Walk In the Woods

Our first Walk In The Woods event was this past Sunday, a very wet and cold day for the 2nd day of spring. Amazingly, we had friends who were willing to join us - Steven and Mary and their girls and Caroline and her two children joined us. We traveled to Mastodon State Historic Site where we spent about 2 hours hiking a short gravel trail. Hiking isn't really the descriptive word: puddle jumping, pebble collecting, rock splashing, mound climbing, stick finding and nature gazing are all probably more apt. It was a wonderful time despite the drizzle and the chill. After the "hike" we spent some time enjoying blondies and exploring the little museum on site. My camera's battery power was giving up by the time we reached the mastodon bones, but be assured that they were wonderful to behold. So was the Giant Ground Sloth re-creation. This was well worth the journey. Tune in next month to see where we might travel next!

What's Going On This Week?

ACTION! Join the People's Settlement - I'll be down there on Saturday afternoon for the bakesale, and probably wander down for the kick-off too. Events keep getting scheduled:

Frustrated with Corporate Control of Politics? Angry over unjust Housing Foreclosures? Big Bank Bailouts? Continuous War? No Change?

That is why a group of us has decided to take the power back and come together on a broad based front, united against a common threat. Join us at the People's Settlement, a week of action dedicated to focusing on various corporations in the downtown area; from Bank of America's bailouts to Peabody Coal's unethical energy to the prison industrial complex to Anthem's blocking of real healthcare reform.

This is the first step in building a genuine broad-based anti-corporate movement in St. Louis. All of us want an end to injustice--from issues of from local control, to clean energy to peace to jobs to healthcare to equality and everything in between. And we have been working separately for too long. It's time that we stand up and stand together on a united front! Many of us have worked hard on political campaigns and activist campaigns attempting to bend the ears of our legislators and it has been to no avail. Why? Because corporate power divides us on every issue and blocks us from effecting real change and legislative action.

We hope our work can harness anger endemic in corporate control of politics, the economy and corporate personhood and serve as a rallying cry for similar actions across the nation. It is also noteworthy that for the first time, all of the major federal campaigns--Healthcare, Financial Reform and Immigration--are emphasizing the need for there to be significant, mass movement in order to achieve anything meaningful in DC. So join us to "break up with your bank", participate in guerrilla street theater, campout on downtown, demand clean energy and a real economy, or simply raise your voice.

We will kick-off the event at 3pm on March 24th with a “real economy” demonstration in Kiener Plaza.

Tentative Schedule:

Wednesday, March 24
3:00- Kick Off Rally
3:30-Foreclosure action at Bank of America
6:00-Settle! Set up the Settlement

Thursday, March 25th
7 a.m. LGBQT Action against Laclede Gas Discrimination
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=376221911371
2-3:00 p.m. Break Up with Your Bank!
5-6:00 p.m CWA-Revenue Action

Friday, March 26th
3:30-5:00 Anti-War Action

Saturday, March 27th
11-1:00 Literacy for Social Justice Teach In
1-3:00 Privatization of Education Bake Sale

Sunday, March 28th
1-3:00 p.m. Faith Based Action-Catholic Action Network
3:30-5:30 p.m. Labor History Tour
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=401545241423&ref=mf

Plus great stuff every evening! Come check us out!

What You Can Do: We need you to come for the kickoff! We need you to camp-out in the evening. We want you to invite your friends and family. Most importantly, this is a movement, we want your ideas on programming and actions.

Sign Up to camp:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BZ3XC2V

City Walks: City Garden

City Garden opened up this summer to a great deal of praise. Despite it being a few short blocks from my office, today was the first day I actually wandered down there. It measured up to the hype. Some of the things I loved about it:

White Bunnies

The prairie running through the middle of the two block park - this grass is about waist high.


These river fountains (and the squirty fountains in the other half) are for playing in



The plantings give walkers the feeling like they might start taking over concrete (from down the block it sort of looks like the beds are in the middle of the street).

And best of all it's smack in the middle of downtown. Great location for tourists, locals, and office workers. The new parking garage Schnucks is just down the street, so it's easy to pick up your lunch and picnic here.

These photos don't show the massive number of statues that are in the park, many of which seem very climber friendly, and the many places to sit that aren't art. One of the other things that make it great is that while there is a security presence, they don't seem to be there to make sure you don't touch the art or stay out of the water. All ages are lounging, playing and soaking up the sun. It's nice to know our city gets it right sometimes.

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.

On The Road Again

Hmm, it feels like I'm never here anymore.  Last week I went to the TESOL conference in Denver.  It was really a very good conference.  As well as being quite big.  I think what I enjoyed most about it was that it was an unusual cross-section of academic and practitioner.  Usually conferences are one or the other, this one had both with the added benefit of actually thinking about policy at the same time.  It was sort of nice for folks like me who actually enjoyed taking classes at college and who sort of miss talking about theory and the big picture, as opposed to just getting some strategies to use in the classroom on Monday.  I also loved that it had social justice issues right at the forefront, which is sort of an unusual thing at a literacy-related conferences, where social justice issues might be present, but usually shunted off to the side.   It being more front and center here  is probably because of it's international focus, which was another thing I liked about it.  Oh yeah, and there was a blizzard too.   

This week I'm off to another conference, presenting and exhibiting (that sounds so wrong), but this time I'm going to Southern Missouri, specifically the Lake of the Ozarks.  I'm not really a fan, although, most of Missouri seems to think that it's the cats pajamas.  We are, of course at the Tan Tar A, which is where just about every Missouri conference having to do with Education ever is held, unless one of the two cities convinces the rest of the state to come their direction.  It is an odd place.  Like a southern shotgun house that someone just kept adding on to, the Tan Tar A has labyrinth of buildings that only sort of connect, elevators  that don't stop at every floor,  and passageways that dead end making you exit and run around the building to resume your course.  I dread going there, but then again, I sort of like the place's oddness juxtaposed with it's unrelenting marketing that they are all about FUN and FAMILY.  I won't being doing the water park, or the golf, or the spa  and to the outlet mall (well, maybe),although that's what children, men and women are supposed to do at resorts, or maybe just this resort - in that order - check out the billboards. The irony of it being a FUN, FAMILY VACATION, where none of you actually spend time with each other or even see each other, is sort of lost on Tan Tar A.   In any case, I will be sans family,  stuck in a big exhibit hall talking about parental involvement and why it's more than asking the parents of the "good kids" to come in and decorate the bulletin board, to a potentially hostile audience. Good times.  Let's hope spring is back to stay, because I really want to get home on Saturday evening.