plateful of action for over 15 years.

As founding sister Sara Choler Hale prepares to set sail (literally) on her next life adventure, she and sibling Jamie Choler share the main course and many sides of their story with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi, with relish.

From dedicated subscribing to local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms, this thoughtful startup started asking all the local farmers if they'd be able and willing to contribute to a Combined CSA (CCSA), where subscriber-member fees are shared among many farmers and food producers. Answer: YES!

In 2008, Fair Shares boxes started sending out Veg And: eggs, jams, honey, fresh and cured meats, cheeses, sweets. Each farmer could focus on what they do best. Today, over 400 members enjoy fantastic diversity of food from over 30 local farmers and producers. Little risk and strong support, serving healthy, varied weekly shares, year-round from this Local Food hub.

Fair Shares staff spans two generations, Family And. And while the crew will dearly miss Sara and volunteer/husband Stephen, the bonds of family and food will surely weather this year's changes.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms audio engineer, and to Jon Valley, KDHX Production maven. Thanks for the tip for this show to FOFS-FOEW, Tom Flood.  

Earthworms On The Farm Related Conversations:

Heru Urban Farming (Jan 2021)

Crystal Stevens, Flourish (Dec 2020)

Rosy Buck Farm Grows in Circles (April 2021)

Rustic Roots Sanctuary (June 2021)

Urban Buds City Grown Flowers (Nov 2021)

And more!

What does a Mom and environmental lawyer do after leading a statewide enviro-coalition into its second half-century and serving as a City of St. Louis Alderperson? This one, Heather Navarro, takes on directing climate action for the Midwest U.S. 

The Midwest Climate Collaborative, based at Washington University in St. Louis, envisions a carbon neutral, climate resilient, interconnected Midwest Region. This is seeing big: if the Midwest US (a dozen states) were a country, we'd be the sixth largest Carbon emitter in the world. Heather Navarro is on it!

Launched with an online summit in January, 2022, this partnership to date includes universities, cities, NGOs, companies and cultural institutions. Students are working in leadership roles: connecting formal research projects, educating educators, and asset mapping are activities so far, seeking options to work with the agriculture and industry sectors that powering Midwestern economics.

Solutions, strategies and shared actions are the focus of this Earthworms conversation!

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Sierra Club national staff and Earthworms audio engineer - and to Jon Valley, KDHX production pro.

Related Earthworms Conversations: 

OneSTL: Implementing our Regional Sustainability Plan (Feb 2021)

A World Without Us? Thoughts from Author Alan Weissman (Oct 2020)

Diversifying Power: Jennie C. Stephens Advocates Energy Democracy (Sept 2020)

Historic Greenwood Cemetery, terrestrial resting place of over 50,000 Black human beings, embodies the paradox of dis- and respect that our species can so profoundly bring to pass. In a heartfelt complementarity, Greenwood also offers one of our region's best opportunities for environmental and cultural service.

Shelley and Rafael Morris, leaders of the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association, first shared with KDHX Earthworms in January 2018 the significance of the oldest non-sectarian African American cemetery in the St. Louis region - and the moving story of efforts to reclaim the grounds from invasive plants and illegal dumping. Four years later, Greenwood's network of volunteers and supporters has certainly grown, yet the need persists for fiscal and work party support.

Good news is that multiple STL companies have adopted Greenwood as a reoccurring focus of service and monetary support. AmeriCorps St. Louis volunteers are regular workers. About half of Greenwood's T-shaped 31.85 acres have been freed from human and plant debris. From the Morris's deep commitment, discussions are beginning to observe the 150th anniversary of Greenwood Cemetery's founding, in 2024. With equity a priority for so many enterprises, what might be accomplished by then?

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This year, NBC News featured Greenwood for a Black History Month story on the plight - and pluck - of those working to resurrect Black cemetery dignity and heritage. Good to get this degree of spotlight, plenty more work and outreach to come.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Meeting Greenwood Cemetery (Jan 2018) 

St. Louis Environmental Racism Report (October 2019)

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Engineer, and to Andy Coco and Jon Valley of KDHX Production Team.