Art, the Final Frontier

Even though I had no visitors this weekend (am I out of people who want to tour St. Louis?) I still went to the Shaw Art Fair and the STL Planetarium.

The art was superb with countless booths although I'll admit I avoided the countless jewelry ones. There was also music: Bluegrass, Jazz, and Blues. I have to relate this as well; I was walking along, quietly looking at paintings and sculptures...

... when I heard someone yell behind me, "PEANUTBUTTER!" I jumped out of my shoes almost, but tried to turn around cooly and came to face a scene with a quirky looking old man singing and telling stories to young children sitting on stacks of hay. They were all smiling and giggling as this man mimed eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and singing about it as his mouth got more and more sticky and full with peanutbutter. He then told some sort of Scottish fable about a tailor and a giant and another fable from Indonesia about Small-Deer, and Tiger, and Elephant, and Warthog (all proper nouns). It was all very cute and fun to clap along.

On my several mile bike ride home I decided to cut through the scenic Forest Park (like I do for any trip). I try to take new paths each time, and this time I rode right up to the Planetarium. Since I'd never been inside immense curiosity guided me into the star show, highlighting the history of Mr. Hubble and the Hubble Telescope. Who knew Mr. Hubble showed Earth's people something far more mindblowing than Galileo's "Sun at the center of our solar system"? He proved our homely Milky Way isn't alone, and in fact some of the largest estimates put the galaxy count in our universe closer to a trillion besides us. Not only that, but galaxies are rapidly moving away from us, so Hubble showed the world that our universe is expanding.

The Pillars of Creation are by far my favorite photo of the beauty in our universe. Can you tell just by looking at this that they are lightyears tall? Woah!

Have a good week and catch me if you want to see St. Louis first hand.