Goodbye to 2021, not one to go down in the list of favorites. And for 2022? Predicting the future is an uncertain business and those who try typically fail. Appropriately, the Arch is mostly hidden in fog. Our family will try to live as normally as possible, dodging spike proteins and autocrats.
What light through yonder lens cap breaks? Okay, terrible joke, but the muse must be off somewhere returning bad Christmas presents. More soft, warm light in Forest Park Saturday afternoon.
It's common for me to go out shooting on Christmas afternoon. Neither of us are from here and our sibs are scattered around. One of our two children is here and, of course, the redoubtable Ellie. Our other child and his family are hundreds of miles away. The city is quiet, of course, but there are things to note. On Saturday the sky was sort of clear but hazy, and with the low winter sun everything had a soft warmth.
I don't know if this was her favorite Christmas present but it was mine, possibly because I bought it for her and I think it's funny. I found it in a New York Times column on off-beat gifts for kids. It is a plate with a vaguely male or female face and lighter or darker skin. The child uses the contents of the meal to make an edible portrait. She took her diced red pepper, the only vegetable she will eat at the moment, and made quite a fright wig.
This is something I saw yesterday that really struck me. Since I was a bit bored I went out cruising for images. As I drove by the great statue of Louis IX in Forest Park, I saw a small group of people, some kneeling on the stone, saying the rosary. I thought I recognized a couple of faces who were involved in this incident eighteen months ago: https://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2020/06/statue-in-crosshairs.html No editorializing, just reportage.
A quiet Christmas Day at our house. Mrs. C and I don't do gifts but we do make contributions in one another's names to causes that are meaningful to us. Ellie, however, made out like a bandit, which we may see here tomorrow.
And freakishly warm, flirting with record high temp. Many events newly restricted with the virus flare, and I'm high risk. A worrisome day.
Today is not the day to be alone, particularly in the West. The season is defined not only by those close to us, but also people at any distance who need us. We have so many new channels of communication that can feel impersonal but seeing your family on Zoom is better than not seeing them at all.
Sidewalk poetry on Cherokee Street. I don't completely agree with this. The ones who leave may need our love even more.
I found out by chance that this line was popularized by Oscar Wilde, who claimed he heard it in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado, while on his marathon U.S. lecture tour. At least this performer, who was publicizing a used piano dealer, wasn't playing Feliz Navidad. 
There was close enough of a full moon here both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was cloudy but Sunday was spotless. I was thinking about a location for a good shot and I decided to try the front portico of the art museum, behind the grand equestrian statue of St. Louis. What I'd forgotten was the four spotlights at the corners of its little plaza. Don't know what was in the air but the moon looked like a tiny pumpkin.
Where did she learn how to pose? TV? Online? Anyway, because you are supposed to do it in this country at Christmastime, we took Ellie to St. Louis Ballet's production of The Nutcracker on Saturday. Big crowd (a few maskless, despite an unenforced house rule), mediocre quality recorded music, pretty dancers in pretty costumes. She liked it.
Mrs. C and I have so much in common despite our very different origins (a farm in Kansas and an apartment in New York). We realized that there is one more thing: neither of us have any interest in ballet. Too often sweet and shallow. Amazingly athletic but the women have to dance in a way that wrecks their feet and ankles and the men don't. Alvin Ailey or Twyla Tharp might be a different matter.
Okay, I don't get it either. There are several art galleries in this stretch of Cherokee Street but I don't think this place has exhibitions. Reminds me of Laurie Anderson's song with the same name as this post's title, https://youtu.be/UfOK0evCqZY.
Still on Cherokee Street. I wondered why the sign on the awning is in English and on the window in Spanish.
St. Louis has a surprisingly smaller Hispanic population than most American cities but what we have is centered on Cherokee Street. If you are into that sort of thing, you can get your entire outfit to be a vaquero, or Mexican cowboy. If I remember my Spanish correctly, the brand name could suggest the high or tall ones.
There was a print market on a recent mild Saturday along The Lou's funky Cherokee Street. It was hard to believe how many people are making original and very strange images on paper in our area. The low winter sun made west-facing walls pop with warmth.
Bees are gone from from the fields by this time of year but their products remain. The design and colors of the table cloth look very Provencal to me.
An episode in the struggle to keep Ellie's taste in music somewhere above Jo Jo Siwa and Taylor Swift. The Metropolitan Opera shows live and recorded productions in local theaters. Mrs. C and I attend occasionally. On Saturday an abridged version of Mozart's The Magic Flute was on offer, two hours and performed in English. The kid has liked the Queen of the Night's arias and Papageno/Papagena since she was a tot so we went together. She liked it so much she wants to go to the full opera when it is produced here in the spring.
Maybe it's just my loose associations, but this has something of an alien look to me, like undersea polyps or sea slugs.
A detail seen at the farmers market. Beef and pork production are a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in this country, not to mention a wasteful use of water resources. We are not vegetarians but we don't eat much meat any more. Chicken and fish, yes, but little of the four-footed products. (Ellie whines for burgers sometimes.) Lots more veg meals. I don't miss the stuff. My cholesterol dropped 30 points in the last year.
Inside Powell Symphony Hall from the front of the balcony. Nicholas McGeegan, a baroque specialist who has been a guest conductor here for many years, was about to lead a performance of three pieces by C. P. E. Bach, the best known of Johan Sebastian's several musical children. The chamber-sized ensemble would have been typical for the time of composition.
Mrs. C and I have been subscribers to the St. Louis Symphony for something like 43 or 44 years. It is one of the best in the United States, a jewel of this medium-sized city. Powell Symphony Hall was built in 1925 as a movie and vaudeville palace. It reopened for the SLSO in 1968, a few months after I showed up here. Our first date was here in the spring of 1973, when we heard Mahler's 1st. I can't guess how many times we have returned. It looks warm and inviting in its holiday decor.
That phrase sounds like it should come from an old Western movie but I can't find a source online. Anyway, there are usually vendors of more than food products at our farmers markets and this is an example. It is a local business called STL Barkeep. They provide fancy cocktails and bar services for any event, as well as selling small-batch, slightly snooty spirits. You can't read the label with this resolution but the clear bottle with the white label says Encryption Vodka. That's a concept I could get into. No one will ever know. The bottle to the right is Origin Gin, which is a bit too cute for me.
A little strange? I can see touring the world with its wines or even beers but bratwurst not so much. By the way, Troy is a town on the edge of the St. Louis area and has nothing to do with Greek epic poetry.
Tower Grove farmers market. Looks like more peppers than figs but I guess you could grow almost anything with organic techniques. Personally, I think organic fruits and vegetables are a waste of money. There are specific reasons but it would take a long time to set out all the data.
I finally got off my rear and found some new local material. There is a Saturday farmers market in the city's second largest (and my favorite) park, Tower Grove. It continues every week until Christmas. There was a big turnout with mild weather yesterday. I've never seen the like of this and, in general, purple vegetables are rare - some potatoes and maybe eggplant/aubergine on the outside. Might buy some next time.
People in this country know how in-person retail has withered, from shuttered bookstores on Main Street to empty, uncompetitive big box stores. (Except for Walmart.) This huge space, vacant for years, used to be a K Mart, roughly in the same class as Walmart and Target. I don't know what they did wrong but the chain has nearly vanished. This modest strip mall is now nearly lifeless. The physical therapy group that works on my creaky back is there, probably because the rent is cheap.
There is an elaborate playground a short walk from our home. When Ellie gets home from school about 3:30 she expects me to take her there because she assumes I am at her command. The relief for me these days is that sunset is an hour later. Does she care? No, she will run around in the growing darkness until I get very insistent.
On Tuesday, St. Louis native Josephine Baker was symbolically interred in the French Pantheon, the final resting place of the nation's most revered dead. She grew up with poverty and discrimination. After some successes in entertainment here and in New York, she traveled to France and a stellar career on the stage and in film. She later became a leader of the Resistance and, it is said, a spy. Charles de Gaulle made her a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. After her death, she was interred in Monaco. This week, she was, in a sense, laid to rest in the Pantheon in a symbolic casket containing soil from various locations that Baker had lived, including St. Louis, Paris, the South of France and Monaco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker
Our loss, France's gain.
People who seriously try to predict the future are almost always wrong. That being said, I don't see much reason for optimism. The scale of risk is greater and greater, and humanity isn't getting a lot nicer. This photo has two layers but is not a composite. The top is a crystal ball I keep on my desk designed by one of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer. The words are engraved on the bottom. Beneath it is a Chinese ten yuan note with its image of Mao. Read it as you will.
See what's in the crystal balls of City Daily Photo members from around the world at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .
