WHERE HAS THIS BEEN?

There was a time when I would upload a picture of the Gateway Arch almost every week. To paraphrase Shakespeare, age cannot wither her nor time spoil her infinite variety. However, after taking thousands of shots over 30+ years of digital photography it's pretty hard to find something new. But since I was down shooting on the riverfront anyway I thought it was time to say hello again.

It's quite a marvel. It is a catenary arch, the inverse of the shape you get if you hold a chain up by its ends. 630 feet / 192 meters tall, with a slightly scary funicular that can take you to the top through either leg. It's now 57 years old. I think of it as our local deity.         

LOW WATER

I drove down onto the levee by the Mississippi to get a closer view of what's going on. During busier periods, particularly summer, the levee is used for parking. You can just see the faint yellow stripes on the cobblestones. It's not unusual to see the water getting close to the spaces painted at bottom center. If Old Man River is really rolling it can cover the paved path at left center or even go over the cement wall above that and over the street.

In an hour's shooting I saw one barge go by. My last office overlooked the river and a tow would pass in both directions every few minutes. As a commentator on FB noted yesterday, this is causing great difficultly for farmers who can't get their grain to port.               

THE MISSISSIPPI IS RUNNING DRY

This is the old levee, built in the 19th Century, that connects the Mississippi River to the central city. It's hard to get scale from this picture, but half to two-thirds of what you see here is normally under water. When the river is really full, it runs up to the street you can just see at the left center. The current level is the lowest in more that 40 years due to drought up and down the watershed. Barges, the commercial life of the river, have to run with light loads and shorter groups in the diminished central channel. There are areas that are restricted to one way traffic on alternating days.

I hope to drive down into the levee today for some closer shots. And I hope today doesn't approach a low water mark for our democracy.             

NOT THE LOCAL SPACEPORT

Gotta get back to normal stuff. When I took this picture my loose associations made me think of a rocket gantry but it's just some kind of industrial structure along the riverfront. That diagonal piece piece on the left is a type used to get material on and off of barges. Which would be great, except the Mississippi is running dry, sort of and at most places the barges can't get close enough to shore. I hope to get some pictures of that.

A bit of the Paint Louis section of the floodwall is at the lower left.            

THE STATE OF MISSOURI POLITICS / MADELEINE MONDAY

On Saturday I took Ellie to The Magic House, STL's children's museum. One section is about the divisions of government, with mock-ups of a courtroom, the president's oval office and a legislative chamber. Here she sits in the judge's bench, head in hand, perhaps thinking about the state of our state.

Tomorrow is election day in the U.S. Yes, it's odd to do it on a Tuesday but it has something to do with market days in agrarian post-colonial times. Lots of us, perhaps including my granddaughter, are are terribly worried about the erosion of democracy in our country. Missouri has an open U.S. Senate seat. Not that the Democratic candidate is so great but, to everyone in this household, the Republican is a horror. This isn't the place for details but, in general, I could never vote for a candidate of a party that has so clearly lost its mind. There, I said it: the occasional rant.