Allons-y!

There was supposed to be an historical re-enactment under the Arch yesterday. 2014 is St. Louis' 250th anniversary. The kick-off event was to be the arrival of the French explorers, Pierre Laclede and his sidekick August Chouteau on the west bank of the Mississippi, ready to start the settlement that became the home of the world's largest croquet wicket. And me.

But, um, it was pretty cold so they canceled the river landing in a birch bark canoe. Six or eight "re-enactors" hung out in the museum under the Arch, chatting with anyone around. (There weren't many.) That's supposed to be Pierre himself in the top picture. The two below could be on their break from their jobs as elves at a department store Santaland.

Since the event was kind of a bust, I took a ride up the Arch for the first time in a couple of years. First time ever with snow cover. Results soon.           

Disoriented Some-Day-Or-Other Arch Series

I read an awful lot of medical records in my job. Part of a standard quickie psychiatric screening is whether an individual is "oriented X 3," that is, to person, place and time. 1 - Who am I? Who are you? 2 - Where are you? 3 - What time/date/year is this? How long have you been in this room? When I put together yesterday's post on Wednesday night, I flunked Number 3. I lost track of the day of the week. We could attribute the problem to a run of days in which I was exploring new dimensions in overwork or to creeping dementia. You pick.

As a result, the Thursday Arch Series appears on Friday. Everyone's entitled to an occasional mistake, right? This view of my favorite monument is from an alley in Laclede's Landing. It is an area of old warehouses north of the Arch from the days when the Mississippi was our chief means of transportation. It's been redeveloped into restaurants, bars, nightclubs and, lately, our most enormous casino-hotel complex. Pierre Laclede and August Chouteau were the French fur traders and explorers who founded St. Louis is 1764. The alley plays peek-a-boo with the the side of the Arch.

TOMORROW: Brother-Hood