Health Care Town Hall and the scariest graphic of the week

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Michael Tanner, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, presented at the North Dakota Policy Council’s town hall meeting on health care last week. I’ve seen Mr. Tanner speak before and was excited to see his return. Sadly, this time around he’s talking about a health care takeover bill that’s been signed into law, not one that was a distant possibility. He did provide some insight into ways that this unconstitutional power grab could be defeated as a whole or in part.

This is the creepiest slide of his presentation, although there were others that had more specifically bad news for North Dakota. This is a diagram of the new Obamacare health care bureaucracy. Looks easy to navigate, doesn’t it? So much for making things simpler!

By the way, if you bought into the line that adding millions of extra insured people to the system was going to bring costs down, don’t forget to add in the costs of all the new unionized government employees required to staff those little colored boxes in the diagram above. Still feeling all Hopey-Changey™ about health care? I didn’t think so.

The North Dakota Policy Council represents the interests of North Dakotans in a variety of ways. By visiting policynd.org regularly you can find out about events like this one where you can ask your own questions. You can find links to videos from past events as well. You may even consider supporting the NDPC to the degree that you choose. I’m glad that they, along with folks like Mr. Tanner, are doing the research to see how all this Hope™ and Change™ is really going to affect North Dakotans.

Test Drive Thursday

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Thursday I was able to hang out with my friend Ken for a while and enjoy a brief photography trip. The cherry on top is that Ken let me test drive his new Canon 7D digital camera, the very one I hope to get later this Spring! Needless to say, I was very excited.

We set our sights on this barn north of Wilton and arrived just before the sun began to set. That gave us some pretty nice “Golden Hour” sunlight despite the clouds encroaching on the horizon.

I was absolutely blown away by the image quality of this camera. The fleeting sunlight didn’t allow me time to play around with the camera settings much except for the usual exposure, shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. I was amazed at the photos this camera was producing.

The colors and dynamic range of the 7D are phenomenal, and I was able to take low-light shots that would send my 20D packing. I love my 20D, but cameras have obviously come a long ways since 2005!

Naturally, having a photogenic test subject doesn’t hurt. Combine that with the onset of color from the imminent sunset, and you have an ideal circumstance for running a camera through its paces.

Can you tell it was shady here? Is it apparent that I used a blast from my fill flash? I didn’t think so. I was flabbergasted by the results I got here; it was a photo I didn’t think was possible, yet it came out very nicely.

I shot these in JPEG mode, not camera RAW, so there isn’t much I could do in post-processing. That means that the photos you see here have very little adjustment to them, if any. This shot was taken after the sun was going down. It had a little bit of a blue tone to it due to the shade, and I warmed it up a little. The exposure, however, does not indicate how dark and shady it was when I clicked the shutter.

On the way home we stopped to catch this windmill with a splash of color behind it. I switched the lens over to my 20D and shot this with the same settings, and none of the color appeared. The shadows were much darker as well. That’s the big difference (aside from features) between the two cameras: I can make some amazing photos with my 20D, but in many situations I have to do a lot more processing to bring out the color and detail that the camera has captured. It doesn’t hurt that I just upgraded my Photoshop!

I love my 20D and will never set it aside. Since I bought it in 2005 and started this blog a while later, Canon has released a 30D. Then a 40D. Then a 50D. Each time I looked at ’em and could not declare them a significant enough upgrade for me to spend that kind of money (which I don’t have, by the way). Then came the 7D. Now I’m ready. With a little blessing to make the money part come together, I will be expanding my digital capabilities!

The 20D will still be in my camera bag as a backup, though. I love it. It’s been faithful and trouble-free for almost 55,000 photos so far and it’s got plenty left in it.

Wednesday night sunset

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I used to post a lot of sunset photos when I was single or married sans children, even having a regular “Thursday Night Sunset” feature. Now that the weather’s nicer, the sun is setting later, and my toddlers are older (and ambulatory), I hope to take in a few more of these. As you can see, while I’ve been busy lamenting the demise of Hillside Park, I still have plenty of other vantage points in my photographic arsenal.

Sister Moon

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While hiking back to my truck from what used to be Hillside Park, I noticed this moon peeking through the branches over my head. Naturally I broke out the tripod one more time and took a quick shot of it!

The past few days have been weird in that they’ve started out so cloudy and then cleared up just in time for some nice evening skies. I’ll take ’em.

First ride of the year

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During many of my bachelor years I’d ride motorcycle year-round. These days I don’t enjoy the same opportunity, but I’ve got other fun stuff to do all winter (ie, toddlers). Besides, I am down to only three motorcycles in the garage these days. I used to use one of my more “spare” motorcycles for spring riding. There are several reasons:

First, there’s the issue of North Dakota roads in the spring: the leftover sand spread in the winter will sandblast your motorcycle. The sand combined with the winter road grime can make for some challenging surfaces. “Cage” (car) drivers are not accustomed to looking for motorcycles. The sun is still low enough in the sky to shine into people’s eyes, making it even more difficult for them to see you.

Now that the weather and roads been nice for a while, I got my license plates renewed, new tires mounted, and I’ve gotten some other things out of the way, my riding season has officially begun. Yes, it’s much later than years past, but I’m not worried. My little boys are old enough to take on short rides now, and my gracious wife makes sure I get time to ride or work in the garage when I express a desire for it. In other words, my life is far better balanced now than it was when everything revolved around my motorcycles!

UPDATED: the City of Bismarck tops its Sertoma Park debacle with the destruction of Hillside Park

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This shot is brought to you despite the best efforts of the CIty of Bismarck which, having never found a park they couldn’t screw up, have topped themselves with the recent reconfiguration of Lions Hillside Park in northeast Bismarck.

For decades, there hasn’t been a better place to take a photo of Bismarck, especially at sunset or during moments of severe weather. You drive to the top, sit on one of the park benches or near the flower beds, and enjoy perhaps the single finest view of the City of Bismarck. There’s no higher vantage point in town worth mentioning…and now it’s completely inaccessible by anybody but hikers!

You see, when they “improved” the park they not only ripped out the road leading to the top of the park, but they also removed the walking paths as well! The path has been replaced with one long asphalt path that winds around the perimeter of the park, but there are no crossover paths at all and it doesn’t even come near the top of the park! If you want to get any closer to the city’s best vantage point, you’re going to have to hike. At this point that means a trip through the dirt and straw covering the ravaged area where the road once existed. See those little red circles? Those are the benches where people used to sit to enjoy our fair city.

UPDATE: Instead of driving to the top of the park to observe our fair city, this is the closest you can get to the top within the park. If you’re mobility impaired or lugging a 21 pound camera bag and an expensive tripod, you might not like hiking all the way up to the top. Too bad! You can park in St. Mary’s Cemetery and hop the fence, I suppose. What were they thinking? You can’t even SEE the top of the park from here!

If you were a teenager or older in the 80’s, you remember Sertoma Park in its heyday. You could drive into the park on the north end, where the walking path exists now. The road hugged the tree line all the way through the park, providing ample access to the sandbars below the Memorial Bridge. During the summertime, those sandbars would be packed with people enjoying the river, playing frisbee, sunbathing, or just hanging out by the water. The area was literally carpeted with people having a good time.

Well, the City of Bismarck apparently couldn’t stomach that, because they broke up Sertoma Park into a bunch of confusing little pods that do not provide more parking than before and totally obliterate ease of access to the sandbar. As a result: none of those pesky kids having a good time out in plain view! Only in recent years have people with boats begun to repopulate Bismarck-Mandan’s sandbars during the summer.

I don’t know what was such a huge problem about having vehicle or walking access to the top of Hillside Park, but obviously somebody thought there was a need to put a stop to it. In doing so they ruined the last truly great park in Bismarck, depriving many of its citizens the best view in town, and leaving photographers like me scratching our heads in bewilderment as we wonder just what in the world they were thinking. It’s as if they wants to torpedo our enjoyment of the area on purpose. Thanks a lot, guys. You just guaranteed that this park will see a tiny fraction of the use it once enjoyed. I hope that was worth the taxpayers’ money.

UPDATE: Since I don’t want to be all negative, even when they’ve screwed up one of my favorite places to go with my camera, I would like to point out that the park does have its own Ten Commandments display, which is a huge positive in my book. It doesn’t change my feeling about the rest of the park’s destruction, but I was very happy to see it here.

Also, the work here isn’t completed. It looks like all the roads and paths that are planned have been installed, however. It’s a shame, because that’s the part that’s so messed up! The other improvements are fantastic. There’s still time to at least get a foot path up to the top of the park; however, citizens who have a problem hiking that far have likely lost their ability to enjoy this park with ease forever.

Well…

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I’m always intrigued when I find an old well out in the middle of an otherwise vacant field. I ponder whether or not there was an old farmstead there at one point, or perhaps a windmill to drive the pump. In this case there’s no sign that there was ever a building foundation there, although there are some big rocks nearby.

I’ve spotted a few of these while out perusing the back roads of central North Dakota. They’re not always easy to see, but I’m starting to get an eye for this kind of interesting stuff as I wander.

Weekend warriors

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These guys are heroes to the people out of town who are relying on them to restore the power. They’re working their tails off to accomplish the task, too! Can you imagine standing on top of these towers and cranking power lines into place? Yikes!

There were still some wooden poles down, but I passed a lot of brand new ones and the crew which was replacing them. They’d obviously accomplished a lot in the area northwest of Mandan.

By the way, when one of those huge metal towers folds, there isn’t much you can do with it. The metal has been fatigued, so it’s time to replace the entire structure (aside from the pilings anchoring it to the ground). Once it’s dismantled and placed in a pile, it becomes obvious that there really isn’t a lot of metal in these things!

Imagine the force it took to twist and bend metal like this. Some of the damage was obviously due to the storm, the rest from cutting it into sections. Wow.

The landscape looks a bit different out there right now, as there are some places where the big metal towers are missing (for now). I poked around a bit west of Mandan to get my truck muddy and see what I could see, and there were crews working diligently to make sure that the lights come back on…one tower at a time.

BMSO “Mimes and Marvels” photos…hold onto your hat!

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After a lovely dinner at The Walrus Restaurant this weekend, my wife and I took in a fantastic season finale at the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra. Naturally I’m biased because my favorite violinist plays with the BMSO, but Saturday night held a particular treat.

Performer Dan Kamin (dankamin.com) came to town last week to entertain children and adults alike, including his program “The Classical Clown” with the Symphony. The show itself is wonderfully assembled, and it was a real joy to experience firsthand!

In addition to a variety of music selections and a fun ride with the character of the Classical Clown, the evening took a very colorful tone. It ranged from dancing…

…to a menacing, mime-frightening drama, complete with a walls-closing-in routine…

…to some sweet lullaby relaxation. Mr. Kamin’s character led us through the ups and downs of the selections performed by the Symphony, giving a new context to many familiar favorites.

This is no ordinary clown, however; after a brief trip backstage, he returned with tuxedo and baton, ready to conduct the Symphony! And conduct he did…

…until our conductor, Dr. Beverly Everett, returned with a few tricks of her own! This is a challenging production in that the conductor needs to co-star and deliver a lot of dialogue. Dr. Everett performed brilliantly! She was captivating and a perfect partner for Mr. Kamin. The orchestra was able to get in on the act a few times, too, which I’m told was a real treat for them.

The “cherry on top” for the evening was a not-so-brief Q&A session with conductor and mime, where a bunch of us were allowed to ask questions to our hearts’ content and hear Mr. Kamin describe his craft.

The show’s star performers graciously took questions from the group until almost 9:45! We got to hear Mr. Kamin talk about his experiences teaching Johnny Depp how to do magic and mime routines for movies such as Benny & Joon (which I loved), including a trick he used during the Pirates of the Caribbean. He also taught Robert Downey, Jr. the skills he needed to star in the movie, “Chaplin.”

What a personable fellow! You can tell that Mr. Kamin really enjoys his work. He talked a lot about the history of his craft, relating silent movie stars with mimes and other genres of performing without words. He taught a little boy how to do the “moon walk” and explained how, while popularized by Michael Jackson, the move was actually invented by Marcel Marceau.

Like I said, he hung out with us for quite a while! In addition to talking about the history of mime, he also expounded on my comment about relating comedic timing to music timing in his work. He talked about how he runs into different and similar conventions in humor when performing in different parts of the world, as well as what it was like to perform for a deaf audience.

The art of mime couldn’t ask for a better ambassador than Mr. Kamin. He said so many things I wish I could have written down. The one I was able to type into my phone, one of the best of the evening: “I look at Mime in the greatest sense, as in it’s what happens when you stop talking.” Well said. He compared the stereotypical “mime in white face” to the silent movie stars of old, Cirque du Soleil performers of today, and other styles that have existed for decades (if not longer).

Naturally I wanted to thank Dan Kamin in person for a brilliant show, his gracious gift of time to answer questions, and his warm personality. I think I blurted part of that out as I mentioned how I liked the scenes he brainstormed for the aforementioned movies. Then it was time for a quick photo and good-bye. Now it’s time to go out and rent Benny & Joon again…

(I hope these photos aren’t too grainy. I didn’t take my camera with me, instead relying on my wife’s little point-n-shoot model. It doesn’t perform in low light like an SLR, but I know how to extract the most from it when there’s no room for my big camera.)