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.
