On This Day in 1764...And She Still Sings

It was on this day in 1764 that the city of St. Louis was founded on the Mississippi River.

Tennessee Williams grew up in St. Louis and hated the city. He called it "that dreaded city" and "the City of St. Pollution.”

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she wrote:

"The Negro section of St. Louis in the mid-thirties had all the finesse of a gold-rush town. Prohibition, gambling and their related vocations were so obviously practiced that it was hard for me to believe that they were against the law.”

The British poet T.S. Eliot was actually born in St. Louis, which he left at the age of 16. He wrote later: "I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those who have not [...] the Missouri and the Mississippi have made a deeper impression on me than any other part of the world."

I went to St. Louis once for a AAAS meeting. It was on a January weekend. That was the coldest, most desolate place I have ever been. I spent two hours walking around downtown in -10 degree weather looking for a restaurant that was open. There aren't any. I ended up eating a microwave burrito and a bag of chips from a 7/11.

There are two places you couldn't pay me enough to live in: all of Florida, and St. Louis.

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Tis for Today in 1925

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The Consequence of Matters

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