HONK IF YOU LOVE INFLATABLE HIPPOS AND HATE AUTOCRATS

 

St. Louis’ No Kings protest spilled out of Kiener Plaza to the edge of Market Street, downtown’s main east-west thoroughfare. Lots of passing motorists honked their approval, even a city fire truck.                 

AXOLOTLS FOR FREEDOM

 

As with everywhere across the country, many protestors at No Kings day wore absurd inflatable costumes. It’s known as tactical frivolity. As the writer Gary Shteyngart said in the New York Times, 

it shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that the protesters were all Hamas agents or antifa interns, the protest [in Chicago] was wholesome, nonaggressive and almost shockingly middle-of-the-road. It’s hard to call an inflatable chicken dangerous.

By the way, axolotls are Mexican.       

THAT SAYS IT

 

Saturday afternoon in the rain, Kiener Plaza, downtown St. Louis.                   

NO KINGS

As most of the world knows, there were thousands of No Kings protests around the U.S. yesterday, attended by millions of people. There were several around our metro area, with the biggest in our main downtown plaza. It rained all day and I wondered if anyone would show up. People dressed for the day and there was a big crowd. More to come.                      

WHICH WAY?

 

The two most striking works in Laumeier Sculpture Park are Tony Tasset’s Eye, seen in detail yesterday, and Alexander Lieberman’s The Way, https://www.laumeiersculpturepark.org/the-way-conservation . I’ve usually photographed it straight on (click the link), but there is much to see in the details with a wide angle lens. What does this make you think of? Telescopes? Artillery?   

Millions of Americans will assemble in protest today for No Kings Day. We are expecting a lot of rain in STL. I hope it holds off until I can get some images.         

VISION

A couple of days ago I posted a picture from Citygarden, our two square block downtown sculpture garden. Yesterday, since I was in the area, I went by Laumeier Sculpture Park, our very big one in the suburbs. This time I decided  to use a wide angle lens and get in close. (10-24mm f4 @ 24mm, Fujifilm X-T5, 1.5 crop factor).  Very hard to decipher if you are not an art-loving local.

It’s Tony Tasset’s Eye, https://www.laumeiersculpturepark.org/tony-tasset-2007, seen in these pages a number of times over the years. It looks like I’ve applied a painting filter but I did not. The best thing was that some small children ran up to the sculpture while I was shooting.                  

DRY AUTUMN

 

It’s increasingly common here. Autumn has been very warm and dry. Officially, we are in moderate to severe drought. The leaves turn brown and just fall. The only way to get some color may be putting them right in front of the setting sun.  

Unfortunately, there are strong storms predicted for Saturday, the day of our nationwide No Kings protests. I really want to document it. We’ll see.