I had the camera set to 3200 ISO, which (if I do my math correctly) is about 8x more sensitive than your typical digital camera will go. That would hopefully allow me to capture the moment, which it did. It was still a little blurry because I am not very steady while protruding from a truck window. But I took it in order to show other people what the clouds looked like last night…so it works.
I saw this as a bunch of low clouds rolled past. The remnants of the clouds caused this phenomenon to occur, and it disappeared when the skies cleared completely.
I’ve been a Lorie Line fan since my wife and I started dating. She’s extremely talented, her husband does a great job as the emcee, and the production is always top notch. This year’s show was really good…but it was nowhere near the high standard they’ve set in years past.
One downside to the show is that gospel singer Robert Robinson is no longer touring with the group. That man’s voice could draw tears from the hardest of hearts! Hearing him sing carols like “Oh Holy Night” “What Child is This” is enough to make your knees weak. I wish him well in whatever his current endeavors may be. The bright side is that his replacement, soprano Kelly Smith. She’s definitely a worthy successor to Mr. Robertson.
Another element missing from this year’s performance is a trademark Lorie Line feature. She comes out with a legal pad and asks the crowd to belt out requests. She then sits down at the piano and makes an impromptu medley of the list! It seems that someone always yells “Spongebob Squarepants” but there are also requests like “Inna Godda Da Vida and other challenging tunes. We kept waiting for this part of the show, but it never came.
I don’t get it…this show’s theme was supposed to be “The Traditions of Christmas” but I didn’t really feel the Christmas spirit by the time the show was over. It was certainly a great performance by everyone, yet really didn’t capture the fun and sparkle that one normally gets at a Lorie Line concert. My favorite show of hers happened to be themed, “My Favorite Things.” This one, however, didn’t really seem to have a theme. Hopefully things will be back up to that sky-high standard next year.
If you have an opportunity to see Lorie Line this Christmas season, don’t pass it up. Don’t let my comments about not living up to last year’s show stop you: I doubt anything could match it. I do hope, however, that Lorie brings her legal pad with her the next time she comes to Bismarck.
Really bright sources of light tend to shoot spires of light straight up into the sky, which are visible for quite a long distance. It’s almost like a “synthetic aurora” in a sense, except they don’t dance like the real thing.
Scroll down a couple of posts, and you’ll see my theory that the six imams who behaved like textbook terrorists, then were evicted from an aircraft, were actually carrying out an operation which achieved its desired result.
Now in this report from Minneapolis – St. Paul, they’re being served a little more victory:
Airport officials said Friday they will consider setting aside a private area for prayer and meditation at the request of imams concerned about the removal of six Muslim clerics from a US Airways flight last week.
…
Airport officials will accept the group’s invitation to visit a mosque, airport spokesman Pat Hogan said.
“I think there’s a mutual recognition that it would be helpful for there to be a solid understanding,” Hogan said.
These people are not going to be satisfied until Islam is institutionalized. They understand how to do it, and little tiny incidents like this will add up and set precedents over the long term. It’s too bad the West seems willfully blind to what they’re trying to achieve, even though they make absolutely no pretense about their goals and methods.
Put it in your iPod for the Parade of Lights tonight in downtown Bismarck, and keep the CD in your car. It’ll put you in the Christmas mood any time you hear it. Once the snow comes and stays, this is the minidisc I put into the player in my truck, and it doesn’t come out until the snow’s gone. Please go buy this CD: trust me, it’ll bring you Christmas joy on Northview Lane or any other Bismarck-Mandan street this winter.
Recent headlines focused on a group of six Muslim imams who boarded a US Airways flight, moved from their assigned seats to seats covering the exits of the plane, requested seat belt extensions they didn’t need and stowed them under their seats, and loudly chanted to Allah while criticizing America. When they were removed from the plane, they immediately began criticizing everyone in sight for racial profiling. Most stories left out the fact that the passengers on board cheered when these people were removed from the plane. In my opinion, the imams never intended for the plane to leave the terminal.
The warriors of Islam have discovered a far more effective weapon than a sword, an RPG, or a broadcast beheading. It’s the political correct movement of the West, which will prove to be our ultimate undoing. Grabbing our ankles in the name of tolerance and diversity has sealed our fate, which the Muslims understand entirely. This incident aboard the US Air flight was a battle front in a war on the West, and the mission was accomplished. It was a carefully planned operation which was executed perfectly, and is now achieving the desired result. Not every battle of Jihad includes a bomb or a sword.
The Islamofascists know that they need to keep pushing the issue of tolerance in order to get us to drop to our knees, so they simply need to come up with high-profile examples of perceived discrimination. In this case, they get six people to behave like terrorists (covering all plane exits, acting in a way they KNOW will upset the passengers and cause suspicion) and bait the airline into removing them from the plane. Then they march straight to CAIR and other such organizations, which loudly beat the drum of discrimination. They deny all appearance of impropriety and claim that it was racism, profiling, or other such injustice against the poor, victimized Muslim.
You see, we’ve become such a pusillanimous culture when it comes to the possibility of anyone being offended (except Christian white heterosexual males, of course…they’re the oppressors) that we can easily be swayed by the horrendous possibility of someone’s feelings being hurt. What better tool to exploit than our own self-imposed sensitivity? These people know which button to push, and it’s the Big Red Button of Embarassment. What could be more humiliating than being an intolerant, hateful, hostile, abusive, oppresive, bigoted American? Nothing, it seems…thanks to the politically correct movement.
While we’re talking about the “blind march” into our ultimate demise, allow me to redirect to the Pope’s visit to Turkey. Regardless of any political gains this may have for the Vatican, this visit was a mockery. According to news reports, Pope Benedict went to the Sultan Ahmet Mosque and “turned toward Mecca and prayed like Muslims.” Well, wait a minute! The Catholic Church claims “We define that the Holy Apostolic See–and the Roman Pontiff–has primacy over the whole world, and that the same Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true Vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians, and that upon him, in blessed Peter, our Lord Jesus Christ conferred the full power of shepherding, ruling and governing the universal Church, as is also stated in the acts of the ecumenical councils and the sacred canons” (DS 1307).”
That’s how far this has come: a man who claims to the the substitute of Jesus Christ himself on Earth (although he’s clearly not) goes out of his way to legitimize a religion which basically places itself at odds with every single doctrinal element of Christianity! Do you think Jesus would have done such a thing? Of course not…he is God manifest in the flesh. So why would a man claiming to be the stand-in for Jesus do it? Because he’s lying, and caught up in the same worldwide blindness with which so many others seem to be afflicted.
Even from an atheist’s point of view, the Pope’s actions don’t make any sense. He’s going into a place of worship for a false god by his own religion’s definition, then legitimizing it by praying alongside one of its leaders. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” The muslims chant that there is no god but Allah, who never had a son. They don’t reconcile. It doesn’t make any sense from a logical point of view. If he truly believes in Christianity, which he claims to represent, then he most certainly cannot give credence to religions which are in diametric opposition to his own. Yet he blindly marches into the mosque. By the way, the Muslims still say that’s not enough.
If the West continues to willfully bend to the manipulation of the 21st century Muslim advancement, then we surely are bound for a worldwide muslim caliphate. Such things don’t happen overnight, but they do happen steadily. When you look at everything going on right now, it seems that all signs point to capitulation on the side of the West. It seems even the guy who, however inappropriately, claims to represent Christianity on this planet has fallen into the same dementia that will lead to the Western fate forecast this very minute in the Islamic world. If we continue to let ourselves be handcuffed by the political correctness being exploited by our enemies, the West may fall…eventually, slowly, yet steadily. At least we didn’t offend anybody on the way down.
In the comments, one person asked if I had a link referring to the specific suspicious behavior of the imams. The Washington Times reports: “The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.
Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.”
There’s some really neat work on display down there. Jack Kline has some scratchboard paintings that are absolutely intricate. Tim Bumb has some watercolors that would complement any cowboy home. My friend Ken has some photographs on metallic paper that are absolutely spectacular. Please go check them all out!
I only took up photography a short time ago, and absolutely fell in love with it. It’s now starting to open my eyes to the Bismarck-Mandan art scene as well. I’d never known much, if anything, about BAGA in the past. There are also other shows in the area, and I look forward to exploring more of them! When I do, I’ll pass them along. There are a many such events going on around our fair cities that most people don’t hear about, and I’m going to help spread the word.
There’s actually a pretty good chunk of roadway missing here, too. Anyone who’s crossed the Missouri River here can attest to that. While a row of sturdy concrete barriers prevents anyone from driving off the side, there’s an open slab on the other side of them. Much of the roadway has been cut away, presumably to make room for the work being performed below.
I also remember crossing this bridge on my BMX bike in the middle of the night, way back when. I was looking out over the river when I came across one of the metal access panels in the sidewalk. It made a nasty *clang* as I rode over it, and it scared me half to death! I seem to remember there being a patch in the sidewalk at one time that was grating as well, but I don’t remember much more specifically about it.
I also remember when there was no Expressway Bridge; in fact, I got my learner’s permit the week that it opened. Prior to that, Memorial Highway saw a lot more traffic from the Memorial Bridge. The Holiday Inn there flourished and was probably the biggest hotel in town at the time. I competed in the state spelling bee there in 1982-1983, and President Reagan even stayed there once. After people began to bypass the Memorial Bridge for the new Expressway, the Holiday Inn began its slow demise. It changed hands a few times before finally being condemned, then razed to make way for the new Bank of North Dakota building. It’ll be interesting to see what the new bank and new bridge do for the area’s development.
As for the title of this post: Where the Sidewalk Ends is a book of funny kids’ poems by Shel Silverstein. When I was younger and lived out in the mountains, my cousin Carolyn would read that book to me every time we’d visit her house. During our last visit with her and her husband before we moved back to North Dakota, she gave me a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends with a nice little note written in the front. I read that book a LOT when we first arrived here in Bismarck. Last summer I dusted it off and read it again, and was able to reminisce with Carolyn about that when we went west on our honeymoon last year. To me it will always be a part of my North Dakota experience; Shel and his poems were there to comfort me when I was a little kid, transplanted (back) to North Dakota and missing my mountain home.