I used to post a lot of windmill photos. Well, I used to post a lot of photos in general, but these days I’ve been doing more work-related and Daddy-related activities. That won’t stop me, though.
I was all lined up to do a brief photo trip today when I realized that my little guys wanted to go sledding. In an instant I sacked said photo trip and donned my snow gear for some sledding, sliding, and snowball throwing. What a blast!
To satisfy my urge to share a photo with all-y’all (my Texan wife swears that’s a word) I grabbed this one. I snapped it on my way back from a freelance photo shoot north of Bismarck, so it certainly isn’t stale. By the way, I don’t do freelance portrait photography; I freelance industrial photography to pay the bills while doing the landscapes and other stuff in my free time. That available free time is harder to come by these days, but I do still find an occasional opportunity for windmill photos to share!
It may be news to you, but the meager apartment buildings above are where Senators Conrad and Dorgan claimed to live “on paper” so they’d be eligible to run for office as representatives of North Dakota. I lived in one of these buildings, and (if the Senators’ appliances were the same olive green as mine) they were hardly what one would expect of a United States Senator. No worries, though…I never ran into either of them while living there, and I doubt these apartments were more than a technicality to facilitate their re-election. They are the addresses they used to claim residency.
This ornate hand-written address label no longer exists, so I suppose the Senator and Kim have moved on. After all, there’s no reason to have a North Dakota address anymore. Certainly these lavish accommodations in no way compare to their Virginia mansion.
In case you’re a new reader, you probably don’t know that former senator Kent Conrad actually owns these two buildings via an LLC that he formed. If you only frequent North Dakota media, you probably don’t know that Senator Conrad was under ethics investigation for a sweetheart mortage deal from Countrywide Financial on this property, which consists of sixteen units in two buildings, even though the company’s policy for the rest of us is to finance nothing larger than a four-plex. Democrats even went to the point of changing the locks on committee room doors to prevent Senator Conrad’s conduct from being discovered!
Isn’t a corruption investigation involving a United States Senator from our state newsworthy? Apparently not. Oddly enough, KFYR/KXMB/WDAY seemed uninterested in this circus; same with the Tribune, Forum, or other state newspaper groups. In fact, this scandal didn’t seem newsworthy to them until after a Democrat committee chaired by a co-conspirator let Kent Conrad off the hook. THEN it was front-page news. If I was an assignment editor or news director at one of these organizations, I’d be asking myself some tough questions after either missing this or willfully ignoring it. If some blogger with a few minutes of spare time and a Google search can come up with piles of relevant information but their newscasts and printed pages contained nothing, isn’t that cause for a little self-examination?
While on the way back from a photo shoot last Friday I stopped to check out an interesting former Cold War site near Regan, North Dakota. On the way I spotted one of those things that seems to just jump out at me: a disconnected power and/or telephone pole.
Combined with the angle of the sun and resulting shadow, the brilliant blue sky, and a few J.J. Abrams-style lens flares, and I had a nice little souvenir of my trip to bring home to Photoshop.
I miss Gentleman Wade Westin, a man who personified the term for which he was known. Fond memories of Sunday nights at the Chinese restaurant, or ribbing him about being the world’s nicest guy, or watching him on stage in the Medora Musical. He passed away four years ago today. It was an absolute privilege to have been his friend.
I met Wade when he joined our production staff at KFYR-TV back in the 1990s; since then I’ve had many noteworthy memories, even though our opportunities to see each other grew farther and farther apart. Guys get busy, you know…that’s just how it goes. I wish it wasn’t so. A while before his passing, Wade and I met up at Taco del Mar and chatted it up about what we’ve been up to, fatherhood, and that kind of thing. We even talked about a possible project we could collaborate on, an idea I relished. That’s the last time I got to spend time with Wade.
When we worked at KFYR-TV together we did a commercial for a furniture or mattress store, one where Wade played a guy who snuggled in under the covers of a comfy new mattress. It took a while for the nickname “Snuggly” to wear off. I had a printout of that shot somewhere in my souvenir box, but in my search for it tonight I came up empty handed. Bummer.
The photo above was from the Medora Musical on my honeymoon trip with my wife. I’d booked front row center tickets of course, planning a Medora weekend on our way back from a week in the middle of nowhere back in my beloved Rocky Mountains. We drove past the turn to Wade’s home near Grenora, ND and it prompted me to call his cell phone and say hi. When he heard we were coming, he arranged the VIP treatment and a backstage tour for us, and we got to chat with him and his family briefly before he left to prepare for the night’s show. He then congratulated us during the show. That’s just the kind hearted, generous guy that Wade’s friends will all remember.
We used to hit the China Wok restaurant in Mandan on Sunday evenings, striking a friendship with the owners over time. When their visas came up for renewal, Wade took it upon himself to get his friends from the Sunday night dinners to sign testimonials to aid in their renewals.
It’s a shocker to have a friend and fellow family man snatched away so suddenly and so early. Of course one tries to make sense of it, but there’s no sense to be had. What we can do is take comfort in the message from his CaringBridge page: “Thank you for your love, support and prayers. Wade is at peace with God His Father and Jesus His Savior in the healing presence of the Holy Spirit.” The Bible talks about a peace that passes all understanding…I pray for that peace for his family and everybody who misses Gentleman Wade.
I have a copy of a TV commercial Wade did for KNDX (Channel 26) back when they first went on the air. It was a “dance contest” making fun of contestants with the numbers of other local TV channels. It features Wade being Wade. I attached a brief tribute at the end. It isn’t much, but it’s a token of my respect for a friend. The music is a portion of “In the Sweet By and By” performed by my friend Sarah.
I know there are lots of people out there who are touched by Wade’s passing as they were by his personality. Hopefully this will trigger some of your best memories as well.
The most usable space in the Heritage Center was the setting for a very interesting presentation this weekend: the effect of the Cold War and military infrastructure on the landscape and culture of North Dakota. It was an extremely well-attended session, to say the least…one of three sessions planned to highlight North Dakota historic sites and their importance.
Site director Mark Sundlov, a former member of a Minot Air Force base missile crew himself, was the presenter. He has a unique perspective on this subject and is determined to help preserve this important part of North Dakota’s (and our nation’s) history. Right now it’s ripe for the picking, as there are many anecdotes to record. The audience had plenty of their own. The interest in this subject as well as the gold mine of information and firsthand accounts was a strong affirmation of just how spot-on Mr. Sundlov is about the impact of the military and this period of history on the culture of North Dakota and the everyday lifestyle of its citizens.
I strongly recommend clicking on this link to listen to a podcast interview with Mr. Sundlov from a while back, before the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Historic Site was even a reality. In it he talks about life on a missile crew, something that wasn’t really part of the focus of Sunday’s presentation.
If you want to read more about the Cold War remnants around our state from this photographer’s perspective, try some of these links, which will each open in a new window:
This is STILL the world record for single-site snow angels.
I found out today that Duluth tried, quite unsuccessfully, to top our record for the most snow angels made in a single location at a single event. Nice try, but North Dakota tops Minnesota in all the good ways. 🙂
You may remember a while back when I posted that Canadians had made over 15,000 snow angels for a new record – but they were at multiple sites across a wide area, so it is NOT the same record as ours.
Super Bowl XXXVI had a special significance outside the football realm: it was the first after the terrorist attacks only a few short months before. Concerns about security ran high, as the nation was traumatized by the events of September 11th and worried whether more such attacks on civilians were in store. Thanks to President Bush, we have not been hit since, but some healing was in order. Who best to deliver a halftime show to help along the way than U2?
The YouTube video I’m going to link to below contains the second half of the show. I have a copy of the full show, raw as it was sent from the truck to the network, but I don’t have permission to put it online. The first song they play, Beautiful Day, is also on YouTube; just search for “U2 Super Bowl Halftime” and you’ll find it. But the part that had me standing, jumping, and cheering that day was the second song, perhaps their most famous: Where the Streets Have No Name.
When Bono is walking with the microphone before he begins to sing, he quotes Psalm 51:15 – “O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” In an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, U2’s manager tells the story of how, in the band’s early days, he’d find them in the bus after their shows reading the Bible instead of out partying it up. Apparently they’re Christians of some sort. According to the program, they almost called it quits when all the fame took hold because they didn’t know what it might do to them. They didn’t break up, however, although Bono has since jumped the shark. I like their music and choose to remember where they supposedly came from.
Tonight’s halftime show was predictably garbage – half dressed “dancers” writhing around without a musician among them – so I tuned it out. In fact, I didn’t even get to begin watching the game until the start of the second half, which turns out to be the best part of the game. I kept a thumb on the remote button to switch away from any of the racy commercials, caught the Dodge Ram “Farmer” ad (easily the highlight of the night), and kept my family’s eyes safe from whatever assault Big Media had prepared for them.
