Wednesday, June 4, 2014

St Louis, and the Arch

I'm sure everyone has seen photos of the St Louis Arch, but it's still pretty impressive in real life!

It is hot here in St Louis today - close to 90, and pretty humid. We had a huge rainstorm last night, with hail blowing around; and more rain is in the forecast - causing an overcast look to the Arch. It is hard to see in this photo, but there is a horse-drawn carriage across the street from where I'm standing (the Old Courthouse).

St Louis has a lot of French names on streets, buildings, and other areas around town. I really notice the contrast to Boston - where everything sounds very British. Driving and walking around St Louis, I noticed it "feels" like Chicago, or Milwaukee, or Minneapolis - Midwestern river/Great Lake towns. It seems more relaxed here than the East Coast, slower in a good way.

My mom used to bring my brother and I to St Louis when we were kids, so I always associate it with trips to the zoo, to the theater, to see the Christmas lights in the windows downtown, and of course - to see the Cardinals!  We spent many happy hours in the car on many weekends listening to Jack Buck, the Voice of the Cardinals! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Buck. (If you miss him - here's a short tribute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58SZPmCn6No) So St Louis has always been "fun" for me - and today was no exception. I even finished off the day at a local restaurant where the very nice waiter stuffed me with Greek Linguini (never had it - now love it!) and recommended a local favorite dessert: gooey butter cake. I couldn't even finish it, it was that good! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gooey_butter_cake

Great things in the library here also! The trouble with visiting libraries while traveling is that I want to check out all the cool things I see - so have to spend time writing it all down so I can get materials from my library. This was particularly troublesome here today, as the St Louis county library had "mystery date" books, and I was dying to check them out!! The books are on a rack and identified as Mystery Date Books; they are wrapped up in brown paper, with a smiley sun or an umbrella with rain, and identifying words/ideas are written in each corner. For someone like me, who loves almost all books and has a low tolerance for unsolved questions, the temptation to check them out - or at least to take a librarian aside and beg for the titles, was nearly overwhelming!

St Louis has a lot of other really interesting, very useful, community-oriented programming going on. The range of the authors they bring in is very impressive, and the programming they offer for patrons of all ages and interests is great: http://www.slpl.org/events/calendar.asp.  You can take a look at their online exhibits here: http://www.slpl.org/slpl/library/article240109024.asp.


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