Hot Town, Spring In The City

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Sunset in the window

Sunset in a window decorated by my lady

It has been bizarrely hot in St. Louis today. I’ve been tolerating it with the windows open, strategically drawn shades to block sunlight, and ceiling fans circulating, but I feel bad for our long-haired pets. It’s a good time to think about any neighbors or relatives who are elderly and might need someone to check in on them when the temperatures elevate this summer. Now on to other local news:

Scarlett Garnet is opening up a location on 2619 Cherokee Street (just west of Jefferson). The grand opening is Friday, April 6, from 6 – 10 PM.

LaBeeBee’s Mid-East Cafe should be resuming their usual restaurant hours in April some time. I can’t wait to get back there for a falafel wrap or tabouli salad. They’re right next door to Foam, and the owner is really friendly.

Local Harvest Grocery, Café, and Catering shared big news today. They will be opening two new locations in 2012. One will be a grocery in Kirkwood and the other will be café and catering in downtown St. Louis. Fear not, the spots we love on Morgan Ford will still remain open.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of the store, and I’d say this is one sign that our local food-producing community is getting stronger. For many of us, it’s much more than a fad. We grow and support growers because we believe it is a worthwhile way to live life and to get our nourishment. And the green horns like me don’t hold a candle to the people who have this in their family history. Just check out the book Missouri Harvest: A Guide to Growers and Producers in the Show Me State, and you’ll learn about lots of Missouri farmers who have been doing this for generations. Many of us are ready to carry on those types of traditions. It may be a hot spring, but it’s an exciting one, too.

Hyperlocal News Reports

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One purpose of this “Info Wrangling” blog is to deliver hyperlocal news items. It has happened in a few of my posts in the past, but I am starting it up again. I like that we can share and chime in on big news stories on the Internet, but I also think that the Internet could be a place where all news has a voice. Social media time-lines offer one way to share local news, but I want more than that. I want local news reporting that shares what’s going on in a more in-depth way and more voices generating it.

I don’t really know anything about journalism, but this is something I feel like I need and something communities might need too. The traditional news reporting outlets get a lot of stories wrong, or at least not-quite-right. How many of you who have been interviewed for a newspaper or television story have found yourself misquoted? Or how many times has the message of the article not accurately represented you? There is no sense in asking for perfect correlation between what we see as reality and what the news says, but I feel like opening up the stage for more voices to report stories could help us feel better represented. Or it could lead to further fragmentation. I don’t know, but I think it’s worth a shot for all of us to try on our press fedoras every once in a while.

One place I go for very local current information is The Cherokee Street News. It’s a darn near perfect example of what I am seeking. Many people contribute to the stream of posts, and there are several frequent commenters as well. And in fact, the site is the source of some of the news featured in this post. Speaking of that, here is the news from my view of the Benton Park neighborhood, Cherokee Street, and environs.

CAMP is fundraising for the Cinco De Mayo People’s Joy Parade! If you don’t know what this parade is, the Kickstarter campaign video is an excellent introduction and also provides a way to support the project. Check the link out here.

This is outdated news, but the Stable (at Lemp and Cherokee) is no more. And furthermore, its successor, American Craft Brewing and Distilling, is also defunct. The Stable was a really enjoyable neighborhood place, and I was sad to see it go. I don’t have any news about what went on behind the scenes, but I guess we’re down to one pub on the intersection of Lemp and Cherokee. OMalley’s, it is!

When I heard that Maggie and Mike were moving and that Mayer’s Bakery was no longer their “bar-to-be”, I was a bit disheartened. But, the Mayer’s Bakery space will not be empty for long. The Archive is moving there! The old bakery building which was once home to Black Bear Bakery has a promising future. Watch the space at 2903 S. Jefferson.

And lastly, keep your eye on the building space formerly known as Shangri-La. Maybe?

Another New Start – Spring 2012 is coming

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Green Garlic March 2012
Last year around this time, I was looking at a new start and felt the season changing. I feel wary of posting anything too subjectively emotional on the Internet because I know that people don’t or can’t care about my personal feelings as written in a blog post. But if you feel that this upcoming vernal season (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) is yielding more than a temperature change for you, read on.

I am so pleased to be growing things in the ground. It is taking my lady and I some time to get the ball rolling on our gardening projects, but I (trans)planted green garlic in two spots this week, and I passed along some of the garlic to two other people. The green garlic was free to me, courtesy of EarthDance in Ferguson, MO. They had an abundance from what they had planted in the fall of 2011, and the garlic needed a good home fast. I separated the shoots from each other and tucked them into the ground. I was surprised at how much they looked like scallions in this stage of their growth. But there is no doubt that they smelled like garlic, and so did my car after transporting them.

There are many things about which to be disturbed in the world today, but each day is a new opportunity for better possibilities. As I look at the growing season ahead, and as I look at what I’ve experienced and learned so far, I feel like it’s a fresh season. Some people I love have died in recent months, but I have ample opportunities for passing on the memory of their lives and paying forward what they gave to me. I have blown opportunities and money in the past, but I’m creative, healthy, and able-bodied. I have every chance to wipe away debt and to even start saving again like I was a couple of years ago. I have good friends and family, and I live in an amazing city. I’m grateful for all of this.

I think I have to stop here because these subjective statements seem unfounded and inconsequential. But I wanted to say something about it all.

Radio Killed The Video Star

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Seriously, although I own a smart phone with a data plan, the radio still holds sway over other forms of media input for me. Like my library card services, conventional radio is basically free. I bought a stereo boom box in the mid-1990′s and that’s all that I’ve ever paid to listen to radio at home. My automobile, like most, has a built in receiver for conventional radio stations. So I effectively pay nothing to listen to KWMU, KDHX, WLCA, and WSIE in St. Louis.

I don’t pay for paper delivery or for Internet service or cable or basic television or satellite or any such thing. My father pays for my smart phone data plan, and I sometimes get wireless Internet reception from my generous neighbors. But even if my father’s or my neighbors’ generosity ever wavers, I can still rely on the good old radio for news, opinions, entertainment, and music. In an ever-changing world, this feels relatively stable and long-lasting. It’s a funny thought to utter about a technology which is barely more than a century old, but things come and go pretty fast these days. Streaming video is a big deal now, but, when the bandwidth is limited or over-priced, I can always receive my amplitude modulation or frequency modulation radio stations for free. I like that.

Am I An iPhone Twit?

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Back in May 2011, I entered the world of Apple products and smart phones thanks to my dad’s benevolence. In March and April, I had neither the inclination or the funds to get an iPhone, but by the time my renewal had come up, my father had offered to hook me up with an iPhone. Despite the Foxconn workers on my mind, I accepted the gift quite readily.

There have been many benefits to having an iPhone. They include having a 5 Mpx camera on hand at all times, being able to geocache with it, being able to check email from remote locations, etc. And I’ve not thought about the Foxconn workers for quite some time. Truth be told, my mind had become quite cluttered around mid August.

I have a Twitter application on my phone, and I began checking it quite regularly when I had a free moment. I watched the tweets from the Midwest Rising protests in St. Louis. It was like watching the news ticker at the bottom of the screen on cable news stations (FOX NEWS, CNN, MSNBC, etc.), except with more images and first-hand accounts. Weeks later in mid September, I observed the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street “occupation”. Some thought they wouldn’t last the weekend, but I observed in real-time as they sought take-out food and generators. They lasted not days but months.

Twitter and other web sites allow you to find news or stories that you would not normally hear in mainstream newspapers, television shows, or other media sources. While I did appreciate the ability to catch the #Occupy news in a largely unfiltered stream from primary sources, my mind was becoming cluttered from watching all these developments in real-time. Also, there became a great need to sift through crummy posts or free-riders who posted about the events just to receive personal attention or web traffic.

I broke my iPhone glass a couple of months back, and the fracture shook me from a daily existence that was getting somewhat saturated with smart phone usage. I pondered how much of an iPhone junkie or twit I had become. I go back and forth between being too desirous of the constant stimulation the Internet can provide and being content with moderate Internet usage. (What is moderate usage? Once a day? Weekly? Monthly?) A smart phone greatly increases the occasions for overindulgence by providing a portable access point for the data stream. It makes it seem archaic that Neo and Trinity needed to check out of the Matrix at pay phones.

Now that I have an intact phone (for free thanks to Apple) I’m asking myself again, am I an iPhone twit? My girlfriend probably thinks that I check my iPhone too much, and I agree with her in those times when I’m sacrificing engagement with the world in my physical proximity for the erratic stimulus of a digital feed. In the end, the smart phone serves me best when it is a tool aiding the rest of my life, not as an end into itself.

Through the haze of social media posts and game application notifications, I want to remember to be thankful and accountable to the FoxConn workers who put the phone together, the power company workers who facilitate the recharging of said device, and the people and living things that will be burdened with the eventual disposal of my iPhone.