Joe's Street

Hi Kids,

You may notice my picture looks a little different -- that's because I'm NOT Tiger!  I'm his big brother Bubba.  Miss Elaine let me come on this trip to St. Louis because the Cardinals were still in the play-offs when we arrived and I have a Cardinals uniform!  On the street where we stayed, there are stars of the sidewalks honoring famous people from St. Louis.  That's me sitting by Stan Musial's star.  "Stan the Man" is one of the best baseball players who ever lived.  During his career he hit 3630 base hits and 475 home runs.  Three times he was named National League Most Valuable Player.  He helped the Cardinals win three world championships.  He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.  He is 92 years old now.  In addition to being a great baseball player, he is known as a kind and honorable gentleman.

We stayed on a part of Delmar Street known as the Delmar Loop.  This street was really run-down until a man named Joe Edwards began investing in the area.  First he opened a restaurant he calls Blueberry Hill.  He refurbished several old buildings on the street and built a brand-new hotel which he calls Moonrise. 

Joe has a lot of interests but two of his big ones are music and space.  He loves Chuck Berry who is a rock and roll legend -- Chuck had his 86th birthday while we were here.  This is a statue of Chuck Berry.  In his restaurant, Joe has lots of music memorabilia including one of Chuck's guitars.  Miss Elaine, Mr. Jack and I had dinner at Blueberry Hill and we can tell you that Joe's restaurant makes super-good hamburgers!

Now for Joe's other big interest -- space.  He wants everybody to learn more about it, so he's put signs on the street to help walkers to get an idea about our solar system.  In front of the Moonrise is a sign about the sun -- the center of our solar system.  As you walk west on the sidewalk, you will come to other signs about the planets and their distance from the sun.  Each sign offers more information about the planets.

On display in the hotel are artifacts from Joe's collection of space-related items including a cloth crew patch which was carried to the moon on July 20, 1969 -- when man first stepped onto the moon's surface.  The patch is autographed by all three of the Apollo 11 astronauts -- Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

This is me with a funny space robot in the hotel -- and the other picture is the hotel.  Do you love the moon on the roof?

P.S.  News Flash -- Tiger and I are getting another brother!  Or maybe sister.  We don't know yet.  Mrs. Beasley's second grade at Ida Freeman is adopting and naming him or her.  I'll let you know when I know more. 

Love,

Bubba

Ancient History

Hi Kids,

I've been in Rome, Italy, one of the world's greatest cities.  Our guide said the city was like lasagna -- layers and layers.  There's been a city on this site for almost 3000 years!  Of course, it started small -- probably just a collection of little huts -- but it grew into the greatest and most important city in the world around the time of Jesus.  In those years, Rome ruled most of the known world.  (This was long before North and South America and Australia were discovered!)

The building in these two pictures is the Pantheon.  The original structure was built between 25 and 27 A.D.  (Ask Miss Kysar what A.D. and B.C. mean!) but the building we see today was built between 118 and 125 A.D.  It was originally a temple to all the gods the Romans worshiped but later became a Christian church and now is a memorial to the kings of Italy.  There are no windows -- only a hole in the dome called an oculus (from Latin, the language the Romans spoke, meaning "eye."  The Pantheon is the oldest complete building in Rome -- but not the oldest structure.  There are ruins that are older.  What's cool is the old buildings are right next to newer ones.

The most famous old building -- and it's sort of a ruin -- is the Colosseum.    It was completed in 79 A.D. The beautiful marble stone that used to cover the building was ripped off centuries ago and used to build other buildings.  And war and earthquakes knocked some of it down.

The Colosseum was the early equivalent of a football stadium -- only they didn't play football.  They had public executions there and fights between gladiators and they also put prisoners there and turned wild animals loose on them.  It was pretty awful.  The Colosseum was so big that they could flood it and stage naval battles inside. 

This is me inside the Colosseum.  The floor is gone so all those walls you can see in the middle were under the florr where they kept the prisoners and the animals.  I'm glad they don't do that any more.

  

Italians don't speak Latin anymore -- they speak Italian.  Italian, French and Spanish all developed from Latin and they are called Romance languages -- not because they're in love but because they came from the Romans.  I'll bet you can speak some Italian, too!  Don't believe me?  How about saying "pizza," "spaghetti," or "macaroni?"  Those are all Italian words.  And here's another one I know - "ciao" (pronounced "chow"), that means "Good-bye"

Love,

Tiger

Up North in South Dakota

Hi Kids,
My name is ......  Well, I don't know what my name is.  You're going to have to pick a name for me.  I travel with Miss Elaine.  You'll meet us on Friday.  She travels and writes stories about her trips for magazines and newspapers.  We're going to share our travels with you.

Last week we were in South Dakota.  That's the third state north of Oklahoma.  We stayed in the town of Sioux Falls.  You can see the falls in the picture above.  The name of the river is Big Sioux.

While we were there, we visited the zoo.  I got to see some of the animals up VERY close as you can see.  Do you know what this one is?  Miss Kysar can tell you.  This animal is a marsupial, which means she carries her babies in a pouch -- like a kangaroo.  These animals live in Oklahoma, too.

Traveling with Miss Elaine sometimes gets scary but at least she didn't let me get near the biting end of this Burmese python!  I'm glad the keepers were holding this guy.  He's a constrictor -- that's a snake that wraps around its prey and squeezes really tight.

We traveled out from Sioux City.  You can see the land is pretty bare.  That little hill is called Spirit Mound.  The Indians used to tell people that the mound was the home of tiny people who would shoot trespassers with arrows.  Over 200 years ago, our country was very young and this part wasn't even part of the United States.  In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought a big piece of land from France.  This was called the Louisiana Purchase and covered an area which now encompasses the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma (except the panhandle), Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and parts of Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming. 

Then the President wanted to know more about the land he'd just bought.  He sent the explorers William Clark and Meriwether Lewis to check it out.  They traveled from St. Louis up the Missouri River.  When they got to this area, they heard about the mound.  They left their boats and walked several miles to find it.  They didn't find any little people but when they climbed on top of it, they could see a long way.  Here's how Captain Clark described what he saw, "from the top of this Mound we beheld a most beautiful landscape.  Numerous herds of buffalo were seen feeding in various directions."

This is the Spirit Mound.  I'm not taking a sun bath -- I just have a bit of trouble sitting up straight without help!

We traveled up the Missouri River, too.  Of course, when Lewis and  Clark were here, there were no dams on the river.  Now there are six dams on the Missouri.  They are used for flood control and for generating electricity.  To the left of me in the picture below is the hydroelectric (hydro means water) plant that uses the force of the river to make enough electricity for 30,000 homes.  We went down inside the dam and got to see all the equipment but we were not allowed to take pictures there.  The gates you can see in the picture are called spillways and machinery in the plant opens and closes the spillways to keep the water in or let it out.

Near the dam was a visitor's center with displays telling about the animals who live in and on the river. 

Do you see the funny thing I'm sitting on?  Those are tree roots.  You can see a steamboat in the picture behind me.  Steamboats delivered all sorts of things to people who settled along the river.  The boats were powered by steam made by burning wood to heat water.  It was a long trip up the river, so the boatmen would cut down trees on the shore.  As the river eroded the banks, the stumps would be washed out into the river.  These were called snags and they were very dangerous to boats -- often poking holes in the boats and causing them to sink.

Miss Elaine used to teach music -- she sometimes even substituted at Northern Hills -- so she really loved the National Music Museum in Vermillion.  It has the largest collection of musical instruments in the United States.  Do you know what this is?  I thought it was a cannon -- but it's not.  It's a drum!  It's so big -- it weights 1000 pounds -- that it has to be moved on its own cart!  It's from Thailand and is called a glawngae, which means goblet drum.  That's what I call it because I can't pronouce glawngae and neither can Miss Elaine.

Back in Sioux Falls we went to a place called the Outdoor Campus.  They have classes for kids and grown-ups on all sorts of things to do outdoors.  They also have wildlife displays.  This is me checking out a giant bass.  Don't worry, it's not real. 

This is Miss Elaine and me standing in the fish's mouth.  Now I know what a worm feels like!

We'll see you soon.  Please think of a good name for me!

Your BBFF (best bear friend forever),

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The Teddy Does Texas Top to Bottom

Hi Kids,

I'm not going to write much because I'll be seeing you in person to tell you about my latest trip.  Look at the map and find Amarillo, Waco and McAllen -- because that's where I've been.  We started in Amarillo -- 

Then we headed for Waco where we visited a really cool zoo....

Our last stop was way down in south Texas at McAllen.  This is one of the best birding spots in the world.

It has been fun being your friend this year.  I'm staying with Ms. Kysar to help her with her next year's class.  Have a great summer.
Love,
Batman

King Batman

Hi Kids,

This is the Cheshire Inn where I stayed in St. Louis.  It looks like it should be in England!  There were lots of antiques inside and a HUGE Kodiak bear.  Fortunately, he was stuffed otherwise I wouldn't have stayed around to have my picture taken!  They were very nice to me here.  I got to sit on a throne.  And even wear a crown!

We went to the Missouri Botanic Gardens.  There were lots of flowers and other plants there.  This is me and Miss Mary in front of the Climatron where they grow all the tropical plants that need to stay warm.  They are getting ready for a Chinese Lantern Festival next month.  We got to see the workers making the lanterns.  They are REALLY big.  One of the dragons is longer than your classroom!  This picture is of one of the smaller dragons.  They will all have lights inside them and will be beautiful at night.  I think this one is beautiful now!

After we left St. Louis, we went to Branson.  Miss Elaine had to do some stuff with her book.  One of the women she wrote about used to live near here.  Her house was called Bonniebrook and we got to see it.  Her name was Rose O'Neill and she was an artist and a writer and a really great lady.  She is most famous for drawing some little cherub-like figures which she named Kewpies.  They were so popular that children wanted dolls like them -- and so she made Kewpie dolls.  Here's a drawing of some of her first Kewpies and that's me with a modern Kewpie doll.  Kewpies can be either boys or girls.  They like to do good deeds but often do them in mischievious ways.  Branson was our last stop before we came home.  It really felt good to get in my own bed!

Love,

Batman