As most people know, wildfires in Canada, particularly Quebec, are circulating smoke and soot into lots of the U.S. It's not that bad here although not exactly healthy. What is remarkable is that over the last several days Chicago and Detroit have had the worst air quality of any major city on the planet. That's saying something. I've been to Delhi and Beijing.
Appropriately, theme day is tomorrow and the topic is climate.
There is a chain of stores in Michigan and the surrounding region based in Grand Rapids called Meijer. It's like a Walmart with a gigantic grocery store. My son tells me that every single one has a mechanical horse named Sandy near the checkout. For a penny, kids like my granddaughter Audrey can get a little bounce and fantasy.
This is located in another part of the city's Public Museum. The room contains arcade games and other children's amusements.
I didn't know much about Grand Rapids, Michigan, until last weekend. My son decided that we should meet there because it's a lot bigger than the city he lives in, Midland, and isn't Detroit. The city proper has about 200,000 people but the metro area has four times that. One interesting feature is the Public Museum. It has exhibits about history, architecture, technology and culture, all interesting to us visitors. This is the clock from the old city hall, parts of which were preserved when it was demolished.
My son, Andy, with his daughter, Audrey, at the controls of the pontoon boat we (perhaps better to say I) rented. I love the way she is looking at her father. Andy and his wife, Claire, seem to be nearly perfect parents with nearly perfect children. I hope I don't jinx them.
All the grandkids: the redoubtable Ellie, almost 10, with Michigan cousin Audrey, almost 8. Below, grandson Atlas, 4, in my son's hands and about to be thrown in the water, to his obvious delight. All in the pool at our hotel in Grand Rapids.
Muskegon Lake is about 40 minutes northwest of Grand Rapids, just in from Lake Michigan and connected by a channel. It's pretty good size, about 2.5 miles / 4 km wide and 5.5 miles / 8.9 km long. My son, um, suggested that I rent a pontoon boat for the day big enough for the five adults and three grandchildren. My son knows how to run a boat; I do not. We could go no farther than the second red tower, the end of the jetty into Lake Michigan proper. Then we went to a beach with shallow water and the kids had a very good time.
Seen in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, across the Grand River. I had no idea what this is about so I had to look it up. It's the local branch of a large international accounting firm. Never heard of it and I don't get any royalties.
Boating today near and possibly on Lake Michigan.
We arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday afternoon following a day of airplanes and airports. After checking into our hotel we found a very pleasant restaurant called River North, https://www.rivernorthgr.com/home, (the river being the Grand River, hence Grand Rapids, although we haven't found the rapids yet). The owner, Rachel Lee, has decorated the place with a delightful collection of bric-a-brac, much of it on Asian themes. This caught my eye. A frog may be able to do that with its legs but I can't.
Today is the beginning of an unusually busy stretch of travel, with 10 flight segments in 24 days. Today's destination is Grand Rapids, Michigan, where we will meet up with our son and his family. This is Terminal 3, the American Airlines part of O'Hare Airport in Chicago, where we change planes. The cow is enigmatic, which is why I liked it.
It's the last week of the season for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which runs in May and June. They have four productions in repertory, always in English. We've been subscribers for 44 years, I think. (Must be pretty old.)
It takes place in a theater with just under a thousand seats on a nearby college campus. The first picture shows the crowd coming in last Saturday night for Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, one of my very favorites (and it was fabulous). The second one is about a beloved tradition. People come early and have a picnic dinner under a large tent or out on the lawn. We'll be back next year.
I'm really low on material - limited mobility with a back flare-up - but traveling this week anyway. Maybe I'll find something at beautiful O'Hare International Airport.
Noisy as thunder but without 007 in attendance, three motorcycles eventually whizzed around the steel sphere. I cannot imagine how this is planned and rehearsed. There is no room for error; error could be fatal. One of our colleagues suggested in a comment this kind of show is popular in Europe. I've never heard of it in the U.S. but saw something like this in Shanghai years ago. The bikers do it safely night after night.
One of the recurring motifs in the circus performance was these three men, dressed in tuxedo jackets and shirts, but one of them wore matching bicycle shorts and one was a dwarf. They served as the connection between acts but threw in some comedy of their own. Here they each held a bottle of water. They would suck down a mouthful and spray it back out in various funny poses. Use your imagination.
Once again, it's hard for me to understand how even a circus performer could do this. Difficult to see because of the color of the lights but the performer's hair is pulled upward into something that looks like a braided ball of artificial hair. There is a hook inserted into that, attached to a cable suspended from the rafters. In a sense, she is dangling by the hair follicles on her scalp. She did some swoops and turns with no expression of distress.
Leonard Cohen sang about a bird on a wire but I've never seen a dog standing on a rope, as here at Circus Flora. Once again, a matter of superb balance that is beyond my understanding. I bet it took a lot of dog treats to train this behavior.
Another act from Circus Flora. What this photo doesn't capture is just how fast this man was juggling. Never seen the like and only a very fast shutter speed could catch the moving clubs. Someone once tried to teach me how to juggle three balls and I couldn't come close.
Some readers may have heard of the Flying Walendas, a multi-generation family of top notch circus acrobats. They are a permanent part of Circus Flora here. Not that they are all that high in this picture but they are performing without a net. I was not given a good sense of balance and I cannot understand how someone could learn and perform these feats.
Is it really better on a camel? Ellie seemed to think so. A portion of the lot at Circus Flora was fenced off and, at intermission, for $10 the kids could take two turns around the rectangle. This particular beast had an unusually gentle temperament. Ellie didn't care about the price-benefit ratio since I was paying.
Old travelers may remember that the original name of the UK's flag air carrier was British Overseas Airways Corporation, or BOAC. Old experienced travelers may recall the true meaning of the acronym, Better On A Camel. Our limited experience with camels at Giza, Egypt, and the Thar Desert in northwest India was not particularly pleasant. Circus Flora had an act featuring four of them trotting around the ring with remarkable good behavior. Rides came later, as we will see tomorrow.
St. Louis doesn't have the best image around the country. Post-industrial, declining population in the core city while the metro population is stagnant, crime problems. But there is so much to enjoy if you look further. One unusual feature is that we have a resident circus company, Circus Flora, with a permanent big top tent. It is named after a beloved elephant from the company's early days (it's 37 years old). We took our granddaughter last night and there was lots to see.
Running a bit low on material. There was an art fair in the pleasant suburb where we live, Webster Groves, last weekend. There wasn't much to photograph but this bright beer truck caught my eye. This brand is made by Anheuser-Busch, the local megabrewer. It's a Belgian wheat ale with orange, lemon and lime peel added. I've never tried it but it doesn't sound appealing. Somebody buys it.
New images soon. We are taking our granddaughter to the circus tonight and they welcome photography.
Fire is a subject on the minds of many Canadians and Americans today. This Chihuly installation, Cattails And Copper Birch Reeds, makes me think of the flames consuming much of Quebec and the Maritimes. The photos of the smoke in New York, my home town, are shocking. St. Louis is far enough southwest that we have been little affected.
This frizzy sunburst and its twin behind me are permanent installations in the botanical garden and not properly part of the current Chihuly exhibition. They flank the large rose garden. The western one catches the last of the sunset.
The scene is the central reflecting pool at our botanical garden, where angels made by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles charm us with their flutes. One of Chihuly's boats filled with an explosion of colored glass seems to have come to rest. It's called simply Fiori Boat, the first word being Italian for flowers.
The works seen in this series get oohs and ahs from the public. However, I once asked an artist acquaintance what he thought of Chihuly. His review was in two words: too easy. Something to think about.
A different style of Chihuly glass work in the botanical garden. Looks dangerous to me. The purple spikes grow from a pile of cleanly-sawn logs, as if in reaction to the destruction of a tree. Any other ideas?.
Looking at a work of art often raises associations - that reminds me of something. This large piece called Vermilion and Canary Yellow Tower is at a major junction of paths in our botanical garden. It immediately made me think of a cartoon germ in a children's book, aggressive, threatening and scary. Lots of other reactions are possible, of course.
To my great benefit, Mrs. C is often sharper at spotting things than I am. I was stumbling through the crowd inside the Climatron, eyes on the path, when she told me to look up. There seemed to be an explosion of ice worms inside the rigid frame of the geodesic dome. This wasn't the whole story, though. Several steps further on I looked back and saw this:
A side-on view of a chandelier. We hope it is well-secured.
I couldn't think of anything happier or more appropriate than my granddaughters, Audrey and Ellie, an endless source of joy. See big grins from City Daily Photo members around the world at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .
