respublica

Off to the races

Katie and I took her boys to Fairmount Park Race track yesterday to see the horses and a totally different type of activity. We stayed  through two of the five races and won 3.90. It's surprising how many people were at the track.

Current tally

It's getting hard to keep up with the falling mattresses and ladders

Now it's

Mattresses 84

Ladders 78

The prediction

The Farmer's Almanac is predicting a miserable winter, a Polar Coaster of freezing, frigid, frosty, temperatures. "This winter will be filled with so many ups and downs on the thermometer, it may remind you of a 'Polar Coaster."

As if last winter wasn't bad enough. But I'm glad to say there are skeptics who believe, "While this forecast trends around this time every year, the more than 200-year-old almanac shouldn't be given too much weight on its own."  As a CNN weather meteorologist said, "It's difficult enough to do a five-day forecast, We're really good at the day of and the next day, (and) we're better at temperature a ways out than precipitation. But to forecast out that far in advance ... even the science behind our long-range forecasting is sometimes not that solid."

Hair styling

Katie and Charlie are here this week with their two boys. After church on Sunday it was decided the boys needed haircuts and the boys decided how they wanted that done. At 6 and 8 they already know what's in and what's out.

The next day things were back to fairy normal

A mattress storm

It might not be rain, but it is raining this morning. The past ten days have seen 5 mattresses and 5 ladders fall on local highways. Best guess as to why? There is lots of work being done in construction and pickup trucks are driving from place to place with ladders some of which have been too hurridly secured. And, college people are moving in bringing mattresses to their off campus housing.

Mattresses 81

Ladders 77

A visit from the grandsons and their parents and dog

Friday evening the Bailey's rolled into town and we've been going every since.

Right out of the car Ferdie and Sidney greeted each other. Checked each other out.

The next morning we all went to youngest grandson, Nick's, soccer game. Cousins reunited

Later that day (Saturday) Katie and I took Jake and Drew to Soulard Market

And a trip to the Demun Candy store across the street from the seminary

They then spent the night over at Lizzie and Darren's for a sleep over.

Honestly, taking photos vertically just does not translate onto websites.

Today (Sunday we were all at the Lutheran Church of Webster Gardens.

Servant event

Yesterday the seminary had its annual servant event in which the new students are taken to various community gardens and a couple of St. Louis city churches to do clean up. So many neighborhood gardens begin with good intentions but by mid-summer they have been ignored and terribly overgrown which becomes eyesores. It was hot of course, but our people worked hard without complaint and made some good progress.

The students have a group photo taken before getting on buses and off to their assigned place. Dale and I worked the garden at the corner of Tamm and Manchester, the Dogtown Community Garden. This is fairly big and borders on a public sidewalk and you can tell this is well loved by all the little garden statues and other things. But it was a nightmare of over-growth.

There are always a lot of people taking pictures at the start. You can click the pictures to make them larger.

The new class of first years' lined up for the photo, but had to wait for Dale who was late.. Shocker. The new students wore yellow, veteran students as team leaders and faculty/staff wore green.

Yes, it was supposed to be 9:00.

Ferdie got himself in the picture as always

Then ten groups onto ten buses and off to the assigned areas around St. Louis.

Dogtown Community garden

Can't even see the actual plantings in a lot of this area.

There were way too many sunflowers in my opinion. They're cool flowers but they should be in a stand alone place because weeds grow under them and the seeds will sprout even more next year. We made some headway and worked there from about 9:30 til almost 1. It was very sweaty and dirty work but a lot of weeds and vines were taken out, paths suddenly appeared and it was much better. More needs doing, but that should now be up to all those who have garden plots in there.

Here is what we do each night before dinner

We head over to the Academic Quad with Ferdie and clean the pond filters. One filter means actually getting into the water, pulling out the pump to clear debris off the bottom intake hole. the other three pumps and filters can be cleared from above the water by pulling them up and out. It's amazing how much gunk slows down the flow each day.

Lizzie happened to be on campus last night and decided to document this. Ferdie always sits and watches.

A warning over what should be obvious

Suburban police in Chicago have begun warning residents in their towns about the danger of leaving their cars unlocked and their key fobs inside the cars. One police chief said, " On any given night, I can head out to Oak Brook, Hinsdale, or go up to Lake Fores and drive off with an unlocked Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes or, if I'm lucky, a Maserati."

These are all upscale suburbs where you'd assume the people who live there have some smarts, but it seems they do not. They not only leave their cars unlocked, but they leave the key fob in it. Key fobs are the most recent type of key for cars these days. We have one that came with Dale's car. It doesn't have to be put into a slot on the steering column, in fact there is no slot. You can put it just about anywhere in the car and by pushing a button on the dash, the car starts. One friend of ours told Dale when he got this car, "just leave it in your pocket so you won't be tempted to forget it in the car."

St. Louis has its own issues with car thefts and the local Clayton police often put out notices on Facebook and neighborhood internet pages about car thefts which occurred because the owner left the car open and the key in the cup holder. Again this is an area where you'd think people were smarter than this.

This from a member of a former auto theft task force about the sense of entitlement coming from many whose whose cars were stolen: "People just don’t accept responsibility today. They ask, ‘Why are there not more police around?’ When the real question is, ‘Why didn’t you take your keys with you and not leave them in an unlocked car?"

One terrible story headline

The Riverfront Times posted a story today with the headline: "Where to get Drunk in St. Louis if you're Broke"

Quite honestly I did not click on or read this story because it's mostly click bait, but with a terrible idea for encouraging someone to get drunk.

"Want to wet your whistle but have more thirst than money? Here are our ten go-to spots for when we're getting blasted on a budget."