Remember the stance and the swing ...

They buried Stan Musial today.  Opening Day in St. Louis ( a civic holiday in every respect except legally) will never be the same.   No more Stan riding around the infield, ushering in the new baseball season.  That makes me profoundly sad.

Stan's last at-bat was in 1963.  I was three years old and I don't remember it.  But I have memories of Stan because Stan didn't leave.  He stayed with the organization and he stayed in St. Louis.  He was around.  You might see him at a restaurant.  Some people saw him at Mass.  In the 1980's when I first started working downtown I would occasionally catch glimpses of him on the street.  I saw him in the airport one time when I was returning from a business trip and he was on his way to Kansas City for the World Series, and I was struck by the fact that EVERYONE in the airport was walking past him as he rode the people-mover, telling him to "bring home a winner" just like they were talking to one of their friends. It wasn't at all like they were talking to a celebrity.

I have an autographed picture of Stan.  So does probably half of St. Louis.  He'd give out autographs to anyone who asked for them.  He was that kind of guy.

Stan was one of the greats of baseball but most of the country didn't seem to know it. From Wikipedia:

Nicknamed "Stan the Man", Musial was a record 24-time All-Star selection (tied with Willie Mays), and is widely considered to be one of the greatest hitters in baseball history.^[1] He compiled 3,630 hits (ranking fourth all-time and most in a career spent with only one team). With 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 on the road, he also is considered to be the most consistent hitter of his era.^[1] He also compiled 475 home runs during his career, was named the National League's (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times, and won three World Series championship titles. Musial was a first-ballot inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.

         *****

Nearly two decades after Musial retired, baseball statistician Bill James and the sabermetrics movement began providing new ways of comparing players across baseball history.^[160] In 2001, James ranked Musial the tenth-greatest baseball player in history, and the second-best left fielder of all time.^[161] According to Baseball-Reference.com, he ranks fifth all-time among hitters on the Black Ink Test, and third all-time on the Gray Ink Test—measures designed to compare players of different eras.^[43][162] He ranks first on Baseball-Reference's Hall of Fame Monitor Test, and is tied for second in the Hall of Fame Career Standards Test.^[43] Despite his statistical accomplishments, he is sometimes referred to as the most underrated or overlooked athlete in modern American sports history.^[163][164] For instance, in his analysis of baseball's under- and overrated players in 2007, sportswriter Jayson Stark said, "I can't think of any all-time great in any sport who gets left out of more who's-the-greatest conversations than Stan Musial."^[163]

Well, we appreciated him.  Stan played 22 years, all with the St. Louis Cardinals.  That never happens anymore.  Players don't stay with one team anymore.  But almost as important as all those years was the fact that he stuck around after his retirement.  He was St. Louis.

The flags have been flying at half-mast this week.  Tributes have been left at the stadium next to his statue.  Today he was buried and his funeral was televised.  St. Louis will not be the same now that Stan is gone.

Goodbye Stan.  We'll miss you. 

Here's his last at-bat in 1963.  Harry Carey calls it:

Winter Garden

I spent most of November and December eating lunch at my desk at work.  Now that things have slowed up, and the weather is not so bad, I have an urge to spend as much time as possible outside.  So one sunny day this week I headed over to the Missouri Botanical Garden at lunch time to take a walk.  Although I get irritated that the Garden has seemingly chosen to develop every square inch of space that it has and leave no open green space, (not to mention plastering donors' names everywhere in incredibly tacky ways) it is still generally a nice place to visit.

The Garden was originally the country estate of Henry Shaw. Here's his country home, Tower Grove House, today.

It must have taken Henry quite a while to get from his town house, located at 7th and Locust (only a few blocks from where my office is today), out to his country house.  But today it is a short drive from downtown. It takes me about ten minutes to get there, which leaves time for a nice walk.
 
Even on a winter's day there are things going on at the Garden.

On this particular day it was sunny but a little chilly so I decided to go into the Climatron, the big greenhouse shaped like a geodesic dome.

On a sunny day it is quite cheerful inside, walking through all that humidity that I would be complaining about if it were summer.

Since it is a tropical greenhouse most of the vegetation is just ... green.  But there were little glimpses of color here and there that were nice to see on a winter's day.

And there are still some Chihuly's left over from the big exhibition they had there a few years ago.

It was a nice winter break.  Thank you Henry Shaw.  Leaving your home to all of us was a lovely thing to do.

St. Louis Central Library

In my last post I said that I needed to branch out to new branches of my local public library system.  On Saturday I visited the St. Louis Central Library in downtown St. Louis.  Designed by Cass Gilbert (who was also the architect for the United States Supreme Court) and made possible by a generous grant from Andrew Carnegie, Central Library was built in 1912.   During most of my life it was one of those libraries that was not meant to be used for browsing.  You looked up books in the voluminous card catalogs and put in requests at the central desk and waited for them to be retrieved from the stacks.   When you put in requests from your local branch, this was generally where they came from.

As a Girl Scout we went on a tour of Central Library.  The stacks had glass floors.  That sounds somewhat cooler than it was; they were heavy glass block floors not plate glass.  But still, it was unexpected.  Books were retrieved and sent to the main desk via a pneumatic tube system.

Of course glass floors aren't earthquake proof so when the Public Library system decided to do a $70 million renovation of Central Library the glass floors had to go.  As did all the central stacks.  It is now a "regular" library where you can browse the collection, which makes it much more user friendly.

I forgot to take a photo of the outside so here is a wikipedia photo taken before Central Library was shut down two years ago for the renovation:




Although the building looks like a standard building it actually is an oval shaped central hall that is connected to four surrounding rectangular galleries via "bridges", thus letting in lots of light to the interior of the building.

The above is the front entrance on Olive Street.  You walk into very formal space, all marble.  On either side of the foyer are stairs to take you up to other levels with beautiful stained glass windows:

Then you walk through a hallway that is really a "bridge" into the oval grand hall, where you used to have to ask for books.  I only took a  photo of the ceiling and the windows along one side:

  If all of this seems very stuffy for a library, you are right.  It is beautiful, but not conducive to browsing.  But that's ok, there's nothing to browse in the grand hall.  They will have special exhibitions and events in there.  From the grand hall you can walk back across another "bridge" to the back of the building into what used to be the stacks.

And here's where the surprise is:  A three story modern glass enclosed atrium that shows you where all the books are:

You can now enter the library from what used to be the back of the building and go right into the "library" part of the library, without having to climb up all those steps on the Olive Street entrance.

Here's the view from the main reading room back into the atrium - see how light it is:

I've read that NY is going to do a similar thing to its central library - replace the old stacks with a light filled atrium.  I've also read that it is very controversial.  All I can say is that I LOVE the way it was done here in St. Louis. The minute I walked into the atrium I started smiling.  In fact there was a smile on my face the entire time I walked through the building and all the people who were working in the building were smiling too.

The exterior of the building has famous quotes carved into the stone.  The ceiling in the new reading room has quotes on the ceiling.  Here it says "All this happened, more or less" (Kurt Vonnegut):

 It is very cool.  When I went down to see it I didn't think that I'd be so enamored of it and it didn't occur to me that I might make it my main library stop in the future.  After all, it isn't really convenient.  But it made me want to go back and browse.
As we were walking through I saw a copy of The Bookseller by Mark Pryor which I had been considering reading.  So I picked it up and checked it out on my way out!

Yes, yes.  I was going to read fewer mysteries in 2013, but I was also going to visit more libraries.

How was the book?  It was ok.  It's the first in a series and it shows.  A little too much explanation and a little too much serendipity.  I'm not sure I'll read the other books in the series but I was glad that I saw something to check out simply as I walked through the room.  Who knows what I'll find when I have time to browse? 

2013 Reading Plans

2012 was, in general, not a great year for reading for me.  I read a lot of books that I enjoyed but most of them were in the mystery genre (not that there is anything wrong with that) and I feel that I really limited myself too much to that one genre.

Part of the reason was that I was so goshdarn busy at work that when I got home I really wanted comfort reading and not challenging reading.  The other reason is that I started reading more on my ipad Nook app and I find the Barnes and Noble online site hard to browse, except for mysteries.  I don't know why this is - I used to order literary fiction from them all the time.  But last year I kept looking for new literary fiction to read and not much of anything they were pushing appealed to me.  Maybe that was them, maybe that was me, or maybe that was just publishing in 2012.

One of my plans for 2013 is to go back to reading more books in "real book" form.  The first challenge for that plan is that my favorite independent bookstore just closed, which is very sad.  There is another independent bookstore downtown that I like, but it isn't close to my office and by the time I hike over there I don't have much time to browse.  The obvious solution is the public library which I haven't visited much in the last year or so.  My local branch doesn't get much new fiction and they hide it in a poorly lit corner, so I think I'm going to try out other branches this year.

As far as what to read, I don't really have many specific books that are goals.  I plan to read the new Louise Erdrich novel next.   Other than that, I don't have any set goals.  I thought maybe I would just pick a few authors and try to find books by them that appealed to me.   I know I want to re-read some Robertson Davies.  I've been meaning to read something by Henry James, I don't think I've ever read any of his novels except Turn of the Screw.  I've had Dostoevsky in my plans for three years now, maybe this is the year.  I want to read more novels by Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Taylor.  I'd like to read another novel by Hilary Mantel.  

250 Years Ago ... Celebrating the New Year

 *Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014. 
 

It is New Year's Eve and we all have our celebratory traditions.  Back before St. Louis was founded, the French settlements in the Mississippi river valley would have celebrated on this night by observing the tradition of 

La Guiannée or La Guignolèe.

  

Because I'm feeling a little lazy today, I will rely on Wikipedia to describe the background of this custom:

La Guiannée or La Guignolée is a French medieval New Year's Eve tradition that is still practiced in two towns in the United States. The tradition related to poor people being able to ask the more wealthy for food and drink at the celebrations of winter. Customarily a troupe of traveling male singers went from door to door to entertain and ring in the new year. Hosts were expected to give them food and drink. Other sources say the young men were seeking donations for Twelfth Night. Begun as a way for the poor to be given gratuities by the rich, it also became a community social event for young men to visit with the families of young women.
Over time, the practice became an occasion for visiting with relatives and friends, and was more or less, a traveling feast. At first it was carried on only by young men, often in costume; women joined the party in the 20th century. In many years, the people appeared in disguise, as part of the celebration was a kind of overturning of the common order.

  

The two towns in the United States where the custom is still observed are the little village of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, which is located just south of the location of old Fort de Chartes, and Ste. Genevieve Missouri, located across the river.   

Here's a description of the celebration in Ste. Genevieve:

Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, lays claim to being the first permanent European settlement west of the Mississippi. Founded by French traders, it remained for centuries a French enclave in the midst of an increasingly Anglophone Midwest. Today, the last generation of native French speakers is disappearing, but old traditions still remain. The most visible is La Guignolée, a medieval tradition analagous to the English custom of wassailing. Every New Year's Eve, the descendants of St. Genevieve's French settlers don bizarre and archaic costumes and wander from bar to bar, singing a begging song that harks back to the Middle Ages.

       "The song asks for a piece of meat -- forty feet long, if I remember right," says Duke Blechler, leader of the current Ste. Genevieve Guignolée singers. "And if the people didn't have a piece of meat to give them, they would ask for their eldest daughter. Take her out, wine her and dine her -- which doesn't sound very good, you know."

       In every bar, the singers are welcomed with a drink and, as the night wears on, they begin to sway a bit and the French lyrics become harder and harder to understand. The spirit of the musical tradition keeps coming through loud and clear, though, until the last singer stumbles home to catch a few hours sleep before New Year's morning mas

 Here for your listening pleasure are Dennis and Jennifer Stroughmatt playing the song traditionally sung on La Guianee, so you can hear it (unfortunately they were  not playing it on a New Year's Eve but, rather, in summer):

   And here is one translation of the lyrics of the song:

Good evening master and mistress,
And all who live with you.
For the first day of the year,
You owe us La Guignolée. If you have nothing to give,
A chine of meat or so will do.
A chine of meat is not a big thing,
Only ninety feet long. Again, we don't ask for very much,
Only the oldest daughter of the house.
We will give her lots of good cheer,
And we will surely warm her feet. Now, we greet you,
And beg you to forgive us please.
If we have acted a little crazy,
We meant it in good fun. Another time we'll surely be careful
To know when we must come back here again.
Let us dance La Guenille,
-- La Guenille, La Guenille!

 Whatever your traditions, Bonne année et bonne santé !

Merry Christmas 2012

Wishing all who celebrate a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year.  

This is my 500th post.  Never thought I'd keep this blog around this long. 

250 Years Ago ... 250 in 250

 *Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

The Missouri History Museum is a little behind me in announcing how they are going to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014. But they did just announce 250 in 250:

St. Louis will turn 250 years old in 2014, and we recently decided to plan an exhibit to commemorate the anniversary. This exhibit gives us the opportunity to tell St. Louis’s history in a number of new ways and to invite our visitors to think broadly and deeply about the city’s past, present, and future. It also gives us the opportunity to take our History Happens Here readers behind the scenes of the exhibit-making process in a way we’ve never done before.

 History Happens Here is the blog of the Missouri History Museum. And it promises to take us along as they plan the exhibition.

What we know so far is this. Our exhibit commemorating St. Louis’s 250^th anniversary will open in February of 2014 in the gallery that is currently being used for the Discover the Real George Washington exhibit.

Also, we have already decided how we want to organize the exhibit (this often doesn’t happen until later in the process). We will tell 250 years of St. Louis history through 50 people, 50 places, 50 moments, 50 images, and 50 objects. That framework provides us with a number of opportunities but also a number of challenges.

 Apparently what they intend is to pack the entire 250 years into one exhibition rather than focus on what happened 250 years ago.  I'm generally OK with that, although I think they are missing a chance to celebrate the old French heritage of the City.   But I'm sure it will be a fun exhibition.  Over the last number of years I've been impressed with most of the history museum's exhibitions.

Still, it would be nice if the City or one of its major cultural institutions would sponsor a French Fête for the event.  After all, February ... that's mardi gras time isn't it?  And we do have the second biggest Mardi Gras celebration in the country.  Hmmm.