This image sums up the year just ended for me. It was taken in front of our largest health care complex, the vast Washington University Medical Center. Emergencies for children, emergencies for adults, a darkening sky. You can only get away for three blocks and then you have to stop. I hope for something much brighter on New Year's Day 2022.
The levee on the Illinois side of the Mississippi is a minimal barrier to more bad juju rolling into town in the new year. Note the detail on the train engine.
May your new year be better. CDP theme day tomorrow.
One of the pair of gryphons that guard the east entrance to Tower Grove Park. There is a long list of things I'd like to keep out of 2021. One of them will sneak in at the beginning of the year but will be gone in just under three weeks, barring disaster.
Yesterday's post mentioned that we took Ellie to the zoo on Saturday on one of those mild winter days we often (but not always!) get. We are fortunate that our middle-sized city gas one of the best in the country. Probably only San Diego is in the same class and its concept is very different.
A number of Asian elephants were out for a stroll. (We've ridden Asian elephants, in Asia, twice, one of which was terrifying and the other more terrifying, but that's another story.) I may be anthropomorphizing too much but these two looked like an affectionate couple or best of friends. They stood for a long time with trunks intertwined, coiling and recoiling. Elephants are intelligent and clearly have an emotional life.
It hardly needs to be said that it's dead around here. Nearly empty streets and shops, quiet parks. My favorite around here, Tower Grove Park, had a few walkers and runners but no other activity. The many open-sided pavilions that groups can rent, https://www.towergrovepark.org/pavilionspicnic1, were empty; the sign here is clearly untrue. The name comes from a society founded in England nearly a century ago that provided places for World War I veterans to chill out. No venue is needed for that in December.
Something new on the Paint Louis section of the Mississippi River flood wall.
Engraved in the stone over the main entrance to our art museum are the words "Dedicated To Art And Free To All." And it is, a wonderful thing, except for special exhibitions. One day last week Mrs. C and I went the current one, a spectacular survey of German art from the last two centuries. All of the works were from the museum's own collection, one of the best in the Americas. (We had a lot of German immigrants who did well. Think Anheuser Busch.)
We nearly had the place to ourselves. Here the entrance to the new wing has a few employees on duty and no one else but us.
The weather was perfect in St. Louis last night to view the planetary conjunction. The family went out for a look, me carrying a camera and tripod. Now, I know nothing about astronomical photography and may not have proper equipment. At least I got a picture with a little horizon and separation between Jupiter and Saturn.
The second photo is severely cropped. What is that diagonal series of reddish dots? Could it be that I got some to the satellites of Jupiter, or are they just spectral highlights? They appear in a few but not all of my shots. Maybe more sophisticated photographers can help answer the question.
We Americans do the craziest things with out homes at this time of the year. Some people's displays look they could blow out a generating station. Others are simpler but that does not guarantee good taste. One of my neighbors has an inflatable Grinch, perhaps 7 feet high, on the front lawn. Since the character is opposed to the spirit of the season I can't tell if the owners are trying to make a point or a joke.
The diner seen in the last two day's posts, recently known as the White Knight, has been a fixture on the west edge of downtown for ages, now barely hanging on. This one is just south of the center and has been around at least since I showed up here for college in the late 60s. It was mostly a 24 hour operation and was well-patronized by late-night partiers of all kinds.
I got an email bulletin from the local newspaper that it had closed without notice late Friday or early Saturday morning. Now it sits at 7th and Chouteau boarded up. I ran out with my camera to pay my respects.
The same diner from the other side. I've never eaten there so I don't need to be in rehab.
The sign on building in back puzzled me. Was it in St. Louis or this very building? This town is a chess hotbed (https://saintlouischessclub.org/) . Turns out the first official world chess championship was held in 1886 but the games were spread among New York, St. Louis and New Orleans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1886 We got a piece of the action.
Not out of business but not open for business. I don't know why it is so bright inside. As the saying has it, the lights are on but nobody's home.
If it looks extra perky for a restaurant of this sort, there's a backstory. Some years ago it was used as a movie set and the producers gave it a new look. The movie was based on an engaging novel by a St. Louis author. I was his lawyer at one time and I wrote a post about it 12 years ago. See https://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/06/may-angels-in-this-storm-guide.html
Not exactly the best cuisine but this restaurant has been a fixture in downtown STL for a long time. A couple of windows away there is one of those "for information call" realtor's signs.
As I wander around the city I see a large number of out-of-business restaurants. The local newspaper just ran a story about 40 popular restaurants around the metro area that have gone under in the last year. We really liked some of them. It's hard to imagine a phoenix rising from these ashes.
I've run through the images from Garden Glow at the botanical garden and there are slim pickings around town these days. It's cold and gray but no snow. There are fewer outdoor decorations except for a few residential areas that traditionally go to extremes (there's an idea). The streets, like everywhere, are empty. Upcoming images may reflect that.
What might you like for Christmas that is made in St. Louis? We make beer, lots and lots of beer. We sequenced the human genome, if you need some of that. And strange pizza with a thin cracker crust. Two of our universities crank out a river of doctors and lawyers.
To look at this LED suggestion of a sweater, you might think we are the home town of Big Macs but they weren't invented here. We just sell them to all comers.
Henry Shaw's tomb in the botanical gardens he founded. It has a certain quiet eloquence, not maudlin, not overblown. Thanks to my better set of eyes, Mrs. C, who spotted this while I was gaping at bright LED lights down the path.
I loved music as a child and was fortunate that my mother did as well. In the late 50s or early 60s, our family had a record player in our apartment, a big console that had a turntable for LP vinyl albums. She had some classical music albums that I would play over and over, not the least The Nutcracker. I was transfixed by the mixture of celesta and woodwinds in the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, https://youtu.be/UYaIQNjAX_8, and swept away by the Waltz of the Flowers, https://youtu.be/LKcZL8q1eBw.These are some of my happiest memories from childhood.
Now the botanical garden recreates a bit of it with light projections on Henry Shaw's mansion. The son et lumière show is remarkable. It's tricky, though. Note how the Nutcracker's green staff it offset near the top by a cornice of the building.
The botanical garden dresses the same tree in the same way every year. It's hardly festive, at least to my eye. It looks like it more appropriate for Halloween and that those bony, twisted limbs might reach down and snatch the unsuspecting.
Henry Shaw, who founded what was to become the Missouri Botanical Garden and adjacent Tower Grove Park, built this odd structure near his grand home. It seems to have no function other than as a watchtower - you may just be able to see the spiral staircase inside the center door. The land isn't very hilly and, of course, there were no high rises, so he and his guests could survey the entire domain.
Surrounding features were developed as the garden grew. There is now a difficult hedgerow maze just to the left.
One more structure at Garden Glow that comes back every year. I particularly like it. It it is elegant with a minimalist feel, a series of gateways to nowhere in particular.
Another fixture at Garden Glow, unused this year. Note the hole in the back about big enough for a person to step through. Up to maybe three people could climb inside. Family members took pictures from in front, making an image that looked like an old-fashioned snow globe with real people. Being stuck inside one seems like a terrible fate.
Possibly a wormhole, or at least an annual feature of the botanical garden at this time of year. Maybe if you ran into this at full speed you would pop out the other end on the pitcher's mound of the baseball stadium, or perhaps the hospitality room at the end of the Budweiser brewery tour.
