Gateway Arch on Winter Solstice

After I bring Ed to work, returning home I am treated to a scene which includes the Arch directly ahead.

Lately darkness prevails, giving the Arch a one dimensional look.  It is not lighted by the National Park Service at this hour, though it shines with the reflected light of downtown streetlights and the slowly awakening hotels and offices.

The morning I took this, a few days ago, a break in the clouds showed that the sun would be coming along, though the break soon closed.

So it is with today, the darkest day of the year. Just after midnight, the light began, incrementally, to return.

Gateway Arch Park

We chose an overcast day to go to brunch in the Millenium Hotel tower. There are irregular shaped pools to the north and south of the Arch, hidden especially in summer by leaves and the valley which contains each.

One of the wondrous things about this region is the presence of bald cypress trees, which I have always equated with Florida.  I will miss them.

Soulard Tiles

This stunning mural is right on Russell St. in Soulard.  Made of extremely irregularly shaped pieces of terra cotta, some details don't make it to adjacent tiles such as the left cow's legs.  No matter.  It is still a magnificent picture. 

Below is the entire tableau. Click to enlarge them to good effect.

Budweiser Clydesdale

Budweiser keeps a large group of Clydesdales at Grant's Farm here in St. Louis, mares with foals in the spring, large groups of geldings from which to choose for the famous 8-hitch teams, and probably a stallion or two.

There are always a couple of horses at the brewery near the river, in a paddock outside the Busch family's historic and architecturally beautiful stable.  The family lived in an adjacent house at this site, gone now, and also at the farm which is now Grant's Farm.

Butterfly House

West of town, the Missouri Botanical Garden's Butterfly House is a very cool place. Actually it is at constant shirt-sleeve temperature, and at any given time there are 1500 butterflies fluttering in the air, resting, or eating.  They arrive as chrysalises from butterfly farms all over the world and are released when they have completely metamorphosed into butterflies.  Just sorry it took us so long to go there.

St. Louis Zoo

The flight cage at the St. Louis Zoo was built by the Smithsonian Institution for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1904 world's fair. Slated to be taken to Washington at the close of the fair, the people of St. Louis worked to keep it. They have a strong history for getting and keeping public spaces. 

The flight cage became the first exhibit of a new zoo after the close of the fair. 

The present exhibit is a cypress swamp and is a lovely, quiet, contemplative outpost at the Zoo. There are beautiful tile pictures of birds in swamplands at the entrance of the Flight Cage, which I will feature in another post. 

Joli at Forest Park

JDo, one very happy dog!

Forest Park

I posted a picture of us in a peddle boat on a warmish day here on Post-Dispatch Lake just three weeks ago. Some difference. St. Louis Art Museum, one of the few remaining structures built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, is on the hill in the background.

Shaw Reserve

 

Shortest Afternoon of the Season is Past!

By the astronomic numbers, yesterday afternoon was the shortest afternoon.


Starting today, the afternoons begin, ever so slowly, to regain light.  By mid-January you can already see the difference as you go home from work or milk the cows.  This is illustrated here:
http://www.analemma.com/Pages/framesPage.html


Go to the last section, Other Phenomena, for an explanation.


Sorry, the mornings continue to lose light until early January.


The shortest day is but an average of mornings and afternoons. Analemma is the answer. A Farmer's Almanac will reveal the numbers.


Horray.

Gateway Arch Reflection

Gateway Arch

Treemonisha

This monumental steel sculpture in near-South City was created by Chicago sculptor John Henry to honor the opera Treemonisha by Scott Joplin. Joplin lived here for a time just a few blocks away. 

Treemonisha's story brings up timeless struggles between education and ignorance, and between reconciliation and retribution. It was not staged during Joplin's lifetime.

Forest Park

A boy, edging his way across the outside of the bridge structure, parents unafraid.

Forest Park

We Northeasterners are agog with the Missouri Novembers.  Sunny sixty degrees on November 21, a trip around the lagoon on a peddleboat at the Boathouse, leisurely lunch outdoors and the waiter brings water for Joli and all of the many other dogs there..we are going to miss this!

Forest Park

Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis

Citygarden

Gateway Arch

Shaw's Garden