First sunset of the New Year! And how about some more stats?

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Here it is. New Year’s afternoon turned into a little bit of a hectic day for me, actually causing me to scrap my afternoon/evening plans, but I did get a chance to drive to high ground along the way and snap a quick sunset photo.

I’m about to wrap things up for the night and put my little boys to sleep, but here are some quick numbers from my last two years of blogging. I started this blog with a photo of the ND State Capitol Building lit up with “2006” in the windows, and that’s how I started 2008. In the two years in between:

This blog has served 984,138 invidual pages;

I’ve been visited by 459,070 individual readers;

The site’s busiest day was January 14, 2007, with 12,051 pages viewed;

The total hit count (includes images, pages, ratings, and messages sent to me via the Contact Me link: 119,415,870!

Yikes. For just some guy with a camera, I’m flabbergasted. Hopefully folks keep coming, hopefully you’re entertained when you get here, and hopefully I can sell a couple of banner ads to local businesses to pay for the cost of operating this thing. I’m looking forward to 2008 on BismarckMandanBlog.com, and I hope you are too!

20+ years of ambulance chasing continues at KXMB

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Upon visiting the KXMB website this evening (a website which syndicates my blog content, by the way) I was met with the top story: a dramatic accident on I-94 in north Bismarck. Complete with video and a slideshow, KX viewers are treated to a dose of sensationalism, KX style. Let me quote anchor Donnell Preskey:

“This is video we just got into our newsroom, and because the accident just happened, we don’t have very much information about it.”

How’s that for journalistic responsibility?

Shots included in this story are of a stretcher with someone’s foot protruding from under a blanket, and the front of the “mangled” (in the words of Ms. Preskey) SUV. While she goes on to say that “initial information” is that there are no life-threatening injuries. Way to wait for solid information, folks.

If I sound pretty ticked about this, it’s because this isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this kind of irresponsibility by KXMB (or posted about it). My last post on the matter got me threats of a lawsuit from Darrell Dorgan last year, by the way. Regardless, I stand firm in my stance that this kind of reporting is unnecessary and unprofessional.

How would you like to catch a news story about one of your loved ones on TV like this? Since my original post I’ve been contacted by others with similar horror stories of seeing loved ones in media. It isn’t a trivial matter.

While turning on my TV just now I caught the tail end of a KFYR-TV story on this same accident. Apparently their cameras were there, too. But did they run to get it on the air before details were known? I see their website has a story on this (with a shot taken from a distance) with a timestamp of 4:35pm. That means KFYR probably had their story on their 5 o’clock news. The KFYR story has details including the speed of both vehicles, the extent of injuries, and the fact that the payloader involved was travelling legally. In other words, they WAITED.

By the way, I’m not railing on KXMB because I worked for KFYR-TV for all those years. When I watch local news, I watch KXMB. The nature of KFYR’s four-station setup means they have to focus on regional news and don’t go into much detail on local Bismarck-Mandan stories. I love Kevin and LT, tho. I will say that when I was at KFYR, we had written policy against sensationalism. Maybe I can find my old employee manual and send that page to KXMB for inspiration.

Look, folks…we’re in DMA number 158…that’s pretty much the hind end of television. There’s no need to rush to sensationalism just to say “we’re first!” Show a little responsibility. Dashing from accident scene to air doesn’t do your stations or your viewers any favors. Think of the victims’ families…please?

ND Peace Coalition urges withdrawal from violent North Dakota quagmire

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(This ain’t the Onion, but I couldn’t resist a little satire. After all, it doesn’t take an intellectual giant to make these people look silly. They do 99% of the work themselves.)

(Bismarck) The North Dakota Peace Coalition called for immediate withdrawal from North Dakota this week, after describing the situation here as “a quagmire with no end in sight.” In light of numerous homicides and other violent crimes in 2007, said NDPC representative Karyn Van Possum, “the continued cost of the North Dakota occupation in the lives and health of our citizens is exceeding our expectations…not that the deaths of North Dakotans should have ever been within our expectations.”

When asked if a resolution in the state legislature along the lines of the Mathern/Kretschmar Pacifism Resolution was being considered, Van Possum indicated, “…that’s certainly a possibility. What better way to demonstrate support for our citizens than to get them out of harm’s way? Staying in North Dakota will not work and is not worth the price.”

Van Possum continued: “The list of atrocities committed in North Dakota include: an asphyxiated newborn in December, the high profile killings of two college coeds in Minot and Valley City, the beating to death of a man in Grand Forks in October, and the April slaying of a Sykeston couple in which their home was burned to the ground in an effort to conceal the crime. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Even now, the local news is reporting a possible kidnapping in central North Dakota. In August, someone hit a young man in the head and tried to run him over with a pickup. Obviously North Dakota is not safe for North Dakotans. We need to keep our citizens safe. We support North Dakotans, just not their mission. It’s time to bring them home…er, well, somewhere safe, anyway.”

When not busy fighting to end all fighting, many of the ND Peace folks keep busy by forming an endless array of coalitions, councils, and other “dot orgs” to champion such causes such as deviant sexual practices and preferences, pseudo-peace through capitulation to all enemies of freedom, and the worship of the Earth rather than its creator. Populating these organizations, attending the occasional protest and/or drum circle, and standing in black in front of the capitol keep many of them too busy to find a productive place in society. “But we care,” stressed Van Possum, “and that’s the important part.”

While they concede that our presence in North Dakota is unlikely to diminish any time soon, the peaceniks vow to remain resolute. “There’s no giving up on giving up,” Van Possum said. “It takes courage to stand up for running away.”

Happy New Year!

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After working the Wizards game tonight I braved the cold and snapped some photos of the state capitol building with 2008 lit in its windows. Brrr!

This marks two years of blogging. It’s too late to get into too much detail, so I’ll post some stats later on in the day. But here are a few numbers I can paste right from my reports:

689 entries using 226,483 words;
750 comments using 74,632 words;
147,691 votes stored in 13,612 bytes;
1,019 photos stored in 373,866,496 bytes.

I can’t believe I’ve written 689 of anything! I’m even more astounded at all the cool photos I’ve been able to take, over a thousand of which were deemed “blogworthy.” I’m truly blessed in that I get to take all these pictures and write about what I see, and then that people actually take the time to read and view them. Crazy. If only I was able to make money this way…

It’s late and I want to cuddle with my wife. I’ll summarize some site stats and stuff later on. Happy New Year!

Thanks for the three hour commercial, guys. Hugs & Kisses, the NFL Network

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I am a casual football fan, but I have to admit I kept an eye on the controversy surrounding Saturday night’s game. Those who don’t have the NFL Network were peeved that such a historic game would not be available to them for free, and the matter finally aroused the interest of Congress.

I don’t know the motivations behind the whole matter, but a deal was struck to simulcast the NFL Network game on CBS and NBC. Presumably it was to keep Congress off the back of the NFL. I was under the impression that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allowed Congress some oversight authority in exchange for granting the NFL anti-trust exemption. So the NFL made a deal with the devil, in the parlance of our times. I was eager to see how it all panned out.

What I saw, in addition to a good football game, was something of a win-win for the NFL Network. They turned it into a three hour commercial for their network. Game interstitials promoted NFL-N exclusives such as draft coverage, game recaps, NFL Films presentations, and the like. And NBC & CBS were forced to carry it! Imagine if the NFL had tried to buy three hours of commercial time…something they got for free Saturday night.

I have NFL Network on my satellite dish, so I’m no stranger to it. Frankly, I think Bryant Gumbel is one of the worst announcers to ever call the game. But I do like a lot of their exclusives, and they were granted access to two national broadcast networks last night in order to promote those exclusives to millions of potential subscribers. I bet there are NFL Network executives laughing themselves silly now that it’s done.

I couldn’t help but wonder what NBC and CBS execs must have thought while watching plug after plug for the NFL Network airing on their networks. I had to chuckle, because I think the NFL Network has every right to do so and were “sticking it to the Man” in a way. I hope they sent NBC and CBS a belated Merry Christmas card, because they got a heck of a freebie: 3 hours of promotional time on TWO broadcast networks during the game of the year, a game which set a historical record for the league. At the same time they got Congress off their backs (for now) and came out looking like the good guys. Good for them.

Stairway to…well, nowhere really

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As my truck crested the hill where the gravel road I’d been following met Highway 1804, I planned to just head north and scoot back to my family. It was early in the morning and I expected little PJ to be waking up soon, so I wanted to be the one to haul him out of his crib. I did, however, spot this on the way home…just north of the aforementioned intersection.

I suppose this could fit into my Fallen Farms series, but instead I just decided to push it around a little bit in Photoshop and leave it at that. Sadly, this is all that’s left of what probably housed a family at some point. What was once home is now gone. I know how that feels; a couple of years I went back to the old homestead in the Montana Rockies and found that my childhood house had been replaced. Bummer. But it sure makes for nice pictures, I suppose.

Download the Governor’s “Angel Day” proclamation

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I wasn’t there Wednesday because I work for a living, but the state capitol was all abuzz with the folks getting their certificates for taking part in the snow angel record. I was there, but I wasn’t flapping my arms. I was flapping the shutter in my camera from the roof of the capitol.

Now the governor has proclaimed December 26th, 2007 to be Snow Angel Day in order to commemorate the event. You can download a PDF of the proclamation by clicking here (Adobe Reader required). Save a copy to your hard drive and print it out to go with your Guinness Book of World Records snow angel certificate, if you have one. And get ready…those Michigan folks are preparing to take another run at the record! That means we’ll have to reclaim it if they succeed, with another outing on the capitol lawn and another day of passing out certificates when we emerge victorious. Ah, the thrill of competition, eh?

Sunrise on the Eve

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My wife woke me up Christmas Eve to tell me of a lovely sunrise developing. I’d fallen asleep with my contact lenses in the night before, so I was pretty well ready to roll out of bed and into the truck. I’m so blessed to have a wife who realizes my need to just get out and roam, and she was graceful in getting me out the door for a brief Christmas Eve outing. I missed the red part of the sunset, but things stayed golden for quite a while.

As I’ve mentioned before, the best sunrise, sunset, or aurora photo is one with a nice foreground. I set out southeast of town in search of that foreground, which is why much of the color got away from me. No worries, though – I found the broken down windmill in the first picture, then moved on to this intact one a little further down the road.

I soon found myself in the river bottoms, in what looked like a graveyard for forgotten cottonwood trees. It was quite a sight, especially so given the sun’s position. I poked around down there for a little bit and even considered hopping out of the truck to pound a few rounds at the gun range, but I didn’t want to be out too long.

I popped out of the other end of the bottoms onto Highway 1804 and pointed the truck home. I gave the boys at KFYR Radio a Merry Christmas phone call along the way and caught up on the latest happenings in local broadcasting, then marched through the door to hug my wife and boys. It was nice to get out and poke around, yet get home early enough to enjoy the rest of the day with family.

Christmas on two wheels

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After a fun afternoon of Christmas frivolity, my wife remembered that I’d made a comment about riding motorcycle today. She suggested that I do so, and I didn’t need any arm twisting. Rather than get a sportbike wet and dirty, I decided to grab something with knobby tires. By the way, knobbies do NOT work on ice. I got it pretty loose a couple of times, but that’s all part of the fun.

Here’s the view from atop Tom O’Leary hill. There were some kids snowboarding when I rolled up. I had my crappy Olympus camera with me, not my nice Canon SLR, so I wasn’t able to do any really challenging shots. It was just nice to be able to enjoy a ride on my summer toy while the kids on the hill were able to enjoy riding their winter toys. We had quite a sunset tonight, too…I think everyone on that hill got some enjoyment out of it.

After running into a friend of mine from Madison, Wisconsin at the intersection of Avenue C and Griffin Street (no, not literally running into) and sharing a discussion about how nobody has sunsets like North Dakota, I flew down to the Memorial Bridge area to get a shot of the brilliant red sky. I wasn’t as fast as the sun, but there was still a little bit of a rosy glow (or pinkish hue) on the horizon as I snapped this shot beneath the Memorial Bridge(s).

My prayers for a White Christmas were answered this year, and yet I was still able to ride motorcycle on Christmas day! I think we’ll call that the best of both worlds. So what did you do for Christmas?

The four most important words you’ll hear this Christmas

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Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King.
Peace on Earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.

My favorite Christmas music of all time is the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. I put it in my truck’s MiniDisc player as soon as the snow flies in the fall, and leave it in until the snow is gone for good the following spring. The verse that jumps out at me, the impact of which I never realized until I became a Christian, was the four words “God and sinners reconciled.” It’s those four words I have to share with you now.

You see, the reason for the season is the birth of Christ. But inseparable from Jesus’ manifestation is his mission. Let me make a few brief points:

1- Everyone on this planet is a sinner (Romans 3:10, Psalms 14 and 53). We’re cursed from Adam’s sin. Jesus came to pay to live a sinless life despite being tempted just as we are (Hebrews 4:15) and pay the penalty for our sins (Romans 6:23). The fact that he came is no more or less important than the reason WHY he came.

2- As sinners, we are enemies of God. No, not everyone is a child of God as Oprah says. Without being redeemed and reconciled to God, as in the last line of that song verse at the top of this post, we’re destined to hell. We need to be forgiven. That brings us back to Jesus, and his work of reconciling us to God. Here are a few verses, look ’em up for complete context:


I Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Romans 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

II Corinthians 5:18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

II Corinthians 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.

Colossians 1:20-22 And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

Ephesians 2:16 And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby

To get even a feeble glimpse of what those four little words means should stop a person in their tracks. All your sins forgiven through belief in Jesus Christ. A home in heaven, purchased by Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself in your stead. Guaranteed, because His work is final. That’s powerful stuff!

I’m not going to give you some deep doctrinal thesis on being born again. I’m not going to give you text from a church statement of faith, either. I’m going to put it in my own simple words and hope I make sense while typing at midnight:

-You need to realize that you are a sinner. I am too. We all are, that’s the point.
-Jesus paid the penalty for your sin (and mine, and everyone’s), living a sinless life yet taking on the sin of the world. He suffered, died, and rose again in victory over sin, death, and hell.
-You need only believe that Jesus is the Son of God (in other words, that he is God manifest in the flesh), that the price that he paid on the cross is sufficient for the forgiveness of your sins, the only thing that could ever be sufficient.
-Pray today and confess these things to God. Simply tell Him that you realize you’re a sinner who needs to be saved, that you believe Jesus is the Son of God, and that His sacrifice is sufficient to forgive you of your sins and give you eternal life.

I ask that you ponder these things today as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. If you’re not a Christian, it’s my hope that you take these things to heart. Pick up a Bible and explore the verses I’ve given. Use the “Contact Me” link on the top right of my website if you have any questions. If you are reading this on one of the sites that syndicates my blog, you’ll have to come to my website directly to get the link. It’s my sincerest hope that everyone who reads this would be born again. Then you’ll know how exciting a time Christmas really is, and the joy behind those four little words at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas.