Tag Archives: Maplewood

Everyday Is Saturday Now

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Saratoga Lanes Centennial Float

Saratoga Lanes Centennial Float

Yesterday, after my last workday, I went to downtown Maplewood where there was a festival going on. Officially, it was called “Heads will Bowl!” The genesis of this party was the centennial of Saratoga Lanes, a neighborhood bowling alley. These local establishments were once pretty common here in Saint Louis, but as time marched on most of them fell by the wayside. Saratoga has survived though and by the size and aspect of this celebration it has many more years ahead of it. There was a parade. The Steampunk roller derby team were part of the parade. Saint Louis loves its parades. There were also numerous artists hawking their wares. My big find was not art, but beer. It is increasingly more difficult to impress this writer, living here in what is arguably the beer capital of America, but last night I was impressed. I’m speaking of The Side Project Cellar. Now I didn’t actually enter this establishment, but I did partake on two occasions of their refined and eclectic cellar. They had a street booth out for the festival. I highly recommend the place and I would appreciate any feedback from those who have actually visited the place.

Steampunk Roller Derby Team

Steampunk Roller Derby Team

A Manifesto Against Momism

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, blier, limer lock
Three geese inna flock
One flew east,
One flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

In preamble I should state that I really hate this story! It viscerally tears at my psyche. Anyway, the kids did alright. Hell, they were fantastic. I loved McMurphy (Miguel Hernandez) and hated Ratched (Anna Wermuth). Please take no offense dear, it was your role, not your performance that offended me. You did your job to perfection. The rest of the cast also ably portrayed their characters. By the end of the show, I was glad that Anne had dragged me along, on Saturday night to see Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School’s production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

“Nurse Ratched, who is so inflexible, so unseeing, so blandly sure she is right, represents Momism at its radical extreme, and McMurphy is the Huck Finn who wants to break loose from her version of civilization.”, wrote Roger Ebert. “Cuckoo’s Nest” is much less about insanity and much more about rebellion to authority. I cannot think of a better staging local for such a drama than in a high school, because it is in high school where America’s future rebels are bred to question authority.

I was first annoyed, but then came to love the audience’s giggling, like whenever a cast member exhibited spastic behavior. This is a small close-knit high school, everybody knows everybody else’s business.

Running this school puts the real world facility’s talents for growth, in direct contrast to Big Nurse’s destructive reign of terror. She would have never condoned this play. The behavior of Big Nurse in another venue, say a prison or say Gitmo, would easily fall within the guidelines of torture.

Nurse Rat Shit made Billy commit suicide and then she first degree murdered McMurphy. Chief Bromden only later sort of unplugged the still breathing corpse.

I’ve vented here, but the play still portrays an evil woman, but then so are men. We are all sinners. In the real world, men are tagged as the perpetrators of most of this world’s wrongs. Men are still the world’s majority power brokers, so the blame fairly falls at their feet. This play illuminates the truth that women, given unchecked power are just as sure to abuse it as their male counterparts.

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.

Ladybug! Ladybug!

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Ladybug! Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
And your children all gone

All except one,
And that’s little Anne,
For she crept under
The frying pan

The preceding rhyme is the Americanized version of the traditional English verse, which dates from at least the mid-18th century. In the English version, the American Ladybugs become Ladybirds. They are also sometimes called Doodlebugs, but that is another story. The second verse is new to me, but maybe some of you were already aware of it? Ladybug or Ladybird, these brightly colored insects are commonly viewed as being lucky. This being a Friday the 13th, it seemed appropriate to broach the subjects of luck and superstition. The following explanation of the Ladybug beliefs comes from Wiki.

There were superstitious beliefs that it was unlucky to kill a Ladybug, and that the verse would make them fly off. Another superstition states that you should chant the verse if a Ladybug lands on you: if it then flies away again, your wish will come true. Ladybugs are useful as eaters of aphids, which would otherwise damage plants. They can also be a nuisance, but there would be logic from a farmer or gardener’s viewpoint in trying to shoo them away rather than kill them. This could be the rational basis for teaching children to respect them.

The photograph with this post was taken far from home. This picture captured only a fraction of the hundreds of Ladybugs that were crawling all over this split rail fence. We found them, years ago, in a Redwood grove, just north of Santa Cruz, CA.

Ladybug! Ladybug! Post

The motivation for this post comes from a real house fire that occurred in neighboring Maplewood. At the intersection of Sutton and Flora stood a three-story, Victorian house, a home, a dentist’s office and a local landmark. It caught on fire last night, was thought to have been put out, but reignited this morning. Anne heard that the roof had collapsed, so I can only surmise that it is a total loss. Fortunately, no one was home to be hurt. The fire is believed to be accidental. While we have no personal connection with this building, we have seen it many times and appreciated the beauty of its architecture.

Closer to home, where Laclede Station Road passes underneath the New I-64 and soon becomes Wise, an armed robbery occurred this week. An MRH student was robbed at gunpoint by two men, who were driving a Grand Marquis [no relation]. The robbery occurred on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Anne walked through this area, twice. We learned of the crime on Thursday and were understandably distressed. This is the second major crime to occur within “spitting distance” of our house, within a month.

Finally, Dr. Linda Henke, superintendent of the MRH School District announced her retirement, at the end of this semester. They say that bad luck runs in threes, and Dr. Henke’s retirement is bad luck for MRH, but as someone who can see the light of retirement at the end of the tunnel, I can only wish her the best of luck. She has been superintendent for twelve years and has successfully transformed the school district from one that was in trouble to one that we can all be proud of. Good luck, Linda!

Pretty Much A Play Day

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Friday night, the Maplewood business district had their Arts and Eats Walk. We walked around taking in the sights and sampling some of the food stuffs too. Anne knew everyone there, or at least everyone there seemed to know her. We eventually ended up at Las Palmas for some Mexican. Anne and I both wanted a margarita. We then made the mistake of ordering a pitcher of margaritas. I thought the waiter said that a pitcher was the price of three margaritas, plus you get another one, essentially free. Since Anne and I were both ordering one already, it seemed cheaper to order a pitcher that way we could both have a second one, for one half off. What came instead was a full pitcher, plus two full glasses of margaritas. It was way more than we could handle. After dinner, there was still plenty of margarita left. The waiter tried to get us to take go cups, but we both had already had enough.

At Las Palmas we caught the end of the Brewer’s defeat of the Diamondbacks and the only run scored in what would eventually become the Cardinal’s 1-0 victory over the Phillies. The Card’s win was a serious nail-bitter, one that I could not bear to watch. If I had tried, I would have nibbled my nails down to the second knuckle. Those of you that have seen my hands know that I am not joking. Chris Carpenter, the Cardinal starter, went the distance and pitched a three-hit shutout. He actually threw for 28 outs. A Philly batter made it to first base, after striking out, when the catcher dropped the ball. Now we face the Brewers. It will be a battle of the suds. I expect Saint Louis to institute drug testing for Miller products this week. It is high time an end is put to that sort of high life. I’m glad to see that the Tigers advanced too, and I wish them well against Texas.

Saturday, we drove out to Gray Summit and the Shaw Nature Reserve, for some birding. I should say that we have enjoyed an almost two-week period of uninterrupted crystal clear blue skies and balmy, but not too hot and not too cold temperatures. It is almost like living in SoCal, but cheaper. The Shaw Nature Reserve is part of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. In the 19th century, when coal was king, its smog was also killing all of the trees in the city of Saint Louis. Henry Shaw, the garden’s founder, bought land in Gray Summit, as an insurance policy for his garden. The Flying Wild Festival was featured. With kid’s activities and a guided walk, it seemed like an interesting event. It was actually a little bit too tame for me, but I did enjoy walking around the reserve. It is like the gardens, but bigger and cut to a rougher hew. The high point of the festival was the release back into the wild of a Red-Tailed hawk. The folks down the road at the World Bird Sanctuary brought the pictured rehabilitated parolee to the party.