Visit ND. Drink booze, score with heavyset chicks, go home with a story. Wait…what? (updated)

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I kid you not: that’s pretty much the implied message this bizarre tourism ad for North Dakota delivers. I’m still trying to figure out how this could have seemed like a good idea.

Since they’re willing to take this bizarre (and tasteless) approach to luring visitors and tourists to North Dakota, maybe they’d like to try my attempt from a while back:

When the Will Smith movie “I Am Legend” came out, I had a little fun with its post-apocalyptic movie poster by applying it to North Dakota’s then-fledgling “I Am Legendary” campaign (again, who comes up with this stuff).

At the time I thought I’d made a somewhat funny, but oddball and questionable attempt at a tourism poster. It has just been demonstrated that it’s possible to do much worse.

(Update – While rubbing two brain cells together to generate a comment on the Great Plains Examiner site, I came up with this barely coherent screed…)

I understand that the “Leave a Legend” campaign is the underlying theme…that tag line with this photo was simply a BAD combination. Without the “leave a legend” text on this ad, you take a LOT of wind out of the critics’ sails. Even so, it’s not a great tourism ad.

I’m a North Dakota Ambassador, and as such I think we’ve got far better things to promote than downtown night life. Even if one wants to dispel any perceived misconceptions that we don’t have any thriving metro areas, why not find a more family-friendly setting such as a unique restaurant or something with broader appeal? Who are we trying to attract to our state, and do we expect them to bring their families?

We locals may tire of promoting things like Teddy Roosevelt’s sojourn here, but let’s not forget that we have something unique that people want to come and see. Despite North Dakota tourism’s inexplicable ad buys within the state, our campaign should be targeted at the tourists we wish to attact to North Dakota, not at the locals. If you want to encourage tourism within the state, Marketing 101 should tell you to generate a separate campaign for that separate objective.

By the way, aren’t we telling local youths that there’s more to do around here than drinking? I sure am…I’ve been spinning that broken record since the 1980s. So now we have an ad touting the bar scene. Great.

Hopefully this will cause some folks at ND Tourism and their favorite ad agency to step back and take a fresh look at some things. In that case, some good will have come from this blunder.

Moon upon the left

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So there I was: blazing down a gravel road at sunset, working my way back toward town. The sun had descended past the horizon, with only the purples and pinks in the eastern sky remaining for another couple of minutes. It’s a magical, fleeting moment that occurs after the brilliant, blazing light of the sunset has passed…and it’s a marvelous window of photographic opportunity in its own right.

That’s when I saw this sign, locked up the brakes, and hopped out into the ditch with my camera and tripod. I had to wander a bit to get just the right angle, but it wasn’t difficult. I had just enough time to try a few exposures before the light began to fade.

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I often like to make musical references in the title of my posts. In this case, I’m referring to the song by folk singer David Mallet. Here are a couple of lyrical samples:

There’s a moon upon the left,
And there’s a star upon the right.
There’s a nightingale a singin’
To the wondrous summer night.
There are gentle deer a grazin’
In the meadow with no fright.
And there’s no past and there’s no future, only now.
We have chanced upon this fragile scene somehow.

…

Now there’s a cottontail a’watchin’,
O’er his lady as she sleeps.
I’m a lover of tradition,
Here’s my heart it’s yours to keep.
Won’t you take me as I’m giving,
We’ll be lovers in our flight.
Cause there’s a moon upon the left,
And there’s a star upon the right.


The days are already getting longer and even though (presumably) we’ll have a cold snap to brave our way through before winter’s over, those calm moonlit nights are just around the corner – perfect for those hand-holding walks with my sweetie. Soon, I tell myself…soon.

Sanstead mulls re-election bid…could it hinge on voters discovering his department’s pro-homosexuality agenda in public schools?

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The Bismarck Tribune recently ran this article stating that Wayne Sanstead hasn’t decided on whether or not he’ll be running for another term as head of North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction. He asserts that health and tradition play a factor. I’d like to see another very important factor come into play.

Wayne Sanstead’s DPI is persistent in trying to fly a pro-homosexuality agenda under our collective radar and into our children’s classrooms. The groups they affiliate themselves with are the same cadre of twisted freaks who got busted teaching “fisting” and “rimming” to school children in Massachusetts in 2009.

Here’s my post from the first time they tried to sneak this garbage into our schools. People found out about what was planned to take place, they notified their legislators, and the DPI folks colluded with their out-of-state partners to hunker down and wait for the legislative session to come and go. And that’s what they did.

Here’s my post about when they actually pulled it off, just like they’d planned. The Bismarck Tribune, by the way, printed a glowing article making DPI’s Sandra Tibke look like a cross between a martyr and a modern day Mother Teresa. It’s no wonder that, if you try to comment on the Sanstead story highlighting things that concern you about this garbage taking place during his term of service, those comments never reach the light of day.

I admit, I only visit the comments section of the Bismarck Tribune website very infrequently…and only when I find myself with a few dozen extra IQ points I want to shave off by subjecting myself to the comments posted therein. But this time, when I decide to chime in with something that doesn’t fit the agenda, it never got posted. The Bismarck Tribune is very transparent on where they stand on the issue.

If Wayne Sanstead does choose to run for re-election, this needs to come out. Regardless of your views on homosexuality, is the public school classroom really the place for advocacy? Do we really want to put our teachers in that position, whether they want it or not? Do North Dakota parents want to cede parental authority in matters of morality and sexuality to their children’s schools, whose view on these matters is obvious and agenda-driven? Under Sanstead’s leadership, DPI’s position seems to be in the affirmative on all counts. We need to stop this, and put an end to his term as head of DPI.

Not what I was looking for, but satisfying nonetheless

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I love old pieces of equipment like the one pictured above. I was out on a photography mission, one in which I came back empty-handed, but I spotted this little gem beside the road during my travels. As it turns out, I caught it just as the sun was starting to splash its pre-sunrise color across an otherwise dreary landscape.

My photographic mantra is that any photo trip is a success if I come back with even one image that I like. That holds true for trips like this one, where I was looking for a very specific shot but couldn’t find the location…I came back with a few different shots that I really like, so I don’t really mind that they weren’t the one I was looking for.

The photo I originally sought evaded me, but only because I got a late start. The sun sets pretty early right now, even though the days are steadily growing longer. Next time, I’ll head out earlier and hopefully get lucky, stumbling upon the photo I’m chasing!

A special calendar…just for me?

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I really appreciate when local print shops do certain things such as in 2011, when Image Printing made those posters with the American flag on them and distributed them around town. One other thing they do, and this is a good business tool as well, is distribute free office calendars as a promotional item. They’re very handy, high quality, and should be appreciated as a valuable gift.

I was taking down my calendar from last year (although I discovered it had 2012 on the back) to replace it with a new one, when I spotted something interesting: at the bottom of 2011 it also had smaller boxes containing Janaury and February 2012, for those of us who don’t change our calendars on time! Wait, what? Janaury?

Yes, mine had January misspelled on it. I checked the back to see if the same quirk existed on the 2012 side (with little January and February 2013’s on it), and it did! As a proofreader I found that noteworthy, so I checked other calendars in the building which hadn’t yet been replaced. As it turns out, I’ve got the only one with the error. Hmmmmm…that’s odd.

In addition to the giant poster-sized calendar, I also had an 8.5×11 version. That had the misspelling of January as well…yet I couldn’t find another calendar with the same typo anywhere! Weird.

I’m one of those people who could look at a printed page and have any typo errors leap off the page at me almost instantly, as if I was looking at one of those 3D computer-generated posters. As a result, I find it appropriate that I seem to have the one calendar with this particular feature.

Before any conspiracy theories abound, I’d like to point out that this calendar was hung three months before I moved into the office where it was hanging. I don’t believe in fate, but if I did I would surmise that perhaps this calendar and I were meant to find each other!

One more time, with feeling

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I had lots of fun family time this weekend instead of roaming with the camera, but I did want to sneak in a quick 2012 shot. Since I began this blog site in January 2006 I have always found a way to nab a quick shot of the capitol with its windows declaring the new year. During that time I’ve just about shot every available angle of the thing, but I was able to grab something a little different this time around.

I did go out after midnight, chuckling at all the other like-minded souls roaming the capitol grounds with their cameras, but I found the experience lacking this time around. The reason for that is the clear sky; it doesn’t reflect any light on the capitol, so in order to properly expose the windows one must underexpose the building even more than I’d like. That almost gives the 2012 an appearance of floating in midair. Here’s where my “technical creativity” kicked in: I figured I’d let the sun help me out.

I packed up my gear this morning before sunrise, got into position, and waited for the sun to give me just enough scattered light in the atmosphere and on the capitol tower without competing with the 2012 in the windows. It was a fine balance, and I actually set an intervalometer to sit and take shots every 30 seconds so I could catch the right window of time, and that was that.

The shot above has the windows lit with the new year, the tower and town are visible, the sky is a nice blue, and it looks like everything worked as planned. Also important is that I think, out of all the people who photographed the building, I have a very unique photo.

Happy New Year!

In a word: Busy.

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Busy. That would describe my 2011 in as concise a way possible, yet in as verbose a manner as necessary. The photo above? I had to Photoshop the windows in last year’s photo because I didn’t get the time to take a real one…yet.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions; however, I do hope to make better use of my time in the future. That should allow more opportunities for what’s important: faith, family, fotography, motorcycles… 🙂

Happy New Year!

Almost forgot one – the Anderson Building

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I can’t let the Christmas season pass without recognizing one of my favorite displays: the Anderson Building on Main Avenue and Mandan Street. For those of you who may wonder, for me Christmas season starts on midnight Thanksgiving Day until midnight on New Year’s Eve. Thankfully, many others feel the same way to a degree; Christmas light displays like this one are still boldly lit all over town! That allows guys like me to get some “pickup shots” of the ones we missed. Christmas was WAY too busy this time around.

One feature about this building has me wondering: the loudspeakers up top. Personally, I think they need to be sending out Christmas music, preferably some sort of Vince Guaraldi montage or something. What do you think?

Merry (continual) Christmas, and Happy New Year!

So the UND Fighting Sioux are already in the Big Sky Conference? (with a plethora of links)

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My friend Rob dropped a bombshell this week when he revealed documents indicating that UND has been a core member of the Big Sky Conference since October 2010. You can view the contract between the NCAA and UND here (pdf).

Well, wait a minute! Weren’t we scolded and scared by UND and its liberal proponents into thinking that we’d never make it into the coveted Big Sky Conference if we didn’t get rid of that nasty, “Hostile and Abusiveâ„¢” Fighting Sioux logo?

Kudos to KFYR for picking up on this and even sending some props toward Rob for his discovery – you can view their online article here. Here’s where it gets even more interesting:

“This notion that, somehow, the University of North Dakota has misled people about our affiliation in the Big Sky, I think, is inaccurate. We`ve been very upfront about that,” said UND Spokesperson Peter Johnson. “We`ve held a news conference, we made a lot of noise when we joined the Big Sky, about a year ago. We`ve said all along that we`re members of the Big Sky Conference.”

Um…really? That’s news to me. In fact, I have this damning piece of evidence, available by the simplest of Google searches using the terms “und allowed enter big sky conference”:

At a hearing Monday on the measure, the university’s athletics director, Brian Faison, said keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname and logo has already caused scheduling difficulties and would jeopardize the school’s plans to join the Big Sky Conference in July. –ESPN’s College Sports news page, November 7th 2011

Somebody at UND better start getting their lies straight! Here are a few more instances of misinformation which the university either propagate or at least allowed to go uncorrected:

Robert Kelley, the university’s president, praised the law’s approval Wednesday, saying the move would lift the NCAA sanctions and ensure that UND may join the Big Sky Conference. –Bismarck Tribune, November 10th 2011

UND’s move to NCAA Division I in 2008 hinged on finding an established conference. The Big Sky is that established conference and had the controversial nickname and logo stayed, the league presidents — based on prior comments — could have refused UND admittance. –WDAY News, November 11 2011

At best, UND officials have allowed a misconception to flourish, while at worst they’ve misled everybody deliberately. The two quotes above from college president Kelley and athletic director Faison seem to indicate the latter. I don’t see any effort by the university to correct the scores of news reports, mostly sourced by the AP, which indicate a pending entry into the Big Sky Conference.

What a mess. We have had UND officials advocating for the removal of the logo behind the scenes, lawsuits by non-Sioux persons claiming discrimination, and now this. There are petitions circulating to put this to a popular vote – I suggest finding one, signing it, and letting North Dakota citizens be in charge of what happens with the Fighting Sioux logo and name, the way it should have been decided in the first place.

Christmas 2011: notable absences

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I’m not about to go negative here, I just would like to fondly remember a few Christmas decorations that have brought a lot of joy in the past but were absent this year. Above is the Paul Schaff house, located southwest of Mandan. It was an amazing display, but he stopped doing it after his wife passed away. You could see it from the Seven Seas restaurant!

This tree on Northview Lane used to be decorated from bottom to top. Under its current ownership, however, it’s only decorated a little ways up. I see the house is listed for sale, so let’s hope that the new owners have a cherry-picker!


Speaking of trees, this one on north Fourth Street (just past Divide Avenue) was one of my personal favorites. It was decorated with class and was enormous. It was dark this year.


Back to Northview Lane – this house at the top of the hill had flashing lights, but I didn’t see a sign indicating a radio station for it to sync with. Since he was on 107.5 before The River (now MOJO 107.5) came on the air, I wonder if he got drowned out. Time to spend a hundred bucks on a frequency-agile transmitter, guys.

Another house on a cul-de-sac just past the top of the hill was a home decorated with lots of characters and lights…it too sat dark this Christmas.

2011 is going to go down as a year in which a LOT of things just didn’t happen. Many people’s lives were turned upside down due to the flooding and other events this year, so I certainly don’t want to come across the wrong way by highlighting an absence of decorations. Again, these displays brought joy to a lot of people, and we miss ’em. That’s all. Hopefully new ones and old favorites like the Chmielewskis will keep all parts of Bismarck and Mandan bright with Christmas cheer next year, while proving those pesky Mayans wrong once and for all!