Rodrigo Amarante:Tiny Desk Concert

He also plays in a band with Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, Little Joy.  And on his solo album Kristen Wiig is one of the people who sings in the choir?
He has been soothing my mind with beautiful tunes as i read more about life in St Louis.

Another article about where we live

Washington Post talks about the Delmar divide.

Interesting tidbit...
The 3rd picture in the slideshow shows a house on the same block my brother lived on a few years ago.   While he lived there, he was shot point blank in the femur and it shattered into more than 50 pieces.

This is worth talking about, whether you live in St Louis or not.

Nickel Creek:Tiny Desk

We saw Nickel Creek sometime around 2002 and took Tullaia the baby with us.  I kind of forgot about these guys, but still love them.

Inside Ferguson

This is an excellent video by a St Louis journalism student named
Bradley J Rayford.

Time to Merge...

We live in St Louis city and Ferguson is 5 miles northwest in St Louis county.  This is fairly irrelevant unless you live here.  
This article talks about the history and how it affects us now.  
The county map that explains Ferguson's tragic discord

Here is a Map of Decline for the St Louis area.

Champ?  I haven't even heard of it, and i love to read city maps before bed.   It's a tiny municipality out by Riverport.  Do people in Champ care much about what happens in Ferguson?  Probably not.  Do I?
We care more about something we are part of.  Otherwise it just turns into "those people".

"Fragmentation is not the principal cause, but it certainly fed into what’s happening in Ferguson,” says Robert Cohn, author of The History and Growth of St. Louis County, Missouri.

White Flight and White Power

All of the chaos in St Louis makes me sad.  Sad for things that came before.
Sad for all the anger that has been building, on all sides.
TIME article

7

We watch old videos on the kids' birthdays.  It is so funny to see how they talk, sing, and dance.

Avery is the beloved baby and it shows.  The videos often include multiple requests for Avery to say something and roaring laughter in the background.  In one family favorite, he performs killer dance moves to Michael Jackson without inhibitions.  On beat.

Time really does fly...
Happy birthday Avery!

10

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I didn't disclose my love of food dehydrators to Jasper. But he wanted one for his birthday.  So, the kids pooled their money to buy it for him. 

I got one for my birthday when i was a kid too. We had about 3 T.V. channels and one of them usually had a Ronco infomercial playing.  I loved those!  One was for the food dehydrator.  

It is a fairly weird thing to want, so it warms my heart a bit to see our similarities.  He hasn't seen any of the infomercials, so it comes straight from him.

It's interesting to see kids morph into people, with their own ideas and interests.  Sometimes it is really frustrating.  But it is really fun to see their joys coincide with yours inadvertently. 

Happy Birthday Jasper!