Halloween

Whew!

Well, there's another Halloween down!

Weeks ago David found a Cars race car driver's outfit and decided this was his costume. And then he proceeded to change his mind a dozen times! Earlier this week he decided to be a knight, so he donned his plastic armor breastplate and arm guards (thank you, Dollar Store!) and took up his shiny plastic sword. But he was quite concerned that he didn't have a ''knight mask.'' So I folded and cut a big sheet of aluminum foil so that one piece covered his head and another piece went across his face, with a large slit for his eyes. This was deeply satisfactory, and he and Lauren (in a purple tutu, big purple hat, arm guards and sword) marched out to the jungle gym to do battle with the ''mean old dragon.''

This morning he couldn't decide what to be. In stark contrast, Lauren has steadfastly declared her burning desire to be ''a dancer'' for...oh, forever, I guess. So this morning she joyfully threw open her dress-up trunk and pulled out her sequin-bedecked purple tutu. Since it was only 50 degrees and was bound to get colder by nightfall (this is nothing compared to the snowy Halloweens I remember!), we paired the tutu with a turtleneck and then topped it off with her white ''dancing shoes.''

By afternoon we had gone all day with one kid in costume and one not, and I took them to their favorite place to eat: Fazoli's. While we were there they fired up a kid's Halloween party which I had completely forgotten about. Princess the Clown arrived to do face painting, and of course the kids wanted to get this done. David declared, ''I will be a race car driver for Halloween. I not changing again from that!'' So with that he marches off to the face-painting and comes back...painted with a mustache, goatee, stubble, eye patch and a bandana. ''Mommy, look, a pirate!'' he beams. Um...well, OK, I've got
*checks watch*
about two hours to come up with a pirate getup. (This wasn't entirely impossible as I am a big believer in dress-up clothes and he already has a few pirate accessories just for fun.)

When Lauren was up to have her face done, I carefully intervened and suggested that she was a dancer. She came back with beautifully coordinated swirls on her forehead and down her cheeks, done in the perfect shades of purple and light blue that she was wearing, and topped off with sparkly, lavender ''jewel'' in the center of her forehead.

The next stop was Target for trick or treat candy for the neighborhood kids and a pair of warm tights for Lauren, then to Michael's for the very lucky floral department purchase.

It was getting dark by then so we headed home.

David insisted on wearing his Halloween T-shirt from Grandma Jean, which I topped with one of his heavy sweatshirts. I fished out one of my white shirts and put it on top, both puffing out the sleeves and rolling them up. I put him in heavy sweatpants, then put black pants on top, and tucked the legs into a pair of slightly-too-large black snow boots I fished out of the closet, donated to us this summer by a neighbor. Then I got out his pirate stuff, and put the black, plastic vest on him and put one of my thick, black belts around his waist. (I had to fasten it with a clothespin in the back, since it was so big for him!) The tri-corner black hat has a terrible time staying on, so I fetched a black sleeping mask from our room and put it on his head like a girl's headband, and attached the hat to it with some of Lauren's tiny hair clips. I slipped the plastic sai into a loop on the vest, and tucked the sword under the belt. Then we put the pirate ''hook'' over his hand, and I got the Michael's bag and pulled out a fake, green parrot. It was meant to be put into floral displays and wreaths and such, so it had wires on its feet. I wrapped those around the top of his vest and used a few more of Lauren's hair clips to hold it in place.

Lauren was much simpler...I put her into the heavy tights and put her lavender ''riding hood'' on over her outfit, and put her butterfly wings on. She was good to go.



Daddy got home just as we were putting the finishing touches on David, so we went trick-or-treating almost immediately. We hit our block and half of two more. It was about 40 degrees or so, and Lauren was about to freeze to death, but she wouldn't give up. They got oodles of candy...after about the 5th house David took to exclaiming ''I LOVE this!'' after every other stop.

I ended up carrying Lauren home, and we ate dinner with (of course!) candy for dessert. Nobody would let me wash their faces before bed, either, so this will undoubtedly take several days to wear off!

Quarters Quarters Everywhere

David is developing a real interest in learning which coins are quarters, which are nickels, how much they're all worth...he starting to obsess about checking our change. This is good, since we couldn't get him to even LOOK at money before. So far he has found:





















These are referred to by David as: Ducks, House, Buffalo, Horse, Da Lakes, Saint Lewis Auch, Norf Carolina, More Buffaloes, Horses, Statue, Window Washing, Music and Trees.

A Clean and Fair Fight

We were watching NOW (and missing Bill Moyers, thank-you-very-much) the other evening, and were introduced to the concept of ''Clean Elections.'' (This is truly worth your time...grab a drink, grab some bandwidth, plug in some headphones and click on Video: Votes for sale?)

An entire NOW program dedicated to campaign finance reform sounds about as exciting as a program on how to file obscure federal tax forms. But we watched anyway. I reiterate, it's worth it.

Clean elections work on the very basic idea that political campaigns should be financed not through wealthy individuals, corporations, lobbyists or PACs, but with public money. Before everyone starts howling, first of all realize that you're talking about a cost of about $6 per year.

Also realize what else this means. It means the wealthy individuals, corporations, lobbyists and PACs are left with a comparatively low level of influence. As someone who has been personally revolted by the kind of access a lot of businesses have been granted to the legislative process (like writing the new laws themselves and handing them to the legislator to introduce and sponsor), I have to admit this looks like a mighty fine idea.

There are some rules, of course. If you choose to run this way, you have to collect a certain number of signatures and private $5 donations, and you have to agree to some basic caps. If you find yourself running against someone who DOES run with PAC money and whose ''war chest'' threatens to dwarf yours, public money begins to match your opponent's spending, dollar for dollar. So there's actually a prayer that the contest might NOT look like a case of King by Right of Cash.

There's lots more out there...try a Google search on "clean elections."

Pinkie Pie and Tap Shoes

I think there's some kind of hideous Karma going on here.

See, I was the kid who filled up her free time by shooting blunt-tipped arrows with an old longbow into the haystack. Who caught and "raced" gardner snakes with the boy next door. (I seemed to have lots of trouble with snakes. I got kicked off the school bus for trying to bring a snake on board (hint which the bus driver didn't seem to know: snakes are quite flexible, and fit easily into purses with zippered pockets.) I would never run screaming at grade school when one of the boys would shove a snake in my face. In fact, I was more likely to follow and hound him for the rest of recess. "Can I hold it? Can I see it? Pleeeeease? I'll give it back, really! I just want to hold him!") I drew lots of space pictures of various futuristic space vehicles shooting down stone obstacles and in general blowing stuff up (this, in fact, was frequently done in front of a Dr. Who show...circa 1978 or so for you aficionados). I liked thunderous fireworks, had no qualms about getting dirty, and while I did like various forms of "fashion," my taste tended less towards pink frillies, ribbons and bows and much more toward denim and black. I went to one Girl Scouts meeting with a friend and deemed the whole organization a complete waste of time, as it seemed to be mostly about singing some kind of little daisy song and trying to look like a flower. ?!?! Why would anyone want to do that?

My two-year-old daughter, on the other hand, is showing increasingly alarming proclivities towards cuteness. The bad kind of cuteness. Evil cuteness.

Some amount of cute is normal...I expect minor fascinations with jewelry and some amount of dress-up clothes, a fondness for flower bouquets, this sort of thing.

But I'm rapidly finding myself in Subgenus kind of cute...a sort of pink-laden, glossy, preteen, cotton-candy kind of cute. A cute that comes up with names like "Rainbow Dash," "Minty," "Sunny Daze" and ... (gulp) "Pinkie Pie." (For those of you who don't have to live in Ponyville, the magical realm of My Little Ponies, be happy.) These are some of the most disturbing behaviors:

1. She loves to have her fingernails painted. Ok, so everyone goes through that when they're about 14, but she's NOT EVEN THREE YET!!!

2. She wants her own makeup. Yes, really. She asks for it, she gets the whole concept, and she's really quite into it. Yesterday she was opening up the "treasure chest" on one of our board games and scraping off the gold glitter inside so that she could dust her cheeks with it. "I jus' want look fancy," she says. How could she possibly know about body glitter??? I don't have body glitter!

3. She loves the idea of a vanity. We were at a kids' resale shop looking for winter clothes and there was a little vanity sitting there, with a star-shaped mirror on top, and decals on countertop made to look like various makeup brushes and such. She marches up to it, squeals in delight, sits down and promptly pretends to pick up the brushes and dust her face, put on eyeshadow, lipstick, even clips on a pretend watch...and with such practiced efficiency, it was truly horrifying.

4. She has requested her own bra. Seriously! (Seriously?) She's sitting there on my lap and she says she wants "what you put on after your shirt." So I'm completely lost at this, and ask if she wants a vest. This ticks her off, and she immediately assumes her Angry Face. (Did I mention the temper like a solar flare yet?) She repeats "after your shirt" several times and finally tries tugging my t-shirt up while saying something about "nursies." (Tip for future moms: be very careful about what words you select to convey the concept of breastfeeding to your baby. They remember, and it can come back to haunt you in the worst of ways, LOL!) So now I'm pretty stunned and I say, "Do you mean a bra?" She just lights up. "YEAH! May you get me a bra? Just my size?" She's quite disappointed that bras aren't manufactured for two-year-olds. Still not willing to give up on the idea, she will come across a bra display at Wal-Mart or a department store and she'll say, "Ooooh!" and rush over and start squeezing all the padded bra cups. (This has the one added side benefit of getting to gauge the store clerk's reaction. Some get a big kick out of it while others appear to be completely mortified.)

5. She's begging for Gymnastics and Dance lessons. Oddly enough, though, she strictly FORBIDS the mention of ballet. I'm not sure what kind of dance lessons she has in mind, but they have nothing to do with classical music, of that I'm sure. Her most recent plans are for her to be a "dancer" for Halloween. ?!?!? She also terms all of her white sandals with an ankle strap "Dancing shoes." Admittedly, they look a tad like taps...but how could she know that? She doesn't have friends who tap dance. (Her mother sure as hell doesn't tap dance! Yikes. Makes one think of certain scenes from Fantasia.)

So we seem to have a makeup-crazed, fashion-forward toddler who is itching to take gymnastics and dance lessons. I live in fear that she will one day see hip-hop style dancing and decide that the whole Bratz movement is where she wants to be. (For those not in the know, Bratz is a new-ish line of dolls with pouty expressions, puffy, collagen-injected lips and hooker-chic fashion. They take the definition of "sexualized toys" to new realms.)

Oh, and in case you might possibly have missed it, there is a strict Bratz ban on at this house. It's even more severe than the Barbie ban. Which is also troublesome, as some people are of the belief that a little girl can't live without a Barbie.

If you absolutely can't help yourself, try something in the new line of Disney Fairies. I might allow those in my house, whereas the other two would be headed for a very fast return trip to the toy store.

At The Cellular Level

Missouri, in case you didn't know it, is right in the middle of a huge stem cell debate. There's a referendum on the ballot to make embryonic stem cell research a constitutionally-protected activity, at least on the state level. And somewhere between all the ads featuring dewy-eyed moms begging for the future of their diseased kids, and the religious ads warning us of the brimstone-laced future, nobody is touching the actual issue.

A couple in KC founded an investment firm that made gobs and fistfuls of money. Both of them later on contracted cancer, and they subsequently poured their money into building a medical research and development facility to cure such diseases at a cellular/genetic level. They've now got a long-term strategic plan which involves expanding medical research facility by 600,000 square feet, every decade, in perpetuity.

Perpetuity?

Apparently the next expansion is slated for embryonic stem cell research. Which is worrisome to them. A couple of state Senators have rattled sabers and made noises about forbidding state funding for such research, per their very Midwestern constituency.

The business, on the other hand, isn't about to let a little annoyance like government and democracy stand in the way of their grandiose (and potentially very profitable) future.

The amendment is an end-run around the state government. It's an attempt to hog-tie the Legislature so that they have no say whatsoever in the matter, now or in the future, regarding funding, regulation, limits or anything else.

Is this a good legal presidence? Shall we follow suit with, say, the utility commission? How about allowing the gas and electric companies to pass a constitutional amendment…not just state laws, but an actual amendment to the state Constitution (which is…anyone? anyone? …easier or more difficult to get changed? anyone?) which says that the state government is powerless over them? They don't have to answer to anyone, now or later. They can build power plants wherever they want to, charge whatever they feel like, and your elected reps will simply have to sit on their hands and shrug at you. What other industries do you suppose would like to write amendments to the state constitution that protects them and shields their every action? Does anybody really believe that they wouldn't be lining up at the door for this opportunity?

So who do you suppose is next? Defense contractors? Real estate developers?

Lobbyists?

But since the whole thing is smoke and mirrors, all we're hearing is the Right-to-Life versus the Right-to-Cures debate. NOBODY is thinking about the Right-to-Representation that's really going on. Nobody is mentioning the 45 different bits of language changes and insertions that this Amendment will put into the constitution; nobody is challenging the dominance of business over the state legislature. This effectively neuters and declaws our elected representatives…which means that the voters won’t have a voice, either for or against stem cell research. The amendment is about putting the legislature and the voters in their place…firmly in the dark, with their hands tied and their mouths taped shut.

Didn't we have some kind of Tea Party in Boston regarding this kind of thing?

Ketoacidosis Kitty

Sasha is back from vet. He spent six days being hospitalized, mostly for ketoacidosis, but also a touch of (perhaps, they think) pancreatitis, and a UTI just for fun. As usual, however, he has baffled the standard veterinary care community.

This started on Sunday morning. The night before he was just fine, begging for food and making a pain in the butt of himself. Sunday morning I went to feed the cats and there was no Sasha. This meant he either had to be accidentally locked in the basement or dead. (Trust me; the cat is obsessively and compulsively starving at all times. He runs to the kitchen, claws scrabbling on the linoleum, whenever he hears dishes clank together OR if he hears the oven timer beep.) Finally the cat came blearily meandering down the hall. He refused his food. In fact, he refused his food all day. The only thing we could think of that was causing it was that Doug forgot to give him his insulin for anywhere between two and four days...but still, it was highly unusual behavior for this cat to want to skip meals and opt to sleep instead.

By Sunday night he was very weak and wobbly, had refused to eat all day, and was lying there on the floor, no longer even tracking things with his eyes. So off he went to the Emergency Animal Clinic, where they promptly declared him dehydrated and started an IV. He got transferred the next morning to the regular vet, and they kept up the IV and had to resort to force-feeding him for a few days.

He came home yesterday afternoon, still pretty rickety, but at least they feel comfortable letting him come home. What they don't understand is how a cat can get into this condition seemingly overnight...it seems that he came in dehydrated and in ketoacidosis, and down about two pounds from his last weight check in August. So how did he manage to act so normal for so long and then dive down into this spiral so fast, and take so long to recover? They have no idea.

That's comforting. That means that we can't really do much to prevent it in the future.

The Diabetic Choice of a New Generation

I read something horrifying on msn.com the other day. Another indictment on soda consumption...but c'mon, we all know it isn't great for you. Right?

There was lots of stuff that was bad, but the clincher was a longitudinal study that looked at a couple thousand women through a very long period of time (yes, I forget specifics) which concluded that women who drank a single soda daily were 83 percent more likely to develop diabetes as compared to the group who reportedly had a soda monthly. None of the respondents were diabetic at the beginning of the study.

As someone who has a very serious Pepsi addiction and a very serious fear of needles, I am mortified. So much so, in fact, that it cut my Pepsi consumption by...oh, probably 98 percent.

The other thing they mentioned was that soda is essentially ''liquid candy,'' and it alters the pH and acidity of you saliva. The acid of level of soda is something ludicrously close to that of battery acid, anyway. The effects are compounded when you drink soda like most people do...slowly, over the period of an hour or two. If you just chugged the stuff down and you were done with it, your mouth would return to normal in about 20 minutes. But for those who drink it slowly and drink a few (?) cans a day, the acid levels never return to normal. It's like dropping your teeth in battery acid and leaving them there all day.

Might explain my dental woes, too. My wisdom teeth are giving me fits.

The only thing left to do is to find a way to make water more appealing. Which is unfortunate, since I really don't LIKE water that much.

Attracted to shiny things

David is now taken with the idea of starting a collection.

He got this mainly from the new idiotic segue bits that PBS has decided to BLATANTLY copy from either Nickelodeon or Noggin. Not having cable, I have no idea which kid's channel it is, but when I go to the neighbor's house I routinely see it. (I also notice a tremendous amount of TV ON whenever I'm at the neighbor's house, but that's a discussion for another day. And I'm unusually anti-TV, too. For anyone looking to make my day, I'm still lusting after a TV-B-gone.)

Anyway, the segue segments come on between shows to try and capture your interest from one show to the next (heaven forbid you should, say, turn the set OFF or anything.) and they chatter about pointless, inane and brain-cell killing topics ad nauseum...kinda like The View for kids.

One of these topics was on starting a collection. David started his own collection shortly thereafter...of dead batteries. He's got five of them carefully stored on a shelf. We discussed this a bit and apparently he finds them aesthetically appealing...particularly the green one. Uh...OK.

A short time later he found some quarters and got to looking at them. He soon discovered that not all quarters have the same pictures on the back, and he begged and pleaded to keep the ''music one.'' (Tennessee) A few hours later he discovered different state quarter and then asked if it were possible to collect money. ''Sure,'' I told him. ''Lots of people collect coins. Your grandpa used to have a coin collection.'' So he's on a mission to collect all 50 state quarters. Unfortunately, he LOST his Tennessee quarter and we haven't found another yet.

His grandpa would be all over this in a heartbeat. I can just see him carefully storing up quarters for David's next visit, and I can also see David jumping up and down with excitement at his grandfather’s extravagance, too.

Weird Science

School has taken a backseat this week. We were having tremendous trouble with Science last week...we were supposed to learn about bones, the skeleton, joints, the skull and teeth. The next unit was on muscles, the heart and the brain. We put together a small paper skeleton and went through the provided lesson, but David was listless and deathly bored, and at the end he couldn't answer a single question on the test correctly. I was livid, he was frustrated. We dropped it for the day, but I was thoroughly ready to pack it in and cancel the program.

That night I looked up some stuff on the 'net, thinking that I CAN'T be the only person to encounter such resistance. Of course I'm not. Most people said they ran into this when they tried to make homeschool too much like School At Home. Same paperwork, same stuff as school, just in your living room instead of a classroom.

I jumped ahead in the lessons and extracted some cool ideas...I bent a cardboard paper towel in half like an elbow joint, and taped deflated balloons to the top and bottom of the fold to make stretchy ''muscles'' that pulled taut or relaxed depending on how the joint bent. I also printed out the test questions for both units and went to bed with a plan.

The next morning I got everyone dressed and fed them a big breakfast and asked if anyone wanted to go to the Science Center. They completely freaked out with joy and we took off.

I happened to have a two-for-one coupon for the new BJC SportsWorks exhibit at the Science Center. It seemed to focus on the human body and all the cool stuff it can do, so I figured I'd tie the material in on one of the proverbial ''field trips.''

The first part was a lot of Cardinals stuff, which nobody in our house really cares about. (I think my St Louis residency can be revoked for making that statement!) The rest, however, was right on the money.

There was a rock-climbing wall (which he will NOT participate in!) and a pitching ''cage,'' where they measured the speed of your pitch. They also had plastic models of arms, joints, tendons, and how they move during a pitch.

There was a balancing beam and mirror surrounded by big mats, videos of different athletes doing some amazing feats of balance, and a huge model of the inner ear which you could spin around and experiment with to see how the fluid moved.

There was a place where you could race down a track against your choice of a T-Rex, Cheetah, or Olympic athlete. The system would shine a light on the wall in the shape of the competitor you picked, and the figure would move along the wall at the speed it would naturally travel while you ran down the track.

There was a section on weight-lifting, a very neat bicycle on a loop-de-loop which allowed you to experience G-force, a thing on dancing, a virtual game for volleyball and soccer...and then there was the little grocery store.

As you might expect, Schnucks put this one together. Here there were kid-sized shelves and dairy cases and meat cases and produce stands full of plastic food. You got to take a little plastic grocery basket and ''shop.'' So we talked about whether bones and muscles are alive or not, and if they need to eat, and assigned the kids the task of picking out the most healthy lunch for their bones and muscles that they could think of. After they ran around and picked lots of stuff, we went through each item and asked ourselves if it was healthy or not: ''Would our bones and muscles like to eat this? So should we eat this?'' For the record, we decided that fresh meats and veggies were healthy, but that our bones and muscles probably wouldn't ask for Nilla Wafers and chocolate syrup.

There was a kid's play area which they thought was nifty. So I sat for awhile and let them play around, then during a relatively calm period I sat on the floor and called David over. He sat on my lap and I asked if he had ever heard of a thing called a heart, and if he knew where it was.
''Now, what's your heart FOR?'' I asked.
''To LOVE people!'' he beamed.
''YES!'' I told him, ''That's right! It also happens do something very important for your body, too.''
I grabbed his hand and held it over his heart.
''Do you feel that?''
He was awed that he felt something actually moving.
''Now, go climb up over there and I want you to jump from there over to there, ten times, as fast as you can.''

He giggled and ran over and started climbing and jumping, but declared boredom after about seven jumps. So I had him leap around over something else and he soon started panting. I snatched him up quick and grabbed his hand and put it back over his heart without saying a word. I held it there, and suddenly his eyes went wide and he yelped "Faster! It's faster!" This of course went to a quick explanation of heart rates and exercise and playing.

There was only one room left in the exhibit. We walked in and I immediately spied a skeleton...the plastic kind that you'd associate with medical school, all assembled with wires and stuck on a metal pole, just sort of dangling there. PERFECT! We shook the skeleton's hand, we bent the arm and wrist joints, we looked at the joints on the jaw, we opened his skull and contemplated what might be housed inside.

The rest of the room was filled with tables; all the tabletops were shaped like a human body, and on top of each was a laminated, basic schematic of where the various systems of the body are located. One table was all bones, and on top was a cardboard Halloween-decoration-type skeleton which we got to put together. Another table showed the circulatory system, and we talked about the heart and all the little "pipes" that carry blood around. Another was the digestive system, another showed all the muscles in the body.

Eventually we got bored of all of this, too, and headed back to the car. While I was waiting for David to buckle his seatbelt, I pulled out the test questions from the previous day as well as the ones for this test and casually posed them to him.

He answered each of them easily and readily.

We spent the whole day on Science and didn't get to any other subject that day, but I think he definitely mastered the concepts!

First Day At School

Today was David's first day at school. I dropped him off at a middle school in a VERY nice part of town, and the last I saw of him before I left was him pulling out a plastic chair next to a table filled with stuffed penguins. There were about five other kids there.

He was very reluctant to go. He cried when we left the house and said he USED to want to go, but didn't anymore. When we got there he wanted to take his Triceratops in, but then decided to leave it (him) in the car. So his big Saturday adventure is his first class ever...two of them, actually. One is Penguins, Puffins & Polar Bears and the other is An Expedition With Pooh.

Finding myself with three hours and no kids was stunning, so I headed over to Forest Park. I couldn't quite decide between the Art Museum or the History Museum, but eventually picked the latter. Mostly because I'd never been there before.

They were holding the Scottish Games right next door (And see, I said that without making any sheep jokes! How classy is that?) and of course there were bagpipes galore. I don't actually mind bagpipes (I know some people hate them), so it didn't bother me a bit. It was rather surreal, however, walking up to the museum.

Looking down, there are quotes about the importance of history and heritage, quotes which have been chiseled into big, granite slabs set into the bricking on the ground...and even most of the bricks themselves are chiseled with names of donors to the museum, the biggest and most wealthy of whom have actual brick-sized metal plaques installed into the mortar. Smaller attempts to be remembered by history. The museum itself is the Jefferson Memorial, built in 1914 (with the proceeds from the World's Fair, I'll have you know) with these huge, imposing columns and this gigantic, larger-than-life, seated statue of Thomas Jefferson looming ahead, with a vaulted entry way above your head and the whole while the bagpipes are wailing away, their sound reverberating off all the stone. Just...surreal.

So while my kid was in class, I learned a bit of St. Louis history. Now...for those who are uninitiated, the 1904 World's Fair was held in St. Louis. You cannot go for more than a couple of weeks here without hearing all about it, too. Native St. Louisians seem to focus their obsessive energy on two obscurities: 1) What high school everyone attended (apparently this allows them to pigeon-hole and categorize your social status, income levels, and relative intelligence instantaneously) and 2) the 1904 World's Fair.

Just merely MENTIONING the World's Fair will bring up all kinds of stories you never wanted to hear...whose great-grandparents went to the thing and who has the rarest souvenir and...oh my. It's really a point of pride for some folks.

I have never understood this in the least. My attitude, in fact, has pretty much been ''Get Over It!'' It did end, after all, more than 100 years ago.

I think learning the context of the thing helped out some.

St. Louis was not a great place to live back in the day. We as a nation, of course, made the Lousiana Purchase in 1803, (and no history book I ever read in school pointed this out, and neither did the museum, but...) mainly out of fear of France and the political whims of a somewhat short little man with a funny hat named Napoleon. Forget 'Manifest Destiny' and all that crap, that was cover for our desire NOT to become a colony of France just 25 years after winning our independence from the British. OK, so we gather up the Lewis and Clark team (who hate each other...also not mentioned by the scrubbed history books) and their lackeys to go figure out what the heck we just bought. Fast-forward.

In the 1850s, things took a turn for the worse. In February, a nasty cholera epidemic swept through the city. The city hospital had only 90 beds, which was a smaller number than the daily death toll from the disease. Some accounts say many thousands were killed by the cholera epidemic.

Things went from bad to worse when a fire alarm sounded on May 17th of the same year...the steamer "The White Cloud" sat burning. The Fire Department at the time consisted of nine hand engines and hose reels that promptly responded. The lines tying the boat to the dock broke, however, and the burning boat slowly floated with the current and set fire to twenty-two other steamers lying moored to the shore.

Finally it ran aground a quarter of a mile away, where the heat of the fire ignited a nearby building. The fire swept from building to building, flames leaping hundreds of feet in the air.

By daylight on May 18th the firemen were completely demoralized and exhausted. The city's water supply was wiped out, and the path to the river was blocked by flames.

Apparently 41 year-old Capt. Thomas B. Targee of Missouri No.5 grabbed a few buddies and they descended on the armory, taking away kegs of gunpowder. In desperation they began throwing the kegs into standing buildings and detonating the powder in order to blow up the buildings and create a fire break. They got three buildings blown up, but the fourth keg detonated prematurely and took Targee with it. The plan worked, though...the fire was finally stopped after destroying 430 houses, twenty-three steamers, nine flatboats and barges, the Republican, Reveille and Evening Gazette printing offices, the post office and three banks.

In 1890, a gigantic tornado came ripping through East St. Louis and St. Louis' south side, killing several hundred and leaving thousands and thousands without homes and jobs. Just three years later, an economic depression gripped the area, lending its share of poverty and despair

Is it any wonder then, when it was announced that the World's Fair would be held here 10 years later, that residents not only rejoiced at the money that would be coming in, but also scrambled like mad to prove that St. Louis was more than a disease-ravaged, burned-out pile of uninhabited kindling and driftwood sitting along the Mississippi?

The city went completely nuts. The Fair site, Forest Park, didn't exist. It was all wetlands. Undaunted by this fact, the finest engineers and Works Department employees got to work madly draining the wetlands. In an absolute fit of early Industrial-age egotism, the city went about building a site that would look as though it had stood for centuries, like the grand palace grounds of Europe. They erected nearly every building now standing at Forest Park in about 14 months. They created a sort of slag of limestone and cement and poured it into molds which were later cracked open and ''carvings'' of lion's heads and Venus de Milo wanna-be's emerged. This ornate stuff, called ''staff'' was hung on every corner and nook and cranny of every building they could think of.

In a nutshell, they managed to pull it off. They put forth a Herculean effort to create an impression of a history of class and culture which just didn't exist...and it paid off, as the world bought it. This spectacular sleight-of-hand has gone down in local history as The Real Deal. As if all the world's knowledge, culture and advancement suddenly sprouted up in Forest Park at daybreak on the first day of the 1904 World's Fair, admitting St. Louis into the rarified circle of the cultural elite.

Legends in their own minds.