Love On Ice

.

Look at the expression on the young man in the top photo, looking at the camera looking at him. Do you think he enjoys teaching?

The bottom couple look like models. Lessons have been learned here but more are still to come. Hard to see in this version but she has quite a rock on her left hand.   

Skating With Santa

.

Every December Steinberg Ice Rink in Forest Park sets aside a couple of Saturdays for a Skating With Santa event. I seem to get around to photographing it about every other year.

The same charming gentleman plays the role year after year, and he's good at it. For one thing, he can ice skate. (I can't ice skate, or ski, or snowboard, or even hit a %^$@^ golf ball, for that matter.) He's been on the blog before. The creepy thing is that his name is John Crowe, my father's name. My father may have known how to ice skate but I never saw him do it. Never wore red velvet and ermine to his job in New York's Financial District, either. If someone did that today, they might end up in the New York Times' fashion section.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

.

There is an annual skating with Santa event at venerable Steinberg Rink in Forest Park.  We'll get jolly St. Nick himself in here shortly, along with his eerie connection to me. For today, we will look at small girls learning to skate and having a good time at it.

Significant news in our family last night. We learned that our first grandchild is expected in late summer. I'll be 63, so about time. Grace, that proposed trip to Australia in August is right out.
 

Santa Stands Accused!

.
These two children appear to be fingering Santa as the culprit, but why? Is he guilty of wage and hour violations in the elves' sweatshop? Shipping huge amounts of loot internationally without the necessary customs licenses? Failure to record a flight plan with the Federal Aviation Administration? I couldn't tell from this distance but just look at his guilty expression. Later, I saw him flashing gang signs with this bro from the hood, pictured below. Something fishy was going on.

WHAT I'M READING: Salman Rushdie's most recent novel, The Enchantress of Florence. Rushdie plays the English language like Horowitz played the piano. The book is riveting (to old Strangetastes, anyway). It is coming out in paperback in the US in early January if you want to save a buck or two.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series and also a new Arch photo on Gateway.

Do You Believe In Santa Claus?

.

There was an interesting and diverse crowd on the ice at Steinberg Rink last weekend. The young woman in the top picture proclaims that she still believes in Santa. And why not? He was right there, skating with everybody else. Maybe she shouldn't be so confident, for reasons we shall discuss in tomorrow's post.

WHAT I'M FINALLY USING: Photoshop CS4. I've had the new version on my computer for two or three months but I've been intimidated about using it - there are some important changes. However, I got the excellent, concise book, Adobe Photoshop CS4: Up To Speed by Ben Willmore, which is only about what's changed since CS3. Very, very useful. Lots of good new features in CS4. Wow, is the sharpening better!

TOMORROW: We accuse Santa!

Hey, lady! Getcher picture taken with a reindeer?

.
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.
But can you recall
The most famous reindeer of all?

No, Rudolph didn't make it to The Lou a couple of weeks before the big night. However, on Skating With Santa day, he did send a heavily tranquilized cousin from a "petting zoo" to the rink. The children generally ignored him/her (I am not an expert in these matters, although the Wikipedia article on the species' description of antlers makes me suspect this is a female and I did not attempt closer inspection) but lots of adults posed for pictures. The animal's handler didn't seem to be having any better a day than her charge.

So, have you been naughty or nice?

WHAT I HEARD YESTERDAY THAT BLEW ME AWAY: the Saint Louis Symphony performed composer John Adams' Nativity oratorio, El Niño. I'm not usually a big Adams fan - a little too retro for me - but this work, which I had not heard before, is full of invention, brilliance and poetry. As soon as I got home I jumped on Amazon and ordered a copy (there's some impulse gratification for you).

TOMORROW: skaters' waltz.

Skating With Santa 2008

.

Little did I know before I started a city daily photo blog, but every year around this time kids can go skating with Santa at Steinberg Ice Rink in Forest Park. I went for the first time last year and got some good shots - see them here. The weather was milder and it was much more crowded this time but I still got a few good ones. What's weird is that when Santa and I got chatting last year we found we had the same last name; his first and last name is the same as my father. He remembered me, calling out, "Hi, Mr. Crowe!" and I replied, "Hi, John!"

My wife and I scour the newspaper for community events I can shoot. So much more going on in this town than I realized.

TOMORROW: all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names.