Another View Of Sunset

Yesterday's photo was taken from about where those people are standing at the center-right. This is facing the other direction, looking down Art Hill, in the last minutes before sunset. Blue and gold.
               

Girl On The Run

From where, to where? The scene is the end of the Grand Basin in Forest Park, opposite the Art Museum, just after sunset.

This is one of STL's primo spots for wedding pictures when the light is better. I think this young woman was part of a very small wedding party. She walked over to my right, had a look around, then ran back to the left. Who knows why.                  

NYC In Exile

I changed educational venues from the Bronx to mid-town St. Louis in September 1967. It was a bit of a shock. After a few days, my thoughts were something like, "Oh my Gawd, I'm stuck in the provinces!" and started wondering if I could transfer back to NYU. I got over it. 

Still, we ex New Yorkers are all over. This young woman could be a student at nearby Washington University. Lots of us there. My sister attended WU. When I, the oldest of four, went to college a thousand miles from home, my mother thought her children hated her. When the next sibling, 18 months younger than me, went to the other big school across town, she was sure. (The younger two stayed in the Northeast.)

The scene here is the walk beside the Grand Lagoon in Forest Park. Art Hill and the St. Louis Art Museum are in the back.                          

Super Tuesday

 No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

                                         - H. L. Mencken, 20th Century U.S. journalist and publisher

Today is what we call Super Tuesday in this country. It goes without saying that we have the most bizarre, convoluted system of electing our president of any democracy on the planet. Each state has its own process of selecting delegates to the parties' national conventions, done at different times and under different rules. The delegates select the candidates. The selection may be a foregone conclusion or there may be a free-for-all on the convention floor. The president is not elected simply by the popular vote. Each state appoints Electors, through a weird process better described here. It is possible to lose the popular vote and still win the presidency, as happened with George Bush against Al Gore in 2000.

As the comedian Yacov Smirnoff says, is this a great country or what?

So Super Tuesday is the day with by far the greatest number of state primary elections and caucuses. It has a big impact on the eventual nominee. It's just that the person who, at the moment, has the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, is an egotistical, unqualified, blow-hard buffoon who opposes most of the party's policies. And he doesn't raise many donations or advertise all that much. Dirt cheap populism by a billionaire.

(By the way, Dirt Cheap is a local chain of discount tobacco and alcoholic beverage stores. Its advertising theme is a person who runs around in a chicken costume shrieking "Cheap! Cheap! Fun! Fun!")

                

The Monster That Ate My Front Yard

The local electric company has been doing some ominous work in the street in front of our house. It's a condominium (although it doesn't look like one) so no requirement to contact us individually. Mrs. C called me at work Friday afternoon - we have no water service! This complicated bit of machinery cut through the water main that serves our house and some of our neighbors. (Chez nous is at the left of the top picture).

The crew found a way to bypass the problem by early evening, cheerfully telling us "you're off your water meter. Use as much as you want!" They also tore up most of the roots of the tree in the top picture so that will have to be pulled out. And, um, they didn't cover that hole very securely.

Worse things can happen around here. We get violent thunderstorms, ice and heavy wet snow that topple large trees,  bashing in people's roofs and crushing cars. Always look on the bright side of life.                 

 

Back In The Lou

We've been home for a week, actually, but I had a lot of Costa Rica material to use and the week at work was horrid. No new local material so I had to get myself back on the street. Not an idea in my head, I drove to Forest Park and decided to walk around the Grand Lagoon and Art Hill. There were things to see.

When I'm out with the big DSLR and white lens, sometimes people call out to me, "hey, mister, take my picture!" Always happy to oblige. These young people were beautiful.                    

Adios

Time to leave la hermosa Costa Rica. We hope to return but the future is unknown. We depart with a few final shots of Horizontes del Mar where we stay.

The pool overlooks the ocean, refreshed by concrete fish. Mrs. C takes a final dip and then relaxes with a piña colada. Her shirt has a quotation from Gertrude Stein: you can either buy clothes or buy pictures. That's right up to a point. Even better if you can make pictures.

Oh, and I was going to get back to my friends blogs, right? Well, our friendly electric company was digging up about everything in front of our house yesterday and cut our water service. One thing led to another...