Category Archives: Around Bismarck-Mandan

Commemorating Twenty Years of This Blog

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This is the photo which started it all twenty years ago. I’d finally been able to enter the world of photography, something I’d wanted to do since I was a teenager. Digital photography had become a thing, and the production company I worked for had a most amazing photographer on staff, a man who I referred to as an “Encyclopedia Photographica”. Mike has been a wonderful mentor and encouragement to me, and thanks to him I hit the ground running. In fact, he got me into the line of work which became my vocation and my career, and I still haven’t gotten even with him for that! (j/k)

I was actually going to title this post “Not with a bang…” in reference to the T.S. Eliot poem “The Hollow Men”. 2025 has been one of the lowest years of my life, and 2021-2024 weren’t spectacular, either. But I have a new lease on life, as they say, and I’m poised to make 2026 one of the best years ever. So instead, as I ventured out with my camera for the first time in nearly four months, I determined it would be fun to look back on my New Year’s photos of our beloved capitol building since I started the blog exactly two decades ago.

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A collector’s delight: Music & More

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It should be obvious that I’m a music and movie fan, and a fan of physical media specifically. I could rant for an hour on the virtue of owning a physical copy of the music or film you enjoy vs. having to rent it in perpetuity from some greedy pinhead who can make your beloved favorites vanish in an instant or pepper them with ads for products you’ll swear not to buy out of sheer annoyance.

Well, there’s a new shop for people like you – people like us – Music & More, located on Lockheed Drive in south Bismarck.

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Finally spotted one in the wild

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I was driving on the east end of town the other day when I spotted something very bright, very blue, and very uh-oh along the road. Naturally I had to pull in and take a closer look – not just because I’m curious, but also because I’ve never seen one of these in person. It’s only been in memes or that sort of thing until now.

BSOD means Blue Screen Of Death, and it’s a sure sign that something is amiss with your Windows computer. I don’t know why these have such an allure…maybe it’s the idea of such a public fail, maybe its schadenfreude, maybe it’s relief that it’s not me…who knows. In any case, I can check this off the Bucket List if it was ever there, because now I’ve seen a very large, very public BSOD.

Makes a guy want to come to town more often, see what other spectacular sights await…

Autumn road

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I love a cloudy day when the leaves are changing. It wasn’t only cloudy, though, it was rainy. And rain plus dirt tends to equal mud. I found a lot of mud on the back roads of Morton County. In fact, I had quite a time pressure washing it from my truck when I got home! But shots like this make it all worthwhile.

Cabin in the rain

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I love this little cabin. I check on it every time I drive Around the World, if you’re old enough to know what that means. This time, while checking out the fall foliage, I got what I think might be my first rainy autumn photo of it. This year has been unusually green, so the leaves have a really nice contrast to their surroundings this year.

I’ve heard multiple people mention how green this year has been. Even though much of our state has technically been in a drought, around here it has been a different story. We’ve also been spared from destructive thunderstorms and late summer wildfires. I’m glad to say it’s been a relatively uneventful summer, from a meteorological perspective. Now hopefully it’ll be a nice photogenic autumn!