Tag Archives: Saint Louis

LA-LA-Land

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Lucy Turner Joy, by Anders Leonard Zorn, 1897

We landed it to LA last night. We scored a decent rent-a-car, a white Camry, with only 107 miles on it. Sweet! I christian it the new Clark Griswold Wagon Queen Family Truckster. We got our motor running, and headed out on the highway. We were looking for adventure in whatever came our way. We found it soon enough, stop-and-go traffic on the 405 at 8 PM. Like a true nature child we were born, just born to be wild.

We made it to CalArts and caught the tail-end of a parents and graduate students barbeque. We met some of Dan’s classmates and we got to see Dan’s studio. It was pretty interesting and I did get pictures.

We met with the insurance adjuster Wednesday night. Last weekend, our next door neighbor, Art the architect, pulled us aside and told us that he and all our other neighbors are getting new roofs. When he asked his adjuster what hail damaged looked like, the adjuster pointed it out on our roof. So, we are getting a new roof, awning and gutters. The awning and gutters were only a year old. So much for lifetime warranties. I just hope that the repair work doesn’t take as long as last year.

Pictured with this post is a photo of a painting from the Saint Louis Art Museum. I chose this graphic anticipating a certain dichotomy between stately Saint Louis and the City of Angels. The following text is the museums description of the painting:

The Swedish artist Anders Zorn enjoyed great commercial success as a painter of the rich and famous in fin-de-siècle America. In the mid-1890s he visited Saint Louis where he received commissions to paint several prominent notables including the sitter here who was the wife of a local cotton broker, Duncan Joy. The painting highlights Zorn’s virtuoso Impressionist brushwork. The sitter relaxes on a green armchair while her left hand plays with a ribbon on the sleeve of her dress.

My Mom Was the Bomb.com!

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Frank, Mom, Me, Nan, Dad, Chris

The above family portrait is from the ’70s. Couldn’t you have guessed it from the hair? The scene is in Texas. It is on one of the balconies of my parent’s then new home. In the center of this family grouping is my mom’s mom, Nan.

Her given name was Adeline, but we, her sweet and loving grandchildren, called her Nanny, or more particularly Big Nanny. This was to differentiate her from our Paternal grandmother, who we dubbed Little Nanny. I don’t know which grandmother, we most insulted. At least, on Adeline’s side of the family, Nanny was the familiar term for grandmother, but I doubt that the adjective Big sat all that well with her. Anyway, the name stuck. Our children dubbed their maternal grandparents, Bugs and Horsey. Kids, say the darndest things, don’t they?

I found my mom and grandma’s 1940 census records. Adeline, was one of the ‘lucky’ one-in-twenty interviewees that was asked the supplemental questions. Unlike today though, the government was not particularly invasive, so other than her listing her occupation as part-time waitress, there was not much of note. The online site has improved considerably. If you know the street address, finding your record is a snap. It even display a Google street view photo of the property. The displayed picture is from twenty-first century origin and not from the forties.

The Homestead

My maternal grandfather had passed by the time of the first photo. He is recorded as the person interviewed in the census. He was a fuel oil truck driver for Texaco. He made $1800 per year.

I stole the title for this post, from an NPR article. The son being interviewed exclaimed that his mom was the bomb.com. I just liked the syncopation and latched on to it.

I, Aye, Eye

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Eye by Tony Tasset

This post is a bit of potpourri. It has no central theme, so you could call it scatter-brained, if you like. I prefer the description, eclectic and I hope it pleases.

Based upon a single Facebook comment, we can assume that Dave safely made it to Hong Kong. It is not much to go on, but unless someone has rather cleverly hacked his account we must take this as proof of life. I would like to hear more of how he is doing, but not at the cost of a four-figure cell phone bill. Stay tuned.

I filed a claim with my insurance company for damages from last month’s hail storm. I had already decided to ignore the baker’s dozen dents in the Prius, when our neighbor came to us last weekend. He explained that he and most of our surrounding neighbors have already contacted their insurance companies and arranged for their new roofs. Further, when he asked his adjuster, what does hail damage look like, the adjuster pointed to our roof and pointed out the damaged spots. I called my insurance company on Monday and started the process.

I would like to recommend “lex-i-con VALLEY” with Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo, a Slate podcast on language. Etymology, the study of historical linguistic change, especially as manifested in individual words, has always been a subject of interest for me. Discussions of words and language, when well done can be both informative and entertaining. However, when it is performed poorly, it can be as dry as dust. “Lex-i-xon” is now in the mist of a multi-episode investigation of gender in language. Come on guys, I can hear your eyeballs rolling back into your heads already. Hear me out.

Their latest podcast is about gendered pronouns, like, he, him, his versus she, her, hers. The fundamental question of this show is what to call people of unknown gender. He, him, his is the default, but in the 1970s a pair of female Harvard divinity students petitioned the university to start using gender neutral pronouns. Faculty pushback was immediate, one dean accused the two of pronoun envy and another labeled the pair, distaff theologians. A word of warning, explicit language is used on the show.

Tony Tasset’s “Eye” supplies the graphic for this post. It is part of the collection at Laumeier Sculpture Park. The following is Laumeier’s description of this work.

Through this gigantic, blue eyeball Tasset creates tension as the sculpture stares, larger than life, across the landscape and back at the viewer. Modeled after Tasset’s own eye, the never-blinking, constantly conscious piece watches over Laumeier day and night. The human eye is simultaneously unique, individual and emblematic. By focusing on a key part of the body, Tasset speaks to a commonality among us. It addresses how we engage and perceive each other while concurrently asserting a prophetic, perhaps even omniscient, presence.

I heard on the radio this morning, a young man’s shout out to his mother, “Mom you are the Bomb.com!” It’s a little late for Mothers Day, but as I say, better late than never.

Laumeier Art Fair

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Laumeier Art Fair

On Sunday, Mothers Day, Anne and I went for a bicycle ride. This is a common Sunday activity for us. We ride on most weekend day. It being Mothers Day, our destination wasn’t all that unusual either. We rode to Laumeier Sculpture Park for the 25th anniversary of the Laumeier Art Fair. Anne has been visiting this art fair for most of its twenty-five years. In the beginning, I would watch the boys and Anne and Joanie would take-off for Laumeier. I feel a little bit guilty for usurping Joanie’s place, but Anne really wanted a ride. Besides, the boys have flown the coop.

This destination was a little bit outside my comfort zone. Not the sculpture park, but its environs. Don’t get me wrong, the park is located in a very tony neighborhood, but the road network that supports it, I found questionably bike friendly. I am frankly more comfortable cycling in the City of Saint Louis. Even with its ‘sketchy’ neighborhoods, it boast a road network that was designed and built for a million people and now supports only a third that number. Consequently, there are plenty of low traffic roads available to us cyclists. On the other hand, the county, in particular West County makes due with a rural road network that has been overgrown with urban sprawl. In the county, there are now fast traffic roads that string together islands of neighborhood bike friendly streets. 

With this backdrop, we sallied forth. Our itinerary included Maplewood, Webster and Kirkwood, all familiar destinations. Leaving Kirkwood, we began a process of navigation by successive approximation. We snaked through the bike friendly neighborhoods and limited our exposure on the fast traffic lanes using our iPhones. We would memorize the next few turns, hop on bikes, ride and repeat. It really was only a few extra miles, but such is my fear and prejudice about riding in the county that it felt like a major victory. We got 25 miles.

In the background above and again below is pictured Alexander Liberman’s “The Way”. It is bright red now, with a new coat of paint. It was constructed from eighteen salvaged steel oil tanks. “The Way” is the signature art work for Laumeier Sculpture Park. Below is the park’s description of this piece:

“The Way” has long stood as an acting symbol for the park, projecting in all directions like the guns of a giant battleship. This monumental work dominates the field; its scale is, in part, and meant to represent the awe-inspiring impact of classical Greek temples and mammoth Gothic-style cathedrals. The massive crumpled cylinders are welded together and placed to resemble a post and lintel architectural system. With numerous points of tension, this sacred pile of weighted geometry possesses shrine-like properties with humorous undertones, familiar to a failed game of Jenga. Discovered along the northeast coast, the eighteen salvaged steel oil tanks are a towering gateway built-in the modernist spirit. Cadmium-red was chosen for its symbolic qualities, representing beauty in Russian culture, and as a luminous abstract mixture that unifies all of the constructed parts of this work. Liberman’s carefully placed industrial columns offer layered symbolism that combines site with compositional elegance and bold enthusiasm of form.

The Laumeier Art Fair is small by some standards, but it boasts an excellent locale. The weather on Sunday was brilliantly perfect, not too hot, not too cold. I keyed on the photographic artists, because my brother, Chris, has begun to sell some of his photos. The stretched canvas framing technique that he has used, was very popular. Another framing technique in vogue was the triptych. A panoramic photograph would be subdivided into thirds, with the twist that the center section could stand on its own and was sold as such. There were no Mark Rothko prices, but close.

The Way, by Alexander Liberman

U.S. peace. I.

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Try Not To Cry, Mother

Early this morning, all too early if you ask me, Dave posted the following Chinese text to Facebook. Google translated it as “U.S. peace I.” I think that it is suppose to say, “I’m from the U.S., peace.” I’m guessing that one of his friends taught him this phrase.

美国和平了。香港我来了。

I read it, while sitting in a car on the roof of the Saint Louis airport’s parking lot. Anne and I were sitting there waiting for Dave to arrive. This is a long and somewhat convoluted story that has a chapter entitled “Get Me to the Church on Time” and another called “Get me to the Plane on Time”.

Dave in his many peregrinations, came to Saint Louis this weekend to attend a wedding. This wedding was a friend of a friend affair, with the intervening friend being a Rochester classmate. Friday night, the night before the wedding, Dave arrived in town, we took him out to diner and then he went out to meet with his friends. He returned home some time early Saturday morning. Anne and I went off biking to the Tour de Grove and upon returning home, found Dave preparing for the wedding. This is when Anne and him cooked-up Sunday morning’s activities. Dave left for the wedding and we for the ball game.

Saturday night was a late night, at least for me, so Sunday morning, when Anne’s ducks began to quack, came all too early. Don’t ask. We woke Dave with a phone call. He had crashed in the party suite after the wedding. Did I forget to mention that the wedding was held in Edwardsville? We drove to the airport from home, while Dave drove from Illinois. While we waited on the roof of the parking structure, Dave called, “Where are you guys?” To make a long story short, Dave was on the roof of Terminal #2′s parking structure, while we were on the roof of Terminal #1′s. I should point out that we entered on the roof of our parking structure, while Dave had to snake through his structure to get to the roof of his. You would think that while doing this, Dave would have begun to wonder, but as early and befuddled as I was, it must have been worst for him. We met up, Anne drove him to the correct terminal and I headed home.

From Saint Louis, Dave flew to Chicago and then on to Hong Kong. Actually, he is still flying to China, as I write this. It is a fifteen hour flight. Traveling halfway around the world is disorienting. After doing so, most people don’t know if it day or night. Dave, who is mainly nocturnal, may find his biological clock set to the diurnal half of the day. It should be a great adventure and we look forward to seeing him again and hearing all about it next week.

We’re Still the World Champions

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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this blogger from the swift completion of his self-appointed posts. I try to post everyday and I do. Sometimes I even post more than once a day. It is generally a pleasure, but sometimes it is a chore. Sometimes life gets in the way, like tonight. So, this will be an abbreviated post, just hitting the highlights sort-of-speak.

Tour de Grove

We biked today and got 16 miles. We rode over to the Grove neighborhood. It was sponsoring the Tour de Grove professional bicycle races. Yesterday, we missed the Loop de Loop, bike races in the U-City Loop. I would have liked to write a whole blog about the Loop de Loop. I like the sound of it, but that will have to wait until next year. We saw Kubie racing in the Women’s Cat 4/5 race. We also checked out the posters at Art Crank.

Art Crank is a charity art project to benefit Bike Works. Bike Works gets bicycles in the hands of underprivileged children. Art Crank is composed of forty artists, each of which designs a Saint Louis and bicycling themed poster. Forty copies are made of each poster, which sell for $40. Last year, everything was thirty. I bought a poster last year. It was all about Pee-Wee Herman’s ‘Best Bike in the Whole World.’ I’ve blogged about it in the past. I intended to get another poster this year, but stuff happened. Basically, we tried following a Trailnet ride, from just the pink dots and lost the trail. Just to get a few more miles. The ride’s arrows had been taking us back home, so that is where we went.

One final bicycling themed story occurred as we were returning through the park. Every Saturday afternoon, the knights that fight with Nerf hold court in their realm of the park. We were passing by just as the melee was breaking-up. I spied one knight mounted atop his bicycle, wearing full chainmail, with a Nerf sword ducked into his belt. I tried to get him to pose for a photo, but he was uncooperative and got away. It would have been a heck of a shot.

Yadier Molina

All of this happened earlier on Saturday. Why couldn’t I have just written it up? Well, we had Cardinal baseball tickets tonight. My boss had gifted them. We had four tickets, so John G. and Joanie accompanied us. Joanie and we drove over to the neighborhood MetroLink stop and as we were walking down to the platform, I heard John call out my name. Cool! So, we all rode downtown together. Adam Wainwright, the Cardinal starter, got shelled. The 7-2 final score doesn’t tell the whole story of how bad it looked. But, it is only a game and we are still the World Champions.

The preceding picture shows Yadier Molina, the Cardinal’s catcher at bat. It is a pretty good action shot, if I do say so myself. OBTW, he is still 0 for life in home runs versus the Braves. This swing resulted in nothing more than a long fly out. Anne reminded me that we had seen his first major league at bats. The first time he stepped to the plate, his batting average was 0.000. He got a hit, so the next time his average was 1.000. He was put out, so the third time his batting average was 0.500. In the intervening years he has managed to stabilize his batting average at a respectable figure and become the well respected ballplayer that he is.

It was so late that I forgot to wish my brother, Frank, Happy Birthday, Ski!

Our BIG Baby

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Modeling the effects of sensorineural hearing loss on temporal coding in the auditory nerve

Dave came into town tonight. We fed him at Houlihan’s and on returning home Anne began a conversation with the neighbors. Gracie, the little neighbor girl piped up with the question, “Do you have a baby?” Anne got that grin across her face that I have come to fear, and answered. “Yes Gracie, I do have a baby inside. He is my baby. Do you want to see him?” She didn’t have to ask twice. Gracie was initially nonplussed with Dave, but Anne explained that Dave has a big brother, just like Gracie does, and that made him the baby of the family. She bought this with the exclamation, “He’s a big baby.” Yes Gracie, he sure is. He dwarfs his lilliputian parents. Dave is no baby, but a grown man. He is in town to attend a wedding. On Sunday, he flies to Hong Kong. He will present the poster that he holds in the picture above.

On a less celebratory note, tonight is the vigil of the first anniversary of my mother’s death. This has been a hard year for my father, her life partner, and my brother, who has lived with them for many years. A few weeks ago, my dad and Chris resumed the international travel that my mother and they all enjoyed for many years, before she became too sick to travel. They took a riverboat cruise down the Rhine. As pleasurable as this trip should have been, it was overshadowed by their still all too raw grief.

I just wish that my mom could have seen our two sons now. I think that they would have lifted her spirit. I know it will, my father’s. They are Anne’s and my future, and in part dad’s too. It should be interesting , when we conclave in Monterey later this year.