We are in St. Louis this week. And while we haven't really had a chance to see very much yet, we have at least driven by the Arch here in St. Louis.
The arch is pretty impressive looking. Large. In the lights of the city at night it gleams in a way that the photos I've seen do not do justice. It is cool.
Or could be cool.
What good is an arch that doesn't actually go OVER anything?
If you built an arch such that each end was near the edge of the water wouldn't you actually put those two ends on opposite sides of the river? We would too. All our lives we have understood that the arch went over the river. Going over the river makes it an impressive feat. Going next to the river just makes it an engineering task.
We find ourselves asking "Why build it at all?" Three weeks ago in those heady "pre-arch-truths-we'd-rather-not-know" days, we had an answer to the question "Why build it at all?" Then, the answer was "Why not? An arch over this piece of river would look really good. Be impressive. And nobody would ever wonder why we did it either."
Now, the answer is a little harder to figure out.