City Commission meeting tonight

Posted on by
Reply

The Bismarck City Commission meets on Tuesday nights in the basement meeting room of the City-County Office Building on 5th Street in downtown Bismarck. You can view their agenda for upcoming meetings online in PDF format by visiting their website* using the link from the Links section of this page (upper right).

If you cannot make it to the meeting and you would like to hear what is said, you can view it online in real-time or when it’s replayed by visiting the Community Access TV website at www.freetv.org. The same is true for all their content, by the way. Check their schedule.


Windows Media stream from CATV

City government is something in which we should all take part. Have you heard the phrase, “All politics is local politics?” Well, in this case you can be heard personally. I’ve been able to get things done in and around my neighborhood simply by going and making the commission aware of problems that simply needed attention.

* Pet Peeve: When someone says “log on to their/our website” it really irks me, unless that website requires you to actually log in. If you are not required to enter a user ID and password, you’re not logging in. Get it right, TV journalists! 🙂

International Space Station flies over Double Ditch

Posted on by
Reply

I heard it was doing a flyby, so I got up early and ran up to Double Ditch Indian Village for a look at the International Space Station. I’ve previously photographed it at the North Dakota State Capitol building and the blockhouses at Fort Lincoln State Park so I decided to try a new vantage point. Since the NASA website tracking flyovers indicated that it would be a north-northwest approach, I chose to go north.

It was a very difficult thing to do, catching a pinpoint as it creeped across the sky, because the sun was starting to rise in the east. The sky was so bright, holding the shutter open long enough to capture the pinpoint of light as a streaking trail left the rest of the photo horribly overexposed. My solution: perform a series of quicker exposures back to back. That left a trail of dashes across the screen once I combined all of the exposures into one, so I filled in the gaps in Photoshop. I wish I could have captured what you see above entirely in the camera, but the fact that the flyby occurred at Sunrise forced my hand. Perhaps I’ll give it another attempt when it flies by in the dark!

Early riser, and some shots to make the hunters jealous

Posted on by
Reply

Saturday morning I had a lot to do, so to stoke the fire of my ambition I got up before the sun and headed out in the truck to stake out a nice photo. Right now the sunrise times out pretty nicely, arriving right around 7:00 am. Perfect. I hit 93rd Street southeast of Lincoln, since I had some potential sunrise locations plotted in my GPS. Instead of YAW (Yet Another Windmill) I chose this lonely tree.

It took a while for the sun to catch up, as there were clouds on the horizon. But once it did, I was able to catch it rising beneath the arc of my tree’s drooping branches. Not bad. Any time I can come home with one photo I like, the trip is considered a success. From here on out, anything else is a bonus.

I hung out a little bit until the sun got up high enough in the sky to make for a blazing sunrise, then figured I’d had enough of standing in the cold. I was wearing long johns and a warm coat, but the cold was starting to gnaw away at me. I hopped into the nice warm truck and headed back to town to get started on a long list of errands, including the introductory animation for the Civic Center screens when the Dakota Wizards take the floor.

Since deer season is in full effect now, I heard a lot of gunshots from all directions. None were terribly close, but I did stay hunkered down by the side of the road. I wanted to minimize the risk of getting shot, as you can understand. Even so, a motorist on Highway 83 near Minot caught a bullet in the leg this week. I don’t want to be come a statistic. My days of hiking with my camera are on hold until the hunting season ends.

Speaking of deer season, I did see this fella. He had four or five of his ladies with him, but I didn’t find them particularly photogenic. I’m no hunter, so I don’t know what a trophy doe looks like…but I do understand the importance of antlers on a buck. This was a pretty decent looking deer, in my estimation. I bet there are a lot of hunters out there that didn’t get a look like this!

Oh yeah…I saw this one, too. I just have to rub it in for those unfortunate hunters who came back empty handed this weekend. This lucky guy also had four or five does with him. Since I’m told the deer are in rut right now, that would explain the sudden socialization. I have shots of all of them, but only felt like posting the big bucks this morning.

So I went out Saturday morning looking for just one good photo. I got many. A lot of times it turns out like that, but then again I do come home empty handed some days as well. I guess I know what it feels like to be a hunter, after all.

Clint’s CRAZY Bargains

Posted on by
1

I found this in my souvenir box the other day. It’s a pretty sizeable box, since I tend to be sentimental about nearly everything. This bag was a gift from a friend and came from a chain of stores that no longer exists.

Back in the 1990s, when Jerry Bartz was still doing weather at KFYR-TV, he took a vacation to Australia. When he came back to work he brought me this souvenir. Apparently there was a big chain of discount stores called “Clint’s CRAZY Deals” down under. I don’t know why they left the apostrophe off the bags, though. I tried to find them online, but only found an article about the chain being purchased by a similar bargain retail chain. So I guess I have a collector’s item, a piece of Aussie retail history!

I know Jerry was working for some shop-at-home channels such as Gems TV, but he moved on from there and I’m not sure what happened to him after that.  I don’t think I’ve spoken to my former coworker since he left KFYR-TV, and as a Minnesota native I doubt he makes it back to Bismarck often.

Iridescent clouds

Posted on by
Reply

As I left work a few days ago I spotted these clouds overhead. The sun is in the center of the photo, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the frame. Its light was reflected, refracted, and deflected by some wild clouds. Some of them took on a rainbow-like appearance. They’re called iridescent clouds and are a pretty neat phenomenon.

I try to keep an eye on the sky…for instance, I took some photos of tonight’s wispy clouds at sunset. But I don’t care to bore people with post after post of sunrises and sunsets. When I see something a little more unique, though, such as these iridescent clouds, I post ’em.

I still say North Dakota has the most beautiful skies, and I’m sure many of my friends and readers who are no longer in North Dakota will agree with me.

Out to pasture

Posted on by
Reply

On a lonely little gravel road west of Mandan I found this rig parked in the corner of a field. As anyone visiting this site on a regular basis knows, I’m a sucker for a broken-down farmstead, a windmill, a well, or an old farm implement. I guess it’s part of North Dakota’s charm, although a wistful one at that. In my travels around the periphery of Bismarck-Mandan I’ve found many such sights, more than I’ve posted here. Gradually I’ll let ’em all out!

Sub-stantial damage

Posted on by
Reply

I found this video while rooting around on the hard drives tonight and thought I would pass it along. I’m not sure who shot it, but kudos. Considering that the transformers in this substation still contained PCB’s, I’m not so sure I would want to be anywhere near them as they burned, at least not downwind. I’m sure they were replaced with more environmentally friendly ones.

You may remember a semi trailer parked in the Kirkwood Mall parking lot with temporary substation equipment on it. That’s long gone now, with a new (and presumably beefier) substation built in the location of the old one. I hope you enjoy the video.

Main Avenue color

Posted on by
Reply

You don’t need to go far to find some beautiful fall foliage in Bismarck. A while back I found these leaves, and many other colorful varieties, right on Main Avenue! In fact, the blue behind them isn’t even the sky; it’s the back of the sign of the office building at the corner of Main and Mandan Street. I can’t believe I spaced the name of it…wait! It’s Tuscany Square.

One interesting thing is that the map graphic on the home page of the Bismarck Historical Society lists east-west roads as “Streets” and north-south ones as “Avenues.” For instance, there’s Washington Avenue and Sweet Street. The map is from 1883, so something must have changed in the 125 years since. Main Avenue, however, is listed on the map as “Main A”…so perhaps it has never been Main Street.

The day the polkas (and bubbles) came back to town

Posted on by
Reply

It was a sunny September day in 1965. I didn’t exist yet, but my friend’s dad did…and so did his camera. Lawrence Welk and his orchestra flew into Bismarck to, as James Grimstad put it, a “royal turnout.”

I haven’t much to say about the event, since I wasn’t there (or anywhere), but I do have to pay tribute to my friend’s dad Jim. I barely knew him before he passed away of Alzheimer’s, although I had the opportunity to know him better. It was only after his passing that I realized he and I were such kindred spirits. It seems he never went anywhere without his cameras over the years, and has left an astonishing and irreplacable photo legacy. Now I really regret not getting to know him better and talking about his photos with him, helping him relive the moments he captured.

Through an enormous gift of grace, I’ve been entrusted with much of that legacy and hope to preserve it in its entirety. You’ll see many more peeks into Bismarck history through his lens here on my blog throughout the years, as he has decades of unique photos of memorable events. His work will live on.

Higher ground

Posted on by
Reply

I got off work to an awesome sky today. The clouds were pretty amazing, so I did what works best: head for high ground and see what develops! I found myself at the University of Mary this time around. I was just going to stop in the parking lot, but I found that the large cross at the edge of the hill was a good point of view.

The neat thing about the sky at this particular time is that the clouds look like they’re going around the cross, like when you put your hand in running water or something similar. It was a pretty cool catch!

Part of the photographic formula is a nice camera. Another part is an eye for an attractive photo. I tend to attribute the biggest part of the formula, however, to just simply being there. I was there tonight. Then it was home for a tremendous honey-do list, which tonight was marathon woodworking in our home improvement project.