The Old Cathedral

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That's what we call it. Officially, it's the Basilca of St. Louis, King of France. It sits at the western edge of the Arch's park, a bit overwhelmed by the downtown buildings on one side. The first church on this site was a log cabin built in 1770. The current building was completed in 1834. You can read about its history here and here.

The Arch is not far off to the right of this picture. There are some interesting views of the monument from inside the basilica, like this one from a post two and a half years ago.

Lines And Cylinders

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Here I go, trying to be artsy again. This scene was adjacent to that of yesterday's photo. I just liked the geometry of it and the sense of inside-outside.

Once more, sorry for slacking off on comments. Too much work, too much work. But relief is in sight.

Oh, and one of our fellow CDP bloggers in Syracuse, New York, paid me a nice compliment yesterday. Click here.

Building America

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This appears to be the slogan of the Union Pacific Railroad these days. It's got all the sledgehammer irony you could want. Just don't try to get too close to the action.

This was shot in a modest rail yard not far south of the Arch. I think we'll have a little more of it tomorrow.

What was going on last night: my daughter and I went to a reading by renowned novelist T. C. Boyle at the main branch of the St. Louis County Library. He did a little stand-up comedy, read one of his short stories and took questions from the overflow crowd. Boyle is erudite and witty, and wears eye-popping red suits (an homage to Tom Wolfe and Mark Twain in their white suits, he told us.) The picture below is a crummy iPhone shot of the author signing his books. My daughter bought one but the line looked like it would be maybe 45 minutes when we got in it so we bailed.

Thursday Arch Series

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Good price, bad description.

Sorry no comments yesterday. I got home in time to post this and go to bed. If I can get to it, I may post an iPhone picture tomorrow of what I did last night.

The Sculptors

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A little bit about the process of making the ice sculptures. Look at the concentration of the man above. He was using an electric drill with a conical abrasive bit .Shards of frozen debris were flying everywhere. Below, someone uses a rotary sander on a block that glows with light, much like Monday's angel.

I was surprised to see only one of the artists wearing eye protection. It seemed foolhardy.

What's That?

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At first glance it's a little hard to catch the figure-ground difference in the top image. Once you've got that, the question of interpreting what you see remains. It's a very close up shot of the face (for want of a better word) of a semi-abstract ancient Greek warrior. The bottom picture give you the bigger view. Pretty clever design and, once again, an awful lot of work.

Ice Angel

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A cold heart, perhaps, but throbbing with light. Wow, this must have taken a lot of work. The sculpture, not the picture.

This was taken on my iPhone. Thanks again to Kim for motivating the iShots. This was edited on the phone with the Photogene app, also suggested by her.