HELP OUT SOME PUNKS

That’s what the sign in the lower right says, and it seems appropriate. Things on the blog have been moving slowly. Mrs. C and I came down with a nasty bug, possibly acquired in the mega airports we passed through recently. These three were selling artwork at Tower Grove Pride. Good attitude.                               

WHAT WAS OLD IS NEW

 

We are fortunate to have one of the best symphony orchestras in the country. Its home, Powell Hall, is 100 years old. While the acoustics are very good, the building is showing its age. It reopened this weekend after two years of restoration are redevelopment. A new building surrounds the old one on two sides, with a fresh lobby, rehearsal space, musicians locker rooms and a green room for visiting artists. The auditorium retains its cream and gold patina, with improved acoustics and much more comfortable seating. It’s a big deal to us.

                  

TOWER GROVE PRIDE

 

Back home and a big change of scene. There is more to edit from Scotland but I’ll put those on Flickr.

There are two major Pride festivals in STL, a big parade downtown in June and a stationary event in Tower Grove Park in September. There were lots of folks who were out there. As happens often, it got so crowded it was hard to pick out individual people with my camera. This makes for a nice start, though.                

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - EDINBURGH OLD TOWN

 

The Old Town of Edinburgh sits on a ridge. It has a long central road, known as the Royal Mile, with meandering streets and alleys leading from it. Population and pestilence brought the city down the hill into the regular grid of New Town. We were grateful for our luck on the weather, given how wet it was when we arrived.                    

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - FRIENDS

 

Statuary in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, two of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. David Hume and Adam Smith. They were contemporaries and good friends, the eminent empiricist and the intellectual father of capitalism. (Wonderful book about the two of them, https://tinyurl.com/u48zhjkj.) My sympathies run more toward the former but their impact cannot be understated. Scotland is justifiably proud.             

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - RECITAL

 

Didn’t get any editing done on the plane from London yesterday. Big meal, watched a movie, fell asleep. Flight from Chicago to St. Louis two hours late (bird strike on the inbound plane on landing!). Anyway, doing some fill-in today. This is the great hall of the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, a wacky collection of fine art, natural history and Scottish bric-a-brac. It has a huge organ and there was a recital starting when we entered. Hard to see here, but the organist is in a blue and white plaid shirt in the center. Quite a treat.               

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - GLASGOW CATHEDRAL

Glasgow Cathedral is said to owe its roots to a chap named St. Mungo, a 7th Century priest sent to convert the heathen Scots. Never heard of him (but wasn’t there many years ago a one-hit-wonder pop singer called Mungo Jerry?). Anyway, what became a major Catholic church turned to the Church of Scotland during the Reformation, but now is maintained by the state. Well-preserved Gothic. 

I’ll edit more on our long plane rides today.              

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - THE SPIRIT OF GLASGOW

It’s been a long time since we visited this city. Some of it feels more modern and elegant, some even more gritty than I recall: the Hugo Boss store across from our hotel and the homeless man cocooned in a nest of blankets just down the street. Posh hotels and boarded-up storefronts. We passed a wall where it was written:

We are not from the left.

We are not from the right.

We are from the bottom

And we are coming for the top.

The city has a wonderful sense of cheeky irony. The photo above is in front of the modern art gallery, a statue of the Duke of Wellington with a traffic cone on his head. It was there when we visited ages ago. The council took it down. People put it back up, and so over and over. The council proposed to make the plinth much higher. There was a huge public outcry and the authorities relented. It is now a local symbol.

The picture below is the water cooler in our hotel lobby. Whisky flights are available at pubs and restaurants at almost every corner.

Edinburgh airport hotel tonight, long journey home on Wednesday.

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - UP SOME MOUNTAIN

Just north of Fort William, where we spent Saturday night, is a gondola leading up to ski lifts in the Nevis range of mountains, topped by Ben Nevis, the highest in the British Isles. The view is down over the town. You got Loch This, you got Loch That, pretty soon you got Loch Around The Clock. Scotland puts Minnesota to shame. 

Around Glasgow today.                     

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - JUST SOME MORE SCENERY

Driving through other parts of the Isle of Skye yesterday before crossing the bridge to the mainland. There is something like this around almost every turn, unless your view is blocked by yet another insufferable tourist bus. In the pretty town of Fort William last night and some top-of-the-line scenery on our way to Glasgow today.                 

STL DPB IN SCOTLLAND - ISLE OF SKYE

Driving around the northern part of the Aisle of Skye yesterday. There is another grand vista around every bend. The places that are easy to reach from Portree, the main town, had full parking lots and crowds that reminded me of some of our national parks at home. The more remote areas were beautifully quiet. 

I have lots more pictures from today to edit, maybe on the plane Wednesday. For today, the southern half of the island and then heading south.                 

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - THE HIGHLANDS

 

Gorgeous, lonely scenery as we drove beyond Loch Ness toward the Isle of Skye. Once we had crossed the bridge onto the island we were dismayed by the great increase in development and traffic since we were last here perhaps 25 years ago. We hope to get out to the less populated parts of the island today.

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - INVERNESS

A pleasant and prosperous city on the banks of the River Ness, the outlet of Loch Ness to the North Sea. Not that muc to do in town but there is an excellent restaurant scene that we enjoyed. Today starts with a visit to Cawdor Castle, where we will not speak of the Scottish play (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_Play). Then down the length of Loch Ness, stopping at a couple of gorgeous, romantic castles, and ending our day on the Isle of Sky.                    

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - EDINBURGH

Taking in as much as our wobbly old legs will carry us to. First, the National Gallery of Scotland, which has a remarkable collection. Second, one of the vaguely Gothic buildings of the University of Edinburgh, a snap that may have been taken by accident. Third, a scene in a pub. The man is intently watching a giant television screen showing American football. Last, from the ramparts of Edinburg Castle, looking northeast toward New Town and the Firth of Forth.

Up to Inverness today, perhaps followed by some Nessie hunting.             

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - ST. GILE’S CATHEDRAL

Long, hard day walking around Edinburgh. It’s hilly and our legs are old. A main attraction is St. Gile’s Cathedral, https://www.stgilescathedral.org.uk/, which has been Roman Catholic, Church of England and Church of Scotland, which is to say, Presbyterian. The Calvinists smashed all the windows and devotional represtational stuff, but it has been richly restored. There was a pianist rehearsing for a recital Monday evening and we walked in to one of my favorite Chopin nocturnes.  If you would like to Play Where’s Waldo, Mrs. C is somewhere in the seats.               

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - NAME YOUR POISON

First night in chilly, wet Edinburgh, Scotland. We went to a little restaurant and pub next to our hotel that had a large array of whiskies (and this isn’t all of them). Now major jet lagged, got to get to sleep.             

STL DPB IN THE AIR - THE CONFLUENCE

Climbing out of St. Louis on the way to the first of two connections at big airports. This is the  confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, the former on the upper left and the latter on the right. It’s the junction of the largest river system in North America. But we will be crossing a lot of open water when this post goes up.                

ANGELS IN ST. LOUIS

Okay, more Paint Louis. These are three sections of a long, continuous work, which I will leave to you to interpret. In the air today and tomorrow, so maybe i’ll switch to pictures of airports.                        

COLOR VISION

I should be moving away from Paint Louis pictures but I like this one for its simplicity and vibrance. Some birds have better color vision than humans and are able to see part of the ultraviolet spectrum. New stuff coming since we are traveling this weekend. The people at our destination technically speak English but we’ve had trouble understanding some of them. (And no, we're not going to Alabama.)                

DALI LIVES

Or at least shows his influence in an enigmatic image at Paint Louis by well-known local artist Phil Jarvis, https://www.philjarvispainting.com/.  Color? But then we think of Ceci n’est pas une pipe.                  

DETAIL AND CONTEXT

Something from Paint Louis that caught my eye. The detail, in a way, shows the point of the whole event. I think it’s perky. The whole panel, though, is unsettling. A baby covered with tattoos and wearing a balaclava (ICE agent?). References to Chicago like the central tattoo and the CTA transit car. Why is the baby cradling what I think is a bolt cutter?  It’s cringy.            

INTERPRETATION NEEDED

There was much creative mural art at Paint Louis but a lot of what went on the walls can be described (if I understand correctly) as tagging. I looked for information online to distinguishing graffiti from tagging and found only a little, such as https://www.edenart.com/news/graffiti-vs-tagging.  Is this hyper-stylized lettering? I can see hints of letters, an R here and maybe a K there, but I can’t read.it. Is it meant to be intelligible to someone? Comments welcome.                       

VISION OF ST. LOUIS

Another from Paint Louis. Besides the beautiful, evocative portrait, the background is of particular interest to me. The view is looking west toward the Arch and downtown from the Illinois side of the river. However, it isn’t today’s downtown, but from decades past, when the Arch was newer and I went to work there 51 years ago. Modern buildings are absent and the one by the left leg was razed long ago. Was the artist aware of this? If so, why was this picture used?                 

PAINT LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

Clever, and one of my favorite works from Paint Louis, a wonderful mix of references. It brings back dim memories of when we walked down the Avenue of the Sphinxes in Karnak-Luxor decades ago on our earliest big adventure.               

HOW IT’S DONE

Painting a mural on a scale this big is a challenge. The flood wall is built in sections (you can see a vertical seam in the center). I don’t know the exact process, but the artists seem to get two of them. There must be a lot of planning, design and expense (think of all that paint!). The well-funded ones rent these jack lifts. Those less so bring tall ladders to go all the way up.                     

PAINT LOUIS

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest graffiti wall anywhere is here in St. Louis. It is a 2 mile / 3 km section of the Mississippi River flood wall south of downtown. Every Labor Day weekend, painters who have applied from around the world are given a section to do with what they will. This is a first sample, perhaps a comment on liberty and capital. I’ll go back for more now that the crowds have left.                 

NOT OKAY

Another shot from Monday’s demonstration where a city street crosses a major highway. Lots of passing motorists honked their support. I read that there is going to be a big nationwide repeat of June’s No Kings rallies on October 18.                 

WE’VE HAD IT

There were demonstrations all around the U.S. on Monday, our Labor Day holiday (an observance with increasingly dark irony in this country). The subject is clear, as Trump makes evermore aggressive threats to our democracy. There were two in St. Louis, this one on the viaduct where a local street crosses a major highway. It was well attended.            

JAPANESE FESTIVAL

There is a big Japanese festival in the botanical garden over the Labor Day long weekend. We took granddaughter Ellie, who enjoyed the opening parade and cosplay show. I don’t begrudge the garden the extra money but there are no capacity controls and it became unbearably crowded. We may not return.

Other things going on, including Paint Louis and our iteration of nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations. Images to come.