Thirty shows. Five venues. Five days. Em Piro, founder of the St. Lou Fringe Festival, has upped the ante for the second annual extravaganza in midtown St. Louis, which will occur from Thursday, June 20 through Monday, June 24.

It wasn’t long ago when vacationers snapped and clicked with fingers crossed, hoping to have a few good pictures when they returned home. In the age of digital photography, things should be easier. But regardless of the equipment upgrade, vacation photos often look dull, amateurish and indistinguishable. Our in-house expert, LN photographer Sarah Crowder, weighs in on what travelers should do to capture the moments they’ll want to remember.

What a chip off the old block! In honor of Father’s Day, we asked LN readers to submit photos of St. Louis dads and their look-alike children. This year’s winners are Brian Tash and his one-and-a-half-year-old son, Hunter Tash, of Creve Coeur. “Everyone tells me all the time that Hunter looks just like Brian’s Mini-Me,” says wife Cristina Tash. The two love to play baseball, football and soccer together, and “Brian loves to read to him.” For winning, Brian will receive gift certificates to La Cantina and Amigos Cantina restaurants (a $100 value)—just in time for Father’s Day. Below, take a peek at other area look-alikes. Can you tell who’s who?

ALTON BROWN, popular Iron Chef host and all-around food TV personality, will be coming to the Fox Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014, with a new show entitled Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable. That date might seem like a ways off, but tickets have gone on sale already and are going quickly. Prices are $60.50, $50.50, $45.50 and $35.50, with a limited number of Gold Circle seats also available. Tickets are available at the Fox box office, online at metrotix.com or by phone at 534-1111.

Northwestern Mutual’s mission is quite a lofty goal: To make the communities they serve the most financially secure in the world. “Given our success here in St. Louis, we’re trying to serve the community from both a client perspective and a charitable perspective,” says Gerard Hempstead, managing partner at the company’s St. Louis network office. His office has a goal of giving at least $500,000 in monetary donations and 5,000 hours of community service before 2015. “It’s actually stated in our vision and we track it,” he says.

SLU RESEARCHERS SCREEN NEWBORNS FOR RARE GENETIC DISEASES

Summer is here. I know that not because of the magical June cloudbursts, nor the brilliant summer blooms. I know that not because of the smell of chlorine in newly opened pools, nor the waft of charcoal from a grill. I know it is summer because I am suddenly called upon to drive three over-scheduled children to various destinations all day, every day without the reprieve of an eight-hour school day. I am telling you there are air traffic controllers at Lambert who haven’t handled as many routes in a day.

On Saturday morning, June 15, Susie Knopf will join tens of thousands of friends, family, survivors and community members in downtown St. Louis for the 15th annual Susan G. Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure. A long-term breast cancer survivor, Knopf will be walking in a sea of pink to raise funds and bring attention to the quest to cure breast cancer, the No. 2 killer of women after heart disease. “We are all one for those few hours and each shares a passion to end this dreaded disease,” she says. “Although we have come a long way, breast cancer is still a killer and 40,000 people in the U.S. will die of the disease this year.”

The devastating scene of an unwanted cat or dog being left in a box, on a curb or in the rain is not simply an emotive scene from the movies—it is the world many animals live in. With the earnest goal to help animals, the Animal Protective Association of Missouri (APA) is there to take in lost, stray or unwanted pets and work to find them loving forever homes.

The Immigrant & Refugee Women’s Program’s (IRWP) clients come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and dozens of other countries. While each of the women served has a different story and faces her own challenges, they all share a desire to learn. “One of our first questions when we meet them is, Why do you want to learn English?” says executive director Pat Joshu. “I’ve had several look at me and say that nobody has ever asked them that before: What do they want?”

Retasha Smith arrived at The Haven of Grace’s doorstep alone, pregnant and confused. But the organization quickly came to her rescue. A dependable support system and resources to become independent led her to a productive family life. 

“We serve some of the most frail and fragile people in the whole world,” says Sue Hockensmith, co-founder of Pony Bird Inc., a care provider for non-ambulatory individuals with profound mental and physical disabilities.

EdLetter / 6-14

Story: Wealthy art dealers Flanders and Ouisa Kittredge have invited an important contact named Geoffrey to their swank New York City apartment to hopefully make a tidy $2 million profit on a Cezanne they’re selling. While the three of them converse, a young black man knocks at the door. He tells Flan and Ouisa that he is a classmate of their children at Harvard and that he’s in town awaiting the arrival of his dad, noted actor Sidney Poitier, who will be directing the film version of Cats.

Story: Louise Seger, a Houston homemaker with a husband and two children, becomes an instant fan of rising young country singer Patsy Cline when she hears the latter perform on The Arthur Godfrey Talent Show on CBS in 1957. She soon pesters the local disk jockey regularly with requests for tunes by Cline. In 1961, when she learns that Cline will be performing at Houston’s Esquire Ballroom, she and her husband and boss arrive 90 minutes early for the concert.

Many of us are already making plans for Father’s Day—to show Dad just how much he’s loved and appreciated. In an ideal world, all dads should be celebrated. Of course, in the real world—at least in the world where Father’s Support Center operates—the issues of responsible fatherhood are complex. But so, too, are the solutions.

In 2009, Gateway Children’s Charity was founded by a group of eight people who wanted to make a tangible difference in the lives of local kids. “In our opinion, there was a void or gap that existed in funding projects that were on the smaller side, which maybe didn’t qualify for or were overlooked by bigger charity groups. We wanted to help fill that void,” says Michael Todorovich II, the nonprofit’s president and one of the founding board members.

Piccione Pastry has a sweet new deal for area nonprofits. The late-night Italian bakery shop, which opened in the Delmar Loop this April, is serving up Pastries With a Purpose.

St. Louis restaurants were well represented on the Opinionated About Dining's Top 25 Midwest Restaurants list that was recently released. Niche took the No. 2 slot; Sidney Street Cafe was No. 8; Stone Soup Cottage was No. 11; Brasserie by Niche came in at No. 12; Farmhaus garnered No. 13; and Tony's landed at No. 20; and Harvest rounded out the list at 22. Well done!

Anyone can talk about making a difference in teens’ lives, but at Wyman Center it’s the numbers that do the talking. Take, for example, Brittany Woods Middle School in University City, where Wyman’s Teen Outreach Program is being offered to all seventh grade students. At the end of the first semester this year, school principal Jamie Jordan looked at the students’ comportment data, explains Wyman president/CEO Dave Hilliard. “Among the 200 sixth-graders, she had 40 referrals to the office for disruptive behavior,” he says. Among the seventh-graders, who had gone through half of the Wyman program, there were half as many referrals. “Among the eighth-graders, who had gone through the entire program, she had only four referrals to the office in the entire semester. There was a 95-percent difference among kids who had the program and learned how to use skills to be successful and avoid conflict.”

If anybody was destined to have a career in sports, it was Jay Delsing. But Jay decided not hit curve balls or blast penalty kids: He wanted to hit wedges.

You wouldn’t trust a stranger with your money, but how much do you know about the person helping you make the biggest purchase of your life? LN asked six area real estate agents about local favorites and the like so you can see what makes these professionals tick. (Hint: The Cardinals might have been mentioned once or twice…)

It seems there is a problem in the virtual world. Don’t panic. It’s not a put-on-your-radiation suit or head-to-the-canning-cellar kind of crisis (that’s assuming you have either of those things, which personally I do not). Nevertheless, there is a new fad that is, for lack of an industry-appropriate term, clogging up the Internet. The fad: food porn.

June

MISSION: Fathers’ Support Center works to improve the lives of children by bettering the father-child relationship. Fathers enroll for at least one year of program involvement, which starts with an intense six-week course meant to grow family, communication, relationship and employment skills.