Virtual St. Louis had a chance to talk to the “social monks” — Paul Sanchez, 32, and Tim Parr, 31 — during an hourlong stopover in the Gateway City en route to Chicago.

“It’s definitely to encourage good deeds,” said Sanchez by phone from a meet-up at Hotshots Sports Bar and Grill in St. Louis. “We want to be a fun example. Monks were dedicated to helping out the poor.”

That’s the gimmick: Dressing as monks, they get attention. People stop them, they ask questions, they offer them help as they make their way across the country. They started on June 4 from San Francisco, according to their blog. They’re making their way to New York. “We’re not out to make fun of monks, but we like to have fun with it,” said Sanchez, of Santa Barbara, Calif.

Part of their schtick includes videos of Tim literally carrying the larger Paul around and about major landmarks to reinforce the theme of “going the extra mile.” They video their experiences and post them online, including the tongue-in-cheek landmark carries — which will include the Arch today.

So, one day they might get a donation of a dozen muffins from a stranger along the street. The next, they might help a woman, who is crying at the gas station, and help her get a bus ticket for her boyfriend. Strangers provide rides or donate money and, Parr says, “Paul will give away 10 or 15.”

“To me, the most rewarding thing about this is that people come to us asking questions,” said Parr, who is from New Zealand. “All we do is listen and ask questions and they find the answers to themselves. They had the answer all the time. All they needed was time. People are starving for someone to listen.”

Their exploits have been documented well on their web site — which they plan to update more with a full-fledged online documentary video — and on other blogs at the sites where they’ve hosted meet-ups and tweet-ups (yes, the Social Monks are on Twitter, too, and they’ve got more than 1,000 followers).

Here’s a few other spots where their tour has been memorialized:
Two Monks walk into a bar… | DivX Labs - Everywhere …
Brian Shaler says If you’re in the Phoenix area
…My blog from the Grand …

Much thanks to Reem Abeidoh for the tip.

Nope. They’re not there. They must be on all of your Facebook pages somewhere! Couldn’t find any pictures from yesterday’s concert festival. (If you find them, let me know. Happy to add a link!) Oh, and that photo on the left there is The Pink Spiders, shot by Sarah Greenbaum (sorry! blogger’s privilege!)

YouTube, on the other hand, has a few dozen videos, including these few seconds from the show by The Academy Is… (which, I believe, was my daughter’s favorite). This video is from Atheanea, who said, “They were amazing.”

Some of the tips might be obvious to regular photographers. But I’m not a pro, so stuff like this is helpful, under the section called “Focal Length?”

One of the hardest parts of photographing fireworks is having your camera trained on the right part of the sky at the right time. This is especially difficult if you’re shooting with a longer focal length and are trying to take more tightly cropped shots. I generally shoot at a wider focal length than a tight one but during a show will try a few tighter shots (I usually use a zoom lens to give me this option) to see if I can get lucky with them.

I thought you might appreciate a link to Flickr with examples of photos St. Louisans posted since last year’s Fourth of July (thanks to herkie for coaching me on the search). There’s about 72 500 photos of fireworks in this slideshow (some by people who apparently already know what they’re doing!).

And, a quick reminder: We would love to see and share your fireworks pictures — and other activities from the long weekend — in our July Fourth 2008 IWitness album posted over here. We’ve already got some shots in there.

Oh, and that picture up top here? That’s from the 2007 fireworks at the Arch by former Post-Dispatch photographer Odell Mitchell.

And even if Twitter is being a pain in the neck today, subscribers’ comments are sneaking through. Readers found plenty to say (here’s a link to my Summize search on the topic of Burke — limited to the St. Louis area).

Most of the comments on Twitter were either announcements — or not favorable to Burke. Examples were along these lines:

mpsecondjournal: OMG I’m so excited Archbishop Burke is leaving St Louis.. happy dance in my chair!

tfooq: Burke is leaving!!!! I hope there are some sweet Burke-no-more parties in STL soon.

That wasn’t necessarily the view elsewhere online, where more conservative sites/blogs/forums expressed regret for St. Louis, but happiness for the Catholic Church as a wider body. One example is here:

“This is a great loss for St. Louis, but obviously good for the Archbishop and the Catholic Church as a whole. May God be with him in his new role. And, may St. Louis be bless with another great Archbishop.” (Posted on Christian Forums)

“I woke up this morning to some of the saddest news of the year in our Archdiocese; I received a text message and an email announcing the departure of Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke….expect some dissension from certain parts of the media.” (Posted on LifeIsAPrayer.com)

“On the more practical side, the return to the Vatican’s top tribunal of the first US cleric to hold a senior post within its ranks — the second consecutive instance of an archbishop of the onetime “Rome of the West” being called out of town to a cardinalatial post — removes the American bishop most affiliated with the so-called “Communion Wars” from the domestic fray in advance of another presidential election season.” (Posted on Whispers in the Loggia)

“It is certainly a bittersweet announcement for those in St. Louis and around the world who have rejoiced in the Archbishop’s stalwart defense of orthodoxy, his courage, his perseverance, and his wise and faithful pastoral care. He has been a shining example of how a Bishop should guide and govern.” (Posted on the Stella Borealis Catholic Roundtable)

“One big unanswered question: when Burke leaves, will he get to take with him the several souls he excommunicated in his brief tenure here, or will he be compelled to open the Mason jar on his nightstand and release them back into the wild?” (Posted on Waveflux)

Just to refresh your memory, we posted the initial information about the contest here. Our last round of finalists (and the vote) is here; see the last round’s winner here.

This week, click this link so you can vote for our four finalists.

Here are this week’s finalists (click the name or the photo to see a larger version of it):

Breaking In
The discoverer (BigFoot) writes: “Working on the windows of an apartment building, it looks like I’m breaking into the place.”

St. George
The discoverer (scp787s) writes: “St. George has always been known as a speed trap, now its been caught by Google.  Someone needs to tell the guy in the silver car not to hit their brakes after passing the police officer… oops!”

Police Action
The discoverer (Climberstephen) writes: “Some dude (not me!) being arrested outside my place, the red brick in the background. The Xterra is my girlfriend’s.” (Editor’s note: We obviously don’t know if anyone was actually arrested.)

Il Vicino
The discoverer (TC) writes: “Google was in Clayton after September 18, 2007. If you look at the SW corner of Maryland and Central, you’ll see barricades around Il Vicino. On September 18, 2007 an accident happened there where a truck smashed into the restaurant.”

Turns out, there’s not a lot of places. The data is available, but just isn’t widely presented online in our area. My first stop, of course, was the St. Louis office of the National Weather Service — but that data isn’t presented online on their site. Only an overall map of lightning strike frequency is presented.

Here are two local sites that are presented by amateurs:

Dardenne Weather Center (the picture above is from there, from shortly after 2 p.m. today)

Ballwin Weather Network

More information on the Weather Matrix web site, which discusses other sources of lightning data.

National Weather Service has tons of lightning safety information.

rednektek: Retweet of @ScottMonty In honor of George Carlin, a quote from Al Sleet, Tonight’s forecast: dark, w/widely scattered light by morning.

jimdunn: In honor of george carlin I will attempt to use each of the 7 dirty words in a sentence today. F*** Hoover and good morning twitters.

DtotheUG: RIP George Carlin, now you can ask JC where the pork chops are.

chriszygmont: George Carlin was the best ever narrator on Thomas the Tank Engine. God bless your soul. Good-bye George.

TheBrad: Carlin: “If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.”

Here’s the Facebook group, with more than 4,100 fans at this moment.

Legacy.com set up a memorial guest book within minutes of the news breaking — which includes this tribute: “The good news is, you didn’t die…..you passed away. — Keith Crocket, Land O Lakes, Fla.”

The Lindell Wall got 44 percent of the votes; the Lindbergh Light got 35 percent; Above Water got 15 percent; and Where Am I Going got 6 percent. See all the entries back here.

Post more entries here, and see what the contest is all about.

Still, it’s quite a sight to see the waters lapping at the steps of the Arch. Readers of STLtoday have started to send their images into our IWitness “spring flooding” album. Reader “Mike” uploaded the photo to the left today.

Plus, here’s a link to a slideshow with the latest tagged photos that readers have uploaded on Flickr in the past couple of weeks.

And here’s another batch from Flickr looking beyond St. Louis, taking in searches in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa; and Quincy, Ill.

One of those photos is below, shot by Raymond Rue, used here under a Creative Commons license. The caption said, “As the Great Mississippi River spills over, the water rises at the waste plant. “It was uploaded on Tuesday.