GUSTAV WAS HERE

 

March, 1973: I was a broke law student who went to a bar on St. Patrick’s Day with my roommate, having only pocket change between us. The crowd literally pushed me into a young woman whom I found attractive. One thing led to another and I asked her out on a first date. It wasn’t the norm at the time, but we went to the St. Louis Symphony (cheapest seats) and heard Mahler’s First Symphony, one of my favorites. 52 years later, we are hearing it again today at the SLSO.    

The Mahler Ballroom in our Central West End, https://www.mahlerballroom.com/, was a dance academy and center of St, Louis society in the early 20th Century. It has been beautifully restored and is now an event space.             

STYLE HOUSE

 

St. Louis STyLe House, on funky Cherokee Street, where you can buy all things St. Louis-y. I have a coffee cup from there, designed in the colors and typeface of municipal trucks, used as a pen holder.                                      

POLITICAL OPINION

 

Seen along the route to my granddaughter’s school. The vehicle never moves. Note the license plate. Personalized plates are cheap in Missouri. Interpret as you will.                         

SOMEBODY FIND A WARMING SHELTER

 

Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France, and his steed look like they need more than a horse blanket.The statue, seen here a number of times over the years, is called The Apotheosis of Saint Louis, standing in front of the art museum and overlooking Art Hill.                 

STILL...

 

Well, it was as cold as expected yesterday and I still didn’t feel like getting out. So, back into the archives. But the real news in this country is the big storm along the Gulf coast. (And it’s still the Gulf of Mexico, no matter what someone says.) Record-breaking snow in New Orleans. New Orleans! Many streets are lined with palm trees. This stuff is an inconvenience for us, but it’s shattering for them.                

COLD WATER

 

We are having the coldest weather we’ve had in years. The forecast high is for today 9 F / -13 C. No trash talk from people in Minnesota, etc. We are on about the same parallel as Madrid and Rome, and these days we are more accustomed to record high temperatures. This is an old picture taken from a walkway over the center of the Mississippi. We are not far downstream from the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The ice all comes from the Missouri, which flows freely. The Mississippi is damed nearby, preventing the formation of ice.                              

ONDER WINS!

People from other countries are amazed at American lawyer advertising. (As an American lawyer, I am, too.) The state authorities that grant our licenses used to consider it undignified, uncouth. Some decades ago our Supreme Court declared that it is protected free speech. Almost all of the many billboards are for plaintiff personal injury firms. That’s where the big money is.

What I really like about this image, though, Is the rhythmic parade of concrete railroad trestle supports, colorfully splashed with graffiti and receding into the background. 

May need to dip into the archives for a bit. It’s been unusually cold for unusually long by our standards, and it’s about to get colder. This old guy ain’t wandering around  outside.                  

IN CASE YOU NEED DIRECTIONS

 

If you were standing there and simply turned to your left you would figure it out. Still, it’s a friendly gesture. I’m impressed by how well the sign painter got the dimensions of the Arch. It is a catenary curve, exactly as wide as it is tall. It sure doesn’t look like that, though, unless you are facing it straight on.                     

SOME MELTING

 

We’ve had a couple days of milder temperatures. The packed snow and ice receded a little but there is a lot to go, and we’re back in the freezer tonight. Of course, the roads are clearest where there is the most traffic, unlike the lonely post-industrial area south of the Arch.                      

LOST KITTY

I’m out of current material so I’m dipping into the archives to continue the snow theme. This in a park close to our home, taken during a storm. I hope the cat found some shelter.                        

DUCKS ON ICE

 

A little bit down the road in Forest Park. There are always ducks around the water features, and sometimes geese. (Who can be really mean. Don’t mess with them.)  The ducks are far better insulated than we are and don’t give a quack about the cold. I do. I wish I could have gotten a better POV over the grass but the snow was piled up so high beside by the plows that I couldn’t get up on it.              

LATE WINTER AFTERNOON, SOFT LIGHT

 

Still closer to sunset. The blue of the shaded snow is touched by a bit of gold in the sky.                    

REALLY BAD IDEA

 

This is the bottom of Art Hill, seen yesterday. The body of water in the foreground is called the Grand Lagoon. The bottom of the hill is supposed to have a row of hay bales and orange net fencing to prevent sledders from flying off the bottom to a drop of about a meter. It’s all been knocked away. Some foolish people thought it would be fun to walk out on the frozen part, which could not have been more than a couple of centimeters thick. I didn’t wait long enough to see if anyone fell through.

SLEDDING ON ART HILL

Late afternoon at STL’s premier sledding venue, Art Hill. (That’s the art museum on top.) We don’t get much snow anymore and it’s cold enough that it’s sticking around, so there was a big turnout. The lagoon is partly frozen and there are some very unwise people out on the ice. Maybe more about that tomorrow.                        

GOALPOSTS

 

Southwest Park, Webster Groves, the suburb where we live. The view is behind where I was for yesterday’s photo of Hawken House. As the years pass, it becomes rarer for us to get this much snow.                     

HAWKEN HOUSE

 

It’s been a long time since I have had a post about this place. The view is two or three minutes walk from my front door. A historic building by our standards, built for local Christopher Hawken in 1867, https://tinyurl.com/2xhv72kz . We don’t get the white trim very often.                

ICE CAT

 

Everybody loves Niki de Saint Phalle’s work. If you have been there, think of the whimsical fountain outside the Pompidou museum in Paris. This one, Ricardo Cat, sits near the entrance  to Laumeier Sculpture Park. Although it’s in the snow, I think it radiates its own heat.

More snow today. Although winters have become milder over my years in this town, there are still data points toward the end of the curve.                    

EYE-CONIC

 

This sculpture was in the background of yesterday’s post. I referred to it as iconic for Laumeier Sculpture Park. It was only later that I realized that this was an opportunity for a really terrible pun.

Odd that there is not a hint of an optic nerve in the back.                       

A QUESTION OF VISION

The roads were passable yesterday so I took my camera out to Laumeier Sculpture Park, a lesser known gem in our area. It has 102 acres / 42 hectares of open fields and hilly wooded trails studded with contemporary art. A piece called Aurelia Roma by Manuel Neri has a protective wrap for the winter. The park’s iconic work, Tony Tasset’s Eye, stares back.

I should acknowledge that this picture was inspired by one that appeared in our local newspaper this week. Although the paper is a shadow of what it once was (Joseph Pulitzer’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch), it has some damn fine photographers.                      

TOYOTA ON ICE

The snow, sleet and freezing rain ended Monday morning. It wasn’t a record snowfall but there may have been an unusual record: if you melted all the varieties of precipitation and just measured the liquid, the total volume may have been a record for a winter storm.

This was Mrs. C’s Prius encased In ice on Sunday afternoon. It was completely snow-covered by Monday. We were not able to get out of our street yesterday but we will today.                     

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

 

A significant winter storm has been sweeping across the middle latitudes of the U.S. from Kansas toward the east coast. This was my street yesterday afternoon. Snow is predicted to continue through Sunday night into Monday morning. It will be followed by very cold (for us) temperatures, 2 F / -17 C Wednesday night. We are on about the same parallel as Madrid and Rome so this doesn’t happen much, but there is a lot of flat land between here and Canada.                   

TOWN HOUSES IN LAFAYETTE SQUARE

 

Five of the elegant townhouses along Lafayette Square. They are architecturally identical with different decorative details. You might be able to see it if you enlarge the image, but all but the left building have unusual scroll decor on the top floor dormer windows. Two of the five have identical filigree fencing on the top. The one on the left appears to be for sale if you are interested.

By the time this post goes up, we expect to be in a big snow and ice storm. I’ll get out with a camera but probably not further than our door.                   

A POND IN THE SQUARE

 

A charming landscaped pond in Lafayette Square, containing the park's two resident swans. There are lots more geese and ducks in a bigger pond. The square’s elegant row houses are in the background.

We expect to get bombed by a snow and ice storm tonight and tomorrow, followed by frigid cold. What can I see from our front porch?                               

NOT THE PAINTER

 

Back into the Lafayette Square images. We are expecting a significant ice and snow storm from tonight into Monday morning, followed by bitter cold (by our standards). Won’t be on the street for a bit.

When you walk into the park from one of the corners you are confronted with this imposing, pompous statue. A few people walked up to the base and I asked them about the small black plaque on the base. They said it referred to Thomas Hart Benton. "Oh,”I said. “The famous painter of the Midwest and the Mississippi River.” But what about the inscription on the pedestal? Turns out this THB is a Missouri politician, one of our original senators when we entered the union in 1820. The painter is his great great grand nephew.

The inscription on the pedestal is still very strange.     

NOT SNOW

 

So, it’s 2025 and rolling towards the end of St. Louis Daily Photo’s 18th year. Also looks like I’ve made it through my third quarter century. I need to go out and find some fresh ways to look at this town but I may have to look into the archives for a bit. This looks like it could be a winter scene in Forest Park - but what’s with that very liquid water jet? The image is one of my attempts to do infrared in color, taken in summer.                     

CITY DAILY PHOTO JANUARY THEME - PICTURE OF THE YEAR

 

New Year’s Day, and time for City Daily Photo members to give us their best shot, so to speak. This isn’t St. Louis but it is my home town, so that’s good enough. Taken from a taxi window somewhere in midtown Manhattan last summer in the haze of late afternoon. It’s a real piece of New York. Will you dine with me? 

City Daily members from around the world show us their very best stuff today  https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .