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! .JPG)
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!
