Category Archives: Missouri History Museum

Storm Damage Repair

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Missouri Historical Society Dome Under Repair

This photo is a drone shot that was gifted me by my neighbor Art. He is an architect and is also our partner on our joint tree trimming project. The history museum has its actual museum in Forest Park, about a mile or more further east. This building functions as the History Society’s main office and library. It is located on Skinker at Wydown and was hit dead on by the tornado. The building was originally a Jewish temple but has been repurposed for as long as I can remember. This is a beautiful capture, with the copper glowing in the sunlight. According to my map of the tornado’s path, it made a direct hit on this building. It might have strengthened to an F2 by then. The Missouri Historical Society has been a major benefactor to Rey’s employer. I hope that they remain so. 

American Holly

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American Holly

I renewed our membership, which had lapsed over the summer, and we went to the gardens. They had a deal, where membership was 20% off. This way our fee will almost pay for itself, when we go back again. Such a deal. They are setup now for their holiday lights show. We stayed until about four, late enough to see most of these lights switched on. I am thinking that if we come back in about a month, around solstice it might be dark enough then to fully enjoy the lights, without having to pay extra. 

Bleeding Red, White and Blue

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Bleeding Blue

Author Jane Smiley wrote a love letter to Saint Louis, her hometown that was published in today’s New York Times. A former Saint Louis resident, she returned to town for her 50th high school reunion. Like all true loves, Smiley’s article describes both her likes and dislikes about Saint Louis, offering a frank assessment of the town’s greatest problem, race. At times, her article often reads like a travel log, where she enumerates all of the attractions that she visited. What results is a good overview for visitors. 

I biked in the park today. The fountain in front of the history museum is dyed blue in honor of last season’s Stanley Cup win by the Saint Louis Blues hockey team. Their new season just got under way. It could have been dyed red instead, in honor of the Saint Louis Cardinal’s playoff bid. Although, it is much safer to celebrate a championship already won, than one that may never come. After the first two games of their NLCS, this seems like a wise decision, but tonight the Redbirds have a chance to staunch their bleeding and hopefully score some runs.

All of this is preamble to our soon to be hosting of house guests. This is the best time to visit Saint Louis. When its weather is the most agreeable. Saint Louis is a town twice cursed by the weather gods, with a Southern summer and Northern winter, but in-between, especially in the Fall, the weather gods give us a break.

Pulitzer Prize Photographs

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Kiss of Life, Rocco Morabito, Jacksonville Journal, 1967
Kosovo Refugees, Carol Guzy, Washington Post, 2000
Six in ’46, Unknown Photographer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1946
Shovel Ready, Robert Cohen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2018

It was a busy day today. I ran errands all day long. I won’t bore you though with any recitations. At the end of the day I found myself cruising by Forest Park and decided to duck in, to see what was new at the history museum. One of the two main halls is closed as they stage the next new show, but the other one was open, with actually two new exhibits. The first photographic show is entitled Pulitzer Prize Photographs and was produced by the Newseum, of Washington, DC. The other is locally produced and called, In Focus: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Photographs. The Post was the flagship of the Pulitzer newspaper empire.

I’ve sampled two photos from each show, which I feel is fair use. I don’t usually photograph photos. I think that doing so is too meta, but this is an exceptional collection of pictures. There are eighty pictures on display, out of a portfolio that numbers over a thousand. Many of the photographs are iconic: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Ruby Shoots Oswald, Babe Ruth’s Final Farewell, to name a few.

Many of the displayed pictures are disturbing. There are ample warning signs at the exhibit’s entrance. Don’t worry though, because I decided to choose only photos of a lighthearted or uplifting subject matter. The following paragraphs  gives a synopsis of the exhibits description for each of the above photos:

  1. It was a hot and muggy day. The photographer heard a women scream and looked up to see a lineman dangling lifelessly above him. A second line- man climbed up to him and gave the first mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a while, the second lineman called down to the gathered crowd that the first was breathing again. He suffered extensive burns, but survived.
  2. Kosovo was Europe’s worse refugee crisis since World War II. This picture was shot outside a refugee camp in Albania. The infant is being passed back-and-forth between relatives who are already in the camp and newly arrived relatives, who are waiting to get into the camp.
  3. Whitey Kurowski, Enos Slaughter, Marty Marion and Stan Musial helped the Cardinals to their sixth World Championship in 1946.
  4. “All I really need to accomplish are two lanes for my car”, said Richard Burst of Webster Groves. I remember seeing this photo in the paper, but of course that was only last winter.

 

Meet Me In St. Louis

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Meet Me in St. Louis
100 Muny Seasons Collage
Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers

We attended the Muny last night. Meet Me in St. Louis was playing. We’ve seen this show many times before. It is almost a perennial hit around here. We went to the show primarily because it was the last show of the season and this being the Muny’s centennial season and all. Tonight is the season finale, but we went last night, just incase a rain check would be needed. The motto for this season is a line borrowed from this musical, “Right here in Saint Louis.”

For those of you not familiar with this show, it is set in the year leading up to the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to NYC. Part of the reason that Meet Me is always a favorite is its strong repertoire of musical numbers. There is the title song of course, but there is also the Trolley Song. Saint Louis is about to get its first real trolley in decades, Clang, clang, clang went the trolley. The story climaxes to the heart string twanging tune of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. By this point in the musical the actors are performing in turn-of-the-century winter garb, outdoors in Saint Louis’s sweltering heat, but the show must go on. Actually, it was pretty nice last night.

Meet Me is full of reprises. In addition to the explicit reprises of Meet Me, Have Yourself, The Boy Next Door and Boys and Girls Like You and Me, there was a de facto reprise added to this production. The first act has, Under the Bamboo Tree. This is followed in the second act with Under the Anheuser Bush.

Today, during our bicycle ride, we swung by the History Museum, which has an exhibit celebrating the Muny’s hundred years. Most of this exhibit is dedicated to the Wizard of Oz, which by looking at the catalog of performances in the back of the program is one of the most popular and frequently performed musicals. I think that nowadays they do this show as the annual children’s show, so that all the flying monkeys can scare the bejesus out of the little tikes.

We’ve been going to the Muny now, for a third of its run. When we first moved to Saint Louis, we snickered at the blue haired old ladies who probably had been coming to the Muny since its inception. Honest, the light from the theater’s spots made their hair glow blue. We had season tickets for years. For part of that run, we dragged the boys to the shows. Dave’s first show was South Pacific. After the show Anne asked him what was his favorite part. “When the airplanes flew over”, he answered. That would have been during the Star Spangled Banner, which precedes every performance. When Anne started teaching, we started to spend less time in Saint Louis, at least during the summer. Now that I’m retired, we’re hardly here at all, but it was good to celebrate the Muny.