ROMANTIC FAKE RUINS

It's a sentimental, recurrent theme in 19th Century European art and literature, the ruins of an ancient castle, barren and evocative. Think Sir Walter Scott. It was nostalgia for a dream of older times. Tower Grove Park, St. Louis' most beautiful, IMHO, has a reference. Kids love to climb on it.         

I CAN ONLY GUESS

It was dead quiet in this town yesterday. Normally an occasion for trombones, snare drums, politicians waving from the back of convertibles and colorful explosives, we could hear only a few passing cars and the wind from our porch. I went out in the late afternoon cruising for images and might have come back with nothing.

As usual I ended up in Forest Park. Pretty empty. When I took a swing by the great statue of Louis IX I found what looked like a small group of conservative Catholics on patrol. (Don't get me wrong. I spent five years under the supervision of the Sisters of Mercy and eleven in Jesuit schools.) There was a priest in an ankle-length cassock, something you don't see much anymore.  And this man. Anti-mask (ggrrr). No churches closed? What kind? No Nazis, no Communists and no Muslims? No "new normal." What is the new normal? Love his shoelaces, though.        

THE FOURTH OF JULY

Our national holiday in what may be a year of sweeping change. There is more hope for racial and economic justice, but it remains unfulfilled. The economy itself is battered by a disease that many of our leaders lack the courage or intelligence to control, while many of our people reject the medical science that can lead our way out of it. We have the opportunity but not the certainty of turning out of office a corrupt wannabe strongman who threatens our democracy. May July 4, 2021, be brighter.                 

THAT HOUSE ON THAT STREET

You have seem this view on television, in electronic media or a newspaper. This is the entrance to Portland Place, a private street filled with old mansions in The Lou's Central West End. You also saw the owners of this mansion, fellow members of the local bar, standing in front. He had a semi-automatic rifle. She had a small hand gun pointed at the passing protesters, finger on the trigger. It is unclear whether the crowd broke through the locked gate.

The car in the foreground is from the news department of a local television station. No particular repercussions so far but the story has not ended.                

AFTER THE RAIN

Wave after wave of storms have passed over us. There is no dust, no smoke. The statues in Citygarden are dripping. All the plants are lush and dampen what little sound is made by the virus-chastened city.

Some people can form a mental visual image - they can see things "in their mind's eye." I'm a little different. I can hear music in my mind's ear. Not a hallucination, just a clear non-physical experience of the music. This is what has been playing all day: