I don't remember things being like this when we moved into our home thirty-plus years ago, Sure, some houses had fancy Christmas decorations but now other holidays are pretty crazy, Halloween first among them. This is down the street from us and the view is only half the yard. The display does have one very redeeming feature. There are other houses that are crazier. We only do a little.
I was raised in a Catholic household. There were these things called Holy Days of Obligation, which meant that you better go to mass or you were in a bunch of trouble. The first of November was one of them, All Saints Day. When I was young I used to confuse it with the baseball All Star Game, which my father took me to once at Yankee Stadium. It was the more fun of the two.
There is no doubt a long history about how the day before the holy day became associated with the dead and every form of mortal horror. If I weren't so lazy I'd look it up. As it is, we get to drive the children through scenes like this.
Well, at least you know where we are and what we're doing. Not too inspired as I prepare this Thursday night. There seems to be a sense of anxiety and foreboding around, and it has nothing to do with Halloween. At least that's what I feel. Something needs to see us through the next week and the winter.
This Boo at the Zoo thing wasn't very scary. Lots of lit displays with orange, yellow, purple and white on a black background. Cartoonish ghosts and witches with very fake tombstones. No headless ghouls popping out from behind corners, screaming at children while grabbing for them with skeletal fingers. In other words, about the right speed for my seven year old granddaughter.
Halloween in the US was not about terror and death when I was a kid. At least in NYC, all we did was cut a hole in an old sheet and chalk our faces white to make a cheap ghost. The rest of it was all about canvassing a dense neighborhood begging for candy.
BY THE WAY, I've been having trouble with someone leaving vituperative anonymous comments damning middle aged and older people for destroying the world. You can't just block anonymous comments on Blogger anymore so I had to change the settings to allow comments only from people with Google accounts, which includes almost everybody. It will not affect Facebook. If you have trouble leaving a comment here please let me know.
Maybe a last shot from the Women's Rally. Michael Parson, mentioned in the yellow signs, is the incompetent governor of Missouri, someone who started off as a rural county sheriff and rose to higher office through a series of coincidences. His attitude toward the virus is to let people do whatever they please, although local governments can impose stricter regulation. Covid cases in the rural parts of our state are exploding and medical facilities in some areas are near collapse. St. Louis and Kansas City aren't nearly as bad but certainly not in the clear. We are still hunkering down.
One of our major local organizations has an annual event for the kids called Boo at the Zoo. We've taken Ellie in the past but it has been almost unbearably cold and crowded. This year was capacity controlled, of course, and the weather was relatively mild. She likes it more than I do, but I like taking her there.
We don't know where she learned to pose but she is quite a ham. Her mother, Emily, spent hours making her a custom-made costume that is a bit too esoteric for me. It it based (I think) on the character Korra, the avatar and water bender of the South, in the animated series Avatar. Great job by mom but when I was that age all I was worried about was where Clark Kent was going to find a phone booth to change into Superman.
Our international friends may not know of it but there is an iconic character promoted by our National Park Service, Smokey the Bear. He is dressed in a ranger's hat, wears blue jeans and boots and carries a shovel. His constant slogan is "only you can prevent forest fires." Well, maybe not so true this year. One of the participants at last weekend's Women's Rally had a shirt with a variation on the theme.
As the sun began to set on the second and final day of Artica, the belly dancers who had been performing with scimitars put down their weapons and took up torches. I assume these were well-designed but I wouldn't let them near my hair, even though I don't have much. The fire light on her face gives it a special glow.
Back to Artica. While the crowd was waiting for the concluding bonfire, a group of young men performed a very not-authorized-by-the-festival stunt, the likes of which I've never seen. They had a hollowed-out pumpkin, open at the bottom. The top was smeared with a flammable gel. One of them put it on his head while another lit the goo on fire. It there were eye holes I didn't see them. As they say, what's the worst that could happen?
Ellie, her mother and I went to the women's rally at city hall on Saturday. Mrs. C had another obligation. The turnout was a little disappointing, maybe 150, but there were disputes on the event's Facebook page about whether it was a good idea with the virus around. Mask use was 100%, everyone kept their distance and there was a good breeze.
Mom helped Ellie make her sign. Her shirt says RESISTL. She was interviewed by a TV news crew but it didn't make it onto the air.
I'll probably go back and forth between this and Artica for a bit.
Some of us geezers remember that riff by Janis Joplin: https://youtu.be/5ddnwyyGo4s . This - I don't have a better term than performance artist - was at the second day of Artica, dressed in a tailored black suit, red tie, black patent leather shoes and a silk top hat. He knelt on what may have been a prayer rug in a posture of submission, subjugation and entreaty.
The sign, hard to read here, said:
$ PLEASE HELP $
#make America great again
#get off my grass (a reference to the McCloskeys, https://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2020/07/that-house-on-that-street.html)
#nearly lost $ in the stock market
And it was hot on that black suit.
Artica is a family affair. Anyone who wanted to hear some music, see some visual art and hang around beneath the colorful ruins of the Cotton Belt Railroad freight terminal came along. Bring the kids.
One of the works on display at Artica last weekend. The question in front is rarely considered by most of us. Saying "I just like it" is unsatisfying. Maybe the question requires a real interest in art rather than casual glances. On the other hand, the poet Archibald MacLeish coined the well-known phrase, which can be used in a broader context, "a poem should not mean but be."
And as to the two questions in the rear: I think I have a fair idea of where I am. I have no idea where I am going. Life has far too much randomness to make such predictions.
The people at Artica were good about masks and I had a way to record some of them. My contribution was to set up an outdoor photo station just inside the entrance. Give me your name and email address, get your picture taken and I send it to you with a festival logo on if as a souvenir. Some interesting people passed by. I like the coordinated accessories on this guy.
I've mentioned that Artica is nothing if not eclectic and free-wheeling. This man, who declined to give me his full name, had an ancient Underwood portable typewriter, one with a distinctive aroma to him. He claimed it was a century old, and it just might have been. He had small sheets of brightly colored paper, and would write you a little poem on request. He did one for my granddaughter, Ellie, which read:
we await, wondering
what is he writing?
anything can be.
the dance beat, bassy
speakers and sound system
recorded musicians uplift
and agitate the atmosphere
A sparse one, perhaps, but with enough spirit. Artica's parade goes from the entry gate to the edge of the Mississippi River. Marchers are invited to bring something that they will float down the great waterway, carrying their wishes and dreams.
There are usually many more people but, of course, the virus depressed the turnout. Those who turned out had lots of percussion. You can just see Ellie bringing up the rear.
I never quite understood why but Artica always has a parade to the river starting at 1:11 PM (13.11 to the rest of the world). It was not as boisterous as usual this year, with limited turnout due to the state of the world. Ellie, however, was all in.
She wore her Halloween costume that daughter Emily, on the right, made for her. It is based on an animation series called Avatar. The structure is too complicated for me, but her costume is based on Korra, the avatar and water bender of the southern tribe, https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Korra . Or something. When I was her age, I was stunned by Disney's Fantasia.
All of us are sad about the suspension of artistic activities, depriving us of the richness of experiences and threatening the organizations that present them.* Some outdoor activities, however, manage to carry on.
One of my favorites is Artica, an annual plein air free for all of the visual and performing arts. It's happening this weekend in the industrial wastelands north of the Arch. Anything goes, subject to minimal screening. I'm not exactly the house photographer. They refer to me as the visual documentarian. This chap always shows up with the threatening crow or raven head. He is getting ready for the parade, which we will see shortly.
* The St. Louis Symphony is resuming performances this month. One hour programs, no intermission, spread out chamber orchestra, limited to an audience of 100 in a hall that seats 1,900. We're going on Friday for the Eroica! Gonna be strange.
From big bridges to shoelaces to the fiber optic line that will carry this post into the ether, we don't think about cables much. Even the heavy ropes seen yesterday are examples, and the rope-maker's art is ancient. We can even think of the tendons in our bodies. Without them, as Yeats said, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. So thank a cable. Do it today.
This is the lyrically-named Stan Musial - Veterans Memorial Bridge, connecting Missouri and Illinois at the north edge of downtown.
This is the front of one of the 15 barge max size flotillas. It was heading downriver into the big side of Lock and Dam 27 as we left the small boat side. Our excursion vessel had to tie up along the side of the lock as the water rose. I'm sure this big one had to do the same in the opposite direction. Note the winches and the rope thicker than my wrist.
But, hey! Artica, STL's wacky outdoor alternative arts festival is this weekend and the weather looks good. I'm not exactly the house photographer. They call me the visual documentarian. There's gonna be a lot to document.
Well, actually, I was just looking for a catchy title. The title is supply-side economic Republican economic baloney but it fits the situation.
The view is upriver as the great gates seen yesterday closed behind us. This time the barrier is horizontal. It will lower slowly, raising the water level in the lock until a boat can proceed safely northward. The engineering and construction of these things is beyond me.
