THAT's A WINNER! It's impossible to live in St. Louis very long and not be a Cardinal baseball team fan...or as they say around here, to catch Cardinal Fever. Well, my fan temperature has certainly been elevated this past week. After the disappointing 4-game sweep by the Red Sox in 2004, most of us were cautiously optimistic this year. The excitement of having a new stadium (although I still miss the old one) and of having another chance this year had the town buzzing. And although we didn't have tickets to the games, we watched intensely on TV and celebrated the victory last night at home. What a difference a day makes! The photo at left is from this morning, taken from the 4th floor of the Adams Mark hotel downtown of the north leg of the Gateway Arch. The bleary one below is the view yesterday...rain, mist, drizzle, fog...all of it cleared out last night just about the time Wainwright got the last strikeout. We plan to get new T-Shirts in honor of this year's season.
This downtown hotel was the location for the annual fall convention of the College Media Advisers and the Associated Collegiate Press, the largest national organization for student journalists. The paper I advise, The Current, sent some 8 delegates and although they would have preferred to party in another city (in past years we have been in Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, Kansas City, Washington and Orlando) in the end, once the World Series came to town, they were just as happy to be on home turf.
Unfortunately, our paths diverged through most of the convention, and I never got all of my students together for a photo. One of the jobs I did was to staff a book exhibit that the advisers hold each year as a benefit for the non-profit Student Press Law Center. People get really serious about these books! About a half hour before the silent auction was to end, students and advisers kept circling the tables, guarding their spots as the high bidder. Since I am a bit averse to bloodshed, I left before the auction ended. Since SPLC has helped our staff with legal issues several times, this is one of my favorite parts of the convention. Another favorite part is giving critiques to newspaper staffs from around the country. During this convention I had a chance to meet with eager young journalists from Farmers Branch, Texas; Boston, Mass.; and Whitewater, Wis.
One of my students entered an on-site photo contest, and we also entered our paper in a Best of Show competition. We won't know the results of either until tomorrow, when the convention closes. Next year it will be in Washington, DC. I'm not sure if I'll still be advising, but if I am, I look forward to my third trip to the nation's capital with this group, and my first trip there post 9/11.What's with the red fountains? Part of the celebration in Kiener Plaza, near the stadium and also home to a sizeable community of folks without permanent addresses. One of them greeted me happily this morning as I paused to take the photo on my way from the MetroLink stop to the hotel, a four-block walk that was much more pleasant today than it was in yesterday's drizzle.
Our Metro system is handy for going downtown or to the airport from where we live. I can park at the campus and hop on the train and not have to worry about traffic or parking fees. The system is clean and safe. Some of the tracks downtown go through ancient underground railroad tunnels such as this one, with century-old stone and brickwork on display. Both the convention and the World Series are over, so maybe this coming week I can get caught up on my e-mail, some writing, and other projects--like quilting--as well.
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