St. Louis

And so a year passes

A year has passed since my mom died from Alzheimer’s disease. It’s an illness that will crush and humble most mere mortals, and even the brave and the strong.

I had been awaiting for this day, contemplating its meaning as it got closer and then arrived.

The markers of time the past year have been unlike anything I can remember.

Collectively we have lived through a global pandemic, which was just taking off right after I flew home. The United States’ imperfect democracy nearly collapsed under the continued assault by Donald Trump and his fascist enablers. Wildfires engulfed my state, and I worked through that for weeks as part of the state’s response. Now I find myself working on the state’s pandemic response, never slowing down.

I am relieved my mother is no longer suffering, nor her husband (my stepfather).

I feel like I have changed too. Luckily my solace has been the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

At the ceremony of life for my late mom, on Feb. 11, 2020, the church choir and musicians performed Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (from Cantata 147).

It was if Bach was speaking to my heart across time and space and said: Peace had come. Her journey had ended. All would be fine. I listened again to this piece over the weekend, and it brought great comfort. Bach’s music has let me say farewell.

Take a good look and describe what you see

Faces are amazing tapestries on which we paint our reality for the world to see.

Yes, many wear masks. Some are so clever, they can deceive others and eventually themselves, and their faces become a testament to their character of falsehoods and lies.

Fortunately for most of us, we show a lot about our life, our struggles, our joys, and our character in the tableaux we show to others.

I have been taking portraits for decades, always looking at the face as my window to the soul of others.

On occasion I take selfies to look at myself and my world at the moment I click the shutter.

I took these shots over a three-week period. During that time, I visited my mom, who was ending her seven-year journey battling Alzheimer’s.

I came to be with her and say goodbye to her in late January 2020. That visit was impossibly hard, and my look captured my sentiments being with her at her extended care facility, when I knew the end was not far away. That is shot No. 1.

The second picture is a selfie I took at the St. Louis Art Museum, a place we came for decades, even as she was slowly succumbing to this horrible disease. We still could find joy and beauty in this great palace of art. Picture No. 2 is from a place we stood many times together the same day of my mom’s funeral in mid-February 2020.

The last picture, three days after the funeral shows me after my trip to St. Louis was ending. I was sitting in a daze on the Portland MAX train, completing a ritual I had done for seven years, going to visit my sick mom and then coming back, not knowing how many more trips I would have to take. This time felt totally different. I felt the weight of my mom’s passing and a sense of both relief and sadness realizing this long chapter had come to an end with the only way that it could.

At long last, I reboot my photography website
Mother and daughter at High Point community garden.
Surfing at Seaside, Oregon
Lafayette Square, St. Louis
Birkenau Death Camp Toilets
Bali Sunrise

After many weekends of work, I have nearly completed the re-launch of my old and once-again-new photography website called rudyfoto.com. I have published this website for more than a decade. I rebooted it after a long siesta of several years.

Photographs that I previously published on my rudyowens.com website can now be found at rudyfoto.com. The re-launch also allowed me to post new images and themes, including an enitrely news series on surfing in Oregon and compilations of my essays compled over many years on the American city. That series includes St. Louis, Portland, Seattle, and Detroit, all of which I have called home at some point during my life. My other series include travel photo essays and documentary projects, incuding my series on Nazi Germany’s damning legacy of human rights abuses, which I completed between 1999 and 2001.

My main webpage, rudyowens.com, will remain my main web hub, and I will continue to publish periodic photo essays on this blog.

Please let me know what you think about my old and dear friend online friend: rudyfoto.com.

Beautiful morning light in Lafayette Square

 

Lafayette Square, St. Louis

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

During my last visit to St. Louis, I indulged myself. I decided to stay in a historic mansion that is now a a bed and breakfast called the Lehmann House, just off of Lafayette Park, in the historic Lafayette Square neighborhood of St. Louis. This beautiful section of urban space is unrivaled in any U.S. city. It was one of the earliest planned communities in the once mighty industrial city, and it catered to the very wealthy when it was developed in the 1800s. It was built around the oldest municipal park west of the Mississippi River, Lafayette Park.

I have shared photo essays on my blog before about the area’s exquisitely built brick homes and architectural styles. I did not have much time to enjoy the area as I had hoped, but I squeezed in two morning walks that were about as perfect as I can remember, ever. The light had that brilliant Midwest-morning Kodacolor glow, and the air smelled fresh from a recent rain. I wandered around the “hood” and snapped these shots, allowing my senses to guide me. If you visit St. Louis, you have to put this place on your list. You will then wonder what we have done so wrong in urban design since we built communities with craftsmanship and care not that long ago.

Family on my mind
My companion in life: my sister

(Click on the image to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

The past six months have been a challenging time for my family. Things got more challenging over the last three months, and especially last week. I wish I could have been closer to them during these times. My sister is mostly on my mind now. I wrote a tribute to her this week and am thinking of her now. This is the image that captures only part of her, but one that seems the most appropriate at this time.

One of my favorite websites that I have turned to the past year to steady my ship as it sails through stormy waters, like the gales blowing now, is The Daily Stoic, created by author Ryan Holiday. It has been a good friend when the storms brew. Here’s a line he wrote about duty, notably to family, that I am embracing now with the latest challenges facing them: “‘Whatever anyone does or says,’ Marcus wrote, ‘I’m bound to the good…Whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.’ He was talking about duty. Duty to his country, to his family, to humankind, to his talents, to the philosophy he had learned. Are you doing yours?”

Snow and winter in St. Louis
The old National Candy Factory factory is now owned and operated by U-Haul.
The National Candy Company factory in St Louis is now operated by U-Haul.
U-Haul now operates the old National Candy Company factory complex in St. Louis.
Resurrection Catholic School
In St Louis, residents can kneel and then raise a glass, all on the same block. This is a shot of the St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Meramac and Behrmann’s Tavern.
Urban Eats on Meramac
City Life, in south St. Louis

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

If you have not heard, snow and cold have returned to the Midwest causing all manner of havoc. I grew up in St. Louis. I remember it as a city that regularly experienced winter. Cold temperatures and snow were the norm. That is not true anymore.

I mostly left the city in the 1980s, and I have returned repeatedly since to visit family and see the good people I know there. Since that time, with global warming, winters have become milder in the mid-Mississippi Valley. Snow and winter became less predictable.

However, the austere beauty of St. Louis in the winter still excites me visually. I love the contrast of the white snow and the dark, red bricks that were used to build many of the homes, factories, and warehouses.

Here is a sampling of some winter shots from my archive. All of these were taken in south St. Louis, where the city takes on a different winter feel with cold and snow.

Fun fact: The National Candy Company factory building, shown here, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was once the largest candy factory in the United States.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat the past

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

I took these images of the statue of Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, and the Old Courthouse in St. Louis in April 2018. Slaves were auctioned from the courthouse steps in estate settlements prior to the U.S. Civil War. Today the courthouse is a National Park site because of its historic significance.

The courthouse also was the location of one of the nation’s most important legal cases. The Scotts brought their suit for freedom in this building in 1847, testing whether they would remain property of slaveholders or be freed. The Scotts’ quest for freedom ultimately helped to speed the divided country into Civil War, starting in 1861.

These images are fitting now because of another recent dangerous test of the United States’ democratic principles, this time by President Donald Trump. During an interview on Oct. 30, 2018, with the news site Axios, Trump claimed he could do away with birthright citizenship by executive order—in other words by dictatorial fiat. Such a move with sweep away the protections of the 14th Amendment of the United States and deny citizenship to children born of immigrants in the United States.

The 14th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” This included former slaves recently freed. It addressed the injustices highlighted in the famous Dred Scott case a decade earlier. It also barred states from denying citizen “life, liberty or property, without due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Not only was Trump saying he could ignore the constitutional separation of powers, his gesture sought to erase a constitutional measure passed after the nation’s bloodiest war in response to the denial of citizenship and core human rights to African-Americans. Trump’s latest statement was another in a series of dangerous moves to unravel basic democratic institutions in the United States.

The Old Courthouse in St. Louis is now a popular tourist destination in downtown St. Louis, where visitors can learn about the underlying national divisions and the institution of slavery that led to the nation’s bloodiest war from 1861 to 1865.

Who Were the Scotts?

Born a slave, Scott was brought to Illinois and Minnesota, where slavery were illegal, and later to Missouri by a slaveholding surgeon. The Scotts’ first owner died and the couple were then, like property, deeded to his heirs. In 1846, Scott and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom.

In a trial held in the Old Courthouse in 1847, Scott and Harriet Scott lost their case on a technicality. During a second trial in the same building, they won their freedom in 1850, but it was also appealed by their purported owners and heirs.

In 1852, The Missouri Supreme Court overturned the 1850 decision and defended slavery itself, saying that it places “that unhappy race within the pale of civilized nations.”

The Scotts sued again in 1854 in federal court. The court upheld their right to sue, but the jury found that the Scott family members still were slaves. The Scotts’ lawyer next appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1857, the nation’s highest court ruled that Dred Scott’s suit for freedom should be dismissed because African-Americans were not considered citizens. What’s more, Congress could not intervene to pass laws limiting slavery because the Constitution ensured the right of property.

The case was one of many triggering factors that erupted in the ensuing four years, culminating in the start of the Civil War after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the Untied States.

It is not without irony that Trump’s latest pronouncement revisited the very measure that sought to end the root injustices and moral failures of the most divisive chapter in U.S. history. My own view is that Trump intentionally seeks to sow deeper divisions and establish precedents for authoritarian power under his presidency. Disturbingly, he is doing this in the light of day and not in the shadow of war, as past presidents have done in the name of national security.

(See Dred Scott timeline here.)

The critters of the Missouri Botanical Garden

(Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

I visited St. Louis last month to visit family. As I always do when I visit St. Louis, I took time to enjoy the Missouri Botanical Garden on a hot, end-of-summer day that was serenely beautiful.

My mother and I always come here. It is our special place. Each time provides something new to learn and see. This visit was no exception.

Our walks always go counter-clockwise from the entrance, past the water lily reflecting ponds, to the Museum and Victorian Garden and then to the Japanese Garden. Our tour provided lovely encounters with birds, bees, and dragonflies.

The water lilies were in bloom and had a lot of visitors with six legs and wings. The dragonflies were particularly stunning. I cannot believe how nice the pictures were with my simple point and shoot Lumix.

At the large pond in the Japanese Garden, I spotted a snowy egret, clearly hunting. There are fat, lazy carp in the pond, and it may have been trying to grab one for lunch. Hopefully it was hunting a small carp, as these voracious eaters can grow nearly two feet in length with all the free food from visitors.

Oddly, a day later, I spotted another snowy egret in the great public park of St. Louis, Forest Park, on my run. I kept thinking it might have been the same one that flies between the two water ways that could feed it.

 

The landmarks and urban landscape of South St. Louis
Turtle Playground, a child’s paradise
Turtle Playground play area
Pat Connolly Tavern in Dogtown, south of Forest Park
World-famous Ted Drewes frozen custard
Cinderella building on Cherokee Street, in South St. Louis
Cherokee Street in South St. Louis, a ghost town in the middle of a work day
Bill’s Custom Cycles, South St. Louis
South St. Louis, Northhampton Neighborhood
Rail corridor, South St. Louis
The former “St. Louis Insane Asylum,” as it was once called, now called the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center

(Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

During my last trip to St. Louis this month, I did not find time to do as many photo trips in the city as I had planned. Because my activities took me between south St. Louis County and University City, I limited my picture-taking to neighborhoods of South St. Louis.

St. Louis, as long as I have been alive, has been one of the most divided cities by race I have ever seen. There is a long history of redlining, federally supported programs like the Interstate Highway System, and private lending practices that have contributed to entrenched racism in how residents of this great city have been segregated.

Historically, the north side of St. Louis, north of Delmar, has been the home of the majority of African-American residents. South of Delmar and south of Forest Park, one finds a larger concentration of white residents. Neighborhoods like the traditionally Irish neighborhood of Dogtown or the Italian-American neighborhood of The Hill are two of the more famous areas in South St. Louis.

University of Iowa history professor Colin Gordon’s masterful book on the racial and economic history of St. Louis, Mapping Decline, provides an in-depth look at this history and its legacy that is now visible throughout this fallen American metropolis that I still love. (You can see his maps of these racial divisions here.)

These photos have no central theme other than highlighting noticeable landmarks, including the former St. Louis County Insane Asylum, also called the Missouri State Hospital, which housed the institutionalized mentally ill. I also found an array of small businesses, my favorite frozen custard shop in the universe called Ted Drewes, some landmark bars, and the brilliant Turtle Playground (known also as Turtle Park), which sits across Highway 40 from the St. Louis Zoo.

While taking these photos, I met a property manager and groundskeeper by the major mental health facility that sits on the highest point of land in the city. She asked me what I was doing. We had a great conversation how she constantly sees photographers coming to properties she cares for, taking pictures of decay. She said she didn’t understand why they kept coming. I laughed. I told her that I loved St. Louis and felt attached to its fate. I told her I took pictures because every building and every business had a story, about people and a community that are worth remembering. I think she appreciated learning my passion. We are now connected. That is the power of telling a story.

Forest Park in dawn’s early light

(Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Forest Park in St. Louis remains the crown jewel of the greater St. Louis area. A visitor will find an incredible array of amenities that are not found in most U.S. cities, or even in great cities of the world.

The park features a world-class art museum, an excellent history museum run the Missouri Historical Society, a popular public golf course, miles of trails for bikes and pedestrians, the world-class St. Louis Zoo, nature areas, festivals, lagoons, and occasionally visiting wildlife. I saw a snowy egret on one of my morning runs last weekend.

A nonprofit organization called Forest Park Forever now provides strong organizational and fiscal support to steer the park’s development and strategic planning needs. Given the fiscal challenges facing St. Louis, this approach likely will pay strong dividends for the entire metro region, which collectively benefits from having a free and accessible public park of this stature.

As a former University City resident (raised there) and longtime visitor to the St. Louis area over the decades, I cannot separate my love of the park from my concern for the metro region. The park’s current success in fulfilling its mission remains at odds with the prolonged pain of the City of St. Louis’s decline and de-urbanization. One needs to keep in mind the larger challenges facing the city, and its many residents who are struggling and whom the park serves, if you come and enjoy it any day of the year.

I took all of these pictures on a three-mile stroll along Lindell Boulevard to the Missouri HistoryMuseum, to the St. Louis Art Museum, through the wildflower savannah off Skinker Boulevard, and back to my starting point. You cannot beat a St. Louis morning walk like this in Forest Park!