coming home

John, his last day of work at the Sioux Power Plant in West Alton, MO

(His hard hat reads "Hitachi - John")

We have been home for about 10 days now and already our adventure to the center of America seems like a dream. We watch the weather for St. Charles, and it’s hard to imagine 6 degrees, or the brown and icy grey colors of winter. Meanwhile in Florida we are trying to heal our house (which became "sick" while we were away) and Jubilee, who has come down with a severe allergic reaction to the mold, pollen and dust of Florida.

I was touched very deeply by the rivers and sky and land and people of Missouri, and hope to carry them in my soul forever. I asked someone who had lived for awhile in Missouri if they ever missed living near the sea, and she answered, "no, because we have this big sky and endless land here." I understand that now.

We are grateful for the strange twist of event that brought this journey into our lives, and hope for more.

MO Girlfriends

Julia and Marcia, my treasured Missouri friends.

(They know how to do scarves!)

winter, birds and gas

It’s winter here – or it sure feels like winter to us. The temperature hovers in the 30s and 40s, but there is this wind … and we bundle up in hats, scarves and gloves every time we go out. Maybe we’re over-doing it. One of the neighbors was making fun of us the other day.

We keep going back to the North side of the Confluence - the Migratory Bird Sanctuary - where the Missouri River meets the Mississippi River. John says that we must be the only people who keep coming back. There are never very many people there. But there is a road there that goes right to the Confluence. It has been gated 4 and a half miles back, since we have been here. The sign says that it is closed due to flooding. It hasn’t really rained here in a while and I wanted to check one more time to see if it was open, but it wasn’t. We hiked around the marshy wetlands. There were a lot of geese and ducks.

Bird's nest

Meanwhile John's job, building a SO2 (sulphur dioxide) scrubber at the Sioux coal power plant, is ending due to a lack of funds. Something about bonds, and the environmental standard that made it a financially wise thing to do was lifted (by Bush?). We don’t know exactly when the job will end, but we have given our notice to the landlord. The rent is paid through November; we could be heading back to Florida any day.

Gas at our critter gas station was $1.95 a gallon today.

Update: The sign closer so that you can see the price!

The last warm day

I think that this may be the last warm day. It is quite windy today, and it is supposed to rain tomorrow followed by a cold weekend.

Jubilee and I needed to get away from the television and computer, and so much election talk, so we headed over to our favorite walk along the Missouri River. Our days here in Missouri are numbered, and I realize how grateful I am for the opportunity to live and know this place.

John McCain rally in St. Charles, MO

It is interesting, but also sometimes disturbing to listen to what the other side is saying.

The McCain rally in my neighborhood in St. Charles this morning looked like a county fair. A small county fair. I’m not good at estimating crowd size, but maybe 1500 is in the ballpark. Children, old people, everyone was well behaved and excited, but the crowd response was weak. Lackluster. The lines that generated energy were those that referred to Sarah Palin.

Several Missouri politicians spoke before Senator McCain, and I was confused by their message. The evil of slavery was equated with socialism. A lot of talk about the idea of “spreading the wealth around”, especially in terms of giving “your hard earned money to people who don’t work”. Do rich people who don’t work deserve it more? I heard a lot about the danger of raising taxes, but not a word about raising the minimum wage.

I stood at the very back of the crowd, but still had a good view of Senator McCain. He looked good. The first words out of his mouth were a commendation of his running mate, Sarah Palin, that drew loud applause. Then it was mostly a re-hash of the confusing money issues that the other Missouri politicians had been drumming on. He ended with a chant about “stand up and fight for America”, and one old woman who had been sitting in a wheelchair stood and thrust her fist in the air. I was behind her and wish that I could have photographed it, but the memory was gone on my camera.

I’ve already mailed my Florida absentee ballot.

Here is NY Times reporting on the rally in St. Charles.

Some photos from the rally ... The crane was used to hoist a giant flag:

A Sarah sighting in the crowd ...

Sharpshooters...

And lots of buttons ... mostly Palin!

John McCain is coming to New Town!

What a time to be in Missouri.

Tomorrow Obama will be speaking under the St. Louis Arch – just where we were planning to go with Eric. Much as we would like to see Senator Obama, we really didn’t want to deal with the crowd and traffic so we changed our plans and will go into St. Louis on Sunday.

But – and this is the real hoot – John McCain is coming to New Town on Monday morning. This little neighborhood in the middle of a cornfield! We saw police and important looking 30-somethings with blackberries prowling around yesterday. Today police dogs were here and the word about McCain coming spread fast. Everyone is talking about it. American flags are appearing.

My gosh.

The amphitheatre is only a block and a half away. The whole entourage will most likely pass right in front of my house. The only thing that I can figure is that it’s a very picturesque place, lots of Republicans are here, and the amphitheatre looks pretty “full” with just a couple hundred people.

I most certainly will have to walk down the street to see what’s going on. I guess I’m going to a McCain Rally! Stay tuned.

New Town Amphitheater

Elephant Rocks, Art, and the Missouri River (again)

[Elephant Rocks State Park, Missouri. That's John and Jubilee out there.]

I’m getting a little behind here, so I figure I’ll start with today and work backwards.

John seems to think that we should start scouting around the Ozarks. All we know about the Ozarks is that they are somewhere south. On the map the beginning of the Ozarks didn’t look so far, so we headed down to a place called the Arcadia Valley and Elephant Rocks State Park. Supposedly the tallest spot in Missouri – Taun Sauk Mountain – 1700 ft high, is around here somewhere.

They call these mountains? The area is very pretty, but more like rolling hills. Maybe you have to get down into Arkansas before you see the real Ozark Mountains.

We went to Graniteville and hiked around Elephant Rocks State Park – a good park, a paved trail through the rocks with some side trails leading deeper into the forest. Jubilee enjoyed climbing the rocks.

I have been looking for a granite bowl for some months now, and thought that perhaps this might be where I would find it, but the one place we saw offering granite products only sold tombstones!

We had lunch in nearby Ironton, where there were only 3 restaurants – all fast food. Ugh.

St. Louis University Art Museum

My son, Eric, is a good art museum date. He helps me to see things that I ordinarily don’t see on my own. Nevertheless, I ventured into the St. Louis Art Museum last week without him. I found the SLU Art museum to be a very quiet and wonderful place to just wander around, looking. It was an interesting collection – some Andy Warhol, Dale Chihuly, Paul Klee, Miro … There was a side exhibit, "Persuasive Politics", a collection of presidential campaign memorabilia that included even the Palm Beach County voting booth of 2000 (I voted on that!). The life-size cutouts of Obama and McCain caused some elderly men (the only other people in the museum besides me) to comment that it was obvious who the people setting up the exhibit were voting for - look at those droopy pants!

I didn’t have time for the collection of the Western Jesuits on the 3rd floor, and hope to see that next week.

At the entrance to the museum there is a sculpture of an “Urban Francis”. This photo does not do it justice – I liked it a lot.

I also got of photo of the Jesus on the bench with the child this week. It is named “Heart to Heart”. People sit on this bench with Jesus and the child, waiting for the bus. And a sculpture of a coed on campus. (More photos on Flickr)


Finally, I want to post this photo of the Missouri River which crested on Thursday and flooded its banks. This is the place where Jubilee and I walk most every day. The water level is usually 30 or 40 feet down an embankment.

It's starting to look a lot different around here ...

It’s starting to look a lot different around here. For one thing, the cornfields that surround us are not green anymore, but yellow and brown. It looks like they are waiting as long as possible to harvest. I’ve heard that this is because the corn will be used for fuel, and the longer it can stay on the stalk, the better.

And there’s a lot of water around. Hurricane Ike came through on Saturday night, and a lot of the roads are still flooded even today (Tuesday). The ground has so much clay in it that the water just sits there. The path that Jubilee and I use to get to the Missouri River is still impassable:
I am reveling in the change. Ever so slightly, the weather is getting cooler, so that I can wear blue jeans and long sleeves most every day now. No more air-conditioning! I am sleeping better than I have in 3 years.

[The latest word is that we will be here at least until the end of November.]

Confluence Park

We are living on the land between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, just before they join. Each river is about the same distance, maybe 5 miles, away. It seems that we are drawn to the place where the 2 rivers meet – a place called Confluence Park.

In 1721, French explorer, Father Pierre Francois de Charlevoix, wrote of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much the same breadth, each about half a league: but the Missouri is by for the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waters to the opposite shore without mixing them, afterwards, it gives its color to the Mississippi which it never loses again but carries quite down to the sea ..."

This is flat land, wet land. Many bays and islands, and usually quite a few people fishing. It is also a sanctuary for migrating birds. Birds from as far away as northern Alaska use the Mississippi River as a navigational route to warmer lands.

I can’t wait to see this area later in the autumn. But already things are starting to look different around here. The sky for one thing. And it is cooler. Will it really get cold here??!! I’ve lived in Florida so long I tend to doubt that this season change thing is really going to happen.

So far, every time we have attempted to drive to the actual place where the Missouri meets the Mississippi, the road has been closed due to flooding. Today, though, we were able to drive as far as the locks. We hiked the “2 pecan nature trail” through tall grasses. It is a magical place.

Hannibal, Missouri

Labor Day was hazy, hot and humid, and on a lark we drove up to Hannibal, Missouri, the childhood home of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. This area served as the setting of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and other of Twain's writings. It is about 1 ½ hour drive from here, almost to Iowa.

Hannibal is a small-ish town on the Mississippi River. Had its heyday during middle 1850’s when the Mississippi River was the main shipping route through America.

There was not much happening other than the few tourists who were milling about. Maybe it was the weather. We toured the museum, the Clemens home, and the Tom Sawyer cave. If you ask me, the quandary of slavery that so consumed Mark Twain still haunts the place.

Weeds are my thing

Weeds are my thing. I’ll take wild and random weeds, any day, over an organized, cultivated garden.

Weeds are not flashy or showy, but humble, mostly blending into the background and each other. You have to make the effort to look at weeds, but when you do, you are astounded at their simple loveliness. All together, weeds can make amazingly subtle changes of color across a landscape.

And if you cut weeds – say for a bouquet or arrangement – they will only hold their beauty for a very short time, maybe an hour, before they die.

Weeds are ordinary, every where. Some people never notice them other than to try to get rid of them. But if you take the time to look, you’ll see and delight in their beauty.

More weeds on Flickr - all weed photos taken this morning at Dusable Park, St. Charles, Missouri.

Point Jean Baptiste du Sable Park (weed walk)

After finally conceding that I don’t stand a chance against the IRS, I wrote the check and then took off with Jubilee for a weed walk. It is cool today, not even going to get to 80 degrees.

We went to the nearby Point Dusable Park, where I found out that Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was born in Haiti to a slave woman and French pirate (imagine that!). After being educated in France, he came to the western shores of Lake Michigan in the 1770’s and built the first settlement in what is now Chicago – hence, he is known as the Founder of Chicago. There he married a Potowatomi Indian woman and became a high ranking member of the tribe. Point du Sable came to St. Charles the last few years of his life, where he lived with his granddaughter. He is buried in St. Charles and now has this nice park named after him.

Here are some photos - more on the Flickr site.

Katy Trail

Not much to add here this week. The weather had gotten somewhat hot again, though the nights and mornings are cool, and I’ve been bogged down with re-doing our 2006 Tax Return. Ugh. (The Government says we owe them $8000!) The tires on the Jeep kept going flat so we got new tires today. John’s motorcycle due to arrive early this coming week.

Above photo is John and Jubilee on the Katy Trail, which is a 225 mile bike path that runs almost all the way across Missouri. Much of it follows Lewis and Clark’s Trail up the Missouri River. We pick it up just down the road.

More Missouri (and Illinois) stuff

We’re still wandering around, looking at the different things in this part of Missouri. Here are some sites and comments, though I still feel too “green” to be making comments.

The corn is getting high, they should be harvesting soon. Mostly the fields around us are planted in corn or soybeans, and they are all marked with signs, noting the type and number of seed (I think).

There is a little ferry boat – the Grafton Ferry – that goes across the Mississippi. This seems kind of strange, since there is a big bridge not too far away. But last Sunday there was long line of cars and motorcycles waiting for the ferry. $4 one way for a motorcycle, we figure maybe people take the ferry just for fun. On the other side, in Illinois, there are bluffs and a road that runs right along the Mississippi River.

John and Jubilee at the Lady of the Rivers statue. The Sioux Power plant where John works is in the background.

Bridge going across Mississippi River to Allton, Illinois.

I really liked the feel of this city (Allton, IL). It feels old, but not tourist-y. Almost industrial, but with a long and living history right on the river. Lots of secret, interesting little places to look. And yet with a realness that is still alive.

There’s a big, glitzy casino on the river now in Allton.

As usual, more photos on Flickr.