Spontaneous Vegetation

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Antonia Perez is a clinical herbalist born and raised in NYC. They have apprenticed with several herbalists around the Northeast, South America and the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine in NYC They graduated from Bard College where they studied environmental and urban studies. They are a community organizer, gardener, food and environmental justice educator. They are also the co-founder of collectives: Brujas and Herban Cura. They are passionate to share their knowledge with other folks especially in urban centers, in order to interrupt notions of individualism and separatism from nature and grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities. www.herbancura.org

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Monica Eng is a reporter at WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio and the co-host of the podcast Chewing. Currently she reports for the Curious City show and Worldview show on issues of Chicago, health, food and sustainability. She has worked in Chicago journalism for three decades, mostly as an editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune. Over the years her reporting has focused on Chicago culture, ethnic communities, health, sustainability and food. Her children are fourth generation Chicago Public School graduates. In this episode, Monica discusses the history of lead pipes in Chicago, preserving old trees in Andersonville, and Mayor Lightfoot's environmental strategy. #Chicago #Environment #Politics #EnvironmentalJustice

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — TODAY'S GUEST on SPONTANEOUS VEGETATION- Vivien Sansour of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library Listen Live to Spontaneous Vegetation from 5-6pm CST on WLPN 105.5 FM (Chicago) or stream on lumpenradio.com Vivien Sansour is an artist and conservationist who uses image, sketch, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for the protection of biodiversity as a cultural and political act. As the founder of Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and the Traveling Kitchen project, she works with farmers to promote seed conservation and crop diversity. She is co-director with Riad Bahour of the feature film El Bizreh Um El Fay, which was awarded best project at RamallahDoc 2015 and will be released in 2020. She has presented her work as an artist at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery, Washington, DC; SALT Art Center, Istanbul; and the 2019 Venice Biennale. Born Jerusalem; lives in Bethlehem, Palestine and Los Angeles, USA

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Lynn Fang, MS specializes in soil and compost ecology for community compost and urban farming projects in the Los Angeles, CA area. She has helped start pilot projects in the Pomona and Claremont area that are rooted in ecological design and increasing community access and connection. Her work bridges healthy soils and healthy communities, making ecological education fun and accessible for everyone. She recently launched an online class series called Soilify!

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Elise Pepple is the GM of Marfa Public Radio in Far West Texas. She believes in the power of storytelling to shape and animate who we are, where we live, and how we relate. Elise spent the last decade learning the contemporary branches of oral storytelling apparent to her: oral history, radio, live storytelling, and podcasting. She got her start in radio when she brought StoryCorps to her small town in rural Alaska. She studied radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Study. She used to produce fun projects like The Other AK: an experiment in narrative tourism and Portland Brick, a project building public memory. She also used to host a live storytelling series called Hear Tell where everyone would end up laughing and crying together. She also also used to teach college students. Now she fills out a lot of paperwork, deals with lightning strikes to a transmitter on a mountain, and raises money.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Heidi Gustafson is an artist, pigment worker and ore whisperer based in rainy, volcanic Cascade foothills of northern Washington. Her intuitive and highly collaborative ochre and iron research projects include work with award-winning scientists, paleontologists, anthropologists, linguists, citizen foragers, artists and friends around the planet. She’s a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, studied forensic art/science at the University of Baltimore and holds an MA in Philosophy and Religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — On this episode Nance chats with Beatrice Scescke, Samara Reigh, and Dr. Tulia Rubero from Blue Island Traditional Medicine, a women-owned, worker-owned holistic health clinic. The trio chats about acupuncture, chiropractic medicine, changing attitudes and more.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Myriam Fallon has been an environmental activist for 10 years. She has worked in community organizing, campaign communications, activist training, and most recently as a crew member on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise. Over the years she has worked on a variety of issues from local fights to shut down old coal plants, to global campaigns to get toxic chemicals out of clothing manufacturing and to reform the global fishing industry. Through her work with Greenpeace she's been able to work with activists around the world to tackle some of the biggest environmental issues of our times. Myriam has recently come home to Chicago, where she was born and raised.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Mushroom Ecologist, Cultivator and Author, Willoughby Arevalo is my guest on my next Spontaneous Vegetation Show! Sunday 5-6pm CST 105.5 FM Chicago or stream at lumpenradio.com Willoughby Arevalo is passionate about the ecology of fungi, the ways they shape our world and the ways we shape theirs. His lifelong friendship with fleshy fungi has led him down a mycelial pathway – from a start in field identification and mushroom hunting, branching into cuisine, DIY cultivation, farming, education, writing and eco-arts. In his thirty years of self-mtivated inquiry and intmate lived experience with fungi, he has spent the last decade prioritizing sharing mycology with people in communities across North America This has manifested in numerous presentations, art projects, teaching tours, collaborations, gatherings, and his new book, DIY Mushroom Cultivatioon, out now from New Society Publishers. Between the mycology and art work, and caring for his kid, Uma, he works part time

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Trinity Pierce is a nature steward based in the Chicago area. She began her restoration journey during barefoot summers exploring woodland, bogs, and roadside wildflowers of northern Wisconsin. With a formal background in history and landscape architecture, Trinity thrives on leading and learning alongside volunteers of all ages. She has designed and implemented restoration projects from the mountain west to the midwest; from rural to urban ecosystems.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently a novelist, public talker and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their twenty books include evolution (poems), Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 re-issue of Cool for You, I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the PSA, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. In 2019 they'll be teaching at NYU and Naropa University and they live in New York and Marfa, TX. Photo by Shae Detar

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — This week's guest on Spontaneous Vegetation is filmmaker David Fenster. David Fenster is a filmmaker based in Marfa, Texas. His films link the cultural and historical with the ecological and mystical - celebrating the specificity of a particular place. His work has shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, the New York Times, HBO, the Hammer Museum, and many other museums, festivals and media outlets.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Olga Bautista has dedicated her professional career and efforts to improving the lives of her community members. As one of the lead organizers for the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Pet Coke Olga led the fight that forced state and local politicians including Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s Office, the City Council, and the Governor’s Office to address the pressing environmental issues in the 10th Ward. She is strongly involved with her local school council, the Immigrant Defense Alliance, migrant education, crisis counseling and is a board member of the Southeast Environmental Taskforce (SETF). She is trained in Restorative Justice Conflict Resolution and DIY Balloon Mapping. 

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Eli Brown is an interdisciplinary artist working in living media (side note – does this mean mushrooms and plants?), drawing, sculpture, performance, video and participatory projects. His projects explore the histories and futurities of queer and trans subjectivities, communities and intimacies and deal with anthropocentrism as it relates to conceptions of evolution and species. He is a 2018 recipient of the Boston Foundations Collaborate Boston Grant and Culture Push’s Fellowship for Utopian Practice.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Weshoyot Alvitre is a female illustrator and comic book artist. She has a BA in fine art and studied illustration and animation. She is Tongva & Scottish. She has contributed to many award winning books including the Eisner award winning Umbrella Academy (Darkhorse Comics) and Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream (Locust Moon press). Her most recent projects include art for Codetalkers Volume 1 (Native Realities Press), Moonshot volume 2 (AH comics inc), Rosebud magazine #61 and including work in several gallery shows across the country to bring awareness to the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. www.weshoyot.com #Weshoyat

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago, born in New York, and raised in New England. She has been the recipient of a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship in environmental journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a Frontline: Environmental Reportage residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts, studying with Naomi Klein. Her work on loss and nature, glaciers and extinction has appeared in The Rumpus, The Chicago Reader, Tikkun Daily, The Nervous Breakdown, The Manifest Station, Punk Planet, the book The Time After, and the forthcoming collection 21/21Chicago. She has also released three albums of original music, Prairie Music, Civil Twilight, and Slipping the Holdfast. Her work has been adapted into the short film Become Ocean, which was accepted into the Sidewalk Film Festival and the Wild and Scenic film festival in 2018.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Sophia ("So") Sinopoulos-Lloyd is a queer Greek-American who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of Alnobak/Abenaki territory (central Vermont). Much of So's work is animated by a study of how personhood and spirituality are interwoven with geography and can be further informed by intimate knowledge of place through naturalist study. Along with their spouse Pinar, So runs Queer Nature and develops nature-based programming for LGBTQ+ people.queernature.org #queernature

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Dreadsen aka "Media Skeptic" is a direct action trainer, organizer and long-term power-building consultant for the many grassroots organizations in Chicago and nationally. Recently, he organized the first IWW recognized railroad union in 80+ years which resulted in a strike in multiple rail yards through Illinois and Wisconsin and brought the largest National Labor Relation Board settlement in IWW's history. Currently, Dreadsen runs a critical media literacy site: www.mediaskeptic.net

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — In this episode Nance speaks with Sol Hinami-Mayorga and Kathleen Soler from the Fraternal Forest wilderness adventure school. Sol is the founder and co-director of Fraternal Forest, a wilderness and adventure school in Chicago. In a previous life, Sol was working in the Sciences. Now a mother of two children she believes that by treating children 'like sourdough' and exposing them constantly to the natural environment, they will get some forest spores deposited in their souls, and when they mature, in 30-something years, they are part person/part forest. As we all should be. Kathleen is an educator with the Fraternal Forest, and a naturalist, meddler, instigator enthusiast from Chicago with ten years of experience working with children in the field of outdoor education. She is especially interested in figuring out how the children of the 21st century will grow into the role of earth stewardship.

Nance Klehm, Radical Ecologist — Cultural worker, Nicole Garneau is an interdisciplinary artist making site-specific performance and project art that is directly political, critically conscious, and community building. Her new book Performing Revolutionary: Art, Action, Activism was recently published by Intellect, UK. Performing Revolutionary was written in response to the UPRISING project: 5 years of monthly outdoor performances exploring practices of revolution. https://www.nicolegarneau.com/