This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 14, 2011 - If you haven't bitten into "Beacon and Eggs" yet, I hope you'll join us at 8 a.m., Tues., July 19, for our inaugural "B & E" foray into Illinois. We have a good program planned for you, probably our most exotic yet, and as usual there'll be a good spread of food and plenty of coffee for all of us to enjoy.
The "Beacon and Eggs" program cracked open last year. One of the first meetings was in the Old North area of St. Louis, in a renovated storefront on the redeveloped stretch of 14th Street just south of St. Louis Avenue. We developed the program as a way to meet folks on their turf, and to listen to what they wanted to say to a group of practicing journalists.
Near the Old North meeting site sits Crown Candy Kitchen, a St. Louis institution, one of the strongest and most enduring urban anchors in this region and a food heaven. Crown demonstrates the strength that comes with having patience, with being loyal and by summoning the courage to stay the course. By minding these qualities, Crown Candy Kitchen not only survives but also soars.
"Beacon and Eggs" has traveled north, south and, last month, west. On that dark and stormy morning, we crossed the widening Missouri and made our way up Main Street in St. Charles to the Foundry Art Centre, where we were welcomed warmly by art center personnel, by officials of the city and the county, and by business folks and citizens eager to tell us about life in that fast-growing part of the metropolis.
(The eggs in Beacon and Eggs are usually stirred into pastry dough and then baked into the food we bring, but for this meeting our friend Cynthia Maasen brought us a dozen fresh-laid eggs from the chickens on her farm in Foristell. So in St. Charles, anyway, we really had Beacon and very visible eggs.)
Trips we have made to places such as north St. Louis, St. Charles, Cherokee Street, Maplewood and Normandy remind us that although our lives are often spent in municipal isolation and are distressed at times by the persistent fragmentation of the region, we have plenty in common that needs to be observed, investigated and, yes, celebrated. Discovering what binds us together in this region is every bit as important as picking at injuries that divide and perturb us.
Our journey on Tuesday takes us to Collinsville. But we also will follow a path that takes us deep into the prehistory of North America. Early in the day, we'll gather in the Interpretive Center of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, where archaeologist Bill Iseminger will host our program. Bill is a great regional resource himself and author of the authoritative book, "Cahokia Mounds: America's First City."
In a region rich in natural resources and a multi-layered culture developed by the congregating of a diverse population of immigrants from all over the world, Cahokia stands apart, and perhaps even above, everything that has been imported and produced in the past 400 or 500 years by non-native peoples.
In its heyday, about a thousand years ago, the civilization that thrived in this region was incredibly rich and complex. In the mid-13th century, its population of about 20,000 equaled the size of the great cities of Europe. But numbers, as so often is the case, are inadequate expressions of cultural quality. The civilization that developed at the Cahokia Mounds site was as exceptional as any in the prehistoric new world, and it rivaled the more famous civilizations to our south.
What remains at the Cahokia site are rich relics of the civilization -- small works of art, utilitarian objects and of course the mounds, including the so-called Monk's Mound, the vast earthworks for which the site is famous. Once treated with an arrogant disregard for other cultures and subjected to culturally criminal destruction, the mounds are revered now as monuments to a spectacular civilization. They stand both as testaments of prehistoric social organization and spiritual practice and as majestic testaments to human ingenuity.
Nevertheless, after about 700 years of existence in this area, the culture that has come to be called Mississippian vanished, and few clues were left to indicate what actually happened.
Fortunate for us, after years of neglect and misuse, the value of the site was acknowledged, and serious excavations and research brought forth a clearer and entirely more satisfactory and sophisticated understanding of this accomplished and sophisticated civilization.
On Tuesday, we'll reflect on the wonder that is the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, but the Beacon staff members in attendance will be eager to hear the issues and concerns of contemporary inhabitants of this fertile land and to learn more about 21st century culture along with looking back into our prehistory. A good question we might ask is, "What can we learn from the lessons of the mounds?"
In addition to Bill Iseminger, members of a panel will be Collinsville Mayor John Miller; Elizabeth Davis, Collinsville Area Recreation District marketing and communications coordinator; Joyce Beigert, manager of TheBANK of Edwardsville; and Pastor David Amsden of Son Life Church, Collinsville.