Museums of St. Louis - SLAM!

One thing that we loved about St. Louis this summer was all of the free museums.  One such museum is the St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM), with it's world-class collections of famous artists like Monet.  While not such a classical masterpiece, my favorite piece of art was the massive mural of Native American life/exploration of the Mississippi River.  It is the only-surviving example of a popular mid-19th-century fad; people would use these panoramic paintings to travel the country telling tales (often tall ones) about their adventures exploring out "West."  As this article puts it, "before there were movies there were panoramic paintings."  If I understand correctly, the painting (which was probably several hundred feet long) would be put on what looks a lot like a massive roll of film.  Through some mechanical means, the picture would be moved along the roll as the speaker told his tall tales.  Would have been awesome to see it live.  But the next best thing was to see it at SLAM, where professional restorers are doing touch-ups wherever the paint has been eroded or badly faded due to humidity while it was in storage (for 150 years!)   Maybe the reason I liked it so much is that it is art and history all at the same time.

The SLAM also had an exhibit about weapons as art.  The fancy polished wooden guns from the 14th thru 18th centuries were cool, but my favorite was the gunpowder container: if you look closely, it's "hunting" theme has a bunch of wild hogs and hounds thrashing and gnashing their teeth and gnawing on one another.  Much more awesome than camouflage.  If I hunted, I would get one of these.

The Napoleon Cigar.  Interesting piece of advertising art from 1932 I believe.

Unique piece of Americana.  A vase with bison, George Washington, and miniature pastoral landscapes.

That's all for now.  We'll write again later about the mummies.

Box Canyon

In mid-(or was it late?) July, I drove back one more time from St. Louis to Bloomington, to attend the baptism of one of the kids in my Primary class, Jeremiah.  The baptism was a great, spiritual, testimony-building event; unfortunately I did not have Erica with me and therefore I completely forgot to take any pictures.  However, on the way there, I did stop and explore an awesome "box canyon" in Southern Indiana:

Hard to tell, but believe it or not that is my foot hanging over the edge of a substantial cliff.  "A box canyon is a small ravine or canyon with steep walls on three sides, allowing access and egress only through the mouth of the canyon."   The coolest part about box canyons is how the sides are very close together.  Probably there isn't much more than a hundred feet separating the walls of this canyon going all the way up to the top of it.

Along the switchbacks winding down to the bottom, there were lots of large boulders with cool hidey-holes underneath them.  I decided I would come back someday with Erica and Charles when we live in Indiana again in 2013.

Big Apple #3: Happiness is Near

Our sister/sister-in-law Christina (aka Sister Nelson) is serving as a missionary in Siberia (she was in Moscow, but was recently transferred).  And now she is on her way to Kazakhstan, hopefully within the next couple of weeks!  We are so excited for her and for the Kazakh people that she will meet and teach. And, as the reason for the name of this post, she will be in the city of Almaty, whose name means Mother of Apples and is said to be the place where apples originally grew and were domesticated.  We are guessing that she will visit this statue when she is there.

Joshua thinks it is really neat that Christina will be in Kazakhstan because he met many Kazakhs while on his mission to Mongolia. He even climbed a hill in Mongolia while wearing a Kazakh hat.  He even almost studied Kazakh at Indiana University for a scholarship (but then decided to become a city manager instead).

Sister Nelson has not yet seen a Russian or Kazakh winter, but she has found out that the lands of the north receive much rain in the summer.

 

(Christina is on the left)

(Translation: Happiness is Near)

And then they took our door

See this handsome man?

This is Charles' super cool Uncle Caleb. They like to play with the penguins:

Caleb and his parents came to visit us in St Louis. It was a busy weekend - Scrabble, Cardinals, the Arch, ping pong at the YMCA, Pancakes, swimming, Science Museum, art museum that was closed, Fitz's root beer restaurant, and lots of love. We were sad to see them go.

I put out the bird feeder just so Shauna could see her beloved east-coast friends, but they never came. Until 2 minutes after they drove off . . .

With everyone gone, Charles and I got bored. Back to normal life.

Except then some men came and stole our door.

Luckily they brought us a new one (a few hours later). No more rolly-polly fiestas in our entryway!! Charles had a good time watching them work. We will have to get him some power tools soon.

Rolly-polly party:

Big Apple Number Two

2. Charles likes to eat food.

We handed him an apple (peeled). Loved it.

Always so serious when he eats. Also quite noisy.

He also enjoys munching on blueberries, peas, and whatever else I hand him. Eggs, avocado, chicken.

And whatever else he finds on the floor. Feathers, rolly pollies.

Big Apple Number One

1. Did we tell you we are moving to New York?

After our adventures in St Louis, we are off to NYC where Joshua will do another internship. Nothing quite like squeezing your whole life into a storage pod every few months.

We took a trip to Bloomington to pack up our apartment and say hello to our friends.

To prepare for the trip to his birthplace, we washed the car. This is Charles supervising:

This is what Charles was like the whole drive. Not.

Pit stop somewhere by a Wal-mart and a field of corn (narrows it down a bit, huh?). I like Charles' camo pants.

 Tears came when I saw this on my door. "This is my hooooommmeeee," I said to Joshua. "We can't go back to St Louis. I love this place, I hope to diiiieeeee heeeeeaaahhhh."

 Thank you, Barlows.

Remember when Baby C was a baby? (I need to find a picture of him being a little baby and fitting on this rug.) He liked to lay here while I did the laundry.

Now he just wants to play in the toilet.

Charles enjoyed getting reacquainted with his buds.

No children were harmed in the moving of this household. (Although you should not let them sit on wobbly stools on top of boxes while you take pictures. They will probably fall off and hurt their head.)

 Goodbye, six-four-six. We will miss you.

You know you're a redneck if . . .

On the radio a few days back there was a little snippet of a comedy show.


"If you have a whole matching set of salad bowls . . . that all say "Cool Whip" on the side . . . . . . you might be a redneck."

That one hit home a little . . . .





We thought this one really leaned us towards the redneck category:

"If you bring your son to a free outdoor play, plop him on a blanket in nothing but a diaper, and dump out a box of Cheerios in front of him . . . . .

. . . you might be a redneck."

All I can say is, he is a Hoosier baby.


We did have a grand time watching Shakespeare's "As You Like It" at a park in St. Charles. Our little Charles was a saint and did really well, just rolled around eating Cheerios all night. A lady walking by commented on how good our baby is.