Gravitational Pull: From Period Products to Our New North Star

S4E3 — Personal Connections: Period Products, Climate Poetry, and a Ritual for the Next North Star

In this episode, the threads of community, justice, climate imagination, and art weave through three distinct yet deeply connected stories.

Today’s show comes in three parts:
Part One: The Secret World of Diapers and Period Products
Part Two: Anthropocene Pastoral — climate-change poetry by Catherine Pierce
Part Three: Jump!Star — a leap 1,000 years into the future, live from Abner Clay Park in Richmond, VA

PART ONE — Menstrual Cups & Community Action

What begins with a surprise email from my sister’s childhood classmate becomes a chain reaction of connection—stretching from a tiny town along the Delaware River to Zambia, Kenya, Hartford CT, and back to my cousin Mona over breakfast.

I speak with four remarkable women whose lives, work, and generosity intersect through period poverty, community organizing, youth empowerment, and a simple but world-changing tool: the menstrual cup.

Featured Guests

⭐ Christine Garde Denning
Founder of Could You? — a global nonprofit providing menstrual cups, malaria prevention tools, and practical pathways out of extreme poverty.
Website → https://couldyou.org
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-garde-denning-2780179/

⭐ Mary Maker (Mary Nyeriak)
Actor, speaker, educator, youth advocate, refugee leader, and the force behind Could You?’s community work across Africa.
Profile → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-maker/

⭐ Fran Stoffer (she/her)
Chair of the Northwest CT Community Foundation Women & Girls Fund.
Fran shares how her regional distribution project for free period products grew into a warehouse of boxes stacked to the ceiling.
Women & Girls Fund → www.yournccf.org/womenandgirls
Instagram → @nccfwomenandgirlsfund
X/Twitter → @northwestctcommunityfoundationwomenandgirls

⭐ Mona Norfleet
Community advocate, YMCA leader, equity organizer, and member of local anti-racist initiatives. Mona jumps in with stories of her own efforts to support women in her region.
She also enjoys mixed martial arts, good bourbon, and the occasional cigar — sometimes all at the same time.

PART TWO — Anthropocene Pastoral by Catherine Pierce

Climate dread meets unsettling beauty in Catherine Pierce’s celebrated poem Anthropocene Pastoral.

The poem first appeared in Poetry Magazine and later in her collection Danger Days.
For this episode, I remastered Catherine’s reading with a new sound design.

About Catherine Pierce

Former Poet Laureate of Mississippi (2021–2025), author of Danger Days, with two new books coming in 2026:

• Foxes for Everybody (memoir, Northwestern University Press)

• Dear Beast (poetry, Saturnalia Books)

Find her work:
Website → https://catherinepiercepoet.com
Studio & Craft (her poetry community) → https://studioandcraft.com

PART THREE — Jump!Star in Richmond, VA

I travel to Abner Clay Park in Richmond’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood for the “Axial Precession Procession,” part of Jump!Star, the ritual welcoming of Earth’s next North Star: Gamma Cephei (“Ceph”), due to rise in about 1,000 years.

The park is transformed with illuminated sculptures, movement choruses, and hundreds of volunteers known as “Dark Matter.”

This segment features a SoundSlice recorded live as time folds—past, present, and future converging for one luminous ritual.

About George Ferrandi & Jump!Star

Artist, director, collaborator, and visionary behind Jump!Star.
Website → https://www.georgeferrandi.com
Photos from the event are also on my Instagram → @petersontoscano

Mirah (NYC)
Beloved indie-pop musician Mirah contributed three original songs to Jump!Star, including the anthem that drives our Axial Precession Procession of the Future North Star Sculptures. Her music guides us through the project’s unfolding story: Hello Star, Axial Precession and Goodbye Song.

LINKS & RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE Could You? — Menstrual Cups & Global Health

CouldYou? → https://couldyou.org
Period Poverty Program Info → https://couldyou.org/menstrual-cups/
Could You? Africa (with Mary Maker) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-maker/

Women & Girls Fund (Northwest CT Community Foundation)

Website → www.yournccf.org/womenandgirls
Instagram → @nccfwomenandgirlsfund
X → @northwestctcommunityfoundationwomenandgirls

Poet Catherine Pierce

Poems, books, events → https://catherinepiercepoet.com
Studio & Craft community → https://studioandcraft.com
Danger Days → Available wherever books are sold

Jump!Star & George Ferrandi

Jump!Star info → https://www.georgeferrandi.com
Photos from the event → Instagram @petersontoscano

ABOUT THE SHOW

Bubble & Squeak is written and produced by me, Peterson Toscano.
I mostly make this show for myself — and for people like Ted Heck and Levi Goren who keep making their dreams a reality.

Find more episodes, images, and strange audio bits at:
🌐 https://www.petersontoscano.com
📸 Instagram → @petersontoscano