Two Couples July 1, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Annette, Blogging, History , 5comments
Two couples; both married on July 1st. The couple on the left in 1983, the couple on the right in 1916. Both married in the bride’s mother’s living room. The couple on the right, in Denver CO. The couple on the left honeymooned in…that’s right, Denver CO. Supernatural baloney? Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not.
The Encyclopedia June 23, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Blogging, Morrison Observatory , 1 comment so farThese days, when you say “the encyclopedia,” everyone knows you mean The Wikipedia of internet fame. I think it’s a great resource. Do it have some issues? Sure, it does. Is it “as good” as, say the Britannica? No, speaking strictly of quality it doesn’t even come close.
First and foremost though, it’s free, and the others are not. I like that. Secondly, it’s much larger that the other encyclopedias. Try looking up “The Morrison Observatory” in a regular encyclopedia. It’s just not there. And, probably shouldn’t be. But, in today’s internet world, isn’t it great that there is a place where I can find such things?
Read this article…
WIKIPEDIA and other online research sources were yesterday blamed for Scotland’s falling exam pass rates.The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information before passing it off as their own work. (read the rest…)
So, what to make of this? Well, you have watch out for accuracy. But, first, one must ask, how does this accuracy matter? I think this is where the internet generation may be weak. I bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the table when I read anything, anywhere. I don’t care if it’s in the daily newspaper or it’s on the internet. I want to know who wrote it, why they wrote it and what’s their angle? So, it’s not shocking when I learn that an article or even an encyclopedia entry is a bit biased. But, biased is different than inaccurate isn’t it?
The Wikipedia deals with “inaccuracies” by having hundreds or more people looking and editing the same article. Click on the Discussion tab of a large article sometime to see all the wrangling. But, having said that, it couldn’t possibly be accurate across the whole body of articles. A better word would by consistency. Now, if you’re the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, you can understand an attitude where inconsistency equals inaccuracy; plain and simple. I agree with that.
However, one should enlighten and encourage young researchers to look out for any “inaccuracies,” for they lay in wait in all sorts of source material. Secondly, you, yourself, may log on to Wikipedia and fix any inaccuracies that you find.
I have written one small entry on Bernice Morrison. I have added to and edited two others. One on the Morrison Observatory (including the photo) and another on Carr Waller Pritchett.
The other day I took a gander at the entry for Dwight D. Eisenhower and about cried. It was horrible. Horribly written. I would assign a letter grade of F to it. I am in the process of completely re-writing it.
You got to time to breath; you got time for music June 16, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Music, Entertainment, Mayberry , add a commentI was talking to an old friend from church the other day about Allison Krauss and bluegrass music. I asked her if she remembered The Darlings from the Andy Griffith Show. I was explaining to her how Bluegrass bands are always so serious or expressionless while they play. The Darlings (The Dillards in real life) made a joke of it in the show. I don’t claim to understand it; but I could listen to Bluegrass all day.
First the Darling Family:
And then a very young Allison singing Heaven’s Bright Shore:
Have we been keeping up with our reading? June 11, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Politics, Entertainment, Blogging , add a commentCamille Paglia’s latest: (read all three pages)
June 11, 2008 | Shuddering, lurching and stumbling, the 2008 general election has finally, mercifully begun. For a year and a half, U.S. voters have been flogged like a prison gang through the nine circles of media hell. The two dazed survivors of the primary process, John McCain and Barack Obama, are now warily circling each other, looking for an opening even as they try to shed the already hardened public perception of their character and motivation. - read the rest….
The Cruise June 1, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Family, Blogging , 3commentsI figure I’d better post some pictures at least before my family disowns me.
First, a couple of shots while we’re waiting to embark:
A view from the shady deck:
Our dinner table on formal night:
Our Servers:
Us later on Formal Night:
Ready to power snorkel!
A really big ship that pulled in next to us:
Us in Cozumel:
It’s official; we are both born hams. With all the highlights of a Caribbean Cruise what was the best part for us? Why, singing on stage, of course! With a live band backing us up. The crowd roared, I tell you.
Oh, yeah, there was some other talent there too:
Ralph & Sam’s House in Mobile, AL:
Girls love a man in uniform May 4, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Emily, Family, History , 2comments |
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I was scanning a bunch of pictures for a dvd that I’m making for Mother’s Day and when I came across the one on the left there it reminded of the one on the right.
On the left that’s my Aunt Lois, Uncle Russ and Mom (Alice) about 1942 I’m guessing.
On the right is Emily, bronze sailor and Maria. This is from one of our trips to the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. I just realized that this picture was four years ago when Maria was heading to college and Emily was heading into her senior year of high-school. Now, we just received an invitation to Maria’s college graduation and Em is heading into her last year of college. Yikes!
Check your pulse May 3, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Music, Entertainment , 2commentsIf this doesn’t take your breath away, check your pulse. (Hint if your connection isn’t the fastest: Hit play, and after a second or two hit pause.Then let the video load for minute or two and hit play again.)
This Week in South Side History April 24, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Entertainment, History, South Side , 1 comment so farBloody 1953 bank heist hit silver screen
Movie gave boost to then-unknown Steve McQueen
by Jim Merkel
At 94, Melburn Stein has been retired longer than he served in the St. Louis Police Department.Yet he still has dreams about April 24, 1953, when he was nearly killed more than once in what was to become known as the Great St. Louis Bank Robbery.
The sensational robbery at the Southwest Bank at South Kingshighway Boulevard and Southwest Avenue attracted a crowd of police officers and onlookers.
It ended with a police officer injured, two bank robbers dead and one robber injured. The getaway car’s driver eluded police but was quickly caught.
One robber took his own life, saying “They’ll never take me.” Stein killed the other one as the robber rushed to the front door using a woman as a shield.
The bank’s directors, who were holding a board meeting in a room in the bank, threw their wallets in a wastebasket and hid under a table until police used tear gas.
In the end, police recovered the entire heist - $141,000.
It was the stuff you’d see in a 1950s crime movie, and people in Hollywood agreed. In 1959, United Artists released a movie about it, “The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery,” starring a new actor named Steve McQueen.
The man who played Stein had a special knowledge of the part. It was Stein himself, ordered by the city police board to play the role.
“Frankly, I didn’t think McQueen was all that great,” Stein said, adding that McQueen was distant and self-contained.
Living in Creve Coeur and still spry enough to cut his own grass, Stein credits his Marine Corps training to saving him amidst the gunfire. It told him to bend down and become a smaller target.
Stein shot the robber holding the hostage after she passed out of his line of fire.
“It was a calculated shot,” Stein said. “I had plenty of time to think about it.”
The dying robber went for a .38-caliber revolver in his belt and almost shot Stein. Fortunately, Stein noticed what the robber was doing.
“I reached down and got the gun,” Stein said. “Just to think about it gives me the creeps.”
Stein stayed on with the city department and retired in 1973 after 31 years.
The officer who was injured, Cpl. Robert Heinz, didn’t do as well.
A bullet that struck him in the head lodged in the skull around the ear and was not removed. He lost his equilibrium and had to retire.
Last week, retired Southwest Bank President Ed Berra showed off the old vault that had held money stolen in the robbery. Now an advisory board member and a consultant to Southwest, Berra started with the bank in 1959.
After the robbery, the bank increased the numbers of armed guards or introduced them at branches that didn’t have them, said Berra, 78.
Pictures on the wall of the Southwest Bank office include a newspaper photo of the robbery.
“I can’t believe that’s over a half-century ago,” Berra said.
Note: I hope Jim Merkel will forgive me using his article as my blog entry. Jim, if you ever read this, just remember who made you famous as the Grinch.
Poetry April 15, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Blogging, Poetry , add a commentI’m listening to a re-broadcast of the an interview with Missouri’s (first) Poet Laureate Walter Bargen on public radio. It was on this morning when a friend called my cell phone to say, “Hey, Mark Tiedemann’s on the radio! Bye!” I walked out to my car and tuned in the station to listen. Then, just now, Emily called my cell, “Hey Mark Tiedemann’s on the radio! Bye!” Mark is president of the Missouri Center for the Book and a good friend. (His blog is here.)
As the host was asking the obligatory questions about poetry (why doesn’t it ryhme?), I was taken back to high-school when the creative writing class was assigned the task of defining poetry. I admit I was at a loss to define it. I do remember though, that by the time we were finished discussing it, I had a word. A word that has stayed with me all these years. I heard it tonight listening to Mark try to describe why he picked Mr. Bargen for the Poet Laureate of Missouri.
The word is universitality. Not universality; but universitality.
The poet’s job (and all other artists, I would argue) is to reveal the universitality of a thing. A clear example of this revealing would be a sculptor “revealing” the sculpture within a block of marble. A poem reveals a moment in time and exposes the eternal lying just beneath.
I’m reminded of one of favorite books, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light by William Irwin Thompson. I can’t exactly remember the quote I’m trying to think of, but it was something like “the eternity that lays at the end of every exhale.” I was looking for that book just the other day to give to Emily. She wanted to know what the meaning of life was so I recommended the Book of Job and this one by Irwin.
I’ll leave you tonight with a couple of quotes from these two great books:
First, from Job, chapter 28 verse 22-28:
So where does Wisdom come from?
And where does Insight live?
It can’t be found by looking, no matter
how deep you dig, no matter how high you fly.
If you search through the graveyard and question the dead,
they say, “We’ve only heard rumors of it.”
God alone knows the way to Wisdom,
he knows the exact place to find it.
He knows where everything is on earth,
he sees everything under heaven.
After he commanded the winds to blow
and measured out the waters,
Arranged for the rain
and set off explosions of thunder and lightning,
He focused on Wisdom,
made sure it was all set and tested and ready.
Then he addressed the human race: “Here it is!
Fear-of-the-Lord—that’s Wisdom,
and Insight means shunning evil.”
And second, from Thompson:
“Forms of knowledge change as society changes. Sometimes these changes are small and incremental; at other times the changes are transformations of the structures of knowledge and not merely the contents. From religion to philosophy, from alchemy to chemistry, from legend to history, the social organization of knowledge changes as a new elite comes in to challenge the old authorities. But this movement is not simply a linear and one-directional shift toward increasing rationalization and de-mystification; when the rational historian has come in to take away authority from the mystical and tribal bard, the artist has returned to create new forms of expression to re-sacrilize, re-enchant, re-mythologize.”
This Week in South Side History April 7, 2008
Posted by Richard in : Blogging, Mayberry, South Side , add a commentSt. Louis annexed Carondelet in 1870
from the South Side Journal Tues. April 1, 2008
written by Jim Merkel
Two visitors came to Carondelet on April 7, 1870 ready to make official the biggest change ever in the community’s century-old history.
They were the St. Louis city register and the marshal, appearing at the office of the City of Carondelet with an order to turn all city documents over to them. They came after the state legislature passed a law annexing the community to St. Louis.
The visit marked the end of the City of Carondelet, which traced itself to a village established three years after the founding of St. Louis.The community began in 1767, when a Frenchman named Clement DeLore Treget crossed the Mississippi to Spanish land on the west side. He started a community called Louisbourg, or “Vide Poche” (empty pocket). Later he changed the name to Carondelet, in honor of the Spanish governor general.
The village grew steadily and was incorporated as a city in 1851. Industry and railroads came to the area, including James Eads’ boat works, where the ironclads were produced that helped the Union take control of the Mississippi during the Civil War.
Despite the city’s industrious residents, the monster to the north grew faster and finally absorbed Carondelet in 1870.
“There clearly is some evidence to suggest that some people in Carondelet were unhappy about being annexed by the city of St. Louis,” said NiNi Harris, a Carondelet resident and author of numerous books on St. Louis historical topics.
But Harris said the community benefitted greatly from becoming the city’s southernmost neighborhood. The annexation brought professional police and fire departments, the immediate construction of two new schools and the opening of Carondelet Park in 1876.
“Though the community lost this sense of independence and to a little bit lost its sense of being distinct, the advantages were many,” she said.