Wallflowery

Neon Memes • Beyond serving as managing editor of St. Louis Magazine, I provide low comic relief on its stylish bimonthly "shelter" sibling, St. Louis Magazine's AT HOME, soon entering its fifth year of publication, and regarding same, I now must make an embarrassing confession. Tonight, with a number of other sterling sponsors―Mercedes-Benz, Saint Louis Cellars, Guinness and Peroni―AT HOME will host a gala honoring the winners of the first annual Architect & Design Awards at the Maplewood showroom of Saint Louis Closet Co. (2626 S. Big Bend, 314.781.9000). Barring unforeseen complications, I plan to attend for a time―even though I'll likely feel as displaced as a shark in the Sahara. I mingle miserably, you see. At large gatherings, though scarcely lacking social skills, I resemble not so much Rikki-tikki-tavi as Chuchundra the Muskrat. (Ancient joke: "Do you like Kipling?" "Why, I don't really know―I've never kippled!") Moreover, a vocational consideration applies. As a writer, I tend less to participate than to "examine, inspect, scrutinize, survey, canvass"―merci, Mr. Roget. I analyze and synthesize, deconstruct and reconstruct. A wallflower? No. More like a botanist among the hothouse cultivars of cocktails, canapés and conviviality. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor