respublica

Well well, hello photo ID

Democrats oppose photo ID's for voting, but look! The Massachusetts democratic state convention requires a photo ID to get in. 

International Horseradish Fest 2012

25 years of celebration this weekend. What began in the alley between Main and Clay street, behind the Chamber of Commerce building has long taken its place in Woodland Park-the International Horseradish Festival.

The star of the show, roots and jars of horseradish. Plus T shirts, glasses, cookbooks, things to help open jars with, water holders, magnets, food, drink, music, games.

There's a 5K run tomorrow morning.

And inflatable jumping things for kids.

And a carousel which isn't really what it seems to be.

Another jump house

People standing or sitting

And the Mayor, John Miller

The Mayor with Congressman John Shimkus and his wife and kid (s)

Ahem. Then there was something new this year. War Games. For kids.

It's laser tag or something complete with camoflage pup tents.

The kids loved this.

What I loved? City development director, Paul Mann brought his 4 month old Great Pyrenees puppy.

Tomorrow the fest goes from 11-6.

 

Drew's first ride on a carousel

He didn't seem too thrilled.

But Charlie looks happy.

Corona around the moon

Last night's (almost full moon) had a ring or corona around it. According to lore this can portend rain, storms or a stretch of beautiful weather.

'When halo rings the moon or sun, rain's approaching on the run".

"A single ring around the moon that quickly vanishes, predicts fine weather."

"Many rings around the moon, signal a series of severe storms."

So what shall it be for us? The forecast is nice sunny weather with no rain as far as the dopler can see.

Email news update

I get email from KSDK with breaking news each day, here are a few of the headlines from Channel 5 which just arrived in my inbox.

"Man accused of cutting up Chinese student, mailing body parts."

Bear interrupts California graduation ceremony."

"Woman accused of stealing gas money for drugs."

Someone in the back of the KSDK newsroom is probably assigned to comb the internet for strange stories.

Mo to Illinois-keep out

I'm just saying, if MoDOT is trying to keep metro east drivers from going to St. Louis they've succeeded. Today they shut down all lanes of westbound 64 just across the Poplar St Bridge. On a week day! At ten in the morning! By the time I got past 203 things were stalling as all that traffic was going to attempt to funnel onto 44.

I took the King Bridge along with a ton of other vehicles. You'd think if IDOT knew MoDOT was closing the westbound lanes on the other bridge area, they'd give westbound King two lanes, but no. Eastbound, with no traffic, had two lanes.

You hear a lot from news people about finding alternate routes, but there really aren't any good alternates when you shut down the main funnel into downtown and beyond. It backs up all the alternates.

Frankly it's getting to the point where I do not even want to attempt going to Illinois when I know I have the return highway mess facing me. Still, if you have to do this, take the King bridge and get yourself over to Jefferson and then back on.

25 years of Horseradish festivals

Tonight begins version 25 as Collinsville's annual International Horseradish Festival kicks off at 6. The main attraction this evening will be tethered balloon rides curtesy of the ReMax hot air balloon.

The fest goes into high gear tomorrow from 11 to 10 and Sunday from 11-6. The events calendar is found here.

Southern Illinois grows 80-85 percent of the worlds horseradish and Collinsville alone grows 60 percent of the world's horseradish.

Cable news ratings down in May

According to the Pew Research Center, cable news networks saw their ratings fall drastically across the board in May:

At CNN the ratings news is consistent — as in consistently dreadful — with several of its prime viewing hours, including the 7 p.m. shows and 9 p.m. shows, attracting the smallest audiences in that channel’s history.

MSNBC also recorded sharp falloffs in viewing compared to last May.
MSNBC was down 26 percent from a year ago in the category of most importance to news channels, viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 (the group news advertisers pay to reach).

Fox News also had some steep declines since last May. It was down about 21 percent in prime time in the 25-to-54 group. News about the political race has apparently not sent viewers flocking to get either the Fox News or MSNBC take (considered polar opposites) on events this spring.

This does not surprise me all that much, so many people are just weary of political talk that repeats and repeats and often just makes up ridiculous things to try and grab our attention. We've been listening to campaign talk since last summer and many of us have just moved on to other things this month. Like summer. Baseball, graduations, swimming, vacations, grilling.

Each presidential election year the campaign and talk gets longer and longer and more tedious with each news outlet trying to out shout the other. Maybe it's their own fault people have turned to other things besides politics.

We'll be back. In September.

Another day, another tree falls

Well, maybe not an entire tree, but a huge section of an old Oak fell onto the fence bordering the seminary soccer field. No rain, no wind, no nothing, but it still fell. A portion of the fence crumpled.

It was up to the grounds people to remove the remnants along with Kirt who was going to move the cut up chunks with the bobcat. Here students David and Adam decide how to go about this with Kirt. And Ferdie.

Christian and Connor spent the day with us and watched entralled as David worked the chainsaw.

Now what? the grown ups debate

Meanwhile the boys sit down to watch the show.

Soda or Pop?

Which? One of life's more pressing questions.

Living in the southern Illinois and St. Louis areas for so many years I've accustomed myself to saying 'soda'. But my mind, I always think, 'pop'.

 

The mayor of bans

New York City's Mayor Bloomberg has called for legislation which would ban the sale of large soda's in restaurants, food carts, movie theaters and sports stadiums. If enacted the purchase of any soda larger than 16 ounces would be prohibited. 

Of course it will be ok to buy 2 sixteen ounce-ers.

You know? It's one thing to wring your hands as an elected official over the number of overweight people in your city, but this is just one more over reach on the part of government. Why is it so many elected people think they can insert themselves into the minutia of our daily personal lives?

Some tweets about this last night:

"Bloomberg is in good company. The Soviets banned Coca Cola until 1985."  @ExJon

"So will Mayor Bloomberg have police to conduct raids to rid homes and businesses of "offensive sodas'".  @sistertoldjah

"Does Bloomberg know a double shot of whiskey has more calories than a 12 ounce Coke? If not, don't tell him." @politicalmath

"Welcome to NYC! Here are your fiber supplements. No, they're not optional." @politicalmath

"Hey Mike Bloomberg! France called. They want the statue of liberty back." @bradthor

Break in season

There has been a rash of break-ins in Clayton during the past week. Every spring and summer this area sees cars being broken into, but the thugs are getting bolder and have begun breaking into homes during the day and even during the night while residents are at home and asleep.

The High Pointe Demun and Hillcrest neighborhoods are bearing the brunt of these robberies, possibly due to their easy access from Skinker. But, really, there has to be a way to crack down on this type of crime before someone gets hurt. It is obvious the police are making every effort to catch these guys, but it's not easy and for some reason they keep coming back and back and back to the same areas.

Keep off the shoe

Two years ago a 7 foot, red, high heeled shoe landed in Belleville's downtown as part of a campaign to "paint the town". Opinions on this big shoe were mixed as you might expect in local towns.

Clayton has its own version of a shoe sculpture, this one being a shoe made of shoes in front of the Brown shoe headquarters on Maryland. Of course the difference is, this shoe does not stand on a public right of way. But still.

photo by WVArtist.com

 

Make your own fly spray

Recipes for fly repellent-body spray and room spray. If anyone decided to try this, let me know if it works. The problem is as I see it, is flys lighting on us is not so much of a problem as mosquitoes. The article does not say if it works for various insects.  

What we have to fear this summer

It's always something. Now it's the ever expanding tick population with the added worry over a new species of tick never seen before.

So far this new tick has only been seen in the southeast.

And by the way, whatever happened to the flood of killer bees supposedly heading our way from South America back in the 70's?

Funny line

In Romney's book, The Real Romney, he writes about his 2 year Mormon mission in France.

"As you can imagine it's quite an experience to go to Bordeaux and say 'give up your wine I've got a great religion for you."

It seems he managed to convert 20 during that time, probably an amazingly high number for France but not so good when compared to other countries.

Memorial Day in Collinsville 2012

The American Legion is all decked out and the parade stepped off.

The Collinsville marching Kahoks

Friendly people

At the end a man and my dog head for home.

Long she waves because of those who sacrificed their lives

What began as Decoration Day when families whose loved one died fighting with the Union Army during the Civil War became what we know as Memorial Day.

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo'
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few;
On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread;
But Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

Theodore O'Hara's poem is found in many military cemeteries and oddly, he fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War.

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

John McCrae-Canadian physician serving with the medical corps in France during WWI when he contracted pneumonia and died in 1918.

 

Day is done...
Gone the sun
From the lake...
From the hills...
From the sky.
All is well...
Safely rest
God is nigh.

Fading light....
Dims the sight
And a star....
Gems the sky....
Gleaming bright
From afar....
Drawing nigh
Falls the night.

Major General Daniel Butterfield

Could it be any smaller?

On major holidays or on anniversary of famous people's birthdays/deaths, google's home page often commemorate's the event with a big banner. Today is Memorial Day and Google once again adds to its home page, but take a look-how small can they make the flag?

It'll be gone by tomorrow.

A day at Splash City

Christian, Connor and their parents came over to Collinsville today and spent 4 hours, yes 4 hours, at the water park. It has been a very hot day, we gave them an hour at best, never imagining they'd love it so much they'd stay that long. Let it be said that Dale and I did not go along, we spent the time in the yard and in front of a baseball game on tv.

At first there was a lot of testing the waters so to speak.

Then a bit of boyish silliness

This pretty much sums up Connor

Then it was on to the big slides and water falls. Christian had to drag Connor the first time.

See, it's like this Connor, Christian told him, you get in the tube and slide down into the water.

Christian went first

Then Connor

Then repeat and repeat and repeat. Sort of looks like Drew B in the background. But no.

But, there's more than this to do.

All in all fun.