CITY DAILY PHOTO JANUARY THEME DAY - PHOTO OF THE YEAR

If you are a photography junkie like me it's hard to select a single picture out of a year's work. I considered some that reflected the tumult and  anxiety of 2021. In the end, I decided on something peaceful and beautiful, hoping it might be therapeutic. This is Ruby Beach on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, photographed in September.

On the other hand, if you care to see what I really thought of 2021 click here: https://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2021/10/armageddon-st-louis-style.html.               

RING OUT THE OLD

Goodbye to 2021, not one to go down in the list of favorites. And for 2022? Predicting the future is an uncertain business and those who try are often doomed to failure. Appropriately, the Arch is mostly hidden in fog. Our family will try to live as normally as possible, dodging spike proteins and autocrats.            

WALKING OUT OF 2021

And none too soon, but can we expect better? Tower Grove Park.               

BUT, SOFT!

What light through yonder lens cap breaks? Okay, terrible joke, but the muse must be off somewhere returning bad Christmas presents. More soft, warm light in Forest Park Saturday afternoon.            

WINTER GOLF

It's  common for me to go out shooting on Christmas afternoon. Neither of us are from here and our sibs are scattered around. One of our two children is here and, of course, the redoubtable Ellie. Our other child and his family are hundreds of miles away. The city is quiet, of course, but there are things to note. On Saturday the sky was sort of clear but hazy, and with the low winter sun everything had a soft warmth.           

MADELEINE MONDAY

I don't know if this was her favorite Christmas present but it was mine, possibly because I bought it for her and I think it's funny. I found it in a New York Times column on  off-beat gifts for kids. It is a plate with a vaguely male or female face and lighter or darker skin. The child uses the contents of the meal to make an edible portrait. She took her diced red pepper, the only vegetable she will eat at the moment, and made quite a fright wig.             

DEVOTION

 

This is something I saw yesterdayday that really struck me. Since I was a bit bored I went out cruising for images. As I drove by the great statue of Louis IX in Forest Park, I saw a small group of people, some kneeling on the stone, saying the rosary. I thought I recognized a couple of faces who were involved in this incident six months ago: https://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2020/06/statue-in-crosshairs.html No editorializing, just reportage.

           

FROM THE LOU TO YOU

A quiet Christmas Day at our house. Mrs. C and I don't do gifts but we do make contributions in one  another's names to causes that are meaningful to us. Ellie, however, made out like a bandit, which we may see here tomorrow.

And freakishly warm, flirting with record high temp. Many events newly restricted with the virus flare, and I'm high risk. A worrisome day              

SOMETHING WE ALL NEED AT THIS TIME OF YEAR

Today is not the day to be alone, particularly in the West. The season is defined by not only by those close to us, but also people at any distance who need us. We have so many new channels of communication that can feel impersonal but seeing your family on Zoom is better than not seeing them at all.          

INVEST LOVE

Sidewalk poetry on Cherokee Street. I don't completely agree with this. The ones who leave may need our love even more.        

DON'T SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, HE'S TRYING HIS BEST

I I found out by chance that this line was popularized by Oscar Wilde, who claimed he heard it in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado, while on his marathon U.S. lecture tour. At least this performer, who was publicizing a used piano dealer, wasn't playing Feliz Navidad.               

THE BACK END OF KING LOOIE'S HORSE, AN ANNOYING SPOTLIGHT AND THE FULL MOON RISING

There was close enough of a full moon here both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was cloudy but Sunday was spotless. I was thinking about a location for a good shot and I decided to try the front portico of the art museum, behind the grand equestrian statue of St. Louis. What I'd forgotten was the four spotlights at the corners of its little plaza. Don't know what was in the air but the moon looked like a tiny pumpkin.           

MADELEINE MONDAY

Where did she learn how to pose? TV? Online? Anyway, because you are supposed to do it in the country at Christmastime, we took Ellie to St. Louis Ballet's production of The Nutcracker on Saturday. Big crowd (a few maskless, despite an unenforced house rule), mediocre quality recorded music, pretty dancers in pretty costumes. She liked it.

Mrs. C and I have so much in common despite our very different origins (a farm in Kansas and an apartment in New York). We realized that there is one more thing: neither of us have any interest in ballet. Too often sweet and shallow. Amazingly athletic but the women have to dance in a way that wrecks their feet and ankles and the men don't. Alvin Ailey or Twyla Tharp might be a different matter.           

LET X = X

Okay, I don't get it either. There are several art galleries in this stretch of Cherokee Street but I don't think this place has exhibitions. Reminds me of Laurie Anderson's song with the same name as this post's title, https://youtu.be/UfOK0evCqZY.                 

WE THE PEOPLE

The side of a brewery restaurant, Cherokee and Iowa, South St. Louis.          

COMESTIBLES MEXICANOS

Still on Cherokee Street. I wondered why the sign on the awning is in English and on the window in Spanish.              

OLD BOOTS

St. Louis has a surprisingly smaller Hispanic population than most American cities but what we have is centered on Cherokee Street. If you are into that sort of thing, you can get your entire outfit to be a vaquero, or Mexican cowboy. If I remember my Spanish correctly, the brand name could suggest old boots, old people or old men.     

CALL ED AGENT

There was a print market on a recent mild Saturday along The Lou's funky Cherokee Street. It was hard to believe how many people are making original and very strange images on paper in our area. The low winter sun made west-facing walls pop with warmth.                

A LINGERING TASTE OF SUMMER

Bees are gone from from the fields by this time of year but their products remain. The design and colors of the table cloth look very Provencal to me.        

MADELEINE MONDAY

An episode in the struggle to keep Ellie's taste in music somewhere above Jo Jo Siwa and Taylor Swift. The Metropolitan Opera shows live and recorded productions in local theaters. Mrs. C and I attend occasionally. On Saturday an abridged version of Mozart's The Magic Flute was on offer, two hours and performed in English. The kid has liked the Queen of the Night's arias and Papageno/Papagena since she was a tot so we went together. She liked it so much she wants to go to the full opera when it is produced here in the spring.            

STILL LIFE WITH ROOT VEGETABLES

Maybe it's just my lose associations, but this has something of an alien look to me, like undersea polyps or sea slugs.           

GOOD ADVICE

A detail seen at the farmers market. Beef and pork production are a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in this country, not to mention a wasteful use of water resources. We are not vegetarians but we don't eat much meat any more. Chicken and fish, yes, but little of the four-footed products. (Ellie whines for burgers sometimes.) Lots more veg meals. I don't miss the stuff. My cholesterol dropped 30 points in the last year.           

INSIDE THE HALL

Inside Powell Symphony Hall from the front of the balcony. Nicholas McGeegan, a baroque specialist who has been a guest conductor here for many years, was about to lead a performance of three pieces by C. P. E. Bach, the best known of Johan Sebastian's several musical children. The chamber-sized ensemble would have been typical for the time of composition.         

HOLIDAYS AT THE SYMPHONY HALL

Mrs. C and I have been subscribers to the St. Louis Symphony for something like 43 or 44 years. It is one of the best in the United States, a jewel of this medium-sized city. Powell Symphony Hall was built in 1925 as a movie and vaudeville palace. It reopened for the SLSO in 1968, a few months after I showed up here. Our first date was here in the spring of 1973, when we heard Mahler's 1st. I can't guess how many times we have returned. It looks warm and inviting in its holiday decor.            

NAME YOUR POISON

That phrase sounds like it should come from an old Western movie but I can't find a source online. Anyway, there are usually vendors of more than food products at our farmers markets and this is an example. It is a local business called STL Barkeep. They provide fancy cocktails and bar services for any event, as well as selling small-batch, slightly snooty spirits. You can't read the label with this resolution but the clear bottle with the white label says Encryption Vodka. That's a concept I could get into. No one will ever know. The bottle to the right is Origin Gin, which is a bit too cute for me.           

TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH SAUSAGES

A little strange? I can see touring the world with its wines or even beers but bratwurst not so much. By the way, Troy is a town on the edge of the St. Louis area and has nothing to do with Greek epic poetry.               

FIG FARM

Tower Grove farmers market. Looks like more peppers than figs but I guess you could grow almost anything with organic techniques. Personally, I think organic fruits and vegetables are a waste of money. There are specific reasons but it would take a long time to set out all the data.       

THERE AREN'T A LOT OF PURPLE VEGETABLES

I finally got off my rear and found some new local material. There is a Saturday farmers market in the city's second largest (and my favorite) park, Tower Grove. It continues every week until Christmas. There was a big turnout with mild weather yesterday. I've never seen the like of this and, in general, purple vegetables are rare - some potatoes and maybe eggplant/aubergine on the outside. Might buy some next time.               

OUT OF BUSINESS

People in this country know how in-person retail has withered, from shuttered bookstores on Main Street to empty, uncompetitive big box stores. (Except for Walmart.) This huge space, vacant for years, used to be a K Mart, roughly in the same class as Walmart and Target. I don't know what they did wrong but the chain has nearly vanished. This modest strip mall is now nearly lifeless. The physical therapy group that works on my creaky back is there, probably because the rent is cheap.         

DUSK ON THE PLAYGROUND

There is an elaborate playground a short walk from our home. When Ellie gets home from school about 3:30 she expects me to take her there because she assumes I am at her command. The relief for me these days is that sunset is an hour later. Does she care? No, she will run around in the growing darkness until I get very insistent.                
 

FROM ST. LOUIS TO THE PANTHEON

On Tuesday, St. Louis native Josephine Baker was symbolically interred in the French Pantheon, the final resting place of the nation's most revered dead. She grew up with poverty and discrimination. After some successes in entertainment here and in New York, she traveled to France and a stellar career on the stage and in film. She later became a leader of the Resistance and, it is said, a spy. Charles de Gaulle made her a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. After her death, she was interred in Monaco. This week, she was, in a sense, laid to rest in the Pantheon in a symbolic casket containing soil from various locations that Baker had lived, including St. Louis, Paris, the South of France and Monaco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker           

Our loss, France's gain.

CITY DAILY PHOTO DECEMBER THEME DAY - THE FUTURE

People who seriously try to predict the future are almost always wrong. That being said, I don't see much reason for optimism. The scale of risk is greater and greater, and humanity isn't getting a lot nicer. This photo has two layers but is not a composite. The top is a crystal ball I keep on my desk designed by one of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer. The words are engraved on the bottom. Beneath it is a Chinese ten yuan note with its image of Mao. Read it as you will.           

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - KN95 AT DCA

 

Sitting on the tarmac at Washington Reagan National Airport, waiting to go home. Never thought of using a smart phone for portrait lighting but, hey, whatever works.

I am totally out of material. May have to do some recycling.           

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - SHOP CLARE

Clare, Michigan, has something over 3,000 people. There are a surprising number of good restaurants (and an unsurprising number of bad ones), an old hotel with an air of elegance and a 125 year old city bakery (now incarnated as Cops & Doughnuts, https://copsdoughnuts.com/) and a few interesting shops. We didn't go into this one so I don't know what mysteries were held within. It's main stock seemed to be minerals, geodes, etc., but I wonder if it glows on the darkest night.           

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - HANGING OUT WITH THE FAMILY

Not a great photo but there isn't much going on. We were thinking of making a long day trip to sand dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan but got scared off by snow in the forecast. So we hung out and entertained kids. 

In the air again later today. Thanks to a big schedule change by the *&$@# airline we would have had a forty minute connection in Chicago, the most direct way, and I ain't taking that chance. So we are going home through Washington, DC, the very long way around, but it works.                

 

STL DPB - THE BEAUTIFUL MIDDLE GRANDCHILD

Audrey Christmas Crowe, 6, and, no, I don't where the middle name came from other than that there is a town called Christmas in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that my son and daughter-in-law visited. She is in rapt attention, watching the movie version of Hamilton. She knows all the lyrics by heart.

It is appropriate that she has a shamrock on her knee. She lives in the town of Clare in Clare County, Michigan, which is twinned with County Clare in Ireland, where my father's family comes from.             

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - NORTH WOODS

We are pretty far up there by American standards, if you set aside Alaska. Although in Europe we are no further north than, say, Milan, the continental climate here makes for serious winters. The family went for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner walk on one of the many area trails. Snow was just beginning to fall as we headed back into town. The cold and damp isn't doing my pneumonia a bit of good.          

THANKSGIVING IN MICHIGAN

 

This is my one and only grandson, Atlas Henry Crowe. He will be three in February and, like all the small members of this family, loves to get in front of my lens. I don't get to see him and his sister, Audrey, 5, often enough. In this picture we are at the side of the pool in our hotel but those eyes could just melt me.                

THE EASY WAY OUT FOR ME

Greetings from a hotel near beautiful Chicago O'Hare International airport, where the traffic, by air and by road, is of mythic proportions tonight. To make sure I get something posted, here's another view of Henry Shaw's house at the botanical garden as the light projections proceed.

On to central Michigan this afternoon.         

FAIRY HOUSE

As every year, pictures of the light projections on the 19th Century home of Henry Shaw, founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden. They are quite remarkable and ever changing. The projections don't even get on the neighboring trees. May have a bit more of this.

Travel day today as we head out to see our Michigan division for the Thanksgiving holiday.. Chicago tonight and Clare, in the middle of the state, tomorrow. Been a while since we've seen Audrey, 5, and Atlas, who is close to 3.          

MADELEINE MONDAY

In case you don't know what to take pictures of at Garden Glow, the garden itself provides a few large picture frames to drop you a hint. Putting children in them usually does the job. A little hard to spot, but Ellie is very proud of herself in her unicorn hat.                

WORMHOLE

I suppose I have a picture of this tunnel every year after the family goes to Garden Glow. That's okay. It's still pretty cool. Anyway, I haven't had an original idea in my head for a while. I'm just now pulling out of two and a half weeks  of what my doctor called mild to moderate pneumonia. My immune system is suppressed by my treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and I'm prone to these things. Antibiotic # 1 didn't help but a bigger gun did. Gotta get better to hit the airports this week.               

CONVERGENCE

 

Here's how to draw the eye to a subject. The colored cylinders pulse and change colors. The visual experience is quite different from other angles.                

ANOTHER DIMENSION

A star gate, maybe. These lights pulse in different patterns and colors, so you catch what's out there when you press the shutter. It looks Emily and Ellie may pass into another dimension. However, when they come out the other side they will still be in Missouri.                 

GLO STIX

Like a strange field of night blooming flowers, these color poles come out every year at Garden Glow. I wouldn't walk across here. Looks dangerous.          

GARDEN GLOW ONCE AGAIN

Every year at this time the wonderful Missouri Botanical Garden illuminates the grounds for an event called Garden Glow. It's been seen in these pages for years and never fails to delight. This is the view down the reflecting pool toward the Climatron, a geodesic dome that houses four different climate zones. All of it changes color as time passes.               

Maeysville, Sunday Morning

Quiet, but there are hardly any people to make a sound. There is, however, a nice coffee shop that opens at eight o'clock and has a real Italian espresso machine.                  

HANK AND LILLIE'S

Like so many little American towns, Maeystown's most thriving business is the bar and casual restaurant, Hank and Lillie's Creekside Inn. In a back corner, there are three slot machines, legal in bars in Illinois. The poster on the wall looks like a collage. The stone bridge is a local landmark. Stag beer is a cheap lager that used to be made in our Illinois suburbs, went out of business and then had the name acquired by another company. The gentleman on the right, well, enjoys his hops and barley.            

Mayestown, Illinois

One of the several nice things my colleagues gave me when I retired a couple of months ago was a gift certificate at a charming B&B in the tiny town of Mayestown, Illinois, 45 minutes southeast of our home. The place is called the Corner George Inn, https://www.cornergeorgeinn.com/. The reason it that the town was almost entirely German and there were so many Georges. or Georg, that each one acquired a nickname to distinguish him. Ours happened to live on the corner of the principal intersection (and they don't have many).

The town has not many more than 100 people. Few business survive, as illustrated above. The B&B, a bar/casual restaurant and a few cutsie gift/antique shops are all that remain.               

VANISHING POINT

The images at the van Gogh show change and shift. At times you can imagine that you are walking through a hallucinogenic version of the fields of Provence. But don't walk too far toward the horizon. You'll bump your nose.