MADELEINE MONDAY

In this country Halloween can be wild fun for children and not a few adults. I'm not into it myself. It is vastly more commercialized than when I was a child. I don't like being frightened (some people think it's fun - I don't) or the implications of violence and death. For most American children, though, it is a sugar-fueled fantasy celebration.

Ellie is getting into Harry Potter. The books are a challenge for her reading level but she has made her way through most of the first one. She loves the movies. So yesterday she got herself up as Hermione (with some help from mom), mounted her broom and was about to take off from our front steps when I caught her.         

CITY DAILY PHOTO NOVEMBER THEME DAY - GREAT BIG MESS

Mess can be a sign of disorder and decay, but, if assembled well, can also convey joy and a free spirit. And no one would ever try to steal this car. Maybe a great big mess can ward off evil.      

WALL WALKERS

Another two for one, but the point is better illustrated this way. Barely visible in the top picture, there is a trampoline below these three performers. With precise timing and direction, they create Escher-like contradictions in space, walking horizontally on vertical surfaces while seeming to float perpendicular to them while sitting in the audience's frame of reference observing the commotion.            

THEY FLOAT THROUGH THE AIR WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE

Who remembers that old song - the daring young men (and women) on the flying trapeze? This is one of the reasons people come to the circus, to watch people do things at frightening heights that we in the audience could not imagine doing. Notice that the man is supporting the woman with just his feet under her arms. And with such grace!               

I WOULDN'T MAKE IT PAST THE FIRST BIT

A two-fer today. Another performer at Circus Flora came rolling our with one foot balanced on the on the back of a tiny tricycle, a posture I could only call precarious. And then she went on to do things with her joints at angles that a ball and socket should not be able to.She soon got her legs extended to 180 degrees from one another. Unimaginable.                     

LOOSE JOINTS

The caption has nothing to  do with combustible pastimes when I was in college.  The person who played the defense counsel in The Trial Of The Century was something of a contortionist (and not the only one in the circus). It's hard to tell from this straight on view but that's a toilet seat he is wriggling his way through. I thought that part of the point of a toilet seat is that you couldn't get through it. Potty humor. The kids thought it was hilarious. Plenty of their parents did, too.               

JUST KIDS!

There is an organization affiliated with Circus Flora called Circus Harmony, https://circusharmony.org/, that teaches children and teens from our area the arts of acrobatics, tumbling and juggling. They are always part of the main circus performance and the skills are amazing. When I was about that age my best physical accomplishment was riding a bicycle, or maybe the subway.              

LEARNED COUNSEL

Circus Flora always has a thread of a story to pull the performances together. The title of this fall's production is The Trial of the Century. One of the performers was accused of stealing the costumes and the jugglers' clubs and something else I forget. Clarence Darrow this wasn't. The man on the left was the over-the-top defense counsel and the woman on the right the prosecutor. Why he came out wearing a giant cartoon mask of himself was never explained bu it was funny.                

MADELEINE MONDAY

We temporarily interrupt the circus for a bad hair day. The kid had no school on Friday for some reason so she wheedled me to take her to our children's museum, The Magic  House. One small room has a Van de Graaff generator, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator, which pumps out very high voltage and very low wattage static electricity charges. You can buy one online if you like. 

It produces this effect, making it a mandatory photo stop. Better Ellie than me. I don't have enough hair to make it worthwhile.         

HOW DOES SHE STAY STANDING?

Something puzzles me about this. All those rings must have sufficient weight to maintain the momentum that keeps them spinning. Yet, if they are too heavy, they might exert enough centrifugal force to pull the performer off balance. One hula hoop is no big deal, but scores of them? The audience didn't get to examine the materials.           

THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN

One of the nice things about The Lou is that we have our own resident circus company, Circus Flora, https://circusflora.org/ and that it has its own permanent big top tent. It has resumed live shows after a long period of Covid-enforced quiet. Of course, we took Ellie. She pretty much squealed for two hours.

Something I really appreciate is that they have no objection to photography, unlike most events. It was often tough to shoot under the dark blue canopy with spotlights and daylight from the sides, open for ventilation, creating wild dynamic range. Still, there are some cute images.         

AND WE BID YOU GOOD NIGHT

Time to wrap up the Artica photos, as much as I like the event. This is the grand finale. All the devotees circle around, ooh and ah, wait for the embers to darken and then wander off into the night.            

LOOKS LIKE A FANTASY MOVIE

You could see this fire dancer as performing a ritual ceremony in a futuristic society, surrounded by acolytes who worship 21st Century suspension bridges. It's just the awkwardly-named Stan Musial-Veterans Memorial Bridge across the Mississippi. Looks cool at night, though.                

NOT QUITE BURNED OUT

Okay, terrible joke. I still have a few pictures from Artica I want to use before I move on. The is another one of the fire dancers who performed before the immolation of Our Lady of Artica. The surrounding people and building give it a sense of scale.             

ANY AUDIENCE WE CAN GET

The Artica festival site is close to the Mississippi but almost all of it is behind a flood wall. However, there is a long bike trail that runs along the river for a miles north of downtown. People ride on either side of the wall and it;s common for them to stop by the festival. Bike clothing has become elaborate and brightly colored.

Been a long time since I rode a bicycle, although I did it a lot when I was younger. The last time I tried my knee got so inflamed I needed a steroid shot. (Thanks to you, Steve, if you see this.) It's scared me off since.       

ANTHEM

On the Artica main stage, the musician who calls herself Celia entertains the crowd. The festival has a pretty good logo, a graphic representation of Our Lady of Artica, the giant effigy that goes up in flames at the end of the last night.              

Dr. Pepper

Jalapeños and poblanos make an effective shield to ward off evil. The headpiece helps scare everything away. This guy shows up for Artica every year but, you know, he's hard to talk to.        

                

KEEP OUT THE MISSISSIPPI

                Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

                That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

                And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

                                                     Robert Frost, Mending Wall

Artica head guy Lohr Barkley leads the annual parade by the Mississippi River flood wall.       

 

 

COULD ANYTHING BE SIMPLER?

Artica has no censorship. You can  say or show whatever you want, and then the interpretation is up to the viewer. The rainbow border on this piece gives us a hint that there is more to it than X = X.          

ARCS OF FIRE

More entertainment at Artica before the bonfire. Some good luck at 1/6 second with the image stabilization. If I was whirling that thing I'd want one of the fire suits like the guys on the right are wearing.           

PUBLIC HUMILIATION

St. Louis leading comedian-provocateurs are at it again. Audrey Crabtree and Lynn Berg placed themselves in stocks of a sort, stood on a platform and invited the public to mock and jeer at them for any reason, or no reason. Hurling water balloons was explicitly permitted although I don't thiink it happened. What sins they might have committed to deserve this were left to the imagination, sort of a Rorschach test for persecutors. Maybe it was cathartic for the audience. Maybe it just built bad karma.                  

WARM UP

Okay, terrible pun. I couldn't help myself. Before the immolation of Our Lady of Artica, there is always entertainment from fire dancers. Hard to shoot because there is not much light but the torches themselves so shutter speed is a problem.. Sometimes you get lucky. This was shot at 1/60 sec. using a lens and body that both had image stabilization.                  

ARMAGEDDON, ST. LOUIS STYLE

Artica always ends on Sunday night with the burning of the wooden effigy of Our Lady of Artica. Although I have hundreds of pictures from this weekend I have to cut to the big finale for the sheer drama of it. The structure is perhaps 10 meters high. It was a perfectly clear night and we wondered what the passengers in the planes flying overhead thought when they looked out the window.

Lots more of this ti come. Ya know, there's a lot going on in this town if you know where to look.                 

KEEP ST. LOUIS FREAKY

Seen in the Audience at Artica yesterday afternoon. Who says this is boring Midwestern fly-over country?

The big burn is tonight. Lots more to come.                

ARTICA'S BACK!

Artica 2021, Brave New Harmony, starts today and continues through tomorrow night. https://articastl.com/artica-2021-brave-new-harmony It's STL's premier alternative arts festival. Performance, constructions, interactive whimsy and fun for kids begins at mid-day today. The traditional everyone's-invited parade is at 1:11 PM and the spectacular end comes after dark tomorrow when Our Lady of Artica, seen above, is put to the torch. It's tucked into a corner of the North Riverfront. Set your nav app for the William A. Kerr Foundation and you'll get there.