Michael was not afraid to discuss politics and religion when we met. In fact, he even told me how his family reacted when he told them he was atheist. He admitted,“I am disease-level open book. Probably to a fault sometimes. But I think it’s paid off for the most part. I think, uh… everybody could deal with a dose of radical honesty. Um… you know to really kind of… I just feel like it’s the best thing for people. Pour it out, let everything else get sorted out.” Let the pouring and sorting begin.

I sank into the cushions of a large couch at Foam (on Cherokee) with some type of delicious lemon drink, while Michael sat across from me with a coffee. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he is one of the original founders of The Able Few, a digital shop that builds web apps and web software. They began in 2001 doing only interactive design and now boast a social media monitoring software that they custom built for a hollywood studio to track and predict a movie’s success. According to him, the company’s focus is “building weird things”.

Working at an advertising agency built the foundation for The Able Few but, “that world kind of jaded me and turned me into a different person”. During his time at the ad agency, he began desperately seeking meaning in his work… to no avail.  “It’s an interesting industry. I mean you know, especially advertising, the nicest people you’ll ever meet, the hardest-working people you’ll ever meet, the most creative and smartest people you’ll ever meet and they’re all working towards a goal that they hate. You try to convince yourself and sell to yourself that things you’re doing are actually meaningful and that they help make people’s lives better. At the end of the day you realize you’re nothing more than you know, moving the bottom line.”

St. Louis is on the cusp of a Renaissance and Michael is excited. The best part is the energy and the feeling that everything that’s happening is not where it can be, yet. He told me that everywhere you point, whether it’s physical location or a sector, something awesome is right around the corner. But the hard part for him is when people are indifferent about this growth and positive change. That led me to ask, is this same entrepreneurial spirit, civic pride, and growth happening in other cities? Despite friends in numerous cities across the U.S. and extensive travels, Michael said he has not seen this combination anywhere else.

The Washington Post issued a retraction about St. Louis because of Michael. A recent interactive map ranked cities on a scale of 1-6 for how “world class” they are. When he found it on Facebook, Michael already knew what he would see. His suspicions were confirmed when he zoomed in on St. Louis and saw that the city was divided into two municipalities and ranked very low. What was even more frustrating to him, was that cities like Tulsa ranked relatively high. So, like any of us would (not) do, he called the author and after a 30 minute discussion, was told the map would be re-done showing St. Louis as one municipality with a higher “world class” ranking. Chalk one up for Michael and STL! “I walked away that day really proud. I felt like I had championed something really great for St. Louis. It’s a small drop in the bucket, but you know, just like anything, it’s...it’s… every avalanche starts with one snowflake.”

After discussing politics, we dove right into religion. I’ll be blunt like he was. He’s atheist. Well… agnostic, really, and his family did not take that well when they found out via Facebook. Michael had always had a “healthy skepticism”, but one day he heard or read something that made him stop disregarding that doubt. “If God wanted me to believe in him, he is the only person or only thing that would know exactly what it would take for me to believe in him, yet he holds it away. He doesn’t want me to see it.” So, despite the wedge this has created between some of his friends and family, Michael feels like they are closer now to his true self, so it’s a “net gain”.

Because he considers himself a serial networker, he said he was very happy to find my blog on Facebook. “I got excited because I absolutely love people. I’m addicted to people. I have to get new people in my life constantly. It’s actually become a bit of a challenge to go places where I don’t see people I know.”

This fascination with people can be traced back to the black girl he dated in middle school. He was reprimanded and told that there were biblical reasons that you shouldn’t mix black and white. That didn’t fly with Michael. He told me that spawned a love of PEOPLE and everything they have to offer.

Two documentaries, Baraka and Sansara, should be required videos for everyone in their formative years, according to Michael. His children watched them at a young age, because these films plant the seeds about us being one human family and not drawing lines about who we are and how we’re supposed to act. “I’m kind of quite the humanist.”

Michael had long since finished his coffee when I asked what he likes best about our city. Considering his love of people, it’s fitting that this was his answer. “The people. St. Louisans are the best mix of cultured and blue collared… its just got a unique blend. It doesn’t feel midwestern, it doesn’t feel like Kansas City. You have people who really do care about things and who are passionate about things and they’re not pretentious. Here people are very approachable, you can talk to strangers. It’s big enough to have, you know, lots of things going on, but also small enough that you don‘t feel lost. You know?” Ok, so REALLY, the people are his second favorite thing. His favorite is actually Imo’s.


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Cody was the guy in the back of the college classroom who was working on his laptop and doing everything except pay attention. He became disillusioned with college right before graduation when a professor answered his question with, “It’s not my job to explain how to apply this. I’m here to teach you the material.”

We met at the Washington Post on a cold evening after work, where we ordered a coffee and a smoothie and began discussing how Cody ended up where he is now. It really began with his interest in marketing. When he enrolled at SIUE, however, he was told he had to complete a calculus requirement to get a business degree. Nope, not an option for Cody. Determined to avoid this at all costs, he received a psychology degree and minored in business administration, instead.

It was in one of these classes that he received the answer that set him on his current course, with Enstitute. “The more and more I got deeper into the application process [with Enstitute], the more I started to not care about grad school stuff. It was really sketchy at first because they were trying to get Enstitute off the ground. It was like it’s own startup, I guess. It ended up being great!” Enstitute is an alternative education program that places individuals in apprenticeships with entrepreneurs. When Cody joined it was just launching in Manhattan, but now the company is expanding from New York to St. Louis.

Initially Cody was placed with Holstee, a company that creates art that encourages mindful living. Their most famous piece to date is called the Holstee Manifesto. As a bitter New York winter approached, the founders of Holstee decided they wanted to work from a warmer locale, so they flew themselves and Cody to Oaxaca, Mexico where they worked for a month.

Once his apprenticeship was completed, 6 months later, Cody found himself placed with another company through Enstitute. This company, called PageFair, is based in Dublin, Ireland and measures how much it costs companies when visitors to their site block ads and then shares that information with site visitors. Cody was writing the blogs and later took over the company’s social media. Even after his return to St. Louis, the company retained him as their content creator.

“Yea, it's been quite the year and a half,” Cody mused. In fact, at one point he flew from Dublin to New York to Las Vegas within approximately 24 hours. When he arrived in Vegas for a conference, they began celebrating Cody’s birthday and for awhile he was so disoriented he had no idea what day it was (the alcohol probably didn’t help).

The reason Enstitute has chosen St. Louis for their second program is not a coincidence. It’s thanks in large part to Cody. Last summer, as he was leaving for New York, Cody googled St. Louis startups and didn’t come across much. When he came back from his adventures he was shocked at everything that had sprouted up. He pitched St. Louis to Enstitute and after a successful scouting trip, they agreed.

Currently Cody is back in his hometown of Bethalto, Illinois and working out of the T-Rex space downtown. He has his hands full as he continues to handle content for PageFair, the launch of Enstitute in St. Louis, and the planning of small networking events. The ultimate goal of all this, is to someday start his own company. Looking back, he realizes that even as a kid he’s been developing unique, entrepreneurial solutions to problems. In fact, he even wrote a clever blog about it called ‘Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me I Wanted to Be an Entrepreneur?’. But it isn’t easy to come up with a really unique idea. "If I could just get that childlike inspiration, you know, again. Maybe I could... maybe I'm just not faced with the right problem. I don't know."

Cody’s favorite thing about Stl? "I love that it's not Manhattan." Although he loved the excitement and activity in New York, it was too chaotic. For now, he’s loving St. Louis, but it’s probably not the final stop. Ideally, he’ll end up in Boulder, Colorado.

We walked together as we left and headed back to our respective offices. I provided Cody a summary of what I’d learned about him. "Crazy 24 year old who's started several blogs, worked for a few startups, flown all over the country for work..." he finished the thought, "Trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up.” We laughed.

“Woooaaaahhh…” is Kate’s favorite expression. In this one word she can convey surprise and understanding. She even uses it to effectively punctuate her stories and sentences.

We met at the Gelateria Del Leone on South Grand, after she heard about my blog from Joanna (Coffee #51). Things were off to a good start when I managed to parallel park in an incredibly tight spot. Inside, Kate was already seated and working diligently over her sketch pad. Once we exchanged the usual pleasantries, Kate told me that she grew up in Maryland Heights, lived in a volunteer house in the inner-city (aka “shadytown USA”) and now lives near Tower Grove in the same building as her mom and brother.

After living in her apartment in Tower Grove for awhile, Kate’s landlord approached her. He was moving out and wanted her to be the landlady in exchange for a pretty nice discount. Why not? While it can occasionally be hectic, for the most part she enjoys it because, “There’s definitely a lot of stories and people are crazy!”

Her brother moved into the same building when he came home from a volunteer trip in El Salvador and not long after, her mom joined them. “It sounds like some sort of Wes Anderson movie and I don’t know which character I am. Which kind of gives me stress.” It doesn’t help that she says her family is a weird magnet. If anything strange is happening within 50 feet, it’s bound to find them.

For example, there’s the friendly neighbor who gets his newspaper without wearing any underwear… just a shirt that’s a bit long. Shortly after witnessing this for the first time, Kate came home to a stranger named Benny in the backyard. He told her with a wink, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m friends with No Underwear’s mom.” Later that week, No Underwear’s mom told Kate in a very strong Jersey accent, “Benny would like yah numbah.” Kate answered, “What do you mean? Like, for a book club?” She laughed as she told me the story and her inner monologue as this was happening. “I am soooo taken right now.”

Kate loves drawing naked people, which she says “everyone’s all curious about.” It began when she took a figure drawing class at Webster University, but she really became interested after volunteering in India for a year. In Indian culture, showing arms or legs is considered very provocative (however showing the midriff is not). After experiencing this for a year and returning to America, it was eye opening for her that everything here is about sex. “When you come back you’re like…. WHEW! She just did that to him to sell some floss?!” Now, for her, figure drawing is a way to present the human body in a way that isn’t meant to be erotic or make you feel any certain way.

Drawing began at a young age for Kate, when she grabbed the crayons from her brother and began coloring inside the lines. When I asked if it was a hobby, she flinched. “Drawing’s kind of a strange thing in that… I mean, it’s definitely, it rides like such a strange line between... if you tell people you’re a painter, they’re like ‘Oh, you’re an artist. You’re a painter.’ Nowadays when you tell people that you draw, they’re like ‘You mean like cartoons or animation?’”

While figure drawing is her favorite, Kate also loves to do commissioned work. I confessed that I wasn’t sure how to go about approaching someone to do a commission for me, but that I would love to. She nodded and said she experiences that fairly often. In fact, she has considered creating a handbook for people on how to ask. Apparently it’s sometimes hard for her to do this type of work however, because it typically ends up being so personalized and special that it feels more like it should be a gift.

When she was in 5th grade, Kate’s mom would bring her to volunteer at a soup kitchen. It changed her life and got her very involved in social justice. One day a few years ago she attended the church next door and heard a gospel choir practicing. So, despite the fact that she can only “fool someone into thinking she’s not tone deaf” she asked when they held auditions. The answer was, “Aw baby girl, we don’t do auditions. You just come and you sing.” And so she has. During rehearsal, when Kate misses a few notes, they are very kind about how they let her know. “Baby girl, you are singing some good notes. But they are not the same good notes we are singing.”

The interest in singing also came about during her time living in India. In the spring of her senior year, Kate signed up through a small French volunteer organization to travel to El Salvador. One month before she was scheduled to leave, the organization contacted her and said they had made a mistake, the volunteer home in El Salvador was full. But there was always India! “I won the volunteer jackpot,” she said as she began reminiscing about the mango farm she lived on for a year. This farm was a refuge for people who didn’t fit anywhere else in society. People with down syndrome, schizophrenia, AIDS and even 11 kids whose families couldn’t afford to take care of them, lived here.

Kate occasionally helped with the mangoes, but for the most part she helped a girl who was a year older than her. The girl had been diagnosed with polio at the age of 4, was orphaned at 6, and then bounced around different orphanages from then on. Kate’s job was to make sure she felt at home AND she led the singing of the morning hymns pretty consistently, too!

It was growing dark outside when I finally asked Kate her favorite thing about St. Louis. It was a hard question for her to answer. Not because she doesn’t enjoy living here, but because there are certain things that it’s difficult for her to look past. “Everyone in the suburbs is like terrified of the city. You know what I mean? Like, ah the city! So growing up I was like, I’m never gonna live in St. Louis when I get older. Like gosh, like even if I live in Detroit, I have to get out of St. Louis. And what I love is like living in the city is like… it’s so different from what I thought it was growing up. And I don’t like that it’s those two separate worlds, like St. Louis really is two separate cities, to be honest. The suburbs is a totally different thing. My favorite thing is like, living here and discovering what the city is. I feel like St. Louis has such a weird, people talk to you kind of thing, you know what I mean?” I think we all know what Kate means.


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Jim and I don’t really enjoy coffee. We began our meeting with a smoothie (in this weather! brr) and a hot chocolate. The giant windows facing Washington Avenue kept the Post slightly brisk as we began discussing our mutual distaste for coffee and our desire to eat sugar and carbs all the time. “It’s too bad that the things that really taste great aren’t always the things that are best for us. You know, if we were built so that we only liked the things that tasted good, it would be great! You know? I’d be eating cream puffs and donuts all day.”

After we bonded over our love of food that is bad for us, Jim told me that he’s lived a long time, relatively speaking, and done a lot of things. He has had five or six different careers including blacksmithing and working for a telecommunications startup that was acquired in four years for about 3 billion dollars. Pretty dramatic.

Startups are in Jim’s blood. He was involved with a couple other small companies as CEO and investor and helped with an incubator around 2004. Finally, in 2008 Jim got involved with iTen (which stands for Information Technology Entrepreneur Network), a non-profit that coaches fledgling companies to help them get their first investment. Jim is incredibly passionate about his work and what is happening here in St. Louis. “There’s a lot of great stuff going on and it’s starting to change the culture of St. Louis. And really that’s the long-term goal, to change St. Louis from a stodgy big corporate town, to a town that is really attractive to young people. Not just young in terms of physical age, but in terms of spirit and inspiration.” He says the goal is also to get people involved who want to change the world instead of getting a job that’s safe.

iTen’s mission is to work with startup companies and help them advance as quickly as possible. This is done by building an ecosystem around startups including investors, lawyers, accountants, etc. who want to get involved in some way. iTen is a non-profit, so the startups who utilize Jim’s experience and connections, don’t pay anything.

Jim and I agreed that America is turning a corner where it is becoming cool to be a nerd, and that’s probably necessary. Many of these young companies need people who are good at engineering and math. Even so, Jim says we still need a long-term solution for the deficit of talented mathematical minds. That, he says, is where America fails. “Even corporations are all about ‘how did we perform this quarter’ and they sacrifice the long-term to get that big bonus.”

Getting more specific, Jim explained that there are three specific areas that St. Louisans need to improve before the city can see real change and growth:

• more open discussion of race relations
  
  
• more interest in the performance and welfare of our public schools
  
  
• a less provincial mentality
  
  

The first time Jim lived in St. Louis was during high school and he remembers that many times when he would pick a girl up for a date, her father wouldn’t allow him to go anywhere past Skinker. This, he believes, is because issues with race relations aren’t addressed here. In DC and Atlanta (cities that he says have a similar racial balance as here) people are open and discuss racial problems. But, he says, when St. Louis discusses extending the Metrolink to the county we encounter the “we don’t know what kind of element that’s going to bring” barrier. Jim scoffed. “You know what they mean.”

The next challenge, he told me, was to overcome the quality of our public schools. Jim is full of useful statistics, so he explained that after Boston, we have the second highest number of parochial schools. While this is a big plus in many ways, most families move to the county when they begin having kids and don’t care about the quality of the public schools. This is a problem because we won’t have families moving into the city until this is resolved.

What makes a city cool? According to one study, the percentage of non-poor who use public transit is a key factor. Another indicator is the percentage of people who have been outside of the United States. Jim told me that St. Louis has a very provincial mentality and ranked very low in both of these areas… but he thinks that’s changing.

You would never guess from Jim’s passion for all things St. Louis that he wasn’t raised here. Born in Boston, he moved from Tennessee to Ohio to Missouri and then back to Massachusetts for college. He thought he wanted to be an astronomer and ended up with a degree in psychology and literature instead. Once he finished, he wasn't immediately concerned with a job. Priority numero uno? Travel.

“I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the world. All kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with, you know, making money." So, he and two of his college buds saved up money, flew to Europe and rented a car in Germany. After driving around for a few months, they split up in Dharamsala, India and Jim continued on to Japan alone where he soon ran out of money. To me, that’s a big deal. To Jim, it was just an obstacle to surmount. He met a guy who ran a shipping company and ended up getting a job on a freighter that was headed to the U.S. When he got home he had $300 in his pocket, which he explained was a bigger deal then than it is now.

The story doesn’t end there. When he got back he hitchhiked to St. Louis and two guys picked him up. They told him they had to pick up something at a friends house and drove him to a deserted part of San Francisco. Then the passenger turned around and stuck a gun in Jim’s stomach. They took the $300 he had earned working on the freighter and threatened to kill him if they found any more money in his bag. Jim forgot about the traveler’s check at the bottom of his bag, but he is still alive today because they didn’t find it.

“So anyway, that’s the worst thing that ever happened to me in a year of traveling around the world. I even lost my passport in a cab in Bangkok and somehow remembered the number of the cab and the next day they brought my passport back. That’s the thing. I mean, Americans tend to think that, you know, the world is all scary out there. You know, we’re here down safe in America and all that bad stuff’s happening out there. People are wonderful everywhere.” An amazingly positive perspective from the guy who was held at gunpoint.

Jim has been to former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran (before the ayatollah), Nepal, Luxembourg, England, India, and all over the U.S., but Japan was his favorite. I told Jim how much I enjoy traveling solo and he agreed. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re on your edge. You’re putting yourself at the mercy of a culture you don’t understand. Everybody’s got limits, but you know, the wider you can be I think the better off you are and the more understanding you can be and more open-hearted you can be. Once you’ve been outside the country and looked back with a different perspective... things look very different.”


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Hospitals don’t have body parts laying in a cold room somewhere to be used when they need them for surgeries. An order has to be placed from a company that Joanna briefly worked for.While that was the most shocking thing she told me, there was a lot more to her.

We slipped into one of the worn booths at Washington Post, with the barista/shopkeep greeting customers by name and slipping treats to any dogs that came in. I immediately asked Joanna, who is receiving her Masters of Fine Arts at SIUE, if she had designed the beautiful tattoos that were visible through her cold weather gear. She did, in fact, design much of her “promotional material”, as she calls it. Two stuck out to me. The first, an incredibly intricate design that whirled all over her arm, is based on a painting by James Jean. “He does a lot of like, kind of, not necessarily abstract, but sort of surrealist imagery. A lot of high color and things are really… it’s just like beautiful painting.” The second was the french word for ephemeral tattooed on her wrist, her “tribute so to speak” to her undergraduate degree in French.

The degree that Joanna is currently pursuing is drawing, which she tells me is relatively rare. Most art majors go for a masters in painting, an interactive degree or do something interdisciplinary. “Honestly, it’s just something that I’ve always done. It’s like that one thing that clicks.”

I have always felt at a loss when it comes to art. I know what I like and what I don’t, but that’s about as far as it goes. And create artwork? Forget about it! I’m clueless! But, Joanna explained that I may actually know more than I think. “Everybody knows something about art, because it’s essentially like communication, you know? You take what’s important to you and you choose to communicate it with whatever material.”

While in Austria, I had visited an Egon Schiele exhibit with my family without knowing much about him or his art. When I mentioned this to Joanna, she told me he was one of her favorite artists and explained that he was part of the Die Bruecke movement in German Expressionism. Die Bruecke (German for ‘The Bridge’) was about angst, while it’s counterpart Die Blaue Reiter (German for ‘The Blue Rider’) was about spirituality. When I told her how my dad had to leave the exhibit because he had such an overwhelming negative reaction, she told me the color palette and strokes in Die Bruecke can make you queasy.

Joanna studied to be a massage therapist for awhile, but it was very difficult for her because it’s more than just a physical connection that you share with someone, “it’s energetic, something that lingers.” When I asked her to elaborate she mused that artists and massage therapists are more intuitive. “It’s an inclination to be open to things… and sometimes that means being open to negative things.”

Born in Virginia, Joanna moved to St. Louis with her family when she was only three, but she has never felt like she was from here. When I asked why, she thought for a moment. “People are kind of homogenous, maybe? I don’t know. Like the Midwest, like people are really friendly, but I miss… I guess I don’t really miss because I never had too much of it, but I really always liked diversity and being around different kinds of people. And I guess that’s something that the Midwest isn’t known for.”

Would you like your muscle tissue freeze dried or frozen? For seven months Joanna worked at a company that specialized in harvesting (what a gross word to use in this context, but I’m not sure what else to use) muscle tissue and skin from donors and sending it to hospitals who ordered it. With no windows and a morgue nearby it sounds a bit creepy, but she brought up a good point. “It’s like something that you can feel good about doing, because you’re helping people get these things they need to like live or like walk.”

Despite not feeling as though she’s from St. Louis, Joanna’s favorite thing about the city is, “Probably the amount of free things we have to do here. There are a lot of really awesome free things, like all of the art museums, we have the zoo, even though I don’t go to the zoo that often.”

NOTE: I regret how my meeting with Joanna transpired. She is one of those rare individuals who is completely genuine. If she asks you a question, you can be sure it is because she wants to know. With that being said, I rambled, interrupted, and talked loudly during our entire meeting, never really getting to the heart of Joanna’s story. So, I apologize to her and to my readers.


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One of the most critical points in Corinne’s life was when she saw her 4th grade teacher drinking a Diet Coke during class. That was it. That was the moment she knew she wanted to be a teacher.

We met at Starbucks on a chilly day in October and each ordered a tea to keep warm. While the coffee grinders whirred in the background we discussed her experience being a student teacher in the Kirkwood school district during the transfer of students from unaccredited districts. “It’s been really tough. There’s been some crying.”

The day we met had been a particularly rough day for her. She is teaching full days with 21 first graders and with the new transfers, it was difficult. One student in particular was a challenge. His parents had not sent him to school before, so this was his first time in a structured learning environment and there were some behavior issues. Because this is Corinne’s first time teaching in a classroom, she hasn’t developed behavior management techniques, yet. The support of the lead teacher has really helped her learn how to manage the classroom and students who need more attention. “It’s been nice to have her supporting me and giving me all of these tips and suggestions.”

I was surprised to learn that there is no maximum number of students per classroom. With the transfer of students from Normandy and Riverview Gardens, Kirkwood class sizes have gone up. After having experienced all of this, Corinne says she’s realized how challenging this job is. But, despite these challenges, Corinne hasn’t changed her mind about teaching.

You have to be pretty dedicated to encounter some of the things Corinne has and still want to continue, so I asked her why she wanted to teach. “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I’ve never really thought of doing anything else.” Well… there was the time she saw her teacher drink a Diet Coke, that MAY have sealed the deal, she remarked with a laugh.

Corinne just loves kids. She used to do quite a bit of babysitting because she enjoys how funny they are and she feels like she can really connect with them. “I guess I have an immature sense of humor!” For awhile she worked at a summer camp for children with cerebral palsy and found it inspiring.

Originally, Corinne was studying education at Murray State in Kentucky, but she was very unhappy. She transferred to Webster University, and has enjoyed being much closer to home. But… she’s heading to South Korea soon to teach English there. Before I could even tell her that South Korea is much farther than Kentucky, she told me, “I like the comfort zone but I guess I also like to get out of it when I can.”

As you may know if you have read my blog before, I am a BIG fan of traveling and could talk about it for hours. So, of course, as soon as Corinne mentioned her trip, I told her about a friend of mine from Ireland who I met in Austria who is now teaching in Malaysia. She nodded and told me that kind of story was the reason she wanted to live abroad for a year, so she can be a bigger part of the global community. “I would love to just have friends all over the world. My view of the world is so miniscule and I need to have those experiences to be a better person and teacher, just in general.”

What can we expect from Corinne when she returns? Even she’s not sure. “If I could just camp and backpack all the time that would just be the ideal thing.” The great thing about an education degree is the flexibility, and Corinne hopes to take advantage of that and potentially work at a national park as an educator.

Speaking of which, Corinne has done a fair amount of hiking and has several places she recommends: The Ozark Trail, Onondaga Cave State Park, Castlewood State Park, Cathedral Cave, and The Irish Wilderness. (PS, Missouri was named Best Trails State in 2013. Just sayin’.)

Before we left, I had to ask Corinne about her very distinct German last name. She told me it means ash woodcutter. How interesting! For me, it conjures up images of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. She had never thought of it that way before.

As we were taking the last sips of our tea and Starbucks was growing empty, I asked what her favorite thing is about St. Louis. “It’s a big town that feels like small town. Just that, everywhere you go you’re probably going to see someone you know.” True that, Corinne.


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Danielle is an aesthete and a cat lady to the bone. Don’t take that the wrong way, I’m a cat lady, too. As the sun was going down we took a seat at the Webster Groves Starbucks and I quickly came to the conclusion that Danielle and I are pretty much the same person. We grew up in towns only 15 minutes away from each other, we both went to Webster University and studied music for two years, we both changed our degrees to be business related, we knew some of the same people and we both have two cats.

After becoming fast friends, I asked her how she became so interested in music. “It was kind of a weird beginning…” She first began by playing piano when she was 7 but really wanted to play in a youth orchestra. So when her parents and school band teacher asked her to pick up the oboe she acquiesced on the condition that she also be allowed to join an orchestra. They agreed, meaning that every week Danielle took both piano and oboe lessons and had youth orchestra rehearsals.

According to her, she was “obsessed with music as a child”, but I don’t think the obsession stopped at childhood. Recently, banjo lessons, english horn lessons and voice lessons gave her the flexibility to play bluegrass, jazz or classical music. While her favorite is still classical, she says, “I just like having eclectic ability.” Eclectic indeed. While she does listen to almost anything, she loves Shostakovich.

If Danielle could have her way, she may have been a musicologist, but how practical is a degree in 20th century music? So, she got a degree in management and now has a great full time job at a local art organization, instead.

Now that she is around art everyday, Danielle finds herself becoming obsessed, most notably with a new on-site installation at the Art Museum called ‘Stone Sea’ by Andy Goldsworthy, her favorite work of art. She was poised on the edge of her chair as she excitedly described it to me. "It's actually outside and it's between the old building and the new building and it's a series of these giant arches made from these chunks of limestone. It's really really beautiful. What I like about it is you can see it from so many different places in the museum, cuz it looks cool from the top but then you can walk along side of it and look at it from the windows too and get a totally different view. It's really pretty! Whenever you're walking next to it, it's kind of an incline up and it feels like waves almost."

I recently finished a book by Steve Martin, called ‘An Object of Beauty’ that I recommended to Danielle. We discussed having paper books as opposed to e-readers and I told her that inevitably all of my conversations turn to literature in some form. That was when the idea for ‘Free Books with Aubrey’ came about. I’m going to have to consider it! Some of her favorite books are those that connect art and science, including one of my favorite authors, Oliver Sacks.

Our mutual excitement over the resurgence happening in St. Louis became clear shortly after we began talking. At my behest, she began reading articles on Techli about the start-up community. After we chatted about where her future may take her, I recommended that she just stay here and work for one of the new tech companies. Fingers crossed that we can keep her in STL!

For the present however, Danielle is here and living with her roommate and their cats Miko and Gigi. Her cat (Miko) is “kind of an asshole to be honest”. She warned me that if I ever meet him to stay away because he will most assuredly bite me. The other cat belongs to her roommate and they like to pretend that Miko and Gigi are dating. I told her that wasn’t weird, my sister and I used to make our cats get married when we were kids.

Once you start talking about cats, you risk looking like a crazy cat lady, so we changed the subject to her favorite thing about St. Louis. “Oh my gosh, it’s such a tough question. I guess that there’s just so many opportunities to get involved with so many different things, be it tech things or art things and no matter where you go everyone is just so friendly and open and inviting. It’s just, it’s a really nice big cozy home, with just, lot’s of lovely people. That summarizes it nicely.”


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Discussing finances, more specifically financial difficulty, is something we usually reserve for our closest family and friends. Kathryn is very open about the problems her family experienced because she believes in educating people on how to avoid common mistakes or get through the results of past mistakes. After all, she says ¼ of American’s credit scores are below 600, meaning they can’t purchase a home or a car.

We met at the Starbucks in Webster Groves one evening and within an hour Kathryn saw three people she knew. That speaks volumes about her personality and likeability. After she said her hellos, and we had settled in with our warm drinks, we began to talk about how she found herself in her current job.

“It was traumatizing and totally scary because we were never taught what to do,” Kathryn began, explaining how her husband lost his job four months after they were married. He had been doing high-end installation of TV’s, internet, alarms, etc., but because he was working with low voltage equipment he was not a certified electrician. His company decided to replace him with someone who was certified.

It was only a few months that he was out of work, but it doesn’t take long for money to become a problem. To complicate matters, Kathryn had signed up for numerous credit cards when she went away to college. “I show up on college campus at 18 years old and there’s the Capital One booth and they’ll give me a free t-shirt if I fill out this thing and I was like ‘sure, I want a free t-shirt’, you know?” she laughs. Without a savings account and with only Kathryn’s part-time job to sustain them they accrued substantial debt and a credit score that was “embarrassingly low”.

Working for a financial services company was a no-brainer for her after she finished college. Her education degree fit perfectly with her new role at Financial Education Services, teaching people about their finances and credit.

Kathryn found this job after she worked with the company to improve her credit score by 100 points. She and her husband have also been able to save some money and are close to being able to buy a house for themselves and their two boys, Isaiah and Joel. “I’m really passionate about it. It’s been really fun to work with this company and be able to help others, because it has been crappy. This economy has hurt a lot of people.”

Speaking of children, Kathryn’s sons are two and four and according to her… “both boys are totally nuts. They are crazy. They are absolutely crazy!” The stories she told me seem to back up that statement, including the time Joel accidentally stabbed her in the cornea while trying to tickle her.

Kathryn had to get to her small bible group meeting, so as we finished up our drinks I asked her a few more questions, like tips on how to improve credit scores. Here are two:

• make sure it’s actually your own information (sometimes similar names get confused)
  
  
• you can dispute late payments. they have 30 days to prove you actually paid late and if they don’t/can’t, they have to take that off your score
  
  

Finally, I asked the question that has become a refrain throughout this blog. Kathryn’s favorite thing about St. Louis is...“The zoo! My kids have really made me fall in love with the zoo again. I grew up loving it and kind of walked away. Middle school, high school I wasn’t really into it anymore. As soon as I had kids, man, I’m like… I don’t know. I take it for granted. I really really love going. It’s so easy to be entertained for free.”

As we gathered our things and headed for the door, Kathryn told me, “My life is nowhere near how I had imagined it would be and I wouldn’t change anything about it.” 


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(P.S. #48 is correct. I wrote #47 prematurely because Mike had an event he wanted me to write about. If you would like to read about him, here you go.)

Jaime and I met at Foundation Grounds in Maplewood, after Kai (Coffee #33) told her about my blog. We sipped coffee and chai tea, while discussing her family and the evolution of her business, AmberSky.

Growing up in Garden City, Kansas wasn’t very exciting for Jaime, so as soon as she turned 18, she moved to Colorado. “I was like, I’m out!” After Colorado came Alaska and finally in 2005 she moved to St. Louis for an internship with the World Bird Sanctuary.

Only a few months after moving here she went rock climbing at Upper Limits. Little did she know that decision would lead to her staying in St. Louis indefinitely. While there, she met a guy and “pretty much the rest is history!”

Almost. Life doesn’t usually take us in the direction we predict for ourselves and neither has Jaime’s. After graduating college in 2011 with her teaching certificate, she was prepared to teach middle school science. But once she had her son, plans changed. “I thought ‘I can do this, I can put him in daycare’, but I have a soft heart.”

I recently read an article about how it can be challenging for women to begin a career again if they have been out of the work force for awhile. Because technology is changing so rapidly, skill sets are difficult to maintain. With this in mind, Jaime began working at Cotton Babies, the worlds #1 retailer of cloth diapers, based right here in St. Louis. Until her son was able to walk, she brought him into work with her, but after he began pulling things off shelves, it was time for a change.

That is how AmberSky was born. Jaime had grown to love photography over the years and had begun doing shoots out of her home, so this was the perfect time to start a studio. DON’T peg this as just another photography studio, yet. She told me that AmberSky also has a lactation consultant for new moms, a doulah, a play area for kids and even a boutique that sells items for preemies.

Because Jaime’s son was born healthy (although she did endure 13 hours of labor and the umbilical cord was cutting off his oxygen), I wondered why she decided to sell clothing for preemies. Apparently, many parents who deal with premature birth are forced to purchase clothing at Build-a-Bear because there are no stores that sell clothing small enough. The regulations surrounding the dyes and chemicals used are much less stringent in doll clothing than in baby clothing. Jaime looked mournful as she told me that formaldehyde is commonly used. “It’s just heartbreaking.”

As we concluded our coffee chat, I asked Jaime to tell me her favorite thing about St. Louis. Her answer lines up with what you’ve heard in my blogs before and what we pride ourselves on in the Lou. “I would say… probably the community. Especially with having a son, it’s opened a whole new world of all the moms that are out there and they are just so supportive and it’s just a wonderful community.”


I have met some wonderful St. Louisans, but I’m not even close to being finished. Sign-up!

There are only 1,516 people who live in Bismarck, Missouri and Lindsey was one of them until recently. Growing up in the country gave her access to experiences that she feels lucky to have, including harvesting and refining sorghum, four-wheeling, riding horses, and canning fresh vegetables from her family’s garden.

Lindsey and I met at Hartford Coffee Company after she heard about my website from Coffee #38 and #39. We talked for almost two hours about her job at The Covering House, her mission work in Jamaica and growing up in southern Missouri.

Before moving to St. Louis, Lindsey finished school in Springfield where she was working at a psych hospital and a church, and then moved to St. James for a job. She made a risky decision to quit that job without having another lined up, because the position was incredibly stressful. But, two days after she left her job, The Covering House called and asked her to interview!

St. Louis tops a list we don’t want to be on. We are one of the top 20 cities for sex-trafficking and The Covering House helps these victims. Lindsey and the staff work predominantly with female minors aged 13 to 17. With approximately 100 to 300,000 minors sexually trafficked each year (the numbers are hard to pinpoint because often the girls will lie and say they are not being coerced), they have their hands full offering counseling, workshops and helping them cope with normalcy.

I asked Lindsey if it’s difficult for her and the girls not to be jaded in relationships because of what she hears at work and what the girls experience. “We’re launching a male advocacy program and the idea is that we want the girls to be able to see healthy men. These are the men that will respect you. These are the men that are going to protect you. These are the men that are going to love and cherish you, because they’ve never seen it. It’s inspiring to see these really amazing men that are stepping up and saying, we don’t know how we can help but we’ll help with whatever you need.” I was also informed that it is becoming more common for women and parents to pimp children.

Lindsey first learned about the issue when she was on a bible school trip to Jamaica. After working with the kids, she asked someone what would happen after they left and was told that most would be adopted, but some would end up being trafficked.

Talking about Jamaica, Lindsey lit up as she delved into her favorite stories. She remembers waking up one morning and looking through her bedroom window (open-air with bars) to see the kids staring at her and waiting for the “white American” to wake up and walk with them through the village (or parish). But, Lindsey’s favorite story was when a young girl she had taught 10 years before approached her and introduced her daughter. “It was very cool. I even have a picture of her and her brother Kamani and I framed it. It’s still my one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever had. I have it in my living room.”

We both began to tell our travel stories. I told her how I traveled solo to Hungary and had seen traditional dancing. But, my favorite memories are from Turkey when I joined a group of dancers and when I was woken up before dawn with the call to prayer echoing all over the city.

Would we take the same risks here in St. Louis that we took while abroad? No. Lindsey and I asked ourselves why we don’t have the same mindset about trying new things when we’re in a place that’s familiar. “When you’re in another culture, it’s easier to lose your inhibitions… It’s like the inhibitions that hold me back, suddenly are gone.” Moving to St. Louis has helped Lindsey fill the void of needing new experiences. But she mused that once things settle down, it doesn’t mean you have to get into a routine, you can still wake up every day and think, ‘how can I have a new experience today?’

Speaking of experiences, Lindsey’s great aunts and uncles used to grow cane sugar or sorghum and they wanted her to have that experience. So, one summer for their family reunion they harvested the sorghum, built a fire and trained horses to grind it. Lindsey explained that it became a tradition because everyone had an amazing time, and soon people outside of the family began participating!

I had an amazing time with Lindsey. We discussed her travels to Alaska and China, staying in the moment to get the most out of life and how the small decisions we make can have a huge impact on our lives. Like moving to St. Louis. I asked her what she thinks so far. “You know, I love it. It feels like there’s always something to do. It always feels like people are friendly, much more friendly than I’d expect… it’s amazing to see how the small town feel is still there in pockets of St. Louis.”

Of course, who doesn't love hearing positive feedback on something you put a lot of time into? I really appreciated that Lindsey commented on my work for this blog and the amount of time I put into it. “I really think what you’re doing is amazing. I just think this is one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever heard. I love hearing people and hearing their stories, so when Laura told me about your blog, I was like that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever… just the creativity of it and just the time!”


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