Monthly Archives: March 2012

Oh, the things you can see, when your out and about on your bike!

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What do Oprah Winfrey, leather balls, pickled turnips, kinky window displays, fashion shows and mammoth elephants have to do with each other? Answer: We saw them all on our bike ride today.

20 miles that’s what we rode, not many miles, but loads of blog fodder. The day started off rather inauspiciously. I wasn’t certain that we would ride together. Anne was still hacking up phlegm. Trooper that she is though, she soldiered on and we launched together at eleven.

We rode through the park, on our way to Tower Grove and South Grand. The Crimson was doing warm-up exercises when we passed by on the way out. They were still playing on the way back. We lunched at The Vine, falafels, smoothies and those pink pickled turnips. Anne had heard about Upcycle Exchange and had to check it out. It is a “secondhand” store for fiber art supplies. Ladies turn your fabric stash into cash! It really doesn’t work quite like that, but is still a good go-to for cheap supplies and is also an outlet for churning your supplies. I left and waited outside, when I saw the sign that said unattended children will be given glitter and a glue gun. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be with ‘em or again ‘em. Wayward parents, this is actually a better deal than what a neighboring coffee shop has to offer, an espresso and a puppy, and then your child returned to you. On the way back, we breezed by Vintage Haberdashery and admired their window displays.

So we were heading back on Tower Grove Ave, which is always congested on a Sunday afternoon. Were waiting at the light at Manchester, Anne was in the lead. Usually I snake between the parked cars and the cars stopped at the light. Anne didn’t feel comfortable doing this. I chided her for this, and then noticed the hubbub. I called out to a woman, “What’s up?” “Oprah” she answered. We were outside Sweetie Pie, a traditionally southern/soul restaurant. We dined there once. The food was excellent, but the portions that we ordered were not conducive to cycling.

Anne offered to hold my bike and I dived into the scrum. While she was waiting, she overheard a phone call, “Guess what, honey? I held the door for Oprah. At Sweetie Pie’s. No, the south one.” As I entered the scrum around her a tall woman took me under her arms. She guided me through the crowd to get the shot that I’ve shown. About this time, a man on the periphery of the scrum announced, “You can see her better on TV.” Since I hadn’t actually seen her, just held my camera up above the crowd, I had to agree.

Afterwards, back on the bikes, Anne asked, “So, are you still upset with me for not making the light?” “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” That’s why I call her the muse. Afterwards, we stopped at the Missouri History Museum, hence the picture of the Spirit of Saint Louis and the mammoth. We stopped there because the Saint Louis Weavers Guild was doing a fashion show. There will be more on this later.

Today was one in a hundred. The weather today certainly was too. It was so good that we had to import Kansas City fans to fill the indoor stadiums. Even at this point in the post, I am wrestling with whether it is wise to blow all of today’s great shots on one post. After all, I got Oprah, but she was just a moment in a busy day. A high point for sure, but without the day’s supporting cast, ultimately a ho-hum.

The Hunger Pangs

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Redbud

It has been a rough week here in RegenAxe-land. Part of the problem was of our own making, two late-night work-nights; left us feeling sleep deprived all week. Still we enjoyed hearing the Rep’s Ignite! readings. Anne had a bad day at school and has had a lot of trouble trying to shake her cold. Near the end of the week, these three maladies combined to make Anne feel low. In stepped me with the perfect prescription, a copy of “The Hunger Games”.

Anne is a sucker for a good read and with teaching high school has developed a taste for young-adult fiction. So with the hubbub surrounding “The Hunger Games” movie opening, I knew I had the quicker picker upper in hand, and I was right. The reason this post is going out so late, is that I had to finish the book too. Now we’re both ready to catch the movie. Say tomorrow?

Friday night we went out to dinner. I wanted to checkout Big Shark. I need a new pair of bibs, but their spring wardrobe hasn’t arrived yet. I have two gift cards and a coupon that are burning a hole in my hand. It matches the hole in my existing bibs. Instead of going to Pi, we went to a new noodle place next door, the Chinese Noodle Cafe. Anne had a huge bowl of their seafood noodle soup. I had their crispy beef, which was just as good as Yen Ching’s.

Saturday, we biked around the park and then over to the west-end to Left Bank Books. Anne needed to pick up a book there. I read while she shopped. Afterwards, we enjoyed a little something at Duff’s. I had a bowl of gumbo and Anne had a grilled cheddar sandwich, with apple slices and caramelized onions. She shared her homemade slaw with me, but not her pickle. It was a gorgeous day. We enjoyed patio seating. The CWE was crawling with KU fans. We got 16 miles. So what’s for dinner?

The Huffington Post

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I am a liberal and I hate the Huffington Post. I hate the Drudge Report too, but I’ll hold-off on that. I was scrolling down on today’s front page of the Huff Post and I saw a link to an article that said, “Obama Hits Heckler”. Clicking it, I am taken to Arianna’s politics page. Scrolling down once again is another link to this article. This time the link has a picture of Obama speaking in-front of microphones and the caption, “Obama Hits Back at Heckler”. Finally, I reach the article and its headline says, “Obama Responds to Heckler during Energy Speech: ‘You’re Being Rude’”. I was lured into drilling-down by a salacious title, to what turned out to be a ho-hum story. All the while, I was being pelted with ads, which was the purpose of this exercise all along.

New HDR Shot of Monterey

I went from envisioning an attack from Obama, possibly involving a drone, to a tussle with the President that the Secret Service had to break up, to just words, and only half of the dialog at that. We never learn what the man heckling from the crowd said. From what Obama says to him from the podium, it apparently involved this man’s desire to give him a book to read. One only learns even this from watching the CBS News video feed of the event, after watching a commercial I might add. We never learn which book. The extent that the Huff Post exhibited any journalism at all was to echo another new source’s report.

Arianna Huffington learned her craft while working for Matt Drudge. For those of you not familiar with either of these two’s work, The Huffington Post is to the left, what the Drudge Report is to the right. Besides better politics, Arianna’s rag has better visuals than Matt’s, which has virtually none. It also reports on culture, which usually degrades to a laundry list of celebrity’s dirty laundry. Still, it is a guilty pleasure. Both Arianna and Matt perform a service for their various constituencies. Such a service is worthy of a fee, hence the ads, but to bait-and-switch the way she does is worthy only of tabloid journalism. I guess that is what she has sunk to, the National Enquirer of blogs.

Non-HDR Version

This is not what really pains me though. I do find it annoying, but what really hurts is the way she always goes all fangs out for Tina Brown and her Daily Beast/Newsweek organization, when ever she can. I know that they are competitors, but cattiness is never pretty and a girl fight is even worse. Brown has a healthy stable of writers who write real news articles, instead of trolling the internet in high-speed cigarette boats. You are never fast enough, if you are sourcing someone else’s material. Part of my anger is derived from what the Huffington Post once was, at least for me. Once it was my first source for much of its reporting. Maybe it is I that have changed and not Arianna. Maybe I have outgrown the supermarket checkout aisles and now prefer to U-scan my own news? They still put tabloids in the U-scan aisles, but watching and waiting for the previous customers to finish is so much more consuming.

The two photos are from my brother, Chris. He took them last night, while we were talking on the phone. They are the product of his new Canon 5D Mark III. It arrived just in time for his birthday. Over the phone, I could hear the shutter fluttering, as he snapped this HDR photo spread. Please be sure to click and enlarge these photographs. It is worth it. Once again, Happy Birthday Chris!

Happy Birthday Chris!

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Rich Uncle Chris Comes Through for the Boys

Completing this week’s trifecta of birthdays is my brother Chris’s birthday, on Saturday. The photos with this post are from the treasure trove that I unearthed this last winter, from our basement boxes of old prints. The place is Monterey and the time is Christmas, sometime in the last millennia. “Rich” Uncle Chris certainly knew what the boys wanted that Christmas, as you can see from the smiles on their faces. A computer Game Boy controller and cash certainly hit the spot, although, some Danish purveyor of Lego, likely relived them of that cash shortly afterwards. The second photo is contemporary with the first one. It is sunset. The reddish western sun is reflected in all the windows. I love the Christmas wreaths in the front door.

Sunset Illumination

Chris has sold another photograph, “Monterey Yacht Harbor“. He also bought another Canon 5D camera, the Mark III. Happy birthday to himself! He and dad are making plans to take a cruise on the Rhine. It is good to see them traveling again. Happy Birthday Chris! He has sent me an out-the-window HDR shot of Monterey bay. It is impressive. Tune in later and I’ll post it soon.

Happy Birthday Jackie!

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Jackie

Friday is my mom’s birthday. She died last May, so this will be her first birthday since then. I’ve included two pictures of her with this post. My dad had collected some photos of her, for her memorial services. I scanned these two then. Chris, my brother, took them. The first one is a portrait. Chris had taken several in this vein. This one wasn’t her favorite, but it is still pretty good. The second one is older, some twenty-plus years old. That is Dave in Anne’s arms, so many of you can do the math. The scene is the kitchen in Texas. It is either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Mom looks happy. This is how I like to remember her. Happy Birthday Mom!

Jackie, Anne and Dave

Happy Birthday Bubs!

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Gene and Betty

First off, happy birthday, Gene! Technically, Thursday is your birthday, but I am posting this late enough that I don’t feel like I’ve jumped the gun. The photos are from our wedding. Our wedding photographer, was my Bro, Chris, but these pictures were taken by Peter, one of my groom’s men. Peter or Evelyn put them in a book, where they have been sitting lo these many years. Among the family members pictured, Betty, Katie and Jackie, have passed. It may seem strange, to invite so many dead people to a birthday, but I had to capture the duality of these two sisters, and these were the people who were there. I love seeing Gene and Betty, with the same laugh. Memories of happier times, and this day was certainly a happy one. Bubs, you are entitled to say, “Oh, Gawd!”, at the sight of these photos. Afterall, it is your birthday. Happy Birthday!

Betty, Katie, John and Jackie

Wednesday night, a work night, was also another night at the theater. We attended The Rep’s third offering in their, new this year, Ignite! theater festival. This evening’s offering was a reading of the play, “Bicycle Girl”. Below is The Rep’s synopsis:

In 1939 two girls from very different backgrounds travel across America by bicycle. Their destination is New York and the World’s Fair with its promise of revealing the World of Tomorrow. A lovingly told play about one world giving way to a new one, and two girls changing along with it.

Like the previous evening’s offering, this was essentially a two actress play. Although, there was a third character, “Man”, who played multiple parts. Unlike the previous evening, this was not an exercise in cringe theater. Speaking with playwright, Rogelio Martinez, the inspiration for his play came from the life of photographer, Ruth Orkin. He mentioned her iconic photo, “American Girl“. He originally thought about chronicling her post-war tour of Europe. Then he learned of her 17-year-old bicycle ride from LA to NYC.

Steven Woolf (The Rep Artistic Director) explained, it takes a written play seven years to make it to Broadway. These readings represent only one step in this process. I asked him if any of the three would likely show up at The Rep. He said that the one we missed, “Stagger Lee”, was the best candidate. It is a musical, and as part of this series, they only performed its first act. Again, here is the synopsis:

On Christmas Eve 1895, shots rang out in a St. Louis bar. A hundred years and a thousand songs later, this ordinary murder has become a legend. This is the true story of what happened after Stagger Lee shot Billy Lyons.

I was very impressed by Ignite! I thought that the two plays read (that I saw) were both worthy of further consideration. The $8 a seat cost made this a no miss opportunity for a Rep patron. According to Associate Artistic Director, Seth Gordon, The Rep plans on repeating this festival.