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.
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!
It’s been a while since I’ve been down at the bottom of these cliffs. Back in the 1980s there used to be a big sandbar island in the middle of the river here, and we’d have big parties out there in August to say goodbye to friends before everybody left for college. We’d have a generator and sound system, volleyball nets, and boats ferrying people to and from the shore. Those were the days. So I decided to find the old foot path down to the river and poke around a little before sunset.
About this point, the sun was a distant memory over the horizon and I was getting cold. I didn’t have any gloves, was wearing only a light jacket and could see my breath. That’s what happens sometimes with these spur of the moment trips, I guess! I worked my way back, hands stuffed firmly in my coat pockets to keep warm, and walked easily up the established trail. I cranked the heater in my truck, dodged deer all the way back into town, and called it an evening. While I didn’t really come away with any jaw dropping photos, I still call the trip a success; it’s an angle of Double Ditch I’ve been meaning to see for a long time.
This lone chimney sits on a little parcel of land south of Bismarck and is for sale if you’re interested. I’ve driven past it several times, even taken a few photos, but none of them really thrilled me. Today I think I got a slightly more interesting photo. I like the starker shadows of the fall sun, the golden grass and leaves, topped off by the dark blue skies (thanks to a polarizer filter on the lens).
The “volume” I joke about is that sometimes I’ll get several really cool shots, and just hang on to them for a while. For instance, I have lots of Fallen Farms photos (and haven’t posted any in a while…hm…) and fall foliage. I like to share them, but sometimes I just pace myself because I’m too busy being a daddy and a freelance video guy to get out with the camera on a regular basis.
Bismarck has so many places like this. Sometimes they’re better than others, and it is a matter of being there at just the right moment. These days I’m so busy I can’t begin to explain, but I take tiny moments here and there to work in a photo where I can. It may be on the way to work or back home, in between errands, or I might get up early or stay up late. But when you’ve got the photo bug, you make time!
We just got done swimming with PJ for about an hour, and she’s feeding him before bed while our dinner cools. Now it’s time to leave the keyboard and go dish up an AMAZING treat. If you haven’t tried one of these, you need to do so immediately. Even Scooter, my little lovebird, likes it. I’m almost drooling on the keyboard!
The attendance numbered almost double the last Civic Center event I attended, so I think support was very good. The station is also trying to secure funding for the next broadcast year, so it was also a call for support.
In a somewhat related note, on Sunday I added a new mini-feature to this site, the Bible Verse of the Week. You’ll see it in the menu on the right-hand side of this site. That is, of course, unless you read these posts on a site that syndicates my blog…in which case, you need to come directly to the source!
For some time now I’ve posted a link to Jon’s Evangelical Musings blog on this site. We have some good mini-discussions on there from time to time. Look under the Links heading on the right-hand column of this page, unless you’re reading this article on one of the sites that syndicates my blog. In that case, come directly to my site for the link.
I’m not trying to exalt anybody, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Jon wouldn’t want that. I just want to say, “I stand with you!” and thank him for his boldness.
The last paragraph is scanned into the image at the head of this entry, but you can find the entire article in the free magazine, which is available all over town in local businesses as well as dispensers. Pick one up today! If you can’t do that, click here to download a PDF version.
If you don’t live under a rock, you know by now that a front group took two words spoken by Rush Limbaugh on his radio talk show and fabricated them into comments he didn’t say, attempting to smear him and brand him an enemy of US soldiers. He’d previously been talking about Jesse Al-Zaid, aka Jesse Macbeth, who the anti-war left was touting as a veteran who witnessed atrocities. Sadly, Al-Zaid simply washed out of boot camp after 44 days and faked the rest. That’s the strength of the anti-war left’s argument.
Then the Democrats in the US Senate jumped on board. They wrote this letter to the CEO of Clear Channel, asking him to pressure Limbaugh to back down from comments that he never even made. That, my friends, is govermnent suppression of political speech, EXACTLY the kind of thing that the Constitution prohibits. And our North Dakota senators, the dutiful little Democrat puppets that they are, signed right on board. It’s no surprise, considering that at least 90% of their campaign contributions come from outside of North Dakota.
There are two possibilities here:
1: That our beloved Senators were misled and signed the letter without knowing the whole story. If that’s the case, then how can we trust them to sign ANYTHING responsibly, especially legislation? If they’ll sign a letter violating the First Amendment, what else will they sign? Don’t they have staffs that research this kind of stuff? If a guy working in his garage with the radio on can get it, how can they miss it…except willingly? Which leads to the next possibility:
2: That they signed this letter knowingly, preferring to be loyal liberal Democrats rather than do what’s right (or legal). In this case, they have shown their loyalty to a corrupt and morally bankrupt political party rather than the state they claim to represent.
What have our ND Senators done to support the families of soldiers? They’ve dutifully done whatever the leftist Democrat Party has told them to do, so they can keep getting enough out-of-state money to remain big fish in a small pond. They vote right in line with Massachussetts liberals, not North Dakotans…check their voting records and compare them with the most liberal: they match. Then they come back to North Dakota every now and then to claim that they’re bringing home the bacon, while pretending to be North Dakotans on paper so they can be re-elected. In the mean time, the free speech rights of a person who holds no public office had better not get in the way, as their signatures on this historic document prove. North Dakota can do better.
Thanks and props to my friend Jerry for the photos!