Spontaneous Vegetation

Phillip Franses works to find the edge where science and spirit meet. He holds a degree in Mathematics from Oxford University, teaches Holistic Science as Senior Lecturer across the world and applies these principles in the field as Director Strategy with The Flow Partnership (www.theflowpartnership.org). He is developing Waterways (www.waterways.world) - an online water school that enables community action globally through traditional methods of reviving landscapes. Philip is the chief editor of the Holistic Science Journal and the current issue In Dialogue (www.holisticsciencejournal.co.uk). Philip is also the author of Time, Light and the Dice of Creation published by Floris Books.

Emily Constantine Mercurio is the CEO and cofounder at CivicMapper. Emily grew up in Pennsylvania coal country and at a young age became interested in geoscience , maps and the interplay of nature and humans activity. Her career has centered on creating innovative, data driven, and tangible solutions to support decisions at the intersection of our natural and built environment. She leverages more than 25 years of experience with earth science data and geospatial technology in the development of civic mapper's products and services. Emily has a PhD in geology and is a licensed professional geologist. www.civicmapper.com

Spontaneous Vegetation airs on second and fourth Sundays on Lumpen Radio, 5-6pm. Virginia Montgomery is a seeker, healer, music maker and visual artist. Her hope is that we are all seeking and or mentoring for the sake of a future that makes sense to us. When it comes to body work, the quest is to be IN OUR BODY enough to feel that we can be in connection with our highest self. We are so much stronger than we give ourselves credit for and it's time we graciously see this truth and never give away our power. We have to know ourselves better before we can expect others to know us. Some of this comes through knowing our own bodies and it's messages when we are in pain. It's a time of many questions.

Spontaneous Vegetation airs on second and fourth Sundays on Lumpen Radio, 5-6pm. Claudia Bernardi, installation artist and printmaker whose artwork is impacted by war and the post war period. Born in Argentina, Bernardi was affected by the military junta (1976-1983) that caused 30,000 “desaparecidos”. Bernardi participated with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team exhuming mass graves in investigations of human rights violations. In 2005 Bernardi created the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, El Salvador, a community-based art project where children, youth and adults work collaboratively. Bernardi is a Professor at the California College of the Arts where she designs classes on art and human rights in Latin America.

Rust Belt Riders is nearly a worker owned cooperative of people inspired by what we do with food when we're done with it. They do the dirty, often sloppy work of collecting food from people, businesses, schools and organizations, and mixing them with woody materials and high quality compost to make organic potting mix to help recapture carbon on our degraded landscapes. All this while growing healthy food and community. Another world is possible (and it will be delicious).

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a Professor of Biology and forest ecologist at the University of Utah. She studies the plants and animals that live in rainforest canopies, with support from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She has written over 130 scientific papers and three books. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge about trees with all sectors in society. She has collaborated with modern dancers, poets, and creative writers to communicate the beauty and complexity of forests to arts audiences, and partnered with corporations to convey the importance of trees to public groups who might not otherwise be interested in forests. She has brought science lectures, conservation projects, and nature imagery to the incarcerated in prisons across the country. Her work has been featured in journals ranging from Science and the Journal of Ecology to Glamour and Playboy Magazine. Her recent national awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the AAAS Award for Public Engagement, the Will

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Maureen weaves threshold vessels, tends willow and tends decomposition in baskets - bending water, shape shifting, remembering how to be human as a white, cis woman, as a soft and fierce student of birth/death/burial/blood mysteries, reverent farmer, full spectrum doula, and collaborative/interdisciplinary creatress. She is a guest here on S’Klallam land in rain shadowed Port Townsend, Washington where cormorants dive and eagles tell glacial memory sky stories with ancestral lines from the west coast of Ireland and Main River lands in Germany. woventhresholds.com

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Ashé Om is a singer, songwriter and producer born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. He is currently on a mission to lift, inspire and nurture space for collective healing through his art. Along with music Ashe has developed a fascination for nature and our relationship with it, recognizing the spiritual benefits of being in touch with the land. He plans on deepening his understanding through structured studies of herbalism in these coming times. @OmasheOm

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Spontaneous Vegetation airs on second and fourth Sundays on Lumpen Radio, 5-6pm. Kelly Pope is a genderqueer organizer with a background in fine arts and cultural criticism. They are based in their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. They’re passionate about low tech biochar production, bioregional herbalism, somatic healing for grief and trauma, Florida natural history, and workers’ health and safety. They would not call themselves an artist; they utilize the arts as a means of opening lines of communication and ideas/exploration. As a scorpio and social chameleon they have a lived experience in liminality that informs their interest in all things transitory. And now, as an essential worker during a global pandemic, they have even more urgency around sharing their perspective and vision of the world. This episode aired on July 12, 2020. It includes clips from two separate interviews with Kelly, conducted in May 2020.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Kumu June was born in Laupahoehoe on the Hamakua (Breath of the Ancestors) Coast on Hawaii Island. She began hula classes at age 6 with Louise Beamer and then danced off and on with other teachers like George Naope and Newton Hitchcock. She began studying seriously in 1988 with Kumu Hula Michael Pili Pang in his Halau Hula Ka No’eau (HHKN) in Waimea. Kumu June went through traditional ʻuniki ritual and graduated as ‘Olapa (Dancer) in 1994, ‘Olapa/Ho’opa’a (Dancer/Keeper of the Chants) in 1996 and Kumu Hula (Master Teacher) in June 2000. She also studied with Native Hawaiian elder and master la’au lapa’au (Hawaiian medicinal plants and spirituality) practitioner Henry Allen Auwae for five years until his death in 2001. She is the founder and director of Halau I Ka Pono hula school also a co-founder of the Zen Life & Meditation Center, Chicago with her husband Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse and was fully empowered as a Zen priest and Sensei (teacher) in the White Plum Li

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Jen Walling has been the executive director of the Ilinois Environmental Council since January 2011. She oversees the stragegic development and management of the organization and lobbies decision makers on environmental issues. Jen is obsessed with building the power of the environmental community to build policy outcomes that protect the environment. Over the last decade Jen has worked to grow IEC five-fold in terms of staffing, budget, and member affiliateswith a laser focus of representing over 90 affiliated organizations. Jen helped secure IEC partnership with the League of Conservation Voters which has helped IEC network and build on a national level with similar organizations. Jen holds a Bachelor's and Master's in natural resources and Environmental Science from UIUC. She received a JD from University of Illinois College of Law and is an attorney licensed to practice law in Illinois.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Catatumbo Cooperative Farm is a worker owned collective run by three immigrant queer, nonbinary women, located in South Chicago. CCF uses a community supported agriculture model to provide culturally relevant food for community members in Little Village, Englewood, and South Chicago neighborhoods. CCF officially begun operations in the fall of 2018 but was conceived in 2017 when the three worker owners attended Soul Fire farmers immersion program. It can be argued that the seeds for Catatumbo Cooperative Farm were planted long before that, through their families’ histories and relationship to agriculture, migration, and community-building. https://www.facebook.com/pg/CatatumboCooperative

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Ben Kessler is, or was, a school teacher, biologist, gardener, and nursery man. He used to work with birds who eat mammals who eat plants, and so became interested in botany by process of elimination. Ben is a worker partner with Little Bluestem, a worker-directed nonprofit that propagates and distributes plants native to central Virginia. Ben lives in a little holler in Nelson County where the water runs sweet. https://www.littlebluestem.net/

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — A curiosity for the natural world has sustained Zach from an early age. This solidified into a passion as he came of age, and dirtied his hands through horticulture, ethnobotany, permaculture, and native plants. Learning native plant propagation, things came together in a very real way, when he realized that the forager's perspective and the propagator's understanding went hand in hand. His path has led him to wild tending, an imperfect word for an ethic of relating to nature, based on reciprocity. Wildtending sets itself as an alternative to the troubled colonial legacy which created the contexts away from which we are presently emerging. Zach is a native of the mid Atlantic Piedmont and is currently based out of the lower Susquehanna river region. His profiles and writing can be found at nomadseed.com

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Rikki Longino is the founder of the Mobile Moon Co-op and Vice Chair of the Utah Permaculture Collective. She biked from Salt Lake City to New York State in 2016, where she met Nance Klehm and Oona Goodman at the Radical Mycology Convergence. She continued to bike around the country and eventually came home to start a mobile botanical apothecary for women and queers in a converted school bus. Now she has found a 1/2 acre lot to park the bus, grow herbs, and build capacity for Permaculture movement in so called Utah (Occupied Ute, Goshute, Paiute territory). Rikki is also working on creating a mushroom-infused tarot deck with Oona Goodman, wherein each of the major arcana are represented by a unique edible, medicinal, or poisonous fungus. www.mobilemooncoop.com

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based reporter, author and journalism instructor. She is a lecturer in the graduate program at the Medill School of Journalism, at Northwestern University, where she leads the Social Justice & Investigative Specialization and is co-director of the Social Justice News Nexus, a fellowship program that brings together graduate students and professional reporters. Kari writes for Midwest Energy News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Chicago Reader and In These Times, with a focus on environment and energy; housing; the opioid crisis; and labor. Her work has appeared in publications including Discover Magazine, Crain's Chicago Business, The Economist, Newsmax, People Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor and High Country News. http://www.karilydersen.net/ https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/directory/faculty/kari-lydersen.html

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — This interview is part 2 of a 2-part series. Çaca Yvaire (He/Li) is a sovereign poet, designer, and tracker. Sharp and coastal sensibilities applied to systems of climate migration, wild law, environmental security, and more-than-human personhood. Li is developing strategies for critical planetary action. He is co-director at Northeast Farmers Of Color. https://nefoclandtrust.org/

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — This interview is part 1 of a 2-part series. Çaca Yvaire (He/Li) is a sovereign poet, designer, and tracker. Sharp and coastal sensibilities applied to systems of climate migration, wild law, environmental security, and more-than-human personhood. Li is developing strategies for critical planetary action. He is co-director at Northeast Farmers Of Color. https://nefoclandtrust.org/

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Mario Ceballos is a Chicanx from Kumeyaay territory also known as San Diego CA. Mario is a stay at home parent of three children, and when they aren't braiding hair or making lunch they are thinking of ways to heal their community. Whether that be by using medicinal Fungi, direct action, smashing the patriarchy, or painting rocks with kids. Mario advocates for all marginalized people and looks to indigenous ways and models for organizing community and cultivating resilience. Growing up in a " border town" , Mario has been forced to navigate two different worlds, with family on both sides of the border, they have first hand experience with the devastating effects of colonization and the re-traumatization of a increasingly militarized border. In a attempt to mitigate appropriation of traditional medicine and to increase access and representation for people of color, Mario created the POC Fungi Community. https://www.facebook.com/pocfungicommunity1/

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Abbe Turner is the creative force behind Lucky Penny Creamery in Kent, Ohio where goats’ milk is handcrafted into artisan cheeses and award-winning candies. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Abbe is recognized as a leader in dairy and of women in agriculture. She is also the author of The Land of Milk And Money: Lessons Learned And Business Earned From Women In Dairy. www.luckypennyfarm.com