STL Free For All

The original Declaration of Independence is on permanent display in Washington, D.C.  It’s faded and discolored and looks its age, but St. Louisans will have a chance on Saturday (Jul. 26) to see a less-worn copy that was hidden behind a painting until 1989, when it was discovered by a lucky flea market shopper.   Thanks to marketing for the new wireless service Cricket and a voter registration drive by Declare Yourself, the copy is touring the U.S. this summer.  Its St. Louis stop is a the downtown public library, where it will be well-guarded but viewable from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. To see details on the event, click here and select the date from the calendar. For more on the original Declaration of Independence — including info about the popular mystery of what’s on the back — click here.

About 10 years ago, my husband came up with the idea of a trip to Africa. Not a safari, mind you, or a visit to one of history’s great civilizations … no, he wanted to go to this little nation that no one (myself included) had ever heard of: Sao Tome and Principe. It’s right on the equator, a few islands sprinkled just off the coast of Gabon. The draw for him was that it was a rare destination for ham radio, his beloved hobby, and while he didn’t mind my companionship, I suspect the real reason he wanted me along was for the luggage allowance my ticket would provide him. Our trip in 1999, in hindsight, was a little comical: He and a German friend holed up in a very nice hotel (the kind frequented, we learned, by cacao company executives and UN representatives) working the radios, while I explored the island. Its main historical relevance was as a stopover where slave ships loaded up on potable water for the Atlantic voyage; due to mosquito-bourne diseases and other factors, it was never populated until the Portuguese imported their own plantation labor in the 1500s.

As a microcosm of Africa, Sao Tome and Principe is pretty relevant today: Its cacao industry has a hard time against the larger ones in Cote de Ivoire and other countries, but  its off-shore oil fields and fishing grounds are rich, making it a highly popular international partner.  When we were there, in 1999 and again in 2000, Taiwan was “sponsoring” all kinds of government buildings — libraries and ministries, for example — in what was rumored to be a quid pro quo for fishing rights. Residents could see the trawlers at night, just on the horizon, and everyone knew the wooden dugouts they still used were simply no match. At that time, the American presence was minimal, just a Voice of America radio station staffed by a few engineers. Today, on the other hand, thanks to Sao Tomean oil, I’ve heard that the American presence is much larger, including a military presence.

What does all this have to do with free events in St. Louis? It’s an introduction to one of the many little pieces that make up the African mosaic, something most of us have almost no knowledge of — to us it’s one large, uniformly mysterious continent, but in fact it has a huge diversity of peoples and histories, and its future is wide open. This weekend’s St. Louis African Arts Festival (May 23 to 26) is a great opportunity to learn a little more, particularly about the arts from various countries and cultures. The schedule on the homepage is full of dance troupes, drummers, musicians and storytellers, as well as a film series (Saturday, May 24 only) and tie-ins at the Saint Louis Art Museum and Zoo. Most of the events take place in Forest Park, centered around the World’s Fair Pavilion.

I’m unfamiliar with most of the performers, but I did note that Coco Soul headlines Saturday’s 6 p.m. show, and I have to say that M. is driving me a little crazy ever since we saw her downtown last Sunday at the Annie Malone Bluesfest. She started off her set there doing a call-and-response that ended with “Somebody scream!” Now he goes around “Wooo-oh”ing and “Da-da-da”ing and SCREAMING as loud as he can.

Be sure to bring cash along for the vendors in the marketplace as well as the food booths, which will have both African-American and straight African dishes. For more info, call 314.935.9676.

In 1855, early on the morning of May 21, a small group of slaves and their conductors from the Underground Railroad attempted to escape across the Mississippi River from Missouri into the free state of Illinois.  They left from the home of Mary Meacham, a free black woman whose role in transporting slaves to freedom is legendary.  Some of the group were caught, including a woman named Ester and her two children, who belonged to Henry Shaw (a prominent St. Louis hardware merchant of the day whose name you may have heard in conjunction with the founding of Tower Grove Park and the Missouri Botanical Garden, among other philanthropic works).  His records are among the official documents supporting the Underground Railroad’s work, a rare piece of publicity for an organization whose work was only possibly thanks to its secrecy.  (And I hope someday, someone with some time on his/her hands will update Shaw’s bio on Wikipedia to reflect this piece of history!)

On Saturday (May 24) at 3 p.m., the seventh annual Mary Meacham Freedom Crossing Celebration will feature a reenactment of the daring crossing, complete with costumed participants traveling in secret compartments on wagons to the staging point (part of the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program) and a pursuing posse on horseback.  For children who’re old enough to understand both the drama and the underlying history, this promises to be a memorable event — and one that will probably lead to some good questions.

Other action at the celebration, which runs from noon to 5 p.m., includes a gospel choir, an actor portraying Frederick Douglas, food, crafts and historical displays. The sponsor organizations range from Grace Hill Settlement House to Trailnet to the National Black Tourism Network, so I anticipate a well-done festival all the way around.

For details and directions to the site, read the St. Louis Frontpage site’s writeup ( it’s the second brief as you scroll down) or call Doug Eller at Grace Hill, 314.584.6703.

Where I’m from, there’s no such thing as Civil War re-enactments. North Dakota wasn’t a state during the Civil War, and nobody seemed to particularly care much about Dakota Territory until later, when the war was over and the military men turned their attention to Native Americans. So there are some forts up there with living history events, but they’re not on the same scale as those further east. I was unabashedly excited about my first Civil War event, which I dragged my husband to when we were living in Ohio. Thanks to my training as a journalist, I knew there was no question too dumb — but I’m sure some of mine came close! I learned a lot at that first event, even though I realize in hindsight that it was perhaps not the most historically accurate … for example, the ice chests were disguised in wooden boxes, but it was hard to explain away the Dr. Pepper the soldiers were swigging!

Perhaps St. Louis, being the gateway to the west an all, has a more solid sense of the importance of history, and that’s why the historic re-enactments around here tend to be first-rate. When a group like the 8th Missouri Volunteer Infantry sets up camp near a fabled institution like Grant’s Farm, you know you’ll get a quality history lesson and a well-organized event. The biannual Civil War re-enactment happens in October and this weekend (May 10 and 11), with demonstrations of military drills, cooking, games, dances, cannon firing (very cool, if you’ve not yet experienced it!) and skits to entertain and explain the way of life on campaign 140-odd years ago. Visit this link or call 314. 843.1700 for more information on the event’s location, and remember that although admission to Grant’s Farm is free, parking fees ($10 per car) do apply. Note also that Grant’s Farm just switched to summer hours; Saturdays it’s open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays it’s open 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A different era unfolds in St. Charles every weekend in May and June: the colonial era from 1790 to 1860 (for those of you who’re as bad at dates as I am, that’s around the time the Civil War started). The Historic Time Travelers represent French and American townsfolk and businesspeople (rope-maker, laundress, merchant, trapper) who’ll go about their tasks from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. The volunteers will be wearing hand-made costumes and will be fully prepared to talk at length about their characters. For details, visit this link or call 636.946.7776.

I’ve noted before how much I respect the historic events St. Charles puts on, even when the “historic figure” in question is Santa Claus! I also really enjoy strolling and browsing the St. Charles Main Street area. My kids put up with the shopping because they know shops like J. Noto Fine Italian Confections are close at hand!

The Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park is one of our summer highlights, despite the August heat and the hordes of culturally curious people. To avoid those two downsides but still get a taste of the international aura, head to the Central branch of the St. Louis Public Library on Saturday (May 3) for a Mini-Folkfest. There’ll be storytellers and bands, demonstration booths and games — just like at the regular festival — but this free event is indoors (no heatstroke risk!). It runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with activities scattered throughout the library’s multi-purpose rooms. Although there’s no schedule posted yet, some of ethnicities represented by performers or artisans include Korean, Turkish, Mexican, German, Hungarian and Native American. For details, call 314.539.0348.

The only downside that I can see is that the fabulous food booths of the International Institute’s big event on Aug. 23 and 24 won’t be present at the library. There’s still food nearby — check out the vendors at the Christ Church Cathedral’s Flower Festival or the nearby restaurants, especially along Washington Avenue (keep in mind that this is downtown, though, so some eateries will be closed at lunchtime on a Saturday).

This early in the baseball season, there’s still hope for everyone. Even the Cardinals fans who’ve spent all winter nay-saying have toned down their bluster. The honeymoon period is on, and I’m happy to spread the love of baseball a little further by publicizing two former players on book tours in St. Louis this week.

Ozzie Smith, of course, needs no introduction for St. Louisans. Well, maybe for kids he does, being as he’s been retired long enough to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002 … kids are probably more familiar with his son Nikko, of American Idol fame. And that’s where the book ties in, because the two collaborated on a story for Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul about a lucky coin Ozzie gave Nikko to see him through the audition process. They’ll be signing their book and Nikko’s CDs (but not sports memorabilia, apparently) at 2 p.m. at the Creve Coeur Borders store, 11745 Olive Blvd, on Saturday (Apr. 19).

The other author, Cal Ripken Jr., is a Hall of Famer too; he was inducted last year after playing 20 years for the Baltimore Orioles. His book is titled Get in the Game: 8 Elements of Perseverance That Make the Difference. And considering his amazing ability to play no matter what — over the course of 16 years the “Iron Man” played in a record 2,632 consecutive games — I for one would definitely like to read his wisdom on sticking with it. He’ll be at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central branch, 1301 Olive St., on Tuesday (Apr. 23) at 7 p.m. Admission is free, but the first-come, first-seated limit is 300 people. It’s part of the new Great Rivers Authors Series, of which Left Bank Books is a sponsor (which means customers who’ve purchased his book there will get to go to the front of the line when book-signing time comes; Ripken will not autograph memorabilia). For details, visit the Left Bank Books events page or call 314.367.6731.

Earth Day this year has a sense of urgency, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s the whole oil thing, or food prices going up, but it feels as if people really do want to make a difference right now. As I scrolled down the list of events this month at the St. Louis Earth Day homepage, I wished I could write about each of them — plays, lectures, clean-ups, art shows, vendor fairs — and I learned a bit just by reading the descriptions. (Did you know athletic shoes can be recycled? I didn’t either.)

The main festival takes place in Forest Park on Sunday (Apr. 20) in the Muny grounds from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its musical and cultural offerings (on two stages) are unique — many musical, theater and dance groups I’ve never heard of, with themes of stewardship and harmony and conservation. The list of vendors and info booths is exceptionally long — you will definitely need to find sustenance at the food stands!

If you have electronics sitting around that need recycling, I highly encourage you to take advantage of the collection point set up at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park (get info on the location here). Earlier this year I sent the hubby out with a load of old monitors and stuff, and he came back with a full report on the scariness of the metal-recycling district over on the North St. Louis waterfront.

And if you’re wisely conserving fuel this year, be aware that there are Earth Day events in many part of the metro area — St. Charles has a great one on Friday; Carondelet Park has one Saturday; Hazelwood and Chesterfield have events the following weekend (Apr. 26).

But back to the main festival. I had been debating bringing the kids (it’s hard to ask serious questions of vendors when you’ve got to keep one eye and half your brain focused on a 2-year-old) but then I saw the list of youth activities (stream table, recycled art station, Science Center MySci van, oil-to-biofuel demo). Maybe, I thought. A few days later I read that the Gateway Kite Club is partnering with the Saint Louis Art Museum for a demonstration and kite-making area on Art Hill. The boys will definitely get into that, I thought. And then I realized that simply exposing them to the festival atmosphere and explaining why all the people had gathered would leave an impression.

In a little room tucked away across from the Old Spaghetti Factory on Laclede’s Landing, there’s a set of 3-foot-high fiberglass teeth that ring a small stage. For those with dentophobia, the room full of tools and dental relics could be a torture chamber — but the whole point of the Dental Health Theatre is to get at kids before their attitude toward dentistry takes that turn toward phobia. The theater’s been around 31 years — some of my friends remember attending it as kids themselves — and the message is so simple that I initially wondered how they’d get an hour-long show out of encouraging kids to brush and eat healthy foods. I also wondered if S. would sit still for an hour of talking that would be completely over his head.

No worries on that score — the light-up teeth fascinated him, as you can see, and he stayed tuned in for way longer than I expected, until the marionette performance about a boy who ate too much candy. Then he climbed into my lap and took a little snooze until the lights came back up. Some of the other toddlers in our group lost interest too, but the rest of the audience, grade-schoolers on a field trip, seemed quite fascinated by it all.

The theater books groups of 15 or more (counting parents and kids) on weekday mornings at 314.241.7391. It’s free admission thanks to Delta Dental and all the local dentists who sponsor it through the Greater St. Louis Dental Society. Our own dentist’s name was on that list, and I thought of her as the schoolchildren eagerly anticipated their free toothbrushes as they exited the theater — she hands out toothbrushes at Halloween, and I’m sure she gets such a much less enthusiastic reception for her message then!

Today kicks off American Indian Awareness Week at Washington University, the highlight of which is the pow wow on Saturday (Apr. 5). There are also other educational events planned, including a lunchtime food tasting Thursday (Apr. 3), movie night, poetry reading and lectures about this year’s theme, American Indian military veterans. The online event flier gives dates, times and locations.

Saturday’s pow wow begins at noon with gourd dancing, followed by a grand entry at 1 p.m. (there’s another at 6 p.m. too). If you’ve never seen an American Indian dance competition, be prepared to stay awhile — you’ll be captivated by the clothing and the rhythms. The category names alone are evocative: for the women, for example, there’s fancy, jingle, buckskin, cloth and golden (for dancers over age 55). Like the men, the kids have their own divisions, one for ages 6 to 15 and another for “tiny tots” who promise to be cute indeed. The dancing is intertribal, which means members of tribes from across the Plains will be there.

An MC explains what’s going on for the uninitiated (if this includes you, check out this link for a very straightforward description of what to expect), and whenever the dancing begins to pale for the kids, take them over to the youth activities area (1:30 to 6 p.m.) or to the arts and crafts area (open from 10 a.m. on).

All of Saturday’s activities take place at the field house. To learn more, take a look at the press release from the week’s sponsor, the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

One of the administrators at M.’s school told me recently that they were reconsidering the way they organize recess for the elementary school students — or, rather, the way they simply release the kids to the outdoors to play. She said the kids don’t seem to know what to do with themselves; it seems that their limited experience with unstructured free time results in difficulty organizing playground games.

Part of it, I suppose, is that these kids are in a fairly new school and don’t have the benefit of games being passed down to them through generations of students. But it’s also a commentary on the rarity of loosely supervised outdoor time in general. And then I got to thinking about the roving band of 8- and 9-year-olds in my neighborhood. They’re kids who live here, whose names and parents everyone knows (and M. wants more than anything to be part of the clique. At nearly 5, he’s much too young, of course, and their casual exclusion of him is totally justified — if painful for him!) But I find myself watching them from my office window so I can tell their parents if they’re getting into trouble, which I guess is old-fashioned of me. Mostly, though, I see them riding bikes around the block or playing pick-up kickball in the empty lots across the alley from our house. Exactly the harmless stuff an expert in child development might want them to be doing.

M.’s school might be going against the national trend in even thinking of promoting playground games; over the past few years, many districts have banned everything from tag to soccer to recess itself on safety grounds. It makes me wonder whether the Wii’s Playground Games virtual world is what this world is coming to!

In pondering all of this over the past few days, I’ve made some resolutions. I’m going to teach M. and his friends (the neighborhood has its own clique his age, they just can’t wander semi-unsupervised yet) some playground games from back in my day 30 years ago, like Colored Eggs (where a “witch” chases kids based on guessing colors from a crayon box, one of my all-time favorite games from third grade) and Circle Tag and Red Light/Green Light and Simon Says and Red Rover and maybe even Four Square. I will probably not teach him Kiss or Kill, just because I’m too old to roughhouse like that and would always choose kiss! Recess might not be around then, but perhaps he can introduce those games when he and his friends are finally old enough to roam the neighborhood on their own.

If anyone has any good games to suggest, e-mail me or comment with them. And if you want to take a trip down memory lane to your own gradeschool days, here are some sites where you can do that:

Kids Games

Wikipedia list of traditional children’s games (which they call street culture)

Suite 101’s Outdoor Games for Kids

Sports4Kids’s playground games how-to manual