Sunday, November 25, 2012

Mud and Chocolate


While I will admit that I have not looked too very hard for a new coffee place, the loss of Middle Way Café from my life when I left Alaska is mentionable.  From the smooth coffee without a hint of bitterness to the chic décor to the friendly baristas who knew me by name and how I took my mochas, hot chocolates and lattes.  Occasionally, I have tried a new coffee place here and there in St. Louis, but have rejected more coffee than I have enjoyed.
                Yesterday, I finally found an analogous coffee place to Middle Way.  Surprisingly, my Mom called it.  Let’s step back for a moment.
                Yesterday, Mom and I decided to go check out Cherokee Row, which is a revitalized neighborhood in the Benton Park area which is known for its antique shops.  I had been down the street once severalmonths ago, but not for shopping.  All I really knew was that it had a book store that looked interesting. 
                We started our afternoon with a stop at The Mud House, a place that I only vaguely knew by reputation.  At eleven o’clock on a Saturday Morning, the place was already busy.  The crowd was relatively young and hip, but refreshingly, they weren’t parked at tables with laptops glaring up in their faces.  Most people were there for a morning with friends and conversation. 
                Mom and I both ordered hot chocolate, and she snuck in a piece of gooey butter cake while I wasn’t watching.  While Mom waited for our drinks, I found us a table near the window so we could watch the street.  Frankly, the eccentric collection of antique games and other memorabilia on the walls was more interesting than the bundled up shoppers scurrying down the chilly streets.
                When Mom came over with the hot chocolate, I knew we were in for a treat.  The heavy ceramic mugs were brimming with the fine foam that only a skilled barista can make.  No whipped cream – who needs that when your hot cocoa is already a creation of perfection?  The conversation between Mom and I went something like this:
                Mom:  “I watched the gal make these.”
                Me:  “She steamed the milk, didn’t she?”
                Mom:  “Yes, and put in lots of chocolate.”
                The hot chocolate was everything you could hope for:  Warm, foamy, and wonderfully chocolately.  When Mom got to the bottom of her mug she kept trying to get the last of the foam out.  Finally I told her to use her fork.  She gave me an incredulous look, kind of laughed, and picked up the fork.  Needless to say, there was no foam left in either cup by the time we finished. 
                The Mud House is worth the trip to Cherokee Street all by itself.  While I didn’t try out the coffee, I can tell you (because we actually went twice) that the gooey butter cake, brownies, smoothies, and sandwiches are all delicious.  Additionally, they have vegetarian options and locally source their coffee beans.  I’ll definitely be going back.


Resources:

Cherokee Antique Row:  http://antiquerow.org/
Middle Way Café (Alaska): http://www.middlewaycafe.com/
For the Book Lovers in the audience, Hammonds Books: http://www.hammondsbooks.net/

Monday, November 19, 2012

A Literary Sanctuary


Every now and then, you find a place that feeds your soul; a place where time stops, the stresses of the day melt away, and you can immerse yourself in oblivion.  The time you spend there is cathartic, a walking meditation on life, or an exploration of newly discovered interests. 
For everyone, this place might be different- a cathedral where the light streams in red, blue and green through the stained glass windows; a hike in the mountains where your shouts and laughter will only be heard by the marmots; a dance club where the music thrumbs through your body to the time of your own heartbeat.
For me, it is a book store.  Not just any book store, it is a book lover’s store.  This kind of book store is generally (though not always) a used book store.  Whether it is tidy or cramped, fastidiously organized or a natural disaster, there is a certain feel to it.  You want to run your fingers across the spines of books lined up as if you were in a fabric store playing with the reams of silk and velvet.  There is often a certain scent in the air, from the accumulation of so much paper and the dust and mold that come along with it. 
That first visit to a new store is like an exploration of the wilderness and a spiritual retreat rolled into one.  You wander the aisles learning where the different sections are and remember books that you want to read from areas that you won’t typically peruse once you are familiar with the store. 
Today, I finally made it to the Book House in Rock Hill.  I had been meaning to go for several months, but I wanted to go when I knew I would have a couple of hours to just wander through the stacks.  In some ways, I should never have waited, in others, I think that the trip would always have been emotionally draining for me.
From the street, you can tell that the Book House has great potential to be an awesome book store.  It is in a small old house that is set back off of Manchester.  But when you step inside, it hits you; this is book lover’s paradise.  There are shelves of books from floor to ceiling along every wall and in every nook and cranny that a few pages of bound paper can be made to fit. Walking up and down the stairs between floors, you have to stop to see what books are along the wall, or on the bookcase in front of you. 
Hand lettered signs hang throughout the store pointing the way to different section of books, including a very helpful sign saying that if you are looking for books on the History of the South, try the bottom shelf on the left.  (I would note that to get to that shelf, you will need to move the piles of books out from in front of it, and probably have to figure out where to put the piles that you just moved.)
In many ways, though I had never set foot in the store, it was a trip down memory lane for me.  Many of my old friends were there (offhand, Harry Potter, Isabelle Allende, Jim Butcher, Ray Bradbury, and Starhawk).  The hoard of books brought to mind the scene in Fahrenheit 451 where the woman lights her own house on fire with herself in it rather than be parted from her books.  Most wrenching perhaps, was thinking how much one of my old friends would have enjoyed exploring the store with me, and the laughter we would have shared as we both spent way too much money on books to add to our already over flowing shelves. 
So, I picked up a book on solitude (Thoreau’s Walden) and a reminder of humanity’s foibles (C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters), added The Book House to my list of personal retreats, and stopped for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Myth Busted



One great thing about being single is that when you find out at the last minute that a fun show is going to be in town, you don’t have to worry about whether your sweetie has different plans.  And so when I found out last Thursday that the Mythbusters were going to be in town, I didn’t even think twice about buying a ticket and making my own little date night.

                My evening started at a restaurant near the theater called Jazz at theBistro.  It was a bit pricy for a regular spot, but the flourless chocolate cake was delicious.  Next time I’m looking for a place for dessert and a cup of coffee, it will definitely be on my list.  Additionally, they have live jazz concerts every week; I was a bit too early to hear the music, but I imagine it is wonderful.


                After dinner, I walked to the theater, the Fabulous Fox.  The exterior façade is really cool, but it doesn’t prepare you for the fabulous interior.  The word that comes to mind is arabesque, but even that doesn’t capture the incredible woodwork, soaring columns, fanciful statuary and stained glass that adorns every square foot of the theater.  I gawked at the decor from the time I walked in the door until the show started.

                As for the show, “Behind the Myths” was part physics horse and pony show, part behind the scenes look at their show, part bloopers reel, and plenty of classic Adam and Jamie.  For the physics parts, they talked a lot about how forces work (including a demonstration of Jamie breaking a brick on Adam’s stomach with a sledge hammer while Adam laid on a bed of nails) and some about fluid dynamics (Adam is probably the only person who can compare the bang made by an exploding hot water tank to falling in love and make it convincing).   The coolest trick in the show was when they took two phonebooks where the pages had been shuffled together like a deck of cards and used it as a carabiner of sorts to hoist Adam off the ground.

They had a couple of audience Q&A sessions where they took questions about everything from Jamie’s mustache to the recent historic jump by Felix Baumgartner.  They shared with us technical and legal aspects of putting together the show, including some of their dealings with their insurance company, a fiasco involving a cannon ball, and their commitment to and actions with respect to safety.  According to Adam, the worst injuries that they have had on the show have totaled three broken fingers. 

Throughout the show, their humor and love for the kind of work they do flowed through.  From their stories about their experiments, to their goofs with the audience (who were invited to participate in many of their tricks), they were engaging and fun to watch.  It was a fabulous was to spend a Sunday evening.


Resources:
The Fabulous Fox Theater: http://www.fabulousfox.com/

Sunday, November 4, 2012

My Secret Life As A Canvasser


*Disclaimer – there are no politics discussed in this post*

                This election cycle, one of the candidates raised my hackles with a badly worded comment.  And so, I found myself (uncharacteristically) volunteering for a political campaign.   I wasn’t so much supporting a particular candidate as I was working to defeat a complete imbecile in what (sadly) has turned out to be a hotly contested race.  My contribution to this effort was to go canvassing door to door, an activity that took me from as far north as St. Ann, down to South County and from Maplewood in the east to Chesterfield in the west.
                While I can’t say that I saw “everything” while out canvassing, each trip out had the potential for a bit of adventure.   My very first evening out canvassing was closed out when a man met me at the door while holding a ball-peen hammer.  No, I’m not really sure why he was holding a hammer, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t using it to make artsy copper jewelry. 
                When they send you out canvassing, they give you a list of voters to ask for at each home.  One of my favorite experiences occurred when I asked a lady whether her daughter was home.  She got all excited and asked “are you here to talk to her about voting?”  Umm… Yes.  I was.  She invited me in and went and got her daughter, who had recently turned 18 and was voting for the first time.  The mother was more excited about the whole process than the daughter, and I was glad that I was supposed to be doing the “get out and vote” version of the script rather than the “persuade voters” version.  As ugly as this year’s election has been, I’d rather talk to a new voter about the process than be another discordant voice in the cacophony.
                On the head-shaking and eyeball rolling front, I ran into one gentleman who was so firmly committed to the other party that when I attempted to hand him a piece of literature, reacted as though I had cooties.  Seriously, was he afraid that looking at a flyer would shake the bedrock of his political beliefs?  Or that gazing at a photo of the opposing candidate might move him to question how he intended to vote?  I imagine him going out to the sidewalk with a bucket of bleach water to wash the germs off from my passing…
                And of course, I discovered once again that it’s a small world after all.  At one home that I visited, I met a lady that I go to church with.  In a back of the envelope calculation, I figure I knocked on approximately 300 doors, and spoke to 100 people, from which I extrapolate that I know approximately 1% of registered voters.  Given that there are approximately 700,000 registered voters in St. Louis County, I think I can safely say that I have met approximately 7,000 people over the last several months.  Okay, so maybe not “safely”- but out of the 700,000 potential voters on my list, it is a bit wild that I ran into someone I know.
                In the end, all I have to say is get out and vote.  Whatever your political views, angst about the ugliness of this year’s campaign, beef about the economy, annoyance about whoever’s handling of whatever social issue, make sure your vote is counted.