Lakehouse Meet

 

"Wes, there is someone I want you to meet, I think you'll like her, Dude..." says my good friend Perry Drake. The Midwest Digital Marketing Conference (MDMC 25) is winding down and Dr. Drake is again trying to facilitate a connection for me.  

We missed a couple of opportunities to meet during the busy two days at The University Missouri - Saint Louis event on campus on May 13 and 14.  Perry and his gal, Beth, have already been busy hopeful matchmakers with Beth's bestie, Donna. Now, Perry is determined introduce me to Bonnie. Perry is a believer in digital solutions to human dilemmas and probably has more confidence in on-line matchmaking that I ever will. Bonnie, has personal experience with finding potential soul-mate this way and takes some credit for helping Perry find Beth. 

Perry prompts me to get to know Bonnie so the texting begins. She wants to meet for coffee but it will have to be after 5pm or on the weekend. I propose an 11:00 Saturday meeting at The Lakehouse Bar & Grill overlooking Creve Coeur Lake. "Sounds great, I look forward to meeting you then," texts Bonnie. 

Saturday morning comes and I'm a little anxious about the meeting but it's a beautiful breezy day and the sun is shining on the lake. The restaurant doesn't open until 11:00 am but I find a spot to read in the open air. (I'm reading a biography of Warhol by Blake Gopnik.) On the other side of the rail tracks, the athletic fields at Lou Fusz soccer park are abuzz with competition. The restaurant opens and I stake a location for us as I read Bonnie's text. "Running late Sorry! No power at home all night. About 5 min." 

"Wes?" she appears, startling me a bit . I give her a hug. She smiles and she considers the menu and asks for coffee. I have a prop which I thought might amuse, an artful mosaic piece with script Bonnie name plate. She was not amused and looking for her coffee. "So, are you dating anyone? (This is he opening line of a task-oriented digital marketer on a quest). She opened the door with this question and I could not help telling her. "I'm in love with my high school girlfriend." This surely was a deal-breaker if in fact I was looking to close a sale. I was not. My naive intent on scheduling this pow wow as just a casual get to know ya. We chatted for 2 hours. But I mostly talked about my episodic life and my family (using a b&w photo inside my 2024 Holiday Card as visual aid to mentions of my mother-in-law, my kids and my two grandchildren). 

We left the restaurant, and I proposed a walk since it was a beautiful day. "I've got to meet a friend who needs to go shopping for a dress for a wedding. We're meeting at 1:30." 

So, in two hours I talked about me. I talked about my family. I talked about Janie. I learned only as much about her as Bonnie was willing to share. She talked about being an entrepreneur and business coach, podcaster and digitally savvy speaker. A bit about the teaching profession. She's a lifelong St. Louis native with Education degrees from Miami University (Ohio) and UMSL. 

Text just an hour or so later on Saturday:

 

Me - Thanks for tollerating me. Next time I'll have PowerPoint 90 minutes qued up. 

Bonnie - Not interested in someone who's in love with someone else. 

That's me trying to be funny and her confirming her lack of interest in a relationship for which I wasn't looking.  

Bonnie Frank meeting at Creve Coeur Boathouse Bar & Grill NOTES

• 1.      Running Late for an 11:00 am Saturday Meeting. (Did you not have enough time       to plan for this very important meeting?)
• 2       Startled me when she arrived.  (Ha)
• 3.       Opening question about who I was dating. (Implies a task-orientation)
• 4.       To my comment about how cool and what an honor to have grandchildren named for my parents Lawton and James – “That’s what Jewish people do.” (Ha. Thanks for the insight I might already have having been married to a Jewish woman for 41 yrs)
• 5.       To my comment on education – glad I didn’t choose it as my career – “Not all schools/districts…” (Implies my sample size is too small to judge even thought I worked for SSD, Riverview Gardens SSD, Winfield and Confluence Academy).
• 6.       Confluence – She had insider info and insight into founder from Clayton (waiting until her kids were out of HS.)
• 7.       I don’t have cable or streaming services. (So my reference to John Walsh and wife and Polo Pony ranch commercial about Omega product not related to… She did recall America’s Most Wanted TV show and maybe Adam Walsh story.)
• 8.       I am not interested in someone who’s in love with someone else. (Okay but I wasn’t tryin’ to hook up, just get to know you – at Drake’s prompting)
• 9.       Coffee, more coffee, reheat….ha. (Funny how many refills. Trying to compensate for lack of sleep?)
• 10      Would not show me her name tag (on her coat in parking lot) – What are you hiding? Maybe a truer picture of job?
• 11.  No insight into her family or relationships… accept her observation when Perry was in hospital. “Marry Her.”  Hmmm (Maybe I was talking too much about me….)

My take is that bonnie was more task oriented in the mold of online digital solution to a human interaction vs. my old school goal in agreement to “get to know her over coffee’ 


 


     
   

A sleek, proud bronze created in honor of the Egyptian goddess Bastet, “Cat” has lived at least six of her nine lives already. She was born between 664 and 332 BC, during Egypt’s Saite dynasty. A collector in Alexandria, M. Dattori, got his paws on her in the early 1900s, but Sage recalls a few cocktail party whispers (later echoed in a 1938 New York Times article) that she’d been sequestered by the German government as French property. She was released in 1920 and later sold to a New York collector—who sold her in 1937 to the Brummer Gallery.

The Depression was grinding on. In our efforts to give relief to the poor, St. Louis was about $2 million overdrawn that year. “And St. Louis, whose population has a background in which thrift and conservatism bulk large, does not like to be in debt,” noted the Times.

Hence the catfight. Smitten with the bronze, the Saint Louis Art Museum handed the Brummer Gallery $14,400 for “Cat.” Letters about this cat who was stealing food from the mouths of the poor poured into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis Star-Times. One suggested selling the museum’s entire collection and putting the museum commissioners on display, 25 cents admission. Another hoped that all the cats in the city would congregate at the commissioners’ homes and yowl all night. Union leaders picketed, carrying signs that read, “$14,000 for a useless cat—nothing for labor.” Even artists protested the museum’s preference for antiquity over their modern works.

“Cat” sat erect, staring into the middle distance.

When she finally deigned to respond, in a letter to the Star-Times, she admitted being troubled—despite her “Egyptian imperturbability”—on reading a description of herself as an inanimate object. She extolled her own sleek elegance and menace, adding, “I am not vain. I am only truthful.” By then she was close to breaking the museum’s attendance record. New York and Paris had written about her. And soon, screenwriter and director Albert Lewin would beg to borrow her for his 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray, saying she was one of the most beautiful Egyptian artifacts he’d ever seen.

Such beauty is fragile, the museum responded, but he was welcome to copy her—so it is a replica of St. Louis’ “Cat” who grants Dorian’s wish that his painting age in his place. For the film (which made almost $1.4 million in U.S. box offices), artist Ivan Albright painted a lurid portrait of Gray’s otherwise invisible dissolution, the cat serene in the background. That painting is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

And “Cat,” in all her mystery, is ours.

https://www.stlmag.com/topics/st-louis-sage/.

This story was published in Saint Louis Magazine in the Spring of 2018. The photo was taken by me at the Saint Louis Art Museum. 

Laumeier Art Fair 2025

 

I volunteered to help out at the Annual Art Fair again this year. Since 2012 I have been a docent and member. My duties over the three day event was essentially to man the Artist Hospitality tent. The weather cooperated and a steady stream of visitors viewed 150 artists work for sale leading up to Mother's Day on Sunday. A robust schedule of live music and lots of food trucks and vendors gave visitors plenty of food options. 

I think this was my 12th or 13th art fair in a row. I think it's fair to say I am a credible judge of the overall quality of this year's show. Maybe my favorite thing is the social nature of just being there.

• Perry Drake, Beth Hammond, Donna Jeffries and another lady (former majorette from Fredericktown).
• Stephanie Camden 
• John Grizzell and Francesca
• Marie Oberkirsch from Central Print (former LSP)
• Sarah Lorenz - Plein Air Painter
• Neil Brown - Photographer
• Liz Murphy Siense (sp?) with husband Chuck and their little girl. Liz if former LSP employee who went to the Science Museum and recently moved to the Federal Reserve. I asked her what I should do with my pennies. Her response "Hang on to them. It will take an act of congress to eliminate that bit of currency in spite of political pressure." She invited me to schedule a tour.
• Maureen Jennings, Ferda, Mary Hansen former docent colleagues.

When I rise up, let me rise joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.