Who is John Galt?

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I noticed something interesting when driving by this sign the other day, so last night I made an effort to actually have a camera with me and sought it out once again…

This line from Atlas Shrugged jumped out at me the instant I saw it (the first time). Plenty of rumors abound regarding Mr. Galt, I guess we can add his chiropractor visit or spa appointment to the list. Even revolutionary fictional characters need a massage or an alignment every now and then! 🙂

They missed a piece when they tore down Meriwether’s

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Despite the efforts of my friend and Burleigh County commissioner Mark Armstrong, the city tore down the former Wilton train depot, known for the past twenty-plus years as the Meriwether’s building. It also doubled as the ticket office and souvenir for the various incarnations of riverboat which docked thereby. One interesting feature in the area was the sign you see above, which the Big Muddy decided to relocate far south during its flooding rampage last year.

It was Mark, in fact, who tipped me off to this sign last year already. Obviously it’s taken me quite a while to find the time to get down there and see it up close for myself. I finally did, however, while taking my little boys on a sandy walk to throw rocks into the water and enjoy a warm sunset. Someone apparently found this sign, which had been washed from the vicinity of the Grant Marsh bridge to a sandy stretch well south of the Memorial Bridge, and decided it to stick it into the ground. It’s stayed there ever since, a testament to its resilience.

As far as the plight of the Meriwether’s building goes, I can’t say I have any feelings one way or the other about it. The last restaurant I remember in the building was driven out of business by the closure of River Road when a section slid, and I can’t remember anything ever taking its place. The building is a pretty remote location for a business in all but the warmest few months, so I’m not sure it would have been a good candidate for business even if it had been restored.

I was on board one hundred percent when Phil and Mark were the super-duo on KFYR AM 550 radio and they set about preserving the Provident Life Weather Beacon. That’s a piece of history well known to thousands of people, one which many of us still consult when we want a snapshot of what the weather forecast holds in store. The old depot down by the river? I’m not sorry to say that I doubt many people held the same attachment to it. Sure, there were parts of it that were pretty cool…but one of the best of those has found itself a home about a mile down the river.

Surprise: Abortion groups put FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in blood money against Measure 3. UPDATE: It’s now being reported as $700,000.

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Measure Three, on the ballot this primary season, is sometimes referred to as the Religious Liberty Restoration Amendment. The key word in this title is “Restoration” as the measure seeks to restore protections for people of faith that have been slowly stripped away by the federal government. Similar measures have been passed in twenty-seven states,

Opponents of the measure claim it’s going to legalize wife beating, denial of medical care, and all sorts of other things that it will not do. They clearly have a vested interest in limiting religious freedom in North Dakota. Who’s the group who has the most to lose from strong religious protections in North Dakota? Easy: the abortionists.

If you click on this link on the Secretary of State’s Office website, you’ll be able to find a list of who’s bankrolling the opposition. It’s exclusively “Planned Parenthood” (wow, what a sterile misnomer) groups from North Dakota and elsewhere.

You can also download the PDF here (I’m hosting a copy on this blog) to examine it for yourself.

If you haven’t paid close attention to the Measure 3 debate, let this one fact smack you square between the eyes: the ones spending the huge money opposing it are people who support killing children. That single fact should be enough to convince you to vote in support of this measure in the June primary.

UPDATE: According to this article, the amount now is around $700,000. That’s a lot of blood money! They want to stop the only barrier remaining to their infanticidal death cult.

Farewell to a familiar sight along Highway 1806…the House of Brides

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In a controlled burn last night the House of Brides, a local feature for as long as I can remember, was taken down in spectacular fashion. I was among the dozens of spectators who observed from a distance, mostly because I wanted to demonstrate to my little boys how fire can consume a house and give a little fire-safety pep talk.

It wasn’t just that, however. I lived south of Mandan for many years and remember this home well. In fact, it’s just east and downhill from Greenwood Cemetery, one of Mandan’s better kept secrets. I think the property has sat unoccupied for quite some time, and it met its demise last night. The brick silo is still intact at this time, the property’s most attractive feature.

Thanks to my friend Tad for the close-up photos. I, of course, didn’t have a camera with me. I always see things like this when I leave the cameras at home…you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now!

What about the hearing impaired?

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I came upon this sign on Friday, one which presents two separate quandaries depending on your interpretation. First: a sign saying no signing? Gotta love the sweet irony of that one! Second: do they have a problem with the hearing impaired? After all, how are they going to communicate? I find this sign horribly discriminatory against people with disabilities in that regard. Signs are often a great source of humor, and this one provides multiple opportunities.

I just thought of something *gasp* – what if it’s also a typo, and they really don’t like singing?

Looking back at one of the most memorable Memorial Day addresses I’ve heard UPDATE: Now with text of his address available for download

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Let’s not forget that Memorial Day is about one thing: honoring fallen heroes who died defending our freedom. I typically attend the ceremony held for such purpose at the Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery each year, the most memorable of which was in 2010. It was during that ceremony that I witnessed a stirring address by C. Emerson Murry, former Major General of the ND National Guard. He was the keynote speaker of the event, and a very memorable one at that.

The words that struck me the most from his keynote address are best paraphrased as follows: “To be born free is an accident. To live free is a responsibility. To die free is an absolute obligation.” That made me set my camera in the grass and hastily type it into my phone so I wouldn’t forget it. Maj Gen Murry fulfilled that obligation, and it’s due to such men and women of our armed forces that we enjoy the freedoms we take for granted.

The National Guard provided me with the text of his remarks in PDF format from an issue of the Guardian magazine, and I’m pleased to be able to provide you a link to that PDF: (Click Here)

It was the last chance I had to hear him speak; Maj Gen Murry passed away in September of that year. You ought to take the time to read about the life of this remarkable man by clicking here.

The eclipse wasn’t total…neither was my fail

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My boys and I ventured out to Fort Lincoln on the night of the eclipse to see how visible it would be. I don’t own a welding helmet (yet) but figured I might still be able to get a good shot if the cloud cover helped a little bit. It did…sorta. Things were still bright and I found myself wishing for a ten-stop neutral density filter. I ran out of patience and we took off, perhaps a little early, but I felt like it was pointless trying to get a shot while so ill-equipped.

I looked at this shot tonight from the beginning of the eclipse and it’s actually not that bad. If I’d waited a little longer for the sun to approach the horizon, backed off a bit to bring the blockhouse and sun closer in size, and waited for the clouds to roll and the eclipse to proceed more fully, I might have had something. This photo isn’t a total loss, but sadly it’s only a hint at what could have been.

We did run into some folks who had built a neat pinhole viewer out of a long slender box with a window cut in the side. It made it very easy for my little guys to see the eclipse while not being tempted to look at the blinding sun. As a photo trip it was only a partial success, but I think as a father-sons trip it worked out just fine.

Parted down the middle

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What do you do when those cute little saplings you planted in the 80s start encroaching on overhead power and/or phone lines? Well, sadly, you’ve gotta cut ’em. As you can see, that can get a little awkward.

I got a chuckle when I noticed this line of trees on South 12th Street a while back. I’ve seen the same sort of phenomenon along Divide Avenue as well, and I’m sure it’s not an isolated situation.

If trees are becoming a hazard near power lines on or near your property, you can fill out an online request on MDU’s website and request that they come and trim the trees back to a safe distance. As the pictures above indicate, sometimes the result of all that safety is a sight that would make Edward Scissorhands proud.

We’ve got a man down, Dude

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So there I was, working this abandoned farmstead with my camera along with my good friend Ken…when I noticed something right in front of me that had escaped my attention the entire time I’d been there: a windmill. You’d think that, with my penchant for photographing old windmills, it would have been the first thing I’d have found; however, this one was lying face-up in the grass at least a hundred feet from where one would expect to find it.

It would be interesting to find out the story behind this…the absence of twisted metal leads one to believe it was removed and not torn asunder by the prairie wind. It wasn’t talking, but I’m glad it did manage somehow to attract my gaze so I could try a few angles for my “Fallen Farms” series.

Compression

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30 second photo technique: by keeping my distance from the east blockhouse at Fort Lincoln I was able to “compress” my shot in order to get it in perspective with a couple of other local landmarks: the state capitol and the Cathedral tower.

How is this most useful? When doing things like this: putting the capitol directly in front of the sun. Twice a year the sun sets directly behind the capitol, and in order to get this perspective I had to drive out nearly to Lincoln to capture it with a 300mm telephoto lens.

Once again, with our most prominent local landmark as the foreground object, I found just the right spot – a friend’s yard on a hill in east Bismarck – to line the two objects up correctly. The capitol is very tricky to photograph in this way, because there are few places from which to get both high enough and far enough to accomplish the desired perspective.

The theory here is that I can’t make the object in the background bigger by traveling significantly closer to it, but I can certainly make the foreground object smaller by traveling away from it. After that it’s a matter of having a long enough telephoto lens to get a decent photo of the arrangement. Try it once…it’s fun!