Nineteen years…I remember when I turned nineteen years old in 1997 it was fairly anticlimactic as no new privileges are unlocked like when you turn sixteen, seventeen or eighteen. Perhaps I feel the same for nineteen years for this site. I do remember when I hit my 6,000th post finally grasping the breadth of St. Louis Patina and thinking, “Wow, this has really gotten out of control.”

Speaking of anniversaries, it’s been one year since the tornado struck the City of St. Louis, plowing a path from Clayton through Skinker-DeBaliviere, the Central West End and up into at least a half dozen neighborhoods in North St. Louis. For a lot of people things are still not going well, with the vast majority of those who are still suffering being residents (or former residents) who live north of Delmar Boulevard.

I have my personal opinion of who to blame, and what could have been done better in the last year, but I’ll keep those thoughts to myself. If you bump into me in real life, I’ll probably share those thoughts to you in person. But I’m not going to do that here. And I have decided against doing a series of “one year later” posts of still-bombed out and deserted streets hit by the tornado.

I am going to ask you to still stay involved, to please continue to make donations, and to make sure other people know that there is still an incredible amount of need for thousands of people who are still left without homes. I know from talking to many people affected by the tornado that their insurance companies are making their life hell; it’s not so simple as having coverage and everything will be fine.

And as I’ve long said, this is not a historic preservation website, it’s an advocate for good taste. Keep fighting for the latter and for obvious reasons the former will follow,