An ice carnival? You betcha (Jan. 19)

One of my longstanding desires is to visit St. Paul, Minnesota, during its Winter Carnival. This year it’s Jan. 23 to Feb. 3, and once again I won’t make it. I’m getting closer, sort of — we were at the Minnesota State Fair in August, also in St. Paul — and since 99 percent of my husband’s family lives in Minnesota I’m pretty confident that one day I’ll be in the Crystal Courtyard, munching something from the Hot Dish Tent …

The closest I’ll get this winter is The Loop’s Ice Carnival on Saturday, Jan. 19. It’s some consolation that a group of snowboarders from the Great White North will be down to school the locals in their art. Word is snow will be trucked to St. Louis for the event, although I also heard that snow machines would be on hand. Either way, the temps will be right for it!

There are other attractions too — chili cookoff, snoball-throwing booths, ice sculptures, human dogsleds — and there’s a full schedule at The Loop’s homepage.

And now I’ve got to log off and get my own little Abominable Snowman healthy enough so he can participate! Or, at the very least, fed and back down for a nap so I can pay some bills and keep our heat on.

Fostering a love of live music (Jan. 11, 12, 19 or anytime)

Last summer the Red Carpet Lounge at Brandt’s and Mae Wheeler had a special standing offer for young musicians (especially high-schoolers) to bring their instruments and get up on stage for a song or two during Ms. Wheeler’s monthly gigs. This struck me as a great idea because most of us don’t think of blues and jazz clubs as places where those under 21 are especially welcome. On the other hand, if they don’t go and hear this great music, how are they supposed to appreciate it? Learning about it in school is all well and good, but there’s no way lessons can generate the same passion as hearing live performers in the flesh.

Jazz St. Louis, which runs Jazz at the Bistro, is a nonprofit with an educational bent, and that’s probably why it makes a point to advertise its student tickets. This weekend, for example, students can pay $10 to see classic quintet Hard Bob Heritage (whose pianist, Carolbeth True won last year’s St. Louis Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts,” presented by the Arts and Education Council of St. Louis). The catch is that tickets for the 8:30 show are available to students only in person with a valid ID 15 minutes prior to the start. Tickets for the 10:15 show can be booked ahead of time. (Both are subject to availability.) To find out about the chances of getting into an early show, call 314.534.1111.

If jazz isn’t your think, there’s also a $10 student ticket offer for select Saint Louis Symphony concerts through Sound Check St. Louis. Discounted tickets to many other symphony performances are available directly, but the rules are pretty detailed.

And to give your young musicians a sense of possibility, watch local concert calendars for teenage prodigies like singer Darrein Safron and the Soul Sensations or guitarist Marquise Knox. No need to go to a nightclub to see Marquise — he’ll be on stage next Saturday, Jan. 19, at Blues City Deli from 1 to 3:30 p.m.

Reserve your picnic spot now (summertime)

Last spring I learned the hard way that savvy St. Louisans who want to book a covered picnic shelter in Tower Grove Park on a weekend do so early — like up to a year in advance.  The kind staffer who fielded my one-month-in-advance request was very polite in telling me that a weekday might be a possibility, but if I wanted any Saturday or Sunday between May or September, I could forget it.  My party, sheltered by trees at the open-air Gurney site, turned out lovely anyway, but if you’ve got your heart set on the Turkish Pavilion or the Chinese Pavilion, now’s the time to get on the phone: 314.771.2679.

The early 20th-century pavilions in Tower Grove Park aren’t the only coveted outdoor party spots in city parks, although they definitely have the most character.  The picnic shelters in Carondelet and O’Fallon parks are also lovely, and also reserved well in advance.  (And yes, that latter one is in North St. Louis, but believe me, it’s quiet and lovely — don’t be put off by its geography.)  For info on reserving them during the May-September “picnic season,” when a permit is required to use the sites, call the Parks Division at 314.289.5330.  At other times of the year, picnic sites can be snapped up by the first group to get there, no permit required.

See the starry, starry sky (Jan. 12)

A few days ago I was promoting an outdoor excursion before dawn; this time I’m advocating going out after dark — and once again, the goal is to see celestial objects.   Because the moon’s out of the picture, this is a good week to give budding astronomers a peek at the heavens, including Comet Holmes, reportedly dim but large and easy to find, if only you know where to look.  And there’s the catch — I slept through 8 a.m. Astronomy 101 during freshman year of college, so it’s no help for someone to tell me the comet will be in Perseus, I’d still have no idea where in the big ol’ sky to point my binoculars to find it, let alone the harder-to-spot Comet Tuttle.  There are some Web sites to help, including an excellent one from Sky and Telescope that’s updated with each week’s highlights, but they recommend using charts to help you sort out what’s where.  And while I’m OK with road maps, those star charts are a lot more confusing to navigate.

The Children’s Museum in Edwardsville (how is it that I wasn’t even aware of this four-year-old institution until last month?!?!) and the River Bend Astronomy Club are braving the cold on Saturday the 12th to help clueless stargazers like me during the seventh annual Starry, Starry Night.  They’ll have high-quality telescopes and high-potency hot chocolate, and they’ll tell you just where to look to find those comets.  Indoors there’ll be space-related activities.

The event is recommended for kids 5 to 15, but interested children of any age are welcome.  No need to register, just pay the $4 fee per participant when you arrive.  And the nice part about winter’s early sunset is that events like this won’t keep you up past bedtime; it runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.  For details, call 618.692.2094 or visit the museum’s homepage.

Tears for a good tree (anytime)

Someone should have warned me that disrobing the Christmas tree is NOT a family-friendly activity if a higly sentimental 4-year-old and a highly curious 18-month-old are involved. But I didn’t know, so we spent a good three hours yesterday dealing with the aftermath.

Knowing how hard it is for M. to say goodbye, I prepped him: We spread some mulch in the record-breaking afternoon warmth, and we talked about where it comes from and how good it is for living plants and trees. And being a smart little guy, he understood what I was telling him. It just didn’t ease his misery at all — when we started taking ornaments off, he started crying. The tears ebbed and flowed the rest of the evening no matter what we did to staunch them. I fixed his favorite dinner, let him have as many bubbles as he wanted in the bathtub, read “O Christmas Tree” by Debbie Trafton O’Neil a dozen times. I even went online to the National Christmas Tree Association’s Web site for pictures of recycling programs where trees aren’t ground up into itty-bitty pieces. Unfortunately, none of them are around here — I had hoped that, since the association is headquartered in Chesterfield, there might be a recycling showcase of some kind locally. No such luck.

After soothing my own pain with half a bottle of wine left over from New Year’s Eve, I came up with a brilliant idea: a tree-unlighting ceremony similar to the ones that mark the start of the season. We always take down our tree on or around Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas — isn’t that a logical date for such an event? Then all the little kids who’re sad about the loss of their tree can get together, sing some songs, learn about what will happen to their trees, and perhaps leave feeling a little happier.

Or perhaps M. is in the minority, and most kids are more like S. He left the ornaments alone while they were on the tree (although he did try to snitch kernels from the popcorn-cranberry garlands). Once those glass balls came down, though, they were fair game. He wanted to handle every one, and his dad made a couple amazing dives and mid-air catches. Happily, no ornaments were lost, and next year we can put up exactly the same decorations in exactly the same places … on our artificial tree. Yes, the National Christmas Tree Association rants against them, and yes, we’ll lose our special ritual of going to the same farm on the same date every year to get our live one. But I’ve made my promise.

A sweet benefit for MDA (Jan. 6)

It’s rare that a charity benefit event promises to be fun for the whole family, but there’s one coming up on Sunday, Jan. 6, that does just that.  The cause is ALS, a motor neuron disease (it attacks nerves in the brain and spinal cord and causes muscles to lose strength and eventually become unusable).  The reason is a well-known local pastry chef, Marla Scissors (you may have taken one of her classes at Kitchen Conservatory, and you’ve definitely eaten one of her Companion pastries or desserts).  Her recent diagnosis prompted the “You Take The Cake” event from 3 to 5 p.m. at Congregation Shaare Emeth, 11645 Ladue Road.  Admission ranges from $10 per adult (flour) to $500 per family (icing).  Children can enter free with adults.  The money goes to the local Muscular Distrophy Association, which contributes to ALS patients and their families as well as  research into the disease (for which there is no cure and only a few recently developed therapies) at Wash. U. and Saint Louis University.

The usual fund-raising silent auction features desserts from St. Louis bakers and pastry chefs, but there’s also entertainment by Ha-Shemesh, a contemporary music group, and Shir Ami, a female quartet (both of them might be familiar from family-friendly Chanukah events around St. Louis).  And, best of all from the kids’ perspective, there will be plenty of cookies to decorate and eat.  Information about ALS will be a big part of the afternoon too, and I’ll admit I had to google it to refresh my memory of its alias as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the toll it has taken on local luminaries like Hans Vonk, formerly the Saint Louis Symphony’s music director.

I have info about registration by mail — too late for that, whoops! — and also a couple of phone numbers to call for more information:  organizers Karen Becker Sher at 314.726.5077 and Cathy Sulivan at 314.503.8140.

A month ’til Mardi Gras?!? The Soulard season begins (Jan. 6)

As my brother was getting ready to depart a couple of days ago, we got to talking about reasons to lure him back here (aside from his nephews, of course).  He’d been talking about coming for Mardi Gras for several years, so we looked up the date in 2008:  Feb. 5!  Brrr…  But he checked out tickets and everything, so I’m betting he’ll be here.  If not for the actual Fat Tuesday parade downtown on the 5th, definitely for the Grand Parade on Feb. 2 in Soulard.  I’ll give more details on that one later — we’ve been there with our kids every year, and this one won’t be an exception.

The kickoff party for Soulard’s Mardi Gras is this Sunday at 7 p.m., when there’s an official proclamation followed by a musical procession to raise the tri-colored flag.  Starting point is the front steps of Johnny’s on Russell; ending point is 7th and Soulard.  You may not want to hang out with the kids at Johnny’s (unless you’re the type who hangsout with the kids at Hooters)  but the procession is a safer bet.   For details on the Twelfth Night event and other festivities throughout January, visit the Web site or call 314.771.5110. Note the other two freebies this month: the Children’s Art Fair on Jan. 20 and the Krewe of Barkus Pet Parade on Jan. 27.

Like many of the Mardi Gras activities, each of those involves a parade.   One of the things I like most about Soulard’s Mardi Gras is that it gets people outside during these rotten, cold months.  Heck, even M.’s school does a procession during the Mardi Gras season: the Teaching Peace Parade.  No one comes out for it (except parents), but the kids are energized nontheless.  Something about banding together and marching around in crazy costumes makes you feel like you can take on the world.