Alma's Statue

I passed through Union Square on Thursday afternoon, just as the clouds were lifting, as if the tail end of the recent rainstorm could be seen departing. In that way I saw the dear gigantic memorial column at the center of the Square in two quite different lights that yet were only separated in time by a couple of minutes.

"Executed by Robert Aitken, the statue at the top of the monument, "Victory", was modeled after a voluptuous Danish-American stenographer and artist's model, Alma de Bretteville, who eventually married one of San Francisco's richest citizens."

I watched a couple of brave laborers many stories overhead adjusting the many-pointed red star at the top of  the outsized symmetrical Christmas tree that appears in Union Square every year as if it grew out of the pavement, and then disappears without fanfare once the shopping season is over.

At the end, I did manage to squeeze the statue atop her column and the orange gondola of the tree decorators into the same frame.