As we bid good bye to 2020—don’t let the door hit you on the way out! We look forward to it leaving. After its departure, we also look forward to happier times ahead in the year to come. As you can see, I’ve been having a bit of fun. Although Photoshop was involved, the main engine of creation was a new phone app called Motion Leap by Light Tricks. In true marketing fashion these two two-word names are really each one word, smashed together, but my spell checker likes it better when they are written out the long way. I downloaded the app for free, which comes with a limited set of features, but you can purchase more, if you so choose. To use it, you start with a photo. The app calls this type of visual effect dispersion. These effects conjure thoughts of losing one’s mind. As in, I have half a mind to give you a piece of my mind, but then I wouldn’t have anything left. But I prefer to skip the whole dementia themed track and take the higher road and think happy thoughts. Why worry? Be happy! I have no idea why Anne’s photo is all bouncy. I imagine that I had inadvertently triggered some in-app feature, but it could just be her naturally buoyant personality. I’ll leave it for you to decide on your own.
Yesterday, we did a variation on our neighborhood walk. As per usual, we crossed Clayton Road, but instead of heading east towards Forest Park, we headed northwest to downtown Clayton here in Saint Louis. Home of the county seat, it looks and functions like a second downtown. It is home to banks, banks and more banks and as such is always a ghost town on a Sunday afternoon, even in non-pandemic times. In the middle of a pandemic, it made for the perfect venue to get out and about and remain socially distant. It was warmer than the day before, but the sky was mostly gray and there was a bit of a breeze, making it feel cooler, as it whistled among the downtown skyscrapers.
As we wandered among the silver towers that adorn Clayton’s downtown, Anne clued me into a controversy going on about us. The CEO of Centene, a health insurance company, after having just completed another one of its sterling colored office towers, has recently announced that his company would hold-off on building a third one, due to the crime problem in Saint Louis. Say, what? We were walking past their newest completed building, Centene Tower C, at the time. In general, crime in Saint Louis is a problem, but not so much in Clayton. I think that this CEO was casting aspersions to cover up his own colossal business decisions. I’m sure that a global pandemic, and its resulting repercussions pale in effect to crime in Saint Louis. The fact that this same pandemic has spawned a work from home revolution, could that be of more import? No, it’s crime, definitely crime in Clayton that is the problem.