In connection with my post last month, which is just down the page, I should say that there will be a fundraiser for Avis Meyer on May 3 at the Richmond Heights Community Center. It will be a trivia night with lots of movie questions and prizes donated by Avis and Anna Marie, and it’s being sponsored by Friends of Avis Meyer. If you’re interested or think you might like to buy a ticket, or if you’d just like to read more about it, check our this blog.
Category Archives: St. Louis
in the news a little
I wrote a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after spending a day at the federal court house last week. Because I expected it would be printed in the paper, if published at all, and because I didn’t see it there, I thought it had failed of its aim. But I didn’t think of the online paper. Here’s my letter, and a couple of links here and here to local blogs that tell a good deal of the back story if you look around.
I blogged about the back story over a year ago. There’s a great deal I know about it that I can’t say, but I’m going to write about it again soon.
fewer nasty emissions for the planet . . .
It’s so nice to know that one is a good citizen. Here on the Mississippi we don’t get the extreme cold that folks get just a couple hundred miles north of here. Still, we keep our thermostats at 68° in the daytime and 55° at night downstairs. Upstairs, where we sleep, we turn off the heat altogether at night, since we have two heating and air conditioning units, one for each floor of the house.
Today the outside temperature is hovering in the low thirties, up from a low of 16° early this morning. That’s pretty normal for St. Louis in January, though we have a low of 2° forecast for later in the week. We’ve also had very little snow this winter. At the gym I hear guys talking about how folks here don’t know how to drive in winter weather, just the sort of stuff I used to hear in Texas.
In November Missouri voters approved a ballot initiative requiring “investor-owned electric utilities to generate or purchase electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and hydropower with the renewable energy sources equaling at least 2% of retail sales by 2011 increasing incrementally to at least 15% by 2021.” But we’re still going to be primarily dependent on coal for the foreseeable future. It’s too bad.
. . . about snakes
In the extended family of my boyhood there was a cousin known as Bubba. The name carried no connotation of ignorance or redneckery — we were all southern folk. It was a carryover from babytalk, like a lot of nicknames, and it meant “brother.” I’m unable to account for the morphing of Bubba from sobriquet to media cliché meaning “dumb hick,” but this week’s Newsweek cover has got to deserve Waylon Jennings’ Wurlitzer Prize for obnoxious camp (though the cover story isn’t bad).
And speaking of that, the sneering and condescension of Michael Gerson and Charles Krauthammer on today’s Washington Post op-ed page is only exceeded by the Post’s front page teasers reading “Asleep at the Pew” for Gerson and “Ex-Uncle Wright” for Krauthammer. We hear a good deal these days about the encroachment of bloggers, whose endless typing threatens the public mind, more properly nourished by the (presumably slower) typing of wise, disinterested, and brainy types who occupy slots in major media outlets. Golly, gee, I can’t wait for the next brainy and disinterested excursus about immigration from Lou Dobbs! And that Krauthammer really gives me food for thought when he sneers in Latin; mirabile dictu, indeed.
New duck on the block. One of the nice things about living in St. Louis is the city’s multiplicity of neighborhood restaurants and pubs. My beloved and I have been saddened recently by the closing of two favorite places, Pestalozzi Place and Tanner B’s. But we were happy last night to be able to walk across the alley again and find Pestalozzi Place reincarnated as The Shaved Duck, a lively new bistro featuring a tapas-style menu with wonderful entrées (we both had a trout entree that was superb), local cheeses, and craft beers. Here are a couple of enthusiastic reviews: [1], [2]. Owners of the Shaved Duck also operate The Scottish Arms on Sarah, just off Laclede. Last night’s opening was great fun, and, to judge from the crowd, a big success.