Monthly Archives: November 2009

element: motion

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I took one of my little two-year-olds to the lovely Bismarck Municipal Airport to look at airplanes and ride the escalators. Since he was having such a blast going up and down, up and down, up and down…I decided to have a little fun of my own. I threw on a 10mm lens, set my camera on the floor at the bottom of one of the escalators, set a slow shutter speed, and voila! Fun.

I don’t think you can see it in the first photo, but yes – that balloon I posted about a few days ago is still hugging the ceiling. Here’s the proof. Then I put the camera back in my trusty backpack so I wouldn’t make security nervous, then took little Sparky for a couple more escalator rides.

Flyby

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I knew that the space station was going to be passing by tonight, because it has been doing so on a nightly basis. I perched myself on the University of Mary hill, got my camera ready, and had one shot at success. I was hoping for a little flatter trajectory, with an arc passing almost horizontally across the frame, but that wasn’t in the cards. I got the shot, however. I processed different areas of this photo differently to bring out the detail in each.

The ISS traversed the sky overhead for several minutes before fading into the dark night sky. Then I hopped in the truck, ran back to town and perused the Bismarck public library for a bit, then brought home a Lightning McQueen toddler bed for one of my two two-year-old boys. Ka-chow!

That last step is a doozy…will our Senators take it?

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I’ve probably featured a shot like this before, but never on such a glorious frosty November morning! Have a great weekend!

Oh…wait a minute. There’s something we need to do, or our nation will be stepping off a figurative, dangerous version of the top step in the photo above. The Senate plans to vote on their monstrosity of a “health care reform” bill this Saturday. We need to urge our Senators to vote NO.

Once again, they have thousands of pages of bureaucracy waiting for us, stripping us of our freedoms and turning your body into a budget item. Oh, and it gets worse:

This bill will require everybody to pay for publicly funded abortions, regardless of their convictions on the matter. Funds will be collected from all participants in the public “option” and dispersed to provide abortion services. This is not elective.

It’s amazing, considering that every poll out there shows that the people do not support the government takeover of health care. Opposition to abortion is at an all time high as well. Yet they continue to plow forward! This is not a representative form of government with the current bunch of idiots in office. Force them to listen; make your voice heard!

Have you ever called one of our congressmen to voice your opinion? It’s easy, it takes about thirty seconds, and their staff will note your call. They have to. You don’t have to argue your opinion or debate with the person on the other end of the phone; you simply tell them how you want the senator to vote. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s a shame it doesn’t get used more.

For reference, the bill in question is HR 3590. You can read it by downloading the PDF here (free Adobe Reader required).

You can find out the contact information of our senators by clicking here but I’ll give you the phone numbers as the senate website is already kinda slow.

Dorgan: (202) 224-2043, 250-4618 locally or email him at http://dorgan.senate.gov/contact/contact_form.cfm.

Conrad: (202) 224-2551, 258-4648 locally or email at http://conrad.senate.gov/webform.html

Don’t wait to to do it. Like I said, it takes thirty seconds, and they need to hear from us! Don’t let them strip us of our liberty in this unconstitutional power grab!

What if your balloon soared up to the sky…and got stuck?

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I noticed this the other day at the Bismarck Airport and grabbed a quick photo with my cell phone. The ceiling in the airport was painted with a sky texture by Ric Sprynczynatyk when the new terminal was built, and seeing someone’s balloon stuck up against the ceiling reminded me of the movie The Truman Show. It’s way up there, too…so either it will be allowed to drift down on its own as it deflates over time, or someone has to get a BB gun! I’d volunteer for that last one, but the TSA would have a heart attack unless I got permission first.

Earl Pomeroy cries about “out of state special interest group” to ND media, needs to review own financing (UPDATED)

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I awoke this morning to discover this KXMB News article describing Congressman Earl Pomeroy’s angst over an “out of state special interest group” running ads against the government takeover of healthcare. He accuses them of “scaring seniors” which is another bit of irony; if it wasn’t for scaring North Dakota seniors and farmers every election cycle, the Democrat Party would barely exist in this state!

Yes, there are a lot of out-of-state interests advertising in North Dakota. How about, for instance all the unions that are advocating the government takeover of health care by their Democrat conspirators, so they can offload union pensions onto the US taxpayer? Apparently those are okay with the Congressman.

With that in mind, I decided to see how much evil “out of state” money Congressman Pomeroy is stuffing into his pockets for his political campaign. A quick web search brought me to this page on opensecrets.org, which as of the time of this post indicates that 90% of Earl Pomeroy’s campaign money comes from outside of North Dakota! Does that officially make Congressman Pomeroy a hypocrite for appearing on ND television stations, whining about “out of state special interests?” It seems, sir, that it is out of state special interests funding your campaign for re-election!

It’s interesting…in the lists of Top Metro Areas and Top Zip Codes of his contributions, only Grand Forks makes the list. Otherwise, North Dakota doesn’t even appear on the page! Congressman Pomeroy, you’ve got a LOT of explaining to do.

Update: Perhaps he’s not the only one, however. Did it not ever occur to any of the KXMB News staff, not even once, to question the Congressman’s source of funding? It took me thirty seconds to find this information. The local TV stations make a very large portion of their revenue from the three Democrats every election cycle, and I think it’s having an effect on the newsrooms. They look the other way when ever one of them goof up (such as Byron Dorgan’s connections to Jack Abramoff or Kent Conrad’s ethics investigation in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal) and then act like cheerleaders and stenographers whenever granted an opportunity by the congressmen’s public relations staff. Perhaps it is because they are the final beneficiaries of much of those Democrats’ out-of-state campaign money!

Updated 3/3/2010: According to this POLITICO article, the unions are funneling $700,000 into advertising in favor of Earl Pomeroy and his Democrat cronies. Do you suppose Earl will be decrying this use of “out of state” money as well? Call his office and ask him!

Foggy Bottoms Boy

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I was afforded the opportunity to take my camera and hop in the truck for an outskirts adventure. I’m still leary about doing too much hiking with my camera due to deer season and recent mountain lion encounters in North Dakota, so I kept things on the road and next to the truck.

The river had a “tube” of fog hovering above it as I neared the river bottoms. While I found a lot of other fun roadside stuff to occupy my viewfinder, I did want to get a good view of this phenomenon from above. Sadly, access to all the high ground on the Bismarck side is hard to come by. I did find one “trail” that could be loosely construed as a section line road, from which I was able to nab a few shots. By that time much of the fog had receded or dissipated, as the sun was quickly burning it off. No matter…I still filled at least one camera card with fun stuff this morning, and put a pretty good dent in another one.

Encounter at the Dakota Zoo

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The tigers are the new stars of the show at the Dakota Zoo, along with the snow leopards in the adjacent habitat. One big thrill for the kiddies is the tunnels leading to glass enclosures protruding into the big cat habitats, providing a unique view of the critters. Sometimes they get really, REALLY close.

I helped Stephanie balance along the edge of the window sill, on a tiny little strip of metal forming the window frame. That – and her bright red sweater I presume – proved irresistible to one of the cats, who looked otherwise bored. He had some fun for a few minutes, and my camera was there.

At first he just paced around and looked really interested, but after a trip around the glass pod he leaped at the glass and looked like he wanted to give her a big hug! A hug with claws and teeth, I presume.

He took a couple different opportunities to lunge at the glass. Each time the people who were in there with us gasped with excitement, and Stephanie was sure excited! I just kept snapping away with the widest lens in my backpack, trying to bounce the flash just right. Now we’ve got a few more memories to share. I think the tiger had a good time, too!

The Dakota Zoo is still open from 1pm to 5pm Friday through Sunday, weather permitting. More information at www.dakotazoo.org.

Something special today at the All Veterans Memorial

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Last night I got done working on the wife’s truck and decided to pay a visit to the All Veterans Memorial on the grounds of the North Dakota state capitol. With today being Veterans’ Day, there will be a lot of visitors here. This memorial does something special on this day, and I didn’t feel like intruding on the day with my camera during a solemn occasion (although I may be visiting to pay my respects).

For anyone who doesn’t know, the top of this memorial is only square on the outside; the inside is a spherical dome. That’s important for many reasons, which are evident when you’re there. At the center of the monument is a globe on a pedestal.

As the placard describes, something special happens here at 11 o’clock on the eleventh hour of the eleventh month every year, in commemoration of Veterans’ Day.

At precisely that time, the rays of the sun travel down this hole in the dome of the monument, beaming their way directly toward the globe at its center. I was kinda hoping that someone would be able to clean that stain off the wall where water sometimes drips through the tunnel.

On the globe, North Dakota is raised and polished above the surrounding terrain. The light of the sun strikes it directly for a brief period of time every Veterans’ Day at 11 am, lighting it up for those in attendance. Hopefully someone can tidy up this globe before it sees all the attention today; I tried to dab a couple of spots off with a clean handkerchief, but that didn’t help like an actual cleaning would.

While this is a really neat phenomenon, it’s really all about remembrance. Millions have served this great nation over the past couple hundred years and every one of them sacrificed a great deal, even if they didn’t lose their life or suffer physical injury in battle. Today is only one of the 365 days each year that we should hold them in high regard and thank them for the freedoms we enjoy because of their commitment to duty. If you’re there to see the light of the sun strike North Dakota on the globe, that’ll be really neat. Then take some time to peruse the names on those metal placards and consider the men and women who protect this great nation.