New Album Post

More Nora pictures are in the album at the right. Most of these are from Easter and they include two short videos. Enjoy!

Rainy Days

It has been so wet this spring, but finally we have some bright sunny days to make up for it. Just in case you forgot what it was like though, I've got some Nora pictures:

The Graduate

Jason walked this past week, I think mainly so he could get the regalia. His parents came up. It was a nice time - we had the most beautiful weather. There are absolutely no pictures of him walking across the stage and getting hooded by his advisor while they read the title of his dissertation, because my camera would not cooperate and I got a picture of my shoe instead and it was way too far way anyway since we were in the basketball arena. SLU did take some that we can order, and we might since several of them have Jason humorously superimposed over SLU landmarks. And they did get the photo of Jason and his advisor and another of him walking across the stage to get his hand shook by the chancellor (Jason was eyeing his big gold medallion and chain). Here's the photos I did get.



This one was taken just moments before the Billikin Mascot walked out of the elevator. Nora didn't scream when she saw him, but she didn't want to shake his hand either. Unfortunately I have no pictures of Jason and the Billikin together.

Wish I Were There

This past weekend, we missed what looks to have been a great party down on Cherokee for Cinco De Mayo. I don't want to steal these fabulous photos, but please go take a look. You can read more about this wonderfully wacky neighborhood and see more photos here. Cherokee Street is a bit an odd place for St. Louis, but also a miniature of some of the forces that move about St. Louis. It's the epicenter of the city's growing Hispanic population (although there are Hispanic areas in the county and the city has several other immigrant populations that are larger), there's a thriving arts community that lives here too with some folks who are a bit outside the political mainstream (anarchist collective bakery anyone?), there's a bunch of just everyday folks on the lower end of the socio-economic scale who may or may not be pushed out as this neighborhood gentrifies, and there's also a bastion of more politically connected shopkeepers hunkered down on the eastern end of the street called antiques row who aren't quite so sure about the folks just west of them. Some of the blog posts talk about the tensions, and it really shows just how segmented and neighborhood idenfitied our city can be.

What The Kids Today Are Listening Too

So lately I've been leaving NPR where my car radio is usually stuck for a little further left on the dial to "THE WOOD", the student radio station of Lindenwood College. I am so very amused by listening to this. Unlike Hendrix's radio station which could barely be heard off campus, this station has some range. Lindenwood is in St. Charles and I'm assuming their radio station is there too, but I've picked it up in Illinois, my parking garage downtown (just not on the second level), and down I-44 a little ways as well. Of course, like everything else (cell phones, radio and tv transmissions, and the cordless phone) it is difficult to get in Webster, but still, I get enough coverage to not be annoyed by static. Some of the things I love about THE WOOD (besides their ridiculous name)is their incredibly in-depth coverage of the Lindenwood Men's Bowling team, their strange hyper-newsy announcer feed from the AP with his old time emphasis on random words in each sentence (think Howard Cosell), the student djs/announcers who try to do this too, despite it not being particularly useful for comprehension and it's made even worse by their not pre-reading the text so they stumble through it, the occasional announcer who cannot read at all, yet painstakingly tries to get through it, and most of all the tendency of THE WOOD to play college favorites from my college period - um 20 years ago. And then they play stuff I've never heard before, but I like which is probably stuff you've all heard of, but I haven't unless it's been featured on NPR, where I get all my other music recommendations, because um, well, I'm old.

So here's a band I would have never heard about if not for THE WOOD, and I'm sharing it with you too, because I think they're nifty (aren't all Scottish bands?)and I keep hearing this song in my head. Oh and they have a girl drummer.

More Delta

All my musings in the last post reminded me of one of my favorite songs by a Delta artist - it's stuck with me since the first time I heard it. Although most people probably associate Al Green with Memphis, he's actually from Forrest City, AR.



Backroads and Byways

Looking back over the past few months, I see I've been a horrible blogger. I don't really have an excuse, except being out of town a lot and general laziness. This weekend I had a training in southern Missouri in what's commonly known as the Boot Heel. We were south of Cape in an area where the Ozark foothills subside and the Delta begins. Being down there stirred all sorts of memories from my time at a Delta Service Corps volunteer and the year I ran all over Arkansas visiting little non-profits who were part of a big community development program with the Rockefeller foundation and the Cooperative Extension Service. I am always amazed at what some of these really isolated communities manage to achieve by leveraging grants and meager community resources. Sometimes these organizations seem to survive on sheer force of will of the staff that give so much of their time for free. Nevertheless, I can tell that the recession/depression is hitting these folks hard and they have the double whammy of increased population needing services and a decrease in funds. I hope they can keep on holding on, because I think (hope) that they will be benefiting from some of this stimulus money that's supposed to be coming, but in the meantime it's looking harsh for them and everyone else at the bottom.

My colleague and I stayed in Cape, and had a fabuous dinner at Molly's downtown. Amusingly, it was prom weekend, so we had to sign pieces of paper at the hotel that we wouldn't sneak anyone into our rooms overnight, there were electronic highway signs everywhere cautioning us that it was prom weekend and to drive carefully, and Molly's was serving a number of young couples dressed up in tuxes and ballgowns. While we were waiting for Molly's to open, I gave Sarah a little tour of Southern Illinois, since she, like many St. Louisians, never goes to east, despite living less than 3 miles from the stateline. Crossing the river at Cape is really not the what Illinois has when in mind when they make up their tourism brochures. I'm sure my father would disagree, but most people don't have Thebes in mind when they think of the great small towns of Illinois. Nevertheless, I was feeling nostogic for locations of my youth and I gave Sarah the grand tour of the courthouse, bridge, trailer park and cemetary. Due to the rain and hunger, we decided to forgoe a walking tour and side trip to see if Horseshoe Lake was spilling over the dam (Dad had requested that we take a look). She was suitably impressed by the river, which was way, way, way up (in fact the flood gates were closed in Cape) and we were momentarily worried that we would be flooded out of our training location the next morning, but Sarah assured me that someone would take us to dry land by boat if the rains came down too hard.

On the way down, Jason called me to let me know that the e-mail he got the night before that we thought was just a request for more information resulted in a surprise interview for a job further down south in the Delta. Despite it being completely unexpected (usually there's a call to set up a time for an interview) and happening while standing in line at the DMV (yes, we were late in getting our tags renewed as usual) he feels like it went really well. We're holding our breath and wishing good thoughts for this one to come through. It would be at a small university in northern Mississippi, just about an hour and 1/2 from Memphis. My trip to the top of the Delta made me remember all the things I love about area and while I know Mississippi would be a huge adjustment, it could also be really terrific. It fits a lot of our criteria for an ideal job for him (workable teaching load, days drive from St. Louis, in the south, sort of near a larger city) although he would not be working with majors, since Philosophy is only offered as a minor there. On the upside, he'd be in a humanities department with some opportunity for crossover type courses. So wish him (us) luck and send him lots of job getting vibes.

Nora is doing well, in the past couple of days she's breaking through another developmental milestone - drawing bodies and appendages on to heads. I know you are all saying, that's fine, but show us a damn photo! Nevertheless, we're all so impressed that she's doing this already, now if only she could manage to use the potty consistantly, we'd be over the moon.