Monthly Archives: April 2010

Wednesday night sunset

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I used to post a lot of sunset photos when I was single or married sans children, even having a regular “Thursday Night Sunset” feature. Now that the weather’s nicer, the sun is setting later, and my toddlers are older (and ambulatory), I hope to take in a few more of these. As you can see, while I’ve been busy lamenting the demise of Hillside Park, I still have plenty of other vantage points in my photographic arsenal.

Sister Moon

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While hiking back to my truck from what used to be Hillside Park, I noticed this moon peeking through the branches over my head. Naturally I broke out the tripod one more time and took a quick shot of it!

The past few days have been weird in that they’ve started out so cloudy and then cleared up just in time for some nice evening skies. I’ll take ’em.

First ride of the year

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During many of my bachelor years I’d ride motorcycle year-round. These days I don’t enjoy the same opportunity, but I’ve got other fun stuff to do all winter (ie, toddlers). Besides, I am down to only three motorcycles in the garage these days. I used to use one of my more “spare” motorcycles for spring riding. There are several reasons:

First, there’s the issue of North Dakota roads in the spring: the leftover sand spread in the winter will sandblast your motorcycle. The sand combined with the winter road grime can make for some challenging surfaces. “Cage” (car) drivers are not accustomed to looking for motorcycles. The sun is still low enough in the sky to shine into people’s eyes, making it even more difficult for them to see you.

Now that the weather and roads been nice for a while, I got my license plates renewed, new tires mounted, and I’ve gotten some other things out of the way, my riding season has officially begun. Yes, it’s much later than years past, but I’m not worried. My little boys are old enough to take on short rides now, and my gracious wife makes sure I get time to ride or work in the garage when I express a desire for it. In other words, my life is far better balanced now than it was when everything revolved around my motorcycles!

UPDATED: the City of Bismarck tops its Sertoma Park debacle with the destruction of Hillside Park

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This shot is brought to you despite the best efforts of the CIty of Bismarck which, having never found a park they couldn’t screw up, have topped themselves with the recent reconfiguration of Lions Hillside Park in northeast Bismarck.

For decades, there hasn’t been a better place to take a photo of Bismarck, especially at sunset or during moments of severe weather. You drive to the top, sit on one of the park benches or near the flower beds, and enjoy perhaps the single finest view of the City of Bismarck. There’s no higher vantage point in town worth mentioning…and now it’s completely inaccessible by anybody but hikers!

You see, when they “improved” the park they not only ripped out the road leading to the top of the park, but they also removed the walking paths as well! The path has been replaced with one long asphalt path that winds around the perimeter of the park, but there are no crossover paths at all and it doesn’t even come near the top of the park! If you want to get any closer to the city’s best vantage point, you’re going to have to hike. At this point that means a trip through the dirt and straw covering the ravaged area where the road once existed. See those little red circles? Those are the benches where people used to sit to enjoy our fair city.

UPDATE: Instead of driving to the top of the park to observe our fair city, this is the closest you can get to the top within the park. If you’re mobility impaired or lugging a 21 pound camera bag and an expensive tripod, you might not like hiking all the way up to the top. Too bad! You can park in St. Mary’s Cemetery and hop the fence, I suppose. What were they thinking? You can’t even SEE the top of the park from here!

If you were a teenager or older in the 80’s, you remember Sertoma Park in its heyday. You could drive into the park on the north end, where the walking path exists now. The road hugged the tree line all the way through the park, providing ample access to the sandbars below the Memorial Bridge. During the summertime, those sandbars would be packed with people enjoying the river, playing frisbee, sunbathing, or just hanging out by the water. The area was literally carpeted with people having a good time.

Well, the City of Bismarck apparently couldn’t stomach that, because they broke up Sertoma Park into a bunch of confusing little pods that do not provide more parking than before and totally obliterate ease of access to the sandbar. As a result: none of those pesky kids having a good time out in plain view! Only in recent years have people with boats begun to repopulate Bismarck-Mandan’s sandbars during the summer.

I don’t know what was such a huge problem about having vehicle or walking access to the top of Hillside Park, but obviously somebody thought there was a need to put a stop to it. In doing so they ruined the last truly great park in Bismarck, depriving many of its citizens the best view in town, and leaving photographers like me scratching our heads in bewilderment as we wonder just what in the world they were thinking. It’s as if they wants to torpedo our enjoyment of the area on purpose. Thanks a lot, guys. You just guaranteed that this park will see a tiny fraction of the use it once enjoyed. I hope that was worth the taxpayers’ money.

UPDATE: Since I don’t want to be all negative, even when they’ve screwed up one of my favorite places to go with my camera, I would like to point out that the park does have its own Ten Commandments display, which is a huge positive in my book. It doesn’t change my feeling about the rest of the park’s destruction, but I was very happy to see it here.

Also, the work here isn’t completed. It looks like all the roads and paths that are planned have been installed, however. It’s a shame, because that’s the part that’s so messed up! The other improvements are fantastic. There’s still time to at least get a foot path up to the top of the park; however, citizens who have a problem hiking that far have likely lost their ability to enjoy this park with ease forever.

Well…

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I’m always intrigued when I find an old well out in the middle of an otherwise vacant field. I ponder whether or not there was an old farmstead there at one point, or perhaps a windmill to drive the pump. In this case there’s no sign that there was ever a building foundation there, although there are some big rocks nearby.

I’ve spotted a few of these while out perusing the back roads of central North Dakota. They’re not always easy to see, but I’m starting to get an eye for this kind of interesting stuff as I wander.

Weekend warriors

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These guys are heroes to the people out of town who are relying on them to restore the power. They’re working their tails off to accomplish the task, too! Can you imagine standing on top of these towers and cranking power lines into place? Yikes!

There were still some wooden poles down, but I passed a lot of brand new ones and the crew which was replacing them. They’d obviously accomplished a lot in the area northwest of Mandan.

By the way, when one of those huge metal towers folds, there isn’t much you can do with it. The metal has been fatigued, so it’s time to replace the entire structure (aside from the pilings anchoring it to the ground). Once it’s dismantled and placed in a pile, it becomes obvious that there really isn’t a lot of metal in these things!

Imagine the force it took to twist and bend metal like this. Some of the damage was obviously due to the storm, the rest from cutting it into sections. Wow.

The landscape looks a bit different out there right now, as there are some places where the big metal towers are missing (for now). I poked around a bit west of Mandan to get my truck muddy and see what I could see, and there were crews working diligently to make sure that the lights come back on…one tower at a time.

BMSO “Mimes and Marvels” photos…hold onto your hat!

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After a lovely dinner at The Walrus Restaurant this weekend, my wife and I took in a fantastic season finale at the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra. Naturally I’m biased because my favorite violinist plays with the BMSO, but Saturday night held a particular treat.

Performer Dan Kamin (dankamin.com) came to town last week to entertain children and adults alike, including his program “The Classical Clown” with the Symphony. The show itself is wonderfully assembled, and it was a real joy to experience firsthand!

In addition to a variety of music selections and a fun ride with the character of the Classical Clown, the evening took a very colorful tone. It ranged from dancing…

…to a menacing, mime-frightening drama, complete with a walls-closing-in routine…

…to some sweet lullaby relaxation. Mr. Kamin’s character led us through the ups and downs of the selections performed by the Symphony, giving a new context to many familiar favorites.

This is no ordinary clown, however; after a brief trip backstage, he returned with tuxedo and baton, ready to conduct the Symphony! And conduct he did…

…until our conductor, Dr. Beverly Everett, returned with a few tricks of her own! This is a challenging production in that the conductor needs to co-star and deliver a lot of dialogue. Dr. Everett performed brilliantly! She was captivating and a perfect partner for Mr. Kamin. The orchestra was able to get in on the act a few times, too, which I’m told was a real treat for them.

The “cherry on top” for the evening was a not-so-brief Q&A session with conductor and mime, where a bunch of us were allowed to ask questions to our hearts’ content and hear Mr. Kamin describe his craft.

The show’s star performers graciously took questions from the group until almost 9:45! We got to hear Mr. Kamin talk about his experiences teaching Johnny Depp how to do magic and mime routines for movies such as Benny & Joon (which I loved), including a trick he used during the Pirates of the Caribbean. He also taught Robert Downey, Jr. the skills he needed to star in the movie, “Chaplin.”

What a personable fellow! You can tell that Mr. Kamin really enjoys his work. He talked a lot about the history of his craft, relating silent movie stars with mimes and other genres of performing without words. He taught a little boy how to do the “moon walk” and explained how, while popularized by Michael Jackson, the move was actually invented by Marcel Marceau.

Like I said, he hung out with us for quite a while! In addition to talking about the history of mime, he also expounded on my comment about relating comedic timing to music timing in his work. He talked about how he runs into different and similar conventions in humor when performing in different parts of the world, as well as what it was like to perform for a deaf audience.

The art of mime couldn’t ask for a better ambassador than Mr. Kamin. He said so many things I wish I could have written down. The one I was able to type into my phone, one of the best of the evening: “I look at Mime in the greatest sense, as in it’s what happens when you stop talking.” Well said. He compared the stereotypical “mime in white face” to the silent movie stars of old, Cirque du Soleil performers of today, and other styles that have existed for decades (if not longer).

Naturally I wanted to thank Dan Kamin in person for a brilliant show, his gracious gift of time to answer questions, and his warm personality. I think I blurted part of that out as I mentioned how I liked the scenes he brainstormed for the aforementioned movies. Then it was time for a quick photo and good-bye. Now it’s time to go out and rent Benny & Joon again…

(I hope these photos aren’t too grainy. I didn’t take my camera with me, instead relying on my wife’s little point-n-shoot model. It doesn’t perform in low light like an SLR, but I know how to extract the most from it when there’s no room for my big camera.)

Uh oh…alert the NCAA, another “Hostile and Abusive™” logo and nickname have been spotted

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I suppose that in the interest of consistency, the NCAA would have to find a way to ban the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe from something? I mean, since a bunch of busybody, politically-correct, out-of-state liberals know what’s best for us hicks out here in flyover country, shouldn’t they at least be consistent?

Let’s not forget how these people view the Native American people they claim to be looking out for. When the Spirit Lake Nation voted to support the UND Fighting Sioux logo and nickname, these same politically-correct types claimed it was because they were uneducated.

The NCAA started this whole sorry mess but have been reluctant to actually let the tribes have a say in the matter. The State Board of Higher Education is doing the tribes a similar disservice in trying to sweep this decision through without giving the people of Standing Rock a chance to give their input. Who’s being “hostile and abusive” to Native American people here? Clearly it isn’t the UND fans.

I was able to thank Klaus Lembke in person the other day for making a motion to reconsider the SBHE decision to go ahead with retiring the nickname. Nobody had the sack to second the motion. I wish there were more voices of reason in this matter. If the people of Standing Rock are okay with referring to themselves as a Sioux tribe, then perhaps the hand-wringing liberals could chill out and show some respect to the people they claim to be trying to protect.

The coolest custom motorcycle helmet you’ll see all day

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My friends at Cycle Hutt are sportin’ some custom lids that are not shy in declaring some popular views held by most North Dakotans! The shop kitties are also prominently featured on this particular helmet. You’ll see them basking in the sun around the shop when you visit.

“Trust in God, not the government!” That goes for Republicans and Democrats. Men are just men: imperfect. Sure, conservatives are far better than liberals, but individual people are not without their occasional flaws.

There’s nothing like a quote from the Founding Fathers to speak volumes. By the way, if you like quotes from our nation’s founders and prominent early American leaders, visit the Wallbuilders website and subscribe to the free podcast!

Yesterday I posted a photo of a locally flown Gadsden Flag. It also has a prominent placement on the top of this helmet. Don’t Tread on Me is a great expression of the spirit of the modern motorcyclist, who has a target on their back just like anyone else the liberals don’t like.

Pro-Life. Pro-God. Pro-Gun. God Bless America! Three of my favorite sentiments, as one of those “bitter clingers” President Obama was talking about when he didn’t think the microphones were on.

The “NOBAMA” thing is gaining a lot of traction as people finally snap out of it and realize who was elected President last time around. His numbers are plunging as eyes continue opening. So much for Hope™ and Change™, eh?

I’ve got lots of various helmet photos (I own seven of them myself) that may trickle in here from time to time. I’m not in favor of helmet laws, but I don’t ride without one!