Never pass up the opportunity to make a Neil Diamond reference. Ever. I’m happy to say that plenty of trees around my place still have these red delights hanging from their branches, and I took advantage of it.
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This was the view coming back down the hill at Red Lodge last weekend. Some buddies and I rented a nice house with a hot tub and a view of the mountain and headed out for a quick ski/snowboard trip.
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I noticed something really cool while taking photos for the owner of a farmstead northwest of the Bismarck-Mandan area. Obviously it was a beautiful day, as you can tell from the green pasture and blue sky above.
This is an inventive way to block the door of the shop. The hasp doesn’t quite line up okay, but by grabbing a spare valve and dropping it into place, it’s easy to keep things closed.
I love the ingenuity of rural North Dakota.
These ice blocks caught my friend Rich’s eye before they caught mine. Thanks to him, I was able to pay them a visit after work today. They sit in a conspicuous location, but I can only guess how they got there.
When I first arrived, I was afraid I wouldn’t have the skies I wanted. And, while it’s true that the clouds overhead didn’t have any of the brilliant oranges blocked by clouds on the horizon, I still had some sweet clouds to work with.
Bonus: I caught some of that color shining through the ice blocks. I had to get to church, so I took off at the last possible moment…but I have a suspicion that going back with some different skies might yield an exciting result!
I walked out of a lunch appointment on Friday and immediately noticed a jet on a very unusual trajectory over Bismarck, far out of position compared to the track usually taken on approach to Runway 13. It was a short leg, and they were still banking south of Main Avenue. Even better, it was a touch-and-go. Well, being the curious type, I had to see what was up. That’s when I snapped this shot and realized it was a Navy plane, not some wayward bus driver or something.
Just doing laps, as you can see. A few down the Runway 13 way, followed by a few down Runway 31. Cruising Main, almost. My flight app did give an ADS-B entry for this aircraft, but being a military plane that was all I got. The desktop app, however, was blank. No worries, it doesn’t take long with “the Google” to narrow down that this is a P-8A Poseidon. There’s a good chance it’s from Whidbey Island, home to those F-18s which stopped in for A&B Pizza about this time last year. AirSOC has an article about the P-8A at Whidbey Island, which you can read here.
This is a particularly cool aircraft (Wikipedia), even though it isn’t as exciting as a fighter jet. It’s a sub-hunter, and apparently a pretty modern one. Just like those F-18s last year, which are actually two-seater Super Hornets loaded with all kinds of electronic warfare equipment, this plane is chock full o’ goodies. First off, look at all the antennae on the top. The 737-800 this is based on doesn’t have those. It’s also capable of deploying anti-submarine weapons once it detects ’em. Sweet. Want to know more about some of the toys? Click on this link.
A few more laps, and they were out of here. I listened to a little bit of the CTAF banter on my handheld transceiver, then went on with my day. I had put in a long week, and it was time to knock off early and play photographer for a while.
Well, there are many ways…but this is one. My wife was at a friend’s, painting a portrait of some sort, and on her way home she stopped to grab this photo for me! I didn’t even know they were doing this in the windows. I have to admit, when she first said there was a giant “6” in the front windows I didn’t connect it to the Bison. Duh. I’m glad she’s got an eye out for things like this! Now I don’t have to go out in the cold tonight.
It all started when I started going through a box of old toys and things that my mom dropped off at the house. Most of it was old stuff that was in disrepair or otherwise unusable (such as an old Commodore 64 that I can emulate on my PC), and ended up being discarded. The two items above, however, caught my eye. Both eyes, actually.
One of them had a disc in it (they were called “reels”), but I didn’t find any other reels. One of my favorites as a little kid was one about dinosaurs, and I’d sure love to find that one again for old time’s sake. But I started thinking about this vintage technology and couldn’t help but wonder…are there any North Dakota-related View-Master reels?
It didn’t take long on eBay before I discovered a set of reels from 1956, and of course I had to have them.
This arrived shortly after I fervently clicked Buy It Now – a new, unopened 1956 set of three View-Master slides portraying North Dakota tourist attractions!
The pack contained three reels, an insert describing the the photos portrayed, and a couple of order forms for other Sawyer products. Sawyer invented the View-Master, and is no longer in business. The company’s View-Master division has traded hands a few times.
These are the three reels in their protective sleeves. Even though the paper package has never been opened, the film slides in the reels have a slight bubbling to them. I’m guessing they’re some sort of acetate film medium that does this sort of thing after sixty years.
The reels are in pretty good shape, although they do have some dust and that sort of thing. Parts of the reels are slightly bubbled as if they have pimples, and there was some powder in the sleeves, but otherwise they’re totally fine.
Naturally we threw them into a film scanner, although it took some rigging. Want to see some of my favorites?
Here’s the capitol building, long before the Judicial Wing was constructed (or probably even conceived). I like the water tower on the east side. Who knew there were trees on the mall, my favorite frisbee spot?
Here’s an entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I may try to find this monument and take a current photo. A friend of mine recently did that with the tree at the nearby entrance to the campground west of Medora, a tree which appeared in a family photo from his childhood.
Here’s a dam photo. I was just up at the tail race with my kids a week or so ago, and the water was nowhere near this high. I just looked at the photos from that day and I guess it was closer than I thought, but this is still a high level. Remember, the dam was only officially completed in the early 1950s and didn’t begin its work as a hydroelectric power plant until 1956 or even 1960, depending on which source you consult.
Back to the capitol. The Pioneer Family monument no longer has the fence around it, and the marble posts are long gone. I have a postcard of this somewhere as well. Again, I love the water tower.
It wouldn’t be North Dakota without a farming photo or two. The harvesting equipment of today is significantly larger, and of course there’s the GPS and air conditioning.
Here’s another example of things being bigger now: lignite coal mining equipment. The draglines I’ve done video and photo work on north of here weigh in at up to thirteen million pounds (13,000,000)! The coal haulers have a 160 ton or greater capacity, too.
Here’s the front of the insert. Click on the photo for a full size (ie, legible) version.
And, of course, the back. Click for the readable size image.
And, because I can’t change who I am, I spotted a typo. I think maybe someone had Fargo on the brain when they wrote the section about “Tiago”. Hey, at least they didn’t call us South Dakota!
I may post some additional images from these reels down the road, we’ll see. We only scanned one of each image, it might be interesting to take a crack at scanning both. What am I talking about? Well, the View-Master is stereoscopic, meaning that the creators of these reels took photos with two cameras spaced slightly apart. For each image you see, there’s a left one and a right one. So you get 3D depth perception as you do in real life. It’s wonderful. But I currently lack the ambition to scan both perspectives of each of these images and don’t really have a plan for how I’d combine them into a 3D-viewable digital image anyway.
Certainly some of you have enjoyed View-Master reels? Feel nostalgic yet?
Last weekend Main Street in Mandan was home to Touch a Truck, put on by the Mandan Progress Association. If you were coming into Mandan from the east and didn’t know what the heck the DOT sign flashing “TOUCH TRUCKS AHEAD” meant, your confusion probably only lasted a moment until you saw all the crane booms up ahead.
There were all kinds of trucks and various other equipment, with the cranes being the most prominent. There were road striping trucks, sanitation trucks, bucket trucks, the works.
Of course, one doesn’t have to be a piece of heavy equipment or possess hydraulics with super powers to be an awesome truck. The Bookmobile was there, too. And it looked like it was getting a lot of attention from the kids.
See the giant crane? Well, each of the four hydraulic cylinders holding it in the air is fed by a trio of the tiny little metal elbows you can see me pointing at on the left. Crazy.
My favorite thing about the cranes, how they hoist Old Glory. The colors were on display and waving in the breeze.
Tractors and other big equipment was present as well. They may not have air horns like some of the other trucks, but they have plenty of stuff to climb on and buttons to push.
Then there were the mini excavators, which were a hit. I think there was a line to see them at one point.
This is only a drill. There, I did it. You can’t stop me. My kids don’t think I’m funny either.
Balloon animals were available, or in the case of my kids balloon swords. Guess how long those lasted before popping in battle. En garde!
Another attraction that amounts to playing in the box the toy came in: These sections of conduit were a hit with the kids, who climbed in and promptly insisted their parents roll them around on the grass. Yes, I did it too…rolling, not climbing inside.
These guys are heroes every time I place an order with B&H or Amazon.com. Note the flag in the background.
I never get tired of shots like this. The weather was perfect, the skies cleared enough to give me a sunburn by the end of the day, and the breeze kept everything comfortable and the flags waving.
One time my kids saw me running camera for a monster truck show, getting closeups of giant trucks doing wheelies and burnouts. The next day my wife took them to watch me on a rooftop, shooting video and stills of a helicopter doing touch-n-go’s on a helipad. When I was tucking them in, I asked if they thought their Daddy had a pretty cool job. “Yeah,” was the reply, “But did you know that Uncle [my brother-in-law] is a mailman?” He’d subbed in our neighborhood and let them walk his route with him for a bit, totally stealing my thunder.
It’s a small crane, but the kids got to operate it…lifting and moving a small load using the tethered controller.
This gives a whole new meaning to the term “Boom town”, doesn’t it? I just made that up right now as I’m typing. Seriously.
I bet I could set off these scales nowadays…I need to bike more and shovel less food into my head. But when I keep coming up with things like blueberry ice cream float recipes, that isn’t very easy. Actually, these scales did weigh my kids, so they don’t just work for heavy things.
This was a fantastic event, with lots of fun for kids and big kids. I sure hope they do this again next year! I may bring ear plugs next time, though, because they let the kids tug the air horns in the trucks. It was a wonderful cacophony, don’t get me wrong, but they get pretty loud!
It’s past my bedtime, so I’m just going to share the photos. I didn’t get out until after I got my kids put to bed, and I let them stay up late in the first place. One more benefit of homeschooling.
Thanks to the legislature, this will be an annual event commemorating the men and women of law enforcement in our state.
We North Dakotans, residents of Bismarck-Mandan in particular, love our law enforcement personnel. The last eight months haven’t just been trying on them, but on the community as a whole, and as a result I think the bond between citizens and LEOs has been forged even stronger. You’ve probably noticed many cars sporting the above decals, which I believe are still available at Signs and Wonders along with other places.
Understanding that relationship, I put together this quick meme early on in the conflict. It may seem prescient now, but I really just understand the fact that our community respects those who put it all on the line to keep our community safe and uphold the law.
And we ain’t done yet. Back the Blue billboards have sprung up around town, events are in the works to celebrate the law enforcement community, and there’s even legislation in the works to honor them.
Yes, that’s right. Senate Concurrent Resolution 4015 (PDF) will not only designate a special day as Peace Officers Memorial Day to honor fallen law enforcement officers, but it also calls for a blue light display to adorn the capitol on an annual basis. I made this hasty mock-up as an example of what I can envision the capitol looking like each May. (Yeah, without the snow. I discovered that I haven’t actually taken any night time photos of the capitol unless the windows are all lit up with something, so I had to do some heavy-handed Photoshop on the easiest shot I had available. Cut me some slack.)
The resolution has been in the House awaiting a floor vote since March 20th. If you feel motivated, let your legislators know how important it is that SCR 4015 gets passed.
So yeah, we support our law enforcement. I sure hope that their tough jobs are made a little easier by knowing that they’ve got the appreciation of North Dakotans that respect them, pray for them, and acknowledge that (while nobody’s perfect) they protect our communities with dedication and professionalism.
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