St. Louis

Last week I was invited to go down to St. Louis to visit two Helpers living there.  I was keen to go as I knew Mary from her time in Liverpool when I was a teenager, plus Missouri was a new state to add to my tally! 

The drive down is through flat, flat cornfields – the whole 6 hours... While my legendary travel sleepiness inevitably kicked in, every time I did come to, there they where-  the flat, flat fields. The only break in the landscape is the occasional vast hill which it transpires, are not hills at all but a giant landfill sites...  When you look closely there all ventilation pipes dotted around to allow the monitoring of air.  Where I’m living in Chicago, there is as yet no recycling collection which, along with the complete lack of any ‘fair-trade’ options in the major supermarkets makes attempts at sustainable living even more difficult.

St. Louis greets you with the beautiful ‘Gateway Arch’ though and won me over with its public art and free entrance to so many ‘attractions.’  Mary and Pat proved good tour guides covering the Missouri Botanical gardens (just when the azaleas were at their most spectacular) the zoo, and the City Park with it’s array of sculptures and resulting photo opportunities!  The pay off however was the non-negotiable daily Mass at 8am!