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A Vision of Joy - My personal reflection about our city’s most popular landmark

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  A Carillon History Lesson. A Vision of Joy I had a meeting with Thomas Joy the other day. If you don’t recognize the name, he is the son of William and Judith Joy. His family along with the Perrine’s who are cousins owned the Sentinel for a whole lot of years.  Mrs. Joy, Jody to many, was a world traveler and her treks were written about in nearly every Sunday paper from the 1970s until about 2015. Then her stories were reprinted in our Express Magazine, a tabloid we used to replace the Parade magazine our subscribers used to love. I say “we” because it still feels like family to me. I worked there for twenty years: four years in late 80’s/early 90’s and from, 2005-2022 after my 13 year stint at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. I worked a lot with Mrs. Joy. Although, I never got into the habit of calling her Jody since I was taught to call adults mister or mrs. At the Sentinel if you emailed Mrs Joy, you were emailing me. Mrs Joy never did move into the computer age. She t...
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A Greenhorn's View of a Big City Boss

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  An Essay About Ray Hartmann, creator of The Riverfront Times and St. Louis Magazine I started at the Riverfront Times as a fresh out of college greenhorn. At twenty-four, I did have four years of working at a daily newspaper in my small hometown under my belt, but getting this job as an ad designer was almost a fluke.  My schooling didn't really prepare me for the new dawning computer age newspapers were growing into. One QuarkXPress design-a-magazine class and my ability to old-school paste-up the classifieds sealed the deal. I couldn't tell you if my new big boss, Ray Hartmann was in that initial meeting or not. It was my first big trip to the city and I was about to have a crash course in reality. Honestly, I didn't see Ray as much as many others did. But what I did get to glimpse of him showed me that he really cared about his employees. Many of our deadline days went long into the night. And when there were concerns about the safety of employees going to their cars, ...
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Maple Hollow and the Bird Sanctuary Dispute

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  Maple Hollow and the Bird Sanctuary Dispute A Gia and Faith Healing Mystery The rain drummed a steady, rhythmic beat against the tin roof of the potting shed, a sound far more soothing than the sharp chirp of a dying smoke alarm battery. Inside, the air smelled of damp earth, dried lavender, and the cedar shavings Gia Doyle used to line the nesting boxes for her neighbors' hens. Gia sat on a weathered wooden stool, her fingers tracing the edge of a vintage tea tin she’d repurposed for storing seeds. Outside the window, the Maple Hollow sky was a bruised purple, the kind of heavy atmosphere that usually signaled a sudden drop in temperature—the sort of weather that made your bones ache and your throat feel a bit scratchy. Across from her, Faith Waters was leaning against the potting bench, her eyes closed as she breathed in the scent of the rain. Faith had arrived twenty minutes ago, looking like she’d been through a metaphorical (and literal) storm, complaining about a "con...
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