Give Peter and the starcather a miss at the Rep

We have season tickets to the Rep which is supposed to be one of the better theaters in St. Louis, though I prefer St Louis Actor’s Studio at the Gaslight. Last night we saw Peter and the starcatcher. The play was a bit ridiculous, the premise entertaining – a prequel to the wonderful Peter Pan. But what bothered me the most was except for two women, one with a leading role, this was a boy’s show, mostly a white boy’s show. There were two cross-dressed characters, so there could have been more females. There were a few hispanics if you go by the names in the program, but no African American actors that I could tell. It is no wonder we have and need and enjoy The Black Rep.

If you could get past the idea that this was yet another boys club, the acting was good, sometimes funny, always energetic. I liked the sheets as water best. I’ll simply be watching for the rest of the season. If it stays theater for white boys, I’ll take my season tickets somewhere else next year. After all, this is St. Louis. We have lots of talented actors that will make everyone feel a bond. Just look at the great work down on Boyle St. by St. Louis Actor’s Studio, or the Black Rep.

The gentle touch of yoga

Do you start your day agitated by what you have heard on the radio, or calmed by the measured sound of your own breath? That breath will be with you all day long, waiting for you to return to its mindfulness. It is a ready snack of reason that is always available.

There is a balance between aloneness and togetherness, between solitude and sociality. We need both in different proportions. We need to be mindful of the power of each. There is a kind of yoga that lets us come together yet practice to our own breath, Mysore Ashtanga. Find it in the morning, here in St. Louis with Kim Spearmon, expertly guiding just south of Forest Park at1015 McCausland, Pilates plus Yoga.

We may breathe alone under Kim’s eye, but feel her gentle touch guiding us towards physical unity with our breath. We remember her hands as we flow into position, ever more accurate and strong. And we wait for the breath.

Fridays are led classes, reminding us for our individual practice, in a group, yet solitary. If you are unsure, Friday would be a good day to start, but Kim will help any day at all!

So come on St. Louis! Get on down to yoga class! It is 6:30 AM, but you can do it!

Did you miss the Riverfront Times Iron Fork event?

Food, great food, from all of the best restaurants in St. Louis and across the river, organized by the Riverfront Times. In all, 38 restaurants if the page is to be believed. We took the Metro to the Union Station stop, lamented the glorious station that is no more. For a great train station we would have to go to Kansas City or Chicago. But we did not. We admired the great metal girders still remaining, and followed the streaming crowds from Metro into the belly of the remaining building, moving smoothly among the hordes into the hotel ballrooms.

The food, tiny plates, was unlimited. Drinks were limited to three, but water cost extra, three dollars extra! I wasn’t in a drinking mood, so shelled out for the water. Maybe I should have chosen otherwise. For without the edge of consciousness removed, it seemed like huge crowds clustered with little order but much good humor. Some food stalls had lines that snaked half way across the ballroom. The food, removed from its ambience might as well have been squeezed out of those toothpaste tubes astronauts once used.

One could not hope for balance as each restaurant showed off a single item. Meat, salt, and fat were the most common tastes. Perhaps most honest was a booth giving out unadorned squares of bacon, maybe an inch across. Others had ribs, sausages, pulled pork, raw fish, cooked scallops, or the occasional cake on a stick or bread pudding, toasted ravioli.

I only tried maybe ten places, so I could not honestly say what was the best. I missed all the tacos because of the lines. But one booth stood out for delicate flavoring, crawfish detectable as crustaceans, and  a surprising fire to the broth. The rice this etouffe was over was also great. So Kitchen Sink got my vote and I’ll have to hunt it down and try it with space to talk to my friends, free water, and a bit of ambience.

We left a bit early, all meated out. Three of the four possible trains went by before ours came, but even so the wait wasn’t too long. St. Louis, I know you have great food. This is not the way to discover it. Or maybe I just wasn’t inebriated enough.

St. Louis, finally we have great 6:30 AM Mysore Ashtanga Yoga!

Centered breathing, focused gaze, tightened core, and ordered movements are one of the best ways to start the day. This is what Mysore Ashtanga yoga is all about. For me it was one of the last pieces to fall into place for a balanced life in St. Louis after I left wonderful Houston. When the legendary Kim Spearmon moved to the studio on McCausland and Clayton and moved her class to 6:30 AM, I was more than ready to join.

Kim Spearmon, always smiling, legendary teacher

I could tell you what is special about independent practice with Mysore yoga, nicely balanced with a led class on Fridays. I could tell you how great Kim is, with her gentle, kind leadership and attentive adjustments. This is a yoga you can embrace at all levels, including my own stiff, inflexible, unbalanced one.

Here’s the schedule for this place, with Kim in the early morning spot. I hope to see you there! Come in with mind all a jumble, breathing disordered. Leave in peace, abs naturally tightened, ready to make the most of your day.

The Ride down Mount Morgan, worth seeing at the Gaslight Theater after dinner at WEGAP

My vote for the coziest place in St. Louis is the West End Grill and Pub, followed by theater next door if the St. Louis Actor’s Studio is playing, as it was tonight in the show that just opened, The ride down Mt. Morgan, by Arthur Miller.

What if two women, their children and their husbands live happy and affluent lives? OK, they may be shallow now and then. There may be doubts, but contented, even happy are their lives. If this goes on for nearly a decade with no problem, why should it matter that they find out they are actually married to the same guy, someone who just can’t make up his mind except to realize he wants both. Do we agree with the protagonist that nothing should change with the knowledge? Are the women shrill to care that they share? How about their kids? Where does the shiver of death come from? Who needs a lawyer?

These are the issues Arthur Miller addresses in this 1991 play, expertly performed by the St. Louis Actor’s Studio at the Gaslight. It fits perfectly with this season’s theme, Sins of the Father. The acting was excellent, the set sublimely minimal, the audience packed. It could not have been better. If there were flaws, I would lay them on Arthur Miller. It felt a tad repetitive. The women could have had more nuanced and even cynical reactions. But it was a play that made you think a bit, perhaps about honesty, indecision, what is right and what is not. My favorite character was the elderly Canadian nurse who said she took delight ice fishing with her husband and her son while they discussed their new shoes, or so she told her patient.

Oh, and the chick pea soup and trout were delicious. Dave got the famous steak sandwich, also wonderful.

 

Table, a restaurant serving food, heavily salted

Did you ever go to a restaurant in the evening and find that the next morning you had gained three pounds? Guess what? You didn’t. You simply are salt overloaded and carrying around the water it retains. Your weight will be back to normal after a day or so.

Sometimes I feel like the only honest restaurant in St. Louis was Salt, now closed. At least it was up front about the problem with the fancy restaurants I have visited here, a real contrast to those in Houston. These problems are too much salt and too much fat, no matter what you order.

Last night we dined at Table. I guess St. Louis goes in for the simple names. We are in job candidate interviewing season at Wash U, so will be dining out a fair amount in the next few weeks. Table originally had the concept of everyone eating together. I like that idea, though couldn’t imagine how it would work with a job candidate. Not to worry, we had our own table.

I ordered the onion soup, the vegetarian hash, and the chocolate pudding, and tried the biscuit, the mac and cheese, and the cake. It all tasted fine, though the soup was tepid and the vegetarian hash needed help. I chose hot sauce. But there was that salt factor, easy to taste, and easy to see the effects the next day on the scales.

Also, this chef has some attitude. One person in our party did not want a soft sunny side up egg in the hash, but wanted the egg cooked hard. It is what any microbiologist should want. The chef refused, saying the soft egg was what bound the hash together. The chef did agree a substitution of a deviled egg, but insisted it be served earlier. Whatever. By the way, the single soft egg was insufficient to sauce up the hash. Yelp also had a review that said the chef refused to cook two eggs over hard for someone’s kids at breakfast. What gives?

A couple hours after we got home my husband had severe digestive upset. I had a gurgly queasy feeling that never quite got to the eruption stage. Was it the tepid soup? Was it the runny egg? Unlikely for the latter since my husband only had a small taste of my hash. Of course with everything that is going around right now it could have been something entirely different.

Should female ginkgos be illegal?

A golden carpet greeted me by the library as I walked to my office in Wilson. The ginkgo leaves had fallen all at once in Monday night’s hard freeze. We have an entire plaza of ginkgos there, glistening like yellow snow. But not one of these trees is female.

Did you know some trees have different sexes? The are called dioecious. I suppose you could say humans are dioecious, but I won’t trouble you with any more botanical sex.

To see a female ginkgo, you have to walk down the Wash U steps towards Forest Park. Stay on the home side of Lindell and a few houses down are a couple of female trees. The odoriferous fruits crush under our feet. I wondered if they are edible. Apparently the nuts are, but getting into them is laborious.

I learned of ginkgos as a child. I learned that the species we have now is the only one left of an ancient plant group. I thought they were incredibly rare and saved ginkgo leaves in my childhood diary. But soon enough I learned that this species, Ginkgo biloba is not so rare. I still feel it is special. Its medicinal qualities may be important, or so the Mayo Clinic implies.

Female ginkgos are not popular in cities. Their fruit ferments. Their round nuts trip people. They leave a mauve slime on the pavement. But should they be illegal?

Before the day was out, my illustrious university had sucked up the shimmering carpet of rich leaves. I’ll try not to take any message about the complete lack of female trees.

Boy scouts, do something good, don’t just beg

The laziest form of charity is taking something from someone else and then giving it to the needy. There is a little effort in gathering, but most charities make better use of money than of dented cans and expired macaroni and cheese, or even undented and unexpired goods. So why to these St. Louis boy scouts just beg for my cans rather than actually doing something? If they want to give money, they should give their own money, or do something that earns money. They should do things all through the year, not just right before Christmas. I don’t need to list here all the kinds of things boy scouts can do. They know. There are tons of fantastic projects, from putting out nests for native pollinators to tutoring students to visiting nursing homes to building trails. Find something to do. Stop begging.

The point is boy scouts should do something themselves and not just mooch off me. I am fully capable of choosing my own charities and giving to them generously. Lazy, unimaginative scouts are not part of the equation.

Lab hike at Cuivre River State Park

    Are your best friends in your lab group? Are there lots of friendships and activities in the group? If so, it sure makes all that pipetting go more smoothly, not to mention struggling with R or finding true significance in your data.

We took a lab hike on Sunday, meeting up at the visitor’s center at Cuivre River State Park, about 50 miles north of St. Louis. Only six of us could go, jeff smith, Tracy Douglas, Suegene Noh, Cassie Vernier, Tony Cantu, and me. Cuivre River State Park is an interesting area because it wasn’t really glaciated, while the area around it was. It also is an Ozark-like island among rolling farmland. Like the rest of the Ozarks, it has occasional vistas, occasional dry creeks with limestone shelves easing the desolation of steep oak-dominated tick-infested forests, generally lacking in understory except for poison ivy. You earn your natural glimpses in the Ozarks.

In November, hiking is a bit challenging because the thick rustle of leaves covered everything, roots, rocks, step downs, all muffled by leaves. I was glad I brought my hiking poles for what turned out to be nearly a nine mile hike.

We hit Frenchman’s bluff early. From there we looked down on the Cuivre River and on a farmer harvesting oats. A bit farther north, around Bowling Green, we might have seen an Amish farmer using horses.

Our food arrangements were casual. We brought something for ourselves and something to share. There was trailmix, apples, pumpkin muffins, jerky, and egg salad sandwiches. Peanut m and ms rounded it out.

I thought a little about safety and brought a bivi sac and a camping pad in case someone got left while others went for help, an unlikely scenario with six.

Levi, the dachshund/Pekinese mix kept things active. We passed a golden retriever and a dalmatian and a couple of other dogs. On this crisp day with brilliant blue sky, the park was basically closed and abandoned. We had to hike up the road a mile to even get to the trailhead. Outhouses were mostly locked. The visitor’s center was closed.

We hiked and hiked, getting into the rhythm of simply moving. Here and there were signs of the humans that once lived in this six thousand acre park. We saw a stone well, and a bit of a wooden fence. I picked up a piece of flint that might have been flaked by the first people. I dropped it for another to find and wonder over.

Birds were few. A northern cardinal, tufted titmice, and chickadees brought the woods a bit away from desolation. At first I only heard the shriek of downy woodpeckers, but later also saw a red bellied woodpecker, then a pileated woodpecker heavily flying across the path. A spider, a wasp, and a beetle, a poison oozing meloid, rounded out the natural life.

Maybe Wednesday we’ll go out again, for a real freeze may be coming. I hope it brings frost flowers!

Halloween in St. Louis is for the jokes

Did you know the children tell jokes? Can you believe this was our third Halloween here already, although last year I was in Finland?

The jokes the children tell are not good jokes.  Here are a few.

 

Why do witches ride brooms? Because vacuum cords aren’t long enough

Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? Because he didn’t have the guts

What room can the skeleton not go in? The living room

What kind of bat is at the circus? acrobat

Why was the dog chasing the skeleton? Because he wanted a bone

What is a fish without an eye? fsssshhhhh

Why did the vampire go to NY to see the Vampire state building

What kind of nut always has a cold? Cashew

What did the skeleton do with the donut? Suck the jelly out.

What kind of music does the mummy like? Rap

What did one hat say to the other? You stay here while I go on a head.

What nationality is in the living room? American, What nationality is in the dining room? American. What nationality is in the bathroom? European.

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Interrupting cow. Interrupting cow who? burp?

Knock Knock whos there? queen queen who? Clean my room

Why couldn’t the lifeguard save the hippie? He was too far out.

What’s the vampire’s favorite dog? Bloodhound.

Why did the cow jump over the moon? To get to the milky way

What’s your joke? The Rams. They’re a joke.

How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it.

Why did the pelican get kicked out of the restaurant? He had a very big bill.

Why did the witch miss a lot of school? She kept getting expelled.

What did the witch say to the vampire? You suck.

Knock knock? Whos there. Philip. Philip who. Philip my candy bag.

What was a witch’s favorite subject in school? spelling

What has ten letters and starts with gas? An automobile.