This is Joan. Yay, I get to be helpful.

Today we left Judy’s at around 9:30 and went to the Illusion Museum. BUT, I wanted to go to the store  known as IKEA! But, no.

From the Illusion Museum:

Next, we went to Crown Candy. G-pa got a tuna sandwich, grandma got an egg salad sandwich, and I got a grilled cheese. And ice cream.

Now the phone goes back to G-pa. He was my spelling editor.

The Museum of Illusion, at the St. Louis Foundry, like the City Museum, is great for a 10 11/12 year old. Crown Candy in North St. Louis has been around for 113 years. Their ice cream is top notch, they have a variety of candies, and their lunch menu is nothing to write home about.

From Crown, we continued north to Bellefontaine Cemetery, a 314 acre cemetery at its 175th birthday with over 87,000 graves. It is easy to get lost in Bellefontaine, as we proved today, trying to find the exit. A lot of famous people here. We found Adolphus Busch (Anheuser is somewhere here as well) and William S. Burroughs.

Then, on to the art museum

I showed Joan the Anselm Kiefers in the main lobby, but we spent the most time with Impressionists and their contemporaries. Joan was her thoughtful self.

For example, she noted that Matisse painted three women looking at a turtle, and noted that one pet, one looked at it, and one was afraid of it. Different reactions to the same object.

She was also interested in Max Beckmann’s portrayal of New York City nightlife, analyzing every character and their roles.

And she was very hesitant to praise Adolph Ivon’s Genius of America (1867), which she didn’t think portrayed the unified America it was supposed to.

She thought the Blacks were portrayed in darkness and being patronized while the Whites were beung welcomed with open arms.

After that came the discovery that the world renowned 16,000 animal St. Louis zoo has only stingrays and flamingos. But that is too long of a story to tell now.