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The weekend before last, I was in Hadley for an interview for an upcoming Preview story. I met the director of an upcoming show at the Panera there on Route 9 -- she picked the meeting spot. It was a nice place for an interview, and L. liked it, because she had wanted to go to Target and Old Navy anyway. So we drove together and she went shopping ( Read more... )

Two weeks ago, I was in St. Louis for a friend's wedding. Getting married was one of my old high school crew. He lives over on the Illinois side of the river. We converged from disparate points around the country: Colorado, Massachusetts and Florida. I arrived on a Thursday afternoon and was picked up at the airport. The van load of us, five in all ( Read more... )

St. Louis is a very good place to be from, writes Lucy Ferriss in Unveiling the Prophet. Being in the middle of the country, St. Louis has a little bit of all of the regions in it -- north, south, east or west -- so you can find a little something familiar in any place in the United States where you might go. Ferriss is from St. Louis, went to ( Read more... )

I've been following pkhentz's ongoing saga with the impending strike at the St. Louis Public Schools. It is in that light that I read with interest this story in The Springfield Republican about the situation in the Springfield Public School system. The thing you need to know to understand Springfield's situation is that the city is basically bankrupt and ( Read more... )