respublica

First Responders Day

Yesterday Concordia Seminary hosted local police and firefighters as a thank you for all they do. There were first responders from Clayton, Richmond Heights, Maplewood, Creve Coeur and other places. There was a chapel service followed by an outside breakfast. All the visitors stayed for a long time, talking and enjoying the event.

A bag piper began and ended the chapel service.

The mayor of Clayton spoke at the end of chapel.

Then some of the campus kids who aren't of school age or were out of school yesterday formed a line and gave the first responders high fives.

Noah and Tabby Comfort Dogs also came.

The kids and students loved this

I believe our guests did too.

 

Pancake faces

For some reason the on air people at KSDK have had pancakes sent to them with their faces engraved on the surface.

Here's Alexandra Corey's pancake.

Week's end tally

Mattresses 136

Ladders 107

This month's Feast magazine

It's a pretty good one. Feast is one of two monthly local food magazines which are free and found in grocery stores near where you walk in or in various restaurants. The other, Sauce, is harder to find and may be falling on hard times. I don't know that for sure, it just seems like it. But Feast covers not just St. Louis but the Kansas City area and parts of Missouri and Illinois. The latest issue covers pizza and beer, two good combinations and it's amazing how many ways there are to make pizza.

Also Feast has some recipes to try at home which I like and the process for onion rings is one I'll try on a free day. Also an interesting recipe for Chocolate chip cookies. That I'll also try.

Also in this edition are stories on older St. Louis pizza places. One I want to try and find is one begun years ago by the Petrillo family and now by someone else who located the original recipe book. This place sounds like it would be a hoot to go to. It's along the River Des Peres in a faded white building among houses. The pizza sounds delicious, but the inside of the place sounds fun. "They couldn’t save one wall of murals due to water damage, but on the left wall of the dining room are the remaining pseudo-frescoes of the Italian countryside originally painted in the 1950s. After you walk down a flight of stairs outside the unassuming white building, you enter the dimly lit space, which has white twinkling Christmas lights strung around the ceiling. Classic red-and-white checkered tablecloths cover a handful of tables."

 

Clayton city news

Each month residents of Clayton get a City Views mailing which contains updates on things going on around the town. This issue has a blurb on when leaf collections will be made and which streets. This is something of a big perk for Clayton people, not us on the seminary campus, but for those living along city streets. They just blow or rake their leaves onto the street in front of their homes and when their dates come up, a street sweeper sucks them all up. No bagging for Clayton people. This is a huge benefit especially since Clayton is filled with trees.

But what I got a kick out of this month was the Ward 1 update from our two aldermen. Seems as though there has been some unhappiness from some residents in this ward when new houses have been built and don't look like all the rest. "While new houses may not have all the old world details of those they replaced, they do provide a fresh, updated look that adds value to our community, particularly when considering the conditions that some of the properties had fallen into. The new quickly becomes assimilated into our environment, leaving us struggling to recall the details of what was there before."

There is a practice here for houses to be knocked down and new ones built in their place, often bigger and more modern.

But this part made me chuckle. I had no idea Demun was getting bike lanes and I have no idea where they are going to squeeze them in, but they're on the way.  "And the new Demun cut-through bike lanes will keep pedestrians from getting mowed down and bicylists from getting clothes-lined by dog leashes."

There you have it folks. Clayton in a nutshell.

Middle of the night news

I'm not sure who our local tv news stations are writing for during the late night hours, but they all seem to attempt to find stories that are totally off the wall. I often wonder who's job it is to find these stories and post them to the news' social media pages. Here area couple I woke up to this morning which were uploaded to Facebook.

KMOV:

Police say they have arrested a woman accused of dressing up like a clown 27 years ago and killing the wife of her future husband. This has nothing to do with St. Louis at all, it happened in Florida about 14 years ago.

Fish Fall from the Sky Rain in Northern Mexico

Fox2Now:

Cops: Mom tried to run down son-in-law with her Mercedes after he exposed their affair to her daughter.

KSDK:

Russian 'cannibal couple' confess to eating 30 people, sold 'meat pieces' at army base, police say

 

Lines, we have lines

I was surprised yesterday, even though I was aware of what was coming, at the mess of traffic on both sides of the Poplar. I had an eye doctor appointment so i had no choice about navigating the highways. Going east, MoDOT has everyone crossing the bridge from 64/40 and 44/55 funneling into one lane. This created a back-up throughout most of the day almost to SLU. Then coming back west, IDOT for reasons which were unclear, had everyone on 64 and 55/70 move into one lane at the merge. That's about 6 lanes altogether trying to merge into one. That traffic, around 11, had cars and scores of semis backed up well past 203. To recommend taking the Musial was not much of an option since the traffic was jammed well before that. None of this was during rush hour either.

Not fun for people who have to do this every day.

But, speaking of lines, here is a different kind of line. After 80 years in business, Lubeley's Bakery and Deli on Watson near Laclede Station Road will be closing. This has long been a very popular bakery and after hearing about its closing, long time patrons have lined up to get some of their baked goods. And this has been some kind of line.

It says a lot about a well run and quality business.

Water Main break

Here at the seminary we've watched for literally months as the local water department tried to find the source of a leak which continuously flowed downhill near the power house. Finally the leak was discovered, it was ours to fix, part of the main line which leaves the campus. It runs sort of parallel to the main line which comes into the campus and the old, iron, pipe 5 feet down had a broken spot underneath one section. The water bubbled out and out down there underground and above ground.

So the Wachter Construction Company which is doing the current library renovation agreed to get this fixed. This is one great company by the way. The water was totally turned off to the campus and faculty homes for about 6 hours. This also meant that some of the people working the early evening sift in the call center had no bathroom facilities. The field house, which is not on that line, was open for them. But it is a bit of a walk so Dale drove several of them to the field house to use the restrooms.

A long L-shaped trench was excavated and the man standing inside had the difficult task of cutting through the pipe so that a new section could be put in.

We did a lot of standing around watching

Ferdie was interested for a while, but pretty soon the heat got to him.

And, the man who did all the cutting finally got through the iron and he was beat.

When that last opened section of pipe was removed, about a foot of pipe, a new piece was connected with 6 sided iron collars on each side and the work was complete and the water turned back on. I have to say, 6 hours without water is still better than 6 hours without power. Great work yesterday.

The omnipresent "But"

Everything these days is controversial. We're shouting each other down either in person or on social media. Here's the thing though when it comes to right or not right. Every argument has as its opposite the well used phrase, "But what about..."

Here's a good example and there are many out there. The football kneeling debate over the weekend brought out the "But what about" Tim Tebow? He was pretty much taken to task for kneeling to pray before one of his games, while his defenders say this weekend's kneelers are praised or at least given credit for what they believe in.

This is only one example. There are "But what about's" for just about every debate these days. We're even finding this way of communicating right at home.

"I could really use some help around this house."

"But what about that time I emptied the dishwasher?"

Let's start the work week tally

As of today when a Mattress fell on Kirkwood road

Mattresses 134

Ladders 105