Josh Renaud's weblog detailing the exploits of his family in Ferguson, MO, USA. Starring Yoli, Jadzia, Ludi, Josie, and Joseph Renaud.
This week, the Tolkien Society posted videos from last year’s inaugural Westmoot, including my presentation, titled “Reflections on Middle-earth from a Middle American.”
Because of poor lighting, it was hard to see my slides, so I created a new video using my high-resolution originals. I hope you enjoy it!
Want to read the talk instead of watching? Here’s a PDF of the text.
If you’d like to know the story behind the story, I wrote about it last May.
I have been morel mushroom hunting this week, and after several tries, today I finally struck gold!
This is really my first time trying seriously to find them. The only other time I remember coming across them in the wild was by happy accident a few years ago during a short family vacation at my great-grandparents’ clubhouse near Piedmont, Mo.
Recently I have been updating old posts on this blog to fix broken image and video links. It has been a fun experience to revisit these stories, many of which I had long forgotten. But one story from 2008 really hit home in a surprising and bittersweet way. (I suggest reading it before continuing)
The story involves a boy named Adam Hardin.
We never knew Adam. In fact, he died several years before Yoli and I moved to Ferguson in 2003. He had been a student at Sts. John and James, the same Catholic school my father attended in the 1960s. Today it’s called Blessed Teresa of Calcutta School, and we live less than a block away.
When Jadzia was nearly three years old, I would walk with her to the playground at Blessed Teresa on summer days. On one of these walks, she noticed a stone marker under a tree near the baseball field with Adam’s face etched on it, and she wanted to know who he was. I did my best to explain.
As I noted in my 2008 post, I soon forgot about the marker and this conversation. But Jadzia didn’t. Months later, when she said “We’re going to see Adam,” during a walk to the playground, it took me a few minutes to understand who and what she was talking about.
I’m ashamed to say that even after that experience, even after writing the story down for posterity, I forgot about it again — this time for nearly two decades.
A lot has changed in that time. So when I stumbled across that old blog post this week, it really hit hard.
Jadzia has her own tree and her own marker now. They are in Ferguson’s January-Wabash Park, overlooking the pool where she used to watch her siblings compete in swim meets.
She died in 2020, a result of Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder she lived with all her life.
Today I searched the Post-Dispatch archives for Adam, to see if I could learn when he died. I found an uplifting story from late 1999 about Blues players visiting kids in local hospitals to cheer them up. Adam was in the hospital for leukemia treatment, but he was very excited to talk about hockey and have his photo taken with Bob Bassen, Jochen Hecht and Terry Yake. The story was written by my former colleague Kathleen Nelson.
But then, 7 months later, his obituary ran. Adam died on July 11, 2000. He was buried at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Florissant. He was 16. Jadzia was nearly the same age when she died, just one month shy of 15.
All those years ago, I had to explain to my precocious little girl why Adam’s face was etched onto this small stone under a tree. This is how I recorded it:
I explained to her that I didn’t know what happened to Adam, but that he had died and now he was in heaven with Father God. All of us are going to die someday, and we never know when God might want to bring us home, whether we’ll be young like Adam or very old.
I couldn’t have known how prescient these words were. Couldn’t have known that my own darling Jadzia would also be one with such an early departure date.
But I’m so glad she noticed Adam’s marker. So glad that she forced me to think about these things back then — and to think about them again now.
Long may her memory live on, like Adam’s.
Through us. Through her friends. That marker. That tree.
Today Josie had one of her best showings in a fencing tournament.
Several people commented on how far she has grown and improved since her first tournament appearance a little over two years ago. She was so scared and intimidated then. She still battles those feelings now, but today she managed to maintain her cool most of the time.
After the tournament, I asked Josie to recount the day’s events from her own perspective. Below is her conversation with me, edited for length and clarity.
Yoli and the St. Louis Classical Guitar Orchestra performed a bunch of times this year, but their final two concerts in December were especially noteworthy because they performed Christmas music in two new venues: the University City Public Library and the St. Louis Art Museum.
Continue reading “New venues for the St. Louis Classical Guitar Orchestra”
Yoli writes about her getaway trip to California in October, fulfilling several longtime dreams of hers.
In 2002, when I was staying in Harrisonburg, Va., my friend Solange shared with me her travels — how she would watch videos of national parks and then visit them. One of the videos she shared with me was about the giant sequoias, and that started a desire in me to one day visit them.
More than 20 years later, my friend Munaba invited me to visit California with her. Our trip was short, but we squeezed in a lot.
Many years ago I saw “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” and it became one of my favorite films of all time. Later, when Joseph was getting into naval history, I showed it to him and fell in love with it, too.
Continue reading “Reflecting on Awkward Davies at the end of the Aubrey-Maturin series”
In World War II, an LST (or “Landing Ship, Tank”) transported tanks, soldiers, vehicles and supplies directly to enemy beaches.
Ludi finished her senior year at STEAM High so strong.
When the Tolkien Society announced in November 2024 that it was creating a new U.S.-based event called “Westmoot,” to be held in May 2025 in Kansas City at the National World War I Museum and Memorial, I knew I couldn’t miss it. Kansas City is practically my backyard!