the metro
A grant of $15,000 to Cinema St. Louis (CSL) is part of the $27 million to be awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The grant, part of the NEA’s first major funding announcement for 2019, is earmarked for the 28th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF). The funds are channeled via ‘Art Works,’ the NEA’s principal grantmaking program. The agency received 1,605 Art Works applications this go-round. During SLIFF, slated for Nov. 7-17, screenings are to include more than 300 animated, narrative, and documentary feature and short films. Also part of the fest: master classes, special events and an ambitious Cinema for Students program. Panels and Q&As with filmmakers and documentary subjects will accompany a third of the screenings. SLIFF, one of the largest international film festivals in the Midwest, recently was lauded in a ‘10 Best’ list published by USA Today. CSL also produces St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, the LGBTQ-centric QFest St. Louis and the Classic French Film Festival. In addition, it hosts educational programs, competitions, screenings and special events throughout the year. In 2018, CSL’s festivals and screenings attracted 26,947 patrons, and film camps and Cinema for Students served 12,532 metro youth.
Pictured at top: 2018 QFest feature Alaska Is a Drag
st. louis
A black comedy from 2005 about Big Tobacco, Thank You for Smoking, featured fictional lobbyists from the alcohol, tobacco and firearms industries. These three nearly 100-percent conscious-free PR spinners met often for self-justification as the M.O.D. Squad. M.O.D. was the acronym for ‘Merchants of Death.’ Grim, yes. But it’s wonderful satire. Back to reality. Now we’ve had lobbyists—sorry, ‘cannabis consultants’ (wonder how many focus groups it took to come up with that moniker)—traveling through Missouri to help start-ups start up in the medical marijuana industry. Voters in the ‘Smoke-Me’ State—sorry, ‘Show-Me’ State (wonder how many focus groups our state’s nickname took)—approved pot for prescription-only use in November. A statement one such consultant provided to the St. Louis Business Journal states: “We’re passionate supporters of medical cannabis, and we want to help make the roll-out as successful as it can possibly be for Missouri’s cannabis entrepreneurs and the patients they’ll be serving.” Why, isn’t that special. Don’t coal producers think it’s the best stuff to operate power plants with? Marijuana is a juggernaut, so I’m not opining that we should ‘hold everything.’ That horse left the barn long ago. But pot isn’t the harmless weed that Cheech and Chong lauded in the 1970s. If it didn’t mess with your mind, people wouldn’t smoke it or bake it into brownies. Distances and periods of time become indistinct, according to a reliable source who inhaled … frequently. So, what about careless driving? No breathalyzer for THC, as far as we know. And how many inveterate pot smokers age 19, 29 or 39 are still ‘just mellowing out’ on mom’s basement couch? It’s wonderful for chronic pain, doctors say … and as I haven’t endured such pain, it would be disingenuous to comment on that here. However, for those folks on that couch, chronic pain is mom’s persistent, annoying insistence that they get a real job.
sunset hills
We’re sorry to report that Johnny Mac’s, ‘your home team store since 1967’ and the StL’s go-to uniform provider for school teams in the metro, has given up the ghost. A Dallas-based firm has gobbled up its team sales division like, um, a Big Mac. Buyers will need to go somewhere other than the store on Watson Road for ‘Your School Name Here’ wrestling singlets or hockey jerseys. Meanwhile: R.I.P., Payless. But don’t shoe shoppers have to try on a dozen pair, then buy eight styles to return the next day? And what’s to become of the hapless dude who goes away and returns, ad infinitum, with another four Jimmy Choo, Chanel and Gucci boxes for a Saks customer, cellphone to ear, who tells her husband she’s checking out at Target and has to call him back? (True story.) Anyhow, shoe stores like Laurie’s—and departments at Target, Saks, Neiman and JCPenney—may be around awhile. Payless is just another soon-to-be former national retail chain. In the coming months, the discounter will close all 2,100 of its locations here and in Puerto Rico; 21 are on both sides of the river. Because the Internet? (Like Childish Gambino thinks.) Um, apparently not. Payless also plans to shut down its online store.
rock hill
More than a dozen fire departments responded to fight a fire that broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 17, in a building at Woodard Cleaning & Restoration Services off Manchester Avenue. The three-alarm blaze took more than five hours to extinguish. The warehouse building is in the Deer Creek valley, just behind Trainwreck Saloon, where owner George Hansford and staff members also responded, providing coffee, water and restrooms to first responders, as well as preparing food. Hansford said he put in more than 12 hours as crews worked the scene. No one was hurt, and the fire did not spread beyond the building where it started. Ironically, the building contained fire- and smoke-damaged customer belongings that had been or were to be restored.
notable neighbors: des peres
May 15, 2002, was one of the last reasonably quiet days in Julie Griesedieck Wurdack’s adult life. Because at 5:50 p.m. the next evening, her daughter Hanna was born … followed in 30 seconds by Lillie. About 30 seconds later, Gretel came into the world. Will was the last to arrive, in another 30 seconds. That’s right: quadruplets. Triplets are rare enough, but anyone who meets this foursome would agree they’re quite uncommon. They wrap up their ‘golden year’—the quads turned 16 last May 16—when they turn 17 in three months. All four are sophomores at MICDS. Other than their risky debut, a concern with all multiple births, the three sisters and their kid brother—remember, Will’s the youngest by about half a minute—are average teenagers. Except they’re not, statistically speaking: Without the help of fertility treatments, according to a mathematical rule doctors use, about one in 729,000 births results in quadruplets. After frustration and heartbreak for four years trying to conceive, Julie and Bill ‘Tiger’ Wurdack decided on in vitro fertilization. Then, a series of ‘coincidences’ convinced Julie, a deeply spiritual woman, that someone was watching over her. She prayed often at the Carmelite Monastery in Ladue near a colorful statue of St. Thérèse, the Little Flower, spreading rose petals around the Virgin Mary, baby Jesus on her lap. Three feminine, cherubic faces are above Mary’s head; one has brown hair, another blonde and the third red. Jesus has brown hair. One night Julie had a retreat at their farm in Des Peres for 25 women who had experienced fertility trouble. They meditated; one led a Native American prayer to the four directions. Fast-forward a little less than nine months: When four babies arrived early, lighter than the average birth weight for quads, their gender and hair color matched the statue. “They’re my cornerstone babies,” Julie says. After the infants came home from the NICU, the ‘Quad Squad’—120 prearranged volunteers who each took a three-hour shift—pitched in for more than a year. Hanna, the redhead, was a tad cranky. “The NICU nurse warned me,” Julie recalls with a chuckle. But that was all back then. Today? It’s not easy to round up four teens for a photo in our age of selfies and myriad activities, which explains our mid-2000s family portrait of four identically dressed toddlers. Will, now much taller than his sisters, takes karate, plays soccer and races on a ski team at Hidden Valley. Hanna, a varsity field hockey player who hopes to continue in college, may become a psychologist, even a psychiatrist. Gretel, an avid horsewoman who does “all the grunt work” in and around the barn on the Wurdack spread, may become a veterinarian. Lillie loves tennis, squash … and socializing. But their preferences, hopes and dreams might change tomorrow and again next week. The four share two cars and think mom’s minivan is lame, which is age-appropriate for 16-year-olds. No matter. As far as we’re concerned, they’re still an everyday miracle.
