Makes You Wonder...

I love the reaction of the British public to the idea, recently floated by their government, of creating a national motto. In short, they refuse to take the idea seriously. The winner of a contest sponsored by a British newspaper: "No Motto Please, We're British." The British have a sense of who they are -- and who they are not. St. Louis, by contrast is still searching for its identity after almost four centuries.

The closest we've come so far has been critic Joe Pollack's "St. Louis is where trends come to die."

What would it take for us to begin identifying ourselves by what we ARE as an area, instead of what we are not? Probably a little honesty to start with. We'd have to acknowledge that we are poltically and racially divided, that we are genetically resistant to change.

The thing is, admitting the negatives is the first step to defining what it is that we find positive about our home town.