respublica

From Daith to Griege

Two new words, at least for me, came up this week. Daith was some sort of weird pierced earring and now it's Griege. Or, more specifically, Classic Griege. If you're like me you have never heard of classic griege, but it turns out home decorators have.

It's the current recommendation for a paint color for kitchens cabinets. "It’s a warm neutral that’s pretty much foolproof.  It looks exceptionally beautiful on cabinetry and will always be super popular."

Basically it is a color combination of gray and beige. Also recommended are warm whites, Moody Greens, Sage and Punchy Pinks. Pink cabinets are probably not for us.

 

Go Out!

The July issue of Feast, a food culture newsprint magazine and found at the entrance doors of most grocery stores, has a lot of interesting articles this time. There are fun recipes to try, new and old places to go out and eat and a very thorough look at river rafting and tubing in Missouri. The issue is not online as yet.

What caught my eye first was a few stories titled, "Go Out" and gave a brief reason why each area would be worth checking out. One was DeMun! Right across the street from us. And, that is how the story described how to find the DeMun area and gave me a laugh. The DeMun neighborhood in Clayton has long been a dining and drinking destination, but the small, tree-lined strip-located just across the street from the Quaint Concordia Seminary Park-has recently seen a bit of revitalization."

"Quaint Concordia Seminary Park!  Quaint is a first, but we'll take it. The article goes on to give a run-down on each restaurant, coffee shop and even the wonderful candy story.

Also, one of the recipes given in order to use garden jalapeno bounty is Candied Jalapenos and I intend to try this since this quaint campus has a ton of jalapenos growing. Here is the way to do it and why.  They have their origin in Texas and are nick-named, 'Cowboy Candy'. Sliced jalapenos are cooked in a sugary syrup until they eat like candy. They can go on hot dogs, tacos, pizza, in coleslaw, nachos, just about anything. Or, eaten plain as a snack.

I actually went out and got a few lidded jars yesterday to have when I get ready to do this. All it takes are the peppers, apple cider vinegar and sugar in boiling water.

There is a lot more to like in this issue which you can find at Schnucks and Dierburgs and most other grocery store entrances. In Collinsville they are stacked up in the west entrance.

Now this is a bag of...

I was doing a few things on the campus this morning and as I walked up to the Walther Arch which holds the big bells, this is what I saw.

Yes it is what you think it is. One of our fine local neighbors decided it was too much trouble to take their dog's poop home and left it next to the bench in a nicely tied up bag. Now you may think she probably didn't realize it had fallen, but we've come across so many of these bagged dog poops laying around it doesn't strike me as an accident.

It's local election day

Some municipalities have a lot going on this election day, others minimal. But get out and vote, the local community affects you more personally than the national elections do. These referendums and candidates are where your property taxes, school taxes, sales taxes etc get decided. Our election here in Clayton is very minimal. Only a couple of school board seats are up for grabs and no one has opposition for the board of aldermen. But there is a school referendum that has brought out the signs for and against.

In Collinsville the mayoral race is very active and hard fought. Lots of campaigning has gone on for seats on the library board which is unusual to say the least. I was on the Collinsville library board for 12 years and find this very interesting. So I look forward to watching the returns for both places tonight. And, the Madison County Illinois county clerk will have the results posted very quickly unlike St. Louis County which seems to take forever.

Local elections coming up

Next Tuesday many local communities will have elections for city councils, library boards, school boards, etc. I'm always amazed at how things work in Clayton. There is almost never a time when an alderman or mayor has any competition, it's like there is an unspoken rule that if you desire a position on the board of aldermen, you wait your turn. There seems always to be someone who has been selected to replace a retiring person and that's that. So we have no one running against the mayor again this go round. The main competition in Clayton is for school board. That is one area where things are normally very hard fought. 

In Collinsville there is always competition for city council and school board and mayor. Right now there is a vigorous campaign going on for mayor with signs everywhere and social media talk every day. 

I'd rather have it the Collinsville way, it's much better for getting information out to the public as opposed to officials not having to answer for their votes while in office.

More on the environment

This is sort of an after thought from the post below. One of the gifts of living on the seminary campus is being able to get trash and recycling put into dumpsters any day as opposed waiting for a once a week pickup. There are 4 areas of the campus which have a large trash dumpster and a large recycling dumpster. I like being able to pitch a garbage bag and recycling bin when they're full. Nothing sits around the house or backyard trash can. The staff and students are good about recyling, those dumpsters get picked up by Republic Waste haulers twice a week and they're always full.

Also, the city of Clayton is holding is annual electronic recycling drop off tomorrow and Saturday. Anything with a cord or battery will be accepted, working or not. The only things not accepted are light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, alkaline batteries, chemicals, hazardous material. A small fee will be needed for freon things and tv's and monitors. 

I love this. Who doesn't have old electronic things sitting around with no where to go. This nl fee list covers just about everything. Computers, Monitors (flat screen), Printers, Keyboards, Laptops, Hard Drives, Cell Phones, Pagers, Radios, Scanners, Speakers, VCR, DVD, Fax Machines, Answering Machines, Stereos, Furnaces, Water Heaters, Microwaves, Cords, Power Tools, Kitchen Appliances, etc...

 

Bike lanes coming to Clayton

This story interested me because of all the issues we've had with cyclists riding anywhere they felt like it on our campus. 

"Trying to balance bustling vehicle traffic in downtown Clayton and growing bicycle use, city officials plan to revamp a stretch of Maryland Avenue to include new parking-protected bike lanes. Under a plan adopted last week by aldermen, parallel-parked cars — plus curbs or bollards — will separate new curbside bike lanes from vehicle traffic." And two lanes will be reduced to one each way. 

Now Maryland is sort of the north border of downtown Clayton. It begins on the east end at Hanley and goes to around 170 and the Ladue plaza. This construction for bikes will not go that far, but end on the west at Forsyth which is a stop light intersection with a Straubs grocery store. What makes this interesting to me is the fact that this street was chosen. A cyclist would have to want to end up somewhere along that route. There are plenty of places to eat, coffee shops, etc. But it isn't actually a place you'd start off from or end up. Maybe the city officials just want to get bikes off of the major downtown streets. And I wouldn't blame them. 

"Not everyone was happy with the plan, however. Some people associated with shops along Maryland are among those concerned. I've got nothing against bike riders; I used to ride myself," said Simon Katz, owner of Simons Jewelers. "I just think it's the wrong place to put it in Clayton." He worries that the change will result in more congestion and make the area less safe. Now when vehicles encounter a car ahead of them stopping to back into a parking space, he noted, they often can move out into the left lane to avoid a delay."

Another store owner said, "people have enough trouble figuring out the parking here" without reconfiguring parallel parking."

Here is what sends a chill over me: From Clayton mayor, Harold Sanger: "We heard from every angle on this," Sanger said. "The bottom line is we went with engineers' options and a study of how many people moving into Clayton are bringing bikes. It's a huge number."

A huge number of new cyclists and bikes! oy. 

Car fire

This shocker happened yesterday afternoon on Clayton Road just west of Skinker, across from the Big Amoco. Dale was heading to Collinsville and got stopped for some time. The black smoke made things look like nighttime.

 

More break-ins

The neighborhood surrounding the seminary has seen more and more car break-ins lately. What has struck the people who were victims of this behavior is that most of the time nothing was taken even though it was obvious someone rifled through the car. One person even had a laptop in the car and it was left.

Most claim their cars were locked but probably many were not. There is a common belief around here that if someone is going to break into a car, they might as well leave the car unlocked rather than have the windows broken out. It was puzzling to the neighbors that nothing was taken and the answer each time from the police was that the bad guys were most likely just looking for guns. That should give us all pause. It's comforting to know our neighbors aren't driving around with guns, but the fact that car breaker in-ers want guns is unsettling.

 

Car break-ins, it's that time of year

I don't know whether it's the nice weather or schools being out for the summer or what, but all of a sudden cars are being broken into all over the area. I recently downloaded the Nextdoor app, a relatively new app which centers around your own neighborhood and lets locals share things or ask questions. Often the daily posts are about a lost dog or recommendations for plumbers, or things for sale. This is not unlike Facebook pages specific to a local community, except that it is confined to neighborhood borders.

As I was reading this site last night I learned many people woke up on Thursday morning and found their cars broken into Wednesday night. Several cars on the blocks behind us and several more on the blocks just ahead of us were hit. Most cars had been locked, but that didn't stop the bad guys who screw drivered one car, broke windows on others and generally ransacked the inside of cars.

Some cars were parked on the street, others under a carport or on a driveway. The most frequent advice given by others was to leave nothing in the car and leave it unlocked so that no damage could be done. Others took issue with the unlocked advice because some bad guys know how to hot wire a car.

I don't know what the answer is, this seems to be the time of year when this sort of thing happens in a big way. But reading the updates from neighbors just before I went to bed last night, made me go outside and check to see that we had nothing in our cars which would interest a thief. I had nothing in mine, but Dale did so I brought that stuff inside and left his books in the car. I doubted anyone looking for valuables would have been interested in theological text books. Not that they aren't costly and important, but still.