Royal Rumble Meetup!

It may be awhile before I can get to new content. I just got a new job, and we are scrambling to finish the dining room renovations at Franceth Manor right now. I've had some requests for progress photos on the house, and I promise that as soon as we actually finish a whole room, I will do that.



This is a bit outside the bounds of my normal content, but as you may or may not know, we are big fans of "sports entertainment" at Franceth Manor, and we are super excited about the WWE Royal Rumble here in St Louis on Sunday night. On Saturday night, we'll be having a meetup at our very favorite bar, The Silver Ballroom. Our very favorite bartender and wrestling fan, Justin Deming, will be slinging drinks that evening. You can see his e-famous tattoo above, and if you click the picture it will take you to an interview he did with Black Sports Online. He's had a lot more work done since that picture was taken, so come out and visit us Saturday night starting at 7:30 pm!

Marvel Cave

I had at least two posts in mind for Silver Dollar City, but I stupidly left my camera back at the condo and had only my cell phone, no flash, in the dark. Oops. So here is one blurry photo of the halfway point of the descent into Marvel Cave. Halfway to the door, I should say. You can just make out the door right about dead center of the picture. Once inside, you have another couple hundred stairs to the bottom. LOTS AND LOTS OF STAIRS. Also a lot of tight spaces, so the whole one hour tour is like doing some sort of aerobics, with the bobbing and weaving and climbing stairs while hunched over.




I thought about saving this for a later trip, when I can get pictures, but I just love to share fun facts and can't save it until summer.

1. Marvel Cave, which is on the Silver Dollar City property and accessed through the Hospitality House, was originally called Marble Cave. Turns out all the "marble" was actually limestone.

2. In the early days as a show cave, you had to descend a 60' ladder and clamber down a huge pile of rocks, with a lit candle. To get out, you used pickaxes to climb back up to the ladder. Don't forget to hang onto the candle, because they don't give you extra matches!

3. Marvel Cave was THE original attraction in this area. It opened in 1894, and the Herschend family bought it in 1950. Silver Dollar City, a mining town themed amusement park, opened in 1960 and was built up around the entrance to the cave. People loved Silver Dollar City so much that it just grew and grew, to the point of, "Oh by the way, we also have a cave."

4. Did you ever hear that women's cosmetics, mascara in particular, contains bat guano? Our tour guide claimed this was made up by a Marvel Cave guide in the 1960s as an explanation for "batting" ones eyes. Fun story, but it's more likely that it's just common confusion. "Guano" sounds very much like "guanine", a color additive that IS used in mascara and is derived from fish scales. There is no poop in any cosmetics, ladies. Guano is/was, however, used in fertilizer and the manufacture of gunpowder.

5. If you're familiar with Missouri show caves, you can probably recite a lot of barn/billboard slogans like "See Jesse James' hideout!" and "60 degrees year round!" Did you know that the "year round" temperature of a cave is the average temperature for the region? We thought all caves are 60 degrees year round, but they're warmer in the south and colder in the north.

6. Which leads to the last factoid: We asked our tour guide if White nose syndrome has arrived at Marvel Cave yet, because they still have a large bat population that you might have to dodge in the summer months. She said there are no confirmed cases in Missouri so far, and that one current theory is that our caves are too warm for the fungus. Good news for the bats of Missouri!

I highly recommend checking out Marvel Cave if you go to Silver Dollar City and are up for a moderate physical challenge. It's a beautiful cave, and we'd never be able to do the waterfalls justice even if we'd had the expensive camera. Some things you really must see for yourself!

Scenes from Branson's 76 Country Blvd

Happy New Year! We spent the weekend in Branson doing silly things that don't make for very interesting/photogenic blogs. We had a blast, though! If you've never been to Branson, it is best described by our roommate, Roy, who called it "Las Vegas if it were run by Ned Flanders".















Yeah, for once I didn't take many pictures. We were scouting for a summer "golf trip", aka Putt Putt Tour of Branson, so there will be more to follow in 2012!

Cathedral Basilica of St Louis

Merry Christmas! I thought it would be fun to post this on Christmas, but I'm posting a little early in case you happen to be Catholic and want to check out the Cathedral for mass tonight or tomorrow. I didn't know until I started researching this that there are Cathedrals, and then there are Cathedral Basilicas, and that ours did not become a Basilica until Pope John Paul II's visit in 1997. In the Catholic sense (it also has an architectural meaning), Basilica means it's an important church that has had special rites performed by the Pope. Click on over to the Facebook page and see a picture of the Pope Chair from his 1997 visit!



I'm going to be using a lot of closeups to talk about the mosaic process, so I suggest checking out the virtual tour (particularly the Baldacchino, but there is a slideshow for each area I mention) on the Cathedral's website to see the full scale of the building. The mosaics cover 83,000 square feet, one of the largest collections of mosaic art in the world, and a real challenge to photograph on those domed ceilings.



Above and below are views of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Construction of the Cathedral Basilica (or as many St Louisans refer to it, the New Cathedral), began in 1907 under the leadership of Archbishop John Glennon. Installation of the mosaics began in 1912 and was not completed until 1988!



Much of the manufacture and installation work was performed by the Ravenna Mosaic Company of St Louis, which was a joint venture of the German mosaic designer Puhl-Wagner and the St Louis glass artist Emil Frei. Ravenna Mosaic is most well known for the Cathedral Basilica, but you can also see their work at Share Emeth Temple in University City, Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, IL, the Soldiers Memorial in Downtown St Louis, and the 7UP building in North County (St Louis). The history of the company is quite fascinating, and you can read more about it on St Louis University's website, The Ravenna Mosaic Company: A Retrospective.



Above and below are images from the Blessed Virgin's Chapel. This and the All Souls Chapel were designed and installed by Tiffany Studios. These mosaics are done in the Italian style, as opposed to the Byzantine style of the rest of the Cathedral.





Above and below, the All Saints Chapel, also designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.



In the basement is a mosaic museum that details the building of the Cathedral and the process of designing and installing mosaics. It begins with sketches and watercolors of the design, and sometimes a scale model. The artist then does a medium scale "cartoon" for the fabricator to work off of.



Each individual tile of a mosaic is called a tesserae. It took 41.5 million tesserae to create the mosaics of the Cathedral Basilica, in over 7,000 shades of color. The mosaic fabricator selects each piece individually, sometimes using a mallet and chisel to get the shape exactly right.



The mosaics are mounted on paper, face down and backwards, and intricate drawings detail the exact placement of each sheet for the installers. It looks kind of like paint-by-number, if no color was used twice and the numbers went into the hundreds. As you may already know, I work in the flooring industry and am familiar with face-mounted mosaic tile, but this absolutely blew my mind. I've never encountered a tile job that approaches even a fraction of the scope here.



I like this one above because you can really get a feel for what they mean when they say there are 7,000 colors of tesserae. Look how many shades of gold are in that one mosaic.



The All Souls Chapel (above) doesn't have a ton of mosaic work, but is worth mentioning because it's positioned over the basement crypt of Cardinal Glennon, Cardinal Ritter, Cardinal Carberry, and Archbishop May. The style is Viennese Reconstruction and uses black marble to symbolize death and white marble to symbolize resurrection. The hats of the Cardinals hang in this chapel above their burial places.



One last item of note is that the Cathedral Basilica has a bronze replica of Michelangelo's Pieta on display for a limited time. It is located at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. This is one of twelve bronzes cast by Fernando Marinell from a mold of the original marble statue, and one of two currently on display in North America.



The Cathedral Basilica is located at 4431 Maryland. Admission to the Mosaic Museum is by donation. Mass times, tour times, and operating hours can be found on the website. If you do not schedule an official tour, I recommend calling ahead to make sure there is not a wedding that day.

Return to Caffe Carnevale

I tried to post this "live" but the Blogger app failed on me and has been "publishing" for 2 hours. I told Francis when we were walking in that I felt terrible that we hadn't been to Caffe Carnevale in a very long time, because the hot dogs are the best and the service is even better. While we were waiting for our dogs, Gary said, "Aren't you the girl that does the blog?" D'OH.



So a shout out for Gary today! Thank you for the gift bags and brownies, and two thumbs up for the Asian dog. Peanut sauce on a hot dog is sheer genius. Caffe Carnevale will be closed for the holidays, but you can find them at 4904 Devonshire on January 2.