CITY DAILY PHOTO AUGUST THEME - SWEETS

A cotton candy vendor at a St. Louis parade. Our health secretary Kennedy would tell you the spun sugar is poison. My granddaughter would tell you he’s nuts. She would be right on both counts.                       

EMPTY CALORIES

But oh so good. Don’t tell our Health Secretary Kennedy, who will tell anyone who will listen to him (which no one should - he’s a wacko), that sugar is poison. But my father, who spent his career in the sugar industry, would say it’s all just fine. This is, of course, a snack stand at Webster Grove’s Fourth of July carnival.                      

SIX TONS OF BALLOON SCULPTURE

As I write this series of posts I wonder more about how much help even receptive viewers need with contemporary sculpture. This piece at Laumeier is called Sugabus, a 2004 work by Robert Chambers. It refers to the arrangement of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a molecule of sucrose. Well, and also Cerberus, the terrifying three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. Are there three heads? Is there a diet version?             

CANDY

My children were born in 1976 and 1980. Being responsible, modern parents, Mrs C and I were careful about their diets, particularly sugar. But the whole thing got blown to hell when we visited my father's house in New Jersey. (My mother had died some time before.)

My father spent almost all of his career in the industrial sugar business. The company for which he was sales manager were middlemen between sugar refiners and bulk users. Back in the day he sold Pepsi all its sugar. For most of that time he literally worked on Wall Street, but in commodities, not securities. Nice picture of his beautiful old office building here. 

Anyway, he doted on his grandchildren. He modified a big bookcase in his home to fill two long shelves with glass candy candy jars. We'd come in and he'd call out "Candy store's open!" to our kids. We were powerless. If we put up a peep of objection he always replied "Sugar is only 14 calories per teaspoon!"

And they seem okay today. This photo is of a former candy wholesaler on Locust Street in Midtown.

      

Please Like My Tour!

After the boat ride on the Tempisque we had a yummy Tico lunch at the main house of El Viejo Wetlands. The third and last item on the schedule was what was billed as a cultural and tasting tour focused on old-time Costa Rica. This lovely young señorita met us outside the restaurant and tied a bandanna around our necks, telling us that we were now going to be cowboys and that we were going to a party. Gimme a break. The closest thing I've ever come to riding down the range is maybe the 8th Avenue subway in NYC.

It was actually kind of interesting for me. The first and second pictures are of an old-fashioned sugar cane press. An ox or two rotated a bar attached to a pair of cylinders that  slowly crushed the stalks. You can see the guide catching the fresh-squeezed juice in the second image. My father spent most of his career  in commercial sugar, the middleman between refiners and industrial users. He sold Pepsi-Cola all its sugar back in the day. This would have interested him.

The bottom image is of the neighboring sugar cane fields. There was one more bit after this, more about which tomorrow. 

Home late tonight. No more stumbling in my bad Spanish.