These are a few of my favorite things (with map)

Posted on by
Reply

You probably knew this already, but two of Bismarck-Mandan’s favorite Christmas attractions are up and running as of Thanksgiving weekend: Northview Lane and Chmielewski’s Christmas Corner.

The display at the corner of Kennedy Avenue, as elaborate as it is, still is a work in progress. The abominable snowmen aren’t up yet, for instance. There is, however, an amazing miniature ski lift hauling your favorite holiday characters up to the roof and back! Yes, photos are forthcoming as time allows.

My little guys and I absolutely love driving around looking at these displays with the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack playing in the truck. This time of year passes very quickly, so make sure you take a few laps!

I’ve resurrected last year’s Google Map of Bismarck-Mandan Christmas Lights for this year, and hope to make some additions or corrections once my little guys and I go out exploring. Highlights include:

– The aforementioned Chmielewski’s Christmas Corner on Kennedy & 23rd Street;
– Northview Lane;
– Acres of musical lights with a Wilz’s Light-O-Rama show on Chestnut Lane;
– Dykshoorn Park in Mandan;
– Christmas in the Park in Bismarck;
– and a wooden cartoon menagerie on west Avenue C.

Notably absent are displays on 4th and Divide, Ridgeview lane, West View Place. They weren’t on display last year, but I see that Ridgeview is back. Hopefully some of the others return as well.

The link is easy to remember:
www.tinyurl.com/bismarck-mandanchristmaslights.

Meme Monday

Posted on by
Reply

I didn’t go out with the camera this weekend as I was busy with Daddy duties, but I do have one contribution to the blog. This is one of my favorite memes: Success Kid. While he most often appears in front of a colored pinwheel background, I opted for the original this morning.

This little guy is now five years old, just like my two little fellas. One reason why I don’t put photos of them on the web is so they don’t end up as memes! 🙂

The graphic is true, though. I forgot to set my alarm last night. Thankfully I woke up one minute before it would have gone off if properly set…thus my feeling of victory. Have a great week!

Wire and ice

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Pat Benatar for a musical reference upon which to base the title of this post. I’ve shared a few images of ice-encrusted trees over the past few days, collected on my venture east of town Sunday afternoon. These fence photos are actually some of the first photos I grabbed on my way out.

The fences east of town looked downright globby in places, with the barbs completely encased in ice at times. As you can see, there was a lot of ice on everything; some of the barbs looked to have a half-inch of ice on them.

Those are an entirely different phenomenon than this, one of my favorite barbed wire photos from 2009. In this case the frost spikes were enormous too, but not nearly as encasing as the ice of last Friday.

Crystal chandeliers

Posted on by
Reply

Great…now I have the Charley Pride song stuck in my head after titling this post. I almost came home empty-handed in my search for cool photos of iced-up trees on Sunday; just as I got out the clouds rolled in and obscured the sun. I did see that frozen mitt from my previous post, but didn’t really see anything overwhelming in the trees. But then, on my way home, I spotted this.

As you can see, the sun wasn’t giving up so easily. It managed to burn its way through the haze and clouds intermittently, which required some near-frostbitten patience from yours truly. It was absolutely critical to wait until the sun was shining behind this ice in order to highlight it, and I was willing to wait.

I tell my little boys that a sunny day does not always equal a warm one. It did, however, equal a great photo opportunity for a fleeting moment…one in which I was poised and ready to capture a few shots.

The ice that adorned these branches is gone now, so I am glad I was able to sneak out and catch a glimpse. Of course, the best part of seeing such a sight is sharing it with others; that’s the reason I got my cameras in the first place. I’m naturally curious to begin with, and the nature of my work so often puts me in places where I get to see things most people don’t get to see. I think that’s why so many people in law enforcement pick up photography as a hobby, by the way.

I have one more set of icy photos from the day, and I think I’ll post them pretty soon. This storm really provided ample opportunity!

I found your glove

Posted on by
Reply

After receiving a tip about icy tree branches from my pastor I decided to venture out briefly on Sunday. Normally I stay within the city limits on deer opener, but I figured the outskirts might be slightly less dangerous due to weather. I don’t feel like either catching a stray bullet or being mistaken for wildlife and shot by some overzealous idiot with an opening-weekend trigger finger. Thankfully the deer and hunters were hunkered down by the ice, snow, and wind, giving us crazy photographers a little room.

As I cruised down a road east of Lincoln I spotted something that would otherwise be unremarkable in rural North Dakota: a glove (mitten, actually) atop a fence post. What made this one more interesting, of course, was the half-inch of ice encrusted thereupon.

As you can see, everything out there was iced up pretty well; the mitten, the fence post, and even the barbed wire all have a thick coat of ice on their east side. This is the same ice that made driving so treacherous over the weekend, especially with a bed of fresh snow over the top of it.

Anyway, if you are missing a mitten, email me. I’ll let you know where to find it. Some chiseling and thawing may be required.

Don’t worry folks – the sand is safe

Posted on by
Reply

On Friday, a long-anticipated storm began to roll across North Dakota from the west. By mid-day no travel was advised in the west as freezing rain and icy conditions made travel very treacherous. It’s not as if we couldn’t see last night’s ice-fest coming.

Imagine my surprise at 5 o’clock when the city’s streets, rapidly turning into an ice skating rink as the temperature dropped, were completely devoid of sand. I drove carefully across town via some of the city’s busiest intersections, but didn’t see any sand spread around.

That’s ironic, because during the summer the city of Bismarck has no problem spreading acres of chip-seal gravel, much of it unmarked, to coat the roads while simultaneously maiming motorcyclists caught unaware. While they’re quite liberal with the pea gravel, each year we end up with a day or so of fender benders that could have been avoided before someone snaps to and orders out the spreader trucks.

This year is no different. In what was perhaps one of the most easily foreseeable freezing rain and ice events, Bismarck residents were forced to tip-toe and white-knuckle their way home on streets that could have been sanded in advance. Once the rain began to fall early in the day, with cold weather approaching and hundreds of miles of iced-up roads in its wake, the city of Bismarck apparently did NOTHING.

By the way, you may have noticed from all the out of state license plates that many drivers on North Dakota roads this year are not North Dakotans. Many come from southern states where they apparently can’t even drive in RAIN, much less snow or glare ice. Now they’re getting a taste of winter and we’re out there playing bumper cars with ’em. I wonder if anyone considered that before opting to wait with winter road preparations?

Where’s the sand? Well, don’t worry, folks – it’s sitting safe and sound at the Public Works building. On an errand today I drove past and grabbed the camera to illustrate that as far as sand goes, we’ve got plenty. Unfortunately, even as they begin to load trucks today, it’s going to be spread on Bismarck’s roads at least a day late.

If the city put as much effort into sanding and plowing winter roads in a timely manner as they did trying to soak us for a $90 million Civic Center addition, perhaps we wouldn’t have such dangerous conditions when we’re simply trying to get to/from work and home safely.

This isn’t how I want to get close-up shots of large raptors

Posted on by
Reply

I got some of my closest photos of an enormous hawk a couple of weekends ago while on a roving photo trip. I was able to slowly approach within several feet of this big guy, although that’s not how he would have preferred it. He even stayed uncharacteristically still for me, and there wasn’t even a fresh kill nearby that he was trying to protect. In fact, he was trying to protect himself.

Sadly, this bird has a broken wing. I noticed him standing beside the road as I drove by and, since that sort of behavior is peculiar and I love trying to get close-ups of hawks, I stopped and got out to investigate. That’s when I realized why this predator wasn’t flying away like dozens of others who’ve seen me approach with my camera: it couldn’t. This would be an amazing pose if it didn’t mean he was wounded and trying to look intimidating so I’d go away.

Many of you know that I’m particularly sympathetic to birds, even lean, mean, killin’ machine birds, but I was unable to do something for this one. I was out in the absolute middle of nowhere, totally unequipped to try to catch him and take him to the zoo or somewhere, and nobody to call. I took a few pictures while talking to him for a bit, and then he vanished into the tall grass behind him.

I originally thought this bird had been shot, but didn’t see any sign of a GSW. The wing simply looks broken. At first it was really exciting to be able to get so close to such a large and elusive critter, but in the end I just ended up feeling sad at its plight and my own inability to assist.

Where nature keeps its stuff

Posted on by
Reply

Walking along the Lewis & Clark recreational trail this fall I came upon a fallen log with a very large crack down its length. As luck would have it, this made a perfect shelf for leaves and other detritus to accumulate. The log was even oriented in such a way as to make it perfectly aligned. Hopefully within a few days it’ll be full of snow!

Only one thing left to do now, and – Hey! TRUCK!

Posted on by
Reply


Image shamelessly recycled from previous election

My sweetie and I voted yesterday, and I didn’t get a sticker. That’s okay; we did our civic duty and can now relax and let election day unfold. I’ve heard the phrase, “It’s a turnout election now,” and it looks like turnout will be heavy. When I put my ballot into the M100 Ballot Scanner yesterday (a machine for which I made the training video), I noticed that the three machines had plenty of use: 1,000 on the first, just shy of 2,000 on the second, and around 2,800 on the third.

All that’s left now is to pray for our elections and the people who are elected. As I’ve said on Facebook: regardless of who wins today: all public officials, regardless of party, are only as accountable as we hold ’em. The days of electing them and sending them off to govern while we go about our business are OVER. We’ve got the government we deserve right now, so let’s take it back and conform it to the will of the people and the frame of the Constitution of the United State of America. So we need to pray that the right people would be elected, for wisdom in the electorate, and for a restoration of the greatness of our country.

Last night felt great, because instead of getting wrapped up in political stuff I simply opened up Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to start playing around with some as-yet undeveloped photos. This truck, for example, is my first real venture into the world of HDR processing. I don’t have any of the industry-standard tools for such a thing, a fact I may have to rectify soon, but I am relatively pleased with this fledgling result. I was able to keep detail in the shadows of the truck and texture of the wood while keeping the colors and brilliant light of the grass, trees, and sky.

I like HDR photos when they’re super-realistic, but not when they begin to look painted. This one is borderline. As I play around with it more and get some more sophisticated tools to wield, I hope to get a better handle on achieving the look I want. It’ll be a nice change from a very polarized and relentless election season.

A few thoughts on Bismarck City Measure #1: a $70 million tax increase with dubious assumptions

Posted on by
Reply

The City of Bismarck has had a “civic center fetish” for as long as I can remember. It has transcended mayors, commissioners, and reason for decades. Now voters will be asked to fund this fetish to the tune of almost $70 million dollars (for now).

City Measure #1 is really nothing more than authorizing an enormous tax hike within the city. Proponents of this idea dismiss the tax as something only visitors will pay. Apparently they don’t think the rest of us ever go out for a burger or rent a hotel room in this town, or they think we’ll forget that we do. Every time you go out to eat you’ll be paying more if Measure #1 passes.

The hotels would love for this measure to pass because it creates much more convention space (no, it wouldn’t expand the arena for the next big concert or minor league sports team). That means they would be able to rent more hotel rooms out to convention attendees. In a way, this is subsidizing the hospitality industry. Why can’t they put some money together and simply provide this service themselves, if it’s so lucrative?

Right now I can only think of two Bismarck hotels which provide convention service of any magnitute: the Ramkota and the Radisson. If the other hotels want a piece of the pie, why don’t they expand to offer it? After all, we’re told it’s such a money maker.

IF you ask John Q. Public what he’d like to see improved in the current situation, I’m sure his top three answers would be: 1) Parking; 2) Parking; and 3) Parking. This $90 million dollar expansion plan, which was only $50 million as recently as June of this very same year (LINK), does not address additional parking according to Mayor Warford (LINK).

Local resident Lynn Bergman points out that this tax not only makes coming to Bismarck to eat or stay in a hotel room more expensive, and therefore less competitive price-wise, but also does not address the increased maintenance costs for such a facility. What happens when the Civic Center has to maintain the larger facility as well as a full kitchen staff and other amenities? You and I are on the hook for it as citizens of Bismarck.

By the way, if you read this Tribune article you’ll find that this tax doesn’t even pay for the Civic Center expansion completely! They simply assume that they’ll be able to come up with tens of millions of dollars of additional revenue from other sources (LINK) to cover the current price tag (which is nearly TWICE the estimated cost from five months ago).

Again, I don’t think this is the right idea.

It’s an enormous tax on Bismarck residents, regardless of what the proponents tell you;

It doesn’t even address parking, one of the Civic Center’s greatest weaknesses;

It raises enormous questions regarding maintenance and operations costs;

It’s for a project which has nearly doubled in cost over only the past six months;

It assumes that tens of millions of dollars in additional funding are going to fall from the sky in order to complete the project.

Finally: what if the economy turns south, by the way? Even if Mitt Romney wins the election, the Obama EPA Administration is preparing an unprecedented effort to strangle coal, one of our state’s key energy industries (LINK). If that happens, and our state economy falters as a result, are the City Commission going to find this $23 million (currently) as they anticipate? If people cut their extra spending (such as hotel stays and going out to eat) and that tax revenue drops as well, who’s left holding the check for this $90 million dollar debt? You and me, residents of Bismarck.