SENTINEL

Why does one sunflower tower over the others? It looks so alert, as if keeping watch over a ragtag group of nodding heads.                        

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, AND THY CUSTOMER

More sunflowers pushed back another day. I was too drained after another open-air opera matinee in STL summer heat to do editing, although the performance of The Barber of Seville was fabulous. Before the show we had lunch at a place called Olio. https://www.oliostl.com/. It's been around a few years but we had never tried it.

Locals who are interested can see my rave review at https://www.yelp.com/biz/olio-saint-louis?q=public%20health. The sign in the photo seemed to reflect the attitude of the owners and staff.                                    

OPERA IN THE HEAT

One of the nice things about this town is that we have a permanent big top tent. Its main purpose is the home of our resident circus company but other events take place there. Our summer opera company is putting on a burst of performance there this weekend. Difficult circumstances but better than sitting idle for another year. 

We went to a matinee performance of The Tales of Hoffman yesterday. The tent is open-sided but not air conditioned and has no interior fans. It was 90 F / 32 C. The two male leads were, um, portly and portlier, wearing three piece suits. (The reed-thin soprano, who was fabulous, calls herself Brooklyn Snow, which I don't believe for a minute.) The whole company did a heroic job. (I started swooning in the third act.) However, we have tickets this afternoon for a performance of The Barber of Seville and the forecast is for 97 F / 36 C. We wonder if it will be canceled. If it's not, we wonder whether we will make it past intermission. We wonder if Almaviva will suffer heat stroke on stage.

Back to sunflowers tomorrow.                  

AH! SUN-FLOWER

By William Blake

 

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun:

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the travellers journey is done. 

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: 

Arise from their graves and aspire, 

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

 

 

I couldn't get that out of my head while I was shooting in the flower field. I know the poem not because of some course in romantic poetry but because of a musical arrangement my weird friends and I listened to in the late 60s, https://youtu.be/Mp1zE1oicdg.                        

NOT KANSAS

 

The Sunflower State, although we'll be there in a couple of weeks. Mrs. C and I went on an excursion yesterday to an out-of-the-way corner of the suburbs, tucked behind the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. In one of the few good works of our benighted state government, the Missouri Department of Conservation maintains the Missouri Bottoms Conservation Area, https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/places/columbia-bottom-conservation-area, bottoms in the sense of river bottomland. It has planted 14 fields of sunflowers, staggered to bloom in sequence through the summer. Quite a sight.

The only issue with these pictures is the haze from the Oregon fires a half-continent away. This picture has been heavily edited in Photoshop and still lacks something, in my opinion.