st. charles
Two outdoorsy nonprofits have joined forces on a project that promotes the region as a premier place for biking and walking, and helps folks understand how trails and bike paths connect people to places. The joint vision of Trailnet and the Katy Land Trust, Across STL will feature a publication of the same name. A limited number of Across STL copies will be printed, but a digital version will be available as well. In the pages of Across STL, you will find a focus on the big picture, and then be able to zoom in for a closer look at the people and organizations making things happen by forging connections of all kinds. With a nod to an iconic, tongue-in-cheek cover of The New Yorker, this one features an illustration of the metro as the most significant thing on the continent, from the Gateway Arch through St. Charles to Missouri wine country—and then, zip—right on through the Rockies and out to the Pacific Ocean. Posters of the whimsical artwork are available for purchase. Trailnet advocates for active, healthy living with walking, bicycling and the use of public transit as a way of life. The group is undertaking an ambitious initiative to create a network of on-street protected bikeways with high-quality sidewalks in the heart of the metro, with opportunities to connect to trails. Meanwhile, the Katy Land Trust works to preserve farms, forests and river bluffs along the Katy Trail, from St. Charles to Hermann. This involves conservation activities, promoting use of the trail, and assisting landowners with concerns or easement issues.

st. louis
Probably the only residents who will get upset about construction of a three-story, $6.4 million, multiuse project at Morganford Road and Connecticut Street in the Tower Grove South neighborhood are those who frequent the car wash currently occupying the spot. Aptly named MOFO, the building’s design concept employs a series of solid and perforated corten steel panels, iron spot brick, and wood panels creating a vibe consistent with the vintage, urban residential landscape of the area, according to renderings by architecture firm JEMA Studio. The dull, weathering steel should create an interplay of light with the brick’s surface glaze. Using a lot that is barely half an acre at 3120 Morganford, the project calls for 26 apartments on the upper two floors and 6,000 square feet of retail space at street level. The parking garage space will be fully enclosed with corrugated and perforated metal panels.

maplewood
Maplewood is hosting its summer concert series on the fourth Wednesday of this and the following three months at Ryan Hummert Memorial Park … and we missed telling you about The Provels, who kicked off the series last month. Wow. With a name similar to white processed cheese, they have to be good. (You can catch their blend of soul, R&B and funk fusion another time at a different venue by checking out their Facebook page or website.) Upcoming shows in the series, all of which run from 6 to 8 p.m., are as follows:
June 28: All Roostered Up—rock, blues and classic country
July 26: The Retro Band—a tribute to the Million Dollar Quartet
Aug. 23: The Hot Flashes—rock and oldies
Sept. 27: The Tony Campanella Band—heavy electric blues
The performances are free, so why not arrive early with lawn chairs and blanket for your perfect spot? All that said, here’s an aside: You may never have heard of the original Million Dollar Quartet, probably because each of the four members did just fine all on his own. They did get together—once, by happenstance, in 1956—for an impromptu jam session at Sun Record Studios … and were none other than Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and one Elvis Presley. (That storied event also became the basis of a Broadway musical.)

kirkwood
We’ve gone quite a while without an item about a knucklehead. That’s because we found out in the interim that our metro tabloid, The Evening Whirl, in turgid and flowery prose, assigns that moniker to all manner of miscreants, even those who perpetrate violent and/or deadly crimes. At T&S, we always used the colorful term in the context of The Three Stooges. That is, dumb enough for slapstick but not serious enough that anyone got physically hurt. So we’ve retired ‘knucklehead’ in favor of another word for the folks who commit seriously ridiculous, nonviolent crimes: ‘numbskull.’ Its etymology is also ‘3S’—derived, that is, from the colorful dialogue in The Three Stooges radio and TV serial … as, we surmise, ‘birdbrain’ also was. Anyhow, the story goes, a Kirkwood resident and police sergeant for St. John (just southeast of the airport) went grocery shopping in Des Peres several weeks ago. (Talk about the towns—that there’s a trifecta, in one sentence!) So this numbskull, followed by a store security guard, was observed selecting a large, $30 package of ground beef and shoving it into his waistband, which was hidden by a large pullover. He paid for the items in his shopping cart, but left with the meat still obscured by the pullover when the security guard stopped and commanded him—and this is where we get to the meat of the matter—to give up the hamburger. Whereupon he identified himself as a police officer, as though that would give him a pass for shoplifting … real cop vs. rent-a-cop—which one has rank here? The cop has resigned. No word on what happened to the meat.

chesterfield
Ananya Vinay is 12 years old and not from Chesterfield. She’s from Fresno, California, and won the national Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee on June 1. But all of us on the home team wish it would have been Chesterfield fifth-grader Alice Liu, 10 (pictured at left), who attends Wild Horse Elementary in Rockwood School District and was the youngest competitor to make it to the final 15! You have to give her props. Most of the words she spelled, and the one she missed, are known only to scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, foreign-language experts and post-doctoral researchers. These folks need to know words the likes of ‘schistosomiasis,’ ‘niveau’ and ‘proveditor,’ which Alice spelled correctly until she misspelled the word for ‘a fine levied for murder in early Welsh law’ … everybody knows that word, right? Unlike many words in the arcane language of Wales, that one doesn’t have 10 consonants, two vowels and a silent ‘q,’ as you might expect from most any word in unpronounceable Welsh. Tired of waiting? It was ‘galanas.’ Yes, Alice is a whiz kid. But do you want to feel about ‘this big’ (represented by the space between your compressed thumb and forefinger)? The youngest competitor ever was Edith Fuller from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She just turned 6 in April, but was 5 when she qualified for the national bee in March by taking down her older Okie competitors with ‘jnana.’ The precious little thing managed to spell words like ‘nyctinasty,’ but was eliminated by a written test designed to winnow down competitors. She has a few more years of eligibility than Alice, since competitors can be as old as 15. Alice plans a career in medicine. Meanwhile, she’ll have a few more shots at the immense trophy and $40,000 cash prize for the national bee winner. (Amusingly, our spell check red-lined each of the words from the bee—so much for computers replacing humans, ha!)

university city
There’s a new rodent in town, and he or she looks a lot like Rally Squirrel, what with a Redbirds hat and all. But this one won’t be scampering across the diamond during a Cardinals championship, and we hope it doesn’t go anywhere at all for awhile. The last chainsaw-carved wooden squirrel on the grassy median separating the north- and southbound sections of Oakbrook Lane in U. City stayed put for who knows how long. That one did go away, but very gradually, as it sadly crumbled into mulch over the years. We ran a photo of and item about it last October in its sorry, decayed condition. What an indignity for the mighty squirrel, perching nobly with an acorn clutched between its front paws, keeping watch over the neighborhood, head and tail cracked, rotting away. Well, the wood the new rodent is fashioned from is fresh, from bushy tail to the claws on its hind feet. Someone, perhaps unsure the critter could survive on one huge acorn, left behind a granola bar … y’know, just in case. The crunchy treat was in its original factory wrapper … hope it’s infused with plenty of preservatives.