A few weeks ago, DJ and I were biking home from anArchitecture for Humanity event and we stumbled across this set of ruins. Its about a block south of Chouteau near Lafayette Square. Its surrounded by some small houses on two sides, an alley on the other, and an abandoned, also overgrown lot. We were left awe-struck. Obviously, this building is really old. But why is it still standing? Or maybe, more importantly, HOW is it still standing? It's such a beautiful, old creature. Was it once a home? A shop? Or something more sinister? Who knows? Now, it's returning to the earth from whence it came. We're going to do some investigation and attempt to discover its provenance. We'll keep you posted.
Why Public Transit is A Social Justice Issue (and Why You, as a caring person, should care about proposition M)
I don't own a car. I guess, if I changed the way that I budget my money, I could be privileged enough to own an automobile. But some because of finances, and some because of personal responsibility, I choose not to own a car, and to avoid driving as much as possible. For me, this is a choice. But for so many others in our community, there is no choice. Public transit is their link to the rest of the community. This isn't just the disabled and the poor. What about the elderly? Youth? Others who have made a choice to live a life without personal transit?
Public transit is not just about being able to get to the baseball game or to the Landing for a night out. It's about getting people to jobs when there aren't any near home, and to the doctor when there isn't an adequate clinic nearby. It's about going to work in a way that doesn't damage the environment. It's about interacting with your neighbors!
We need public transit. Even if you don't ride it, we still need it. Proposal M will raise $80 million annually for Metro, which will prevent service reductions, fare increases and employment cuts and allow for expansions of MetroLink and potentially the development of Rapid Bus Transit for the St. Louis region. Metro provides an invaluable service to our community, and we must support it. A YES vote for Prop M is a YES vote for St. Louis.
The leaves in St. Louis are just starting to turn. It's almost as if they know it; the chilly winds of change are blowing. The sort of symbolism I see in these leaves makes me hopeful, but they foreshadow the unknown, something new and different. And I think we all know this. Or at least, we hope that a few speckled and crunchy leaves actually signal the coming of autumn and not some fluke coldspell followed by another six weeks of summer.
Saturday morning marked the third time I had seen Barack Obama speak and although his speech was pretty standard, this appearance was of such monumental proportions that it meant so much more than usual. The settings for the speech were epic in both magnitude and proportion; excitement and anticipation ran high, you could feel it in the air. I had never really seen so many hopeful and positive faces on a chilly saturday morning. These faces were framed by the stout towers of downtown St. Louis on one side and the Arch and Mississippi River on the other. And in many ways, this speech was the sort of speech I have always been dying to see: a major figure, speaking within a monumental architectural setting, to a vast crowd of adoring fans. It's the stuff of movies and history, the sort of stuff you only hear about, but never witness. But saturday, I witnessed this vast specticle of a political event and was left quite impressed by the sheer humanity of it all. On that beautiful St. Louis day, 100,000 people came out to listen to a person share their vision for the future. And they did so hoping and praying that his vision would indeed come true, with the awareness that his ability to fulfill that vision was in their hands. But I feel a certain sense of anxiety over the whole situation. What if we lose? What if the message we're all fighting for simply isn't enough to enough people?
Antonio, DJ, and Hitomi will spend this semester at Washington University in St. Louis to study the city and its people with all of the grueling struggles and dyanamic solutions. We will try to come up with our solutions, too, but not without the help of fellow St. Louisans along with principles of ecological, economical, and social sustainability.
We'll be blogging about what who we talk to, what we see, and what we do. What it is, what it is. Welcome to the hug life.
We were left awe-struck. 
Obviously, this building is really old. But why is it still standing? Or maybe, more importantly, HOW is it still standing? It's such a beautiful, old creature. Was it once a home? A shop? Or something more sinister? Who knows?
Now, it's returning to the earth from whence it came. We're going to do some investigation and attempt to discover its provenance. We'll keep you posted.
