Missed ’em

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This is what I was hoping for last night; however, I spent the evening dozing off with an ice pack while waiting for an unsettled atmosphere to suddenly flare up. Horsing around with my boys, I managed to acquire a huge, swelling bruise that I needed to tame before any late night excursions. Thankfully, it worked…but I did end up sacking out for the night.

This photo is from the last time Northern Lights abounded in North Dakota: 2005. It’s partially responsible for me getting a digital camera in the first place. I spent the previous solar maximum in the 1980s hanging out at Double Ditch with friends while breathtaking displays filled the sky overhead, and I wanted to capture the moment. Then, as if my purchase had single-handedly extinguished the sun, the solar activity period waned and I’ve waited ever since. I only got a handful of Aurora Borealis photos before things quieted down. Needless to say, I’ve been waiting as anxiously as all those scientists who’ve been scratching their heads and wondering why the solar maximum has taken so long to return!

Hopefully, now that I’ve almost totally ditched this head cold and managed to bring down the swelling of my brand new shiner, I’ll be able to hit some of my favorite spots and put to use some of the best tricks I’ve learned in astrophotography over the past six years. Naturally I’ll be treating you to the results as soon as they manifest – I hate posting recycled content!

Melange and malady

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At last – some snow! It’s a couple feet less than I prefer, having grown up in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, but it’s a start. Of course, I set things in motion when I took my snowblower in for a tune-up…but this isn’t even enough to bother with it. I have a little boy who LOVES to shovel snow, so we turned him loose instead.

I managed to capture this incongruous mixture of random rural elements while out on some remote gravel road, as usual. This particular photo is actually from quite a while back; I spent most of my weekend unconscious while trying to sleep some sort of cold/flu/sinus malady instead of outside with the cameras.

I sure was excited for the Northern Lights which resulted from a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun over the weekend – but of course it was cloudy! I actually don’t mind that so much, since my ailment had me bedridden (or couch-ridden) anyway. If conditions had been right overhead and I’d missed the event due to illness, I’d have been plenty frustrated!

Here’s to the start of another great week.

Mater could not be reached for comment

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I spotted this rusty old vehicle hiding behind some trees southwest of town a while back, just as the sun was starting to really splash the area with color. The hour before sunset/sunrise and the hour after are absolutely magical from a photography point of view.

I know this isn’t a tow truck, but thanks to Pixar I start thinking of Tow Mater every time I see a rusty old truck anywhere. That may have something to do with having two little boys who love all things related to Cars and Cars 2!

Chillin’

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Yeah, these cold snaps aren’t much fun. They’re slightly more tolerable if you possess the ability to fluff up by a factor of two or three times your actual body size!

This little guy and his friends inhabit the bushes along the McDonald’s drive-thru on Main Avenue. I couldn’t help but take a quick photo before rolling ahead to get my food.

Iranians no longer an underserved demographic in Bismarck-Mandan television

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I’m kind of bewildered at why a new digital television channel, 43.1, is transmitting some sort of Aryan Iranian 24/7 broadcast. I don’t know what the actual content is, since I don’t speak Farsi…but there it is.

I actually was clued into this little broadcast by a friend who lives on the north end of town; those of us living down south are unable to pick it up, apparently. I have an excellent antenna array and usually get a 96% or greater signal on the locals, but I can’t get channel 43-1.

My friend surmises that New Song Church is operating this station (for instance, check the GPS location of the transmitter) and has attempted to contact someone at the church, but has not received a response. There’s a pretty good paper trail on this station, though:

– It’s licensed by the FCC to a little LLC called EICB-TV;

– EICB stands for Excellence in Christian Broadcasting, and they have a partially finished website template running with a ton of Lorem Ipsum text placeholders.

– EICB apparently has approximately 31 stations nationwide.

– The broadcast they’re transmitting is Iran Aryaee International TV, and their website can be found by clicking here.

– The content appears to be a “Free Iran” sort of theme, as an opposition to the Islamic regime currently in control of Iran. The weird term that stuck out to me was “Aryaee”.

– A cursory Google search for “Aryaee” reveals it to be a term associated with Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persiam transcendentalist religion. The imagery on the ieatv.com website doesn’t look very Christian. So what gives?

Apparently “Aryaee” can also be a racial reference (remember Hitler’s fascination with the Aryan race?) that applies to people of this area, and some claim that the name Iran comes from Aryan. That would fit with a theme of national pride you’d expect from an opposition broadcast, such as a “Free Iran” sort of thing. But why Bismarck?

Often what happens with these little low-power (LPTV) stations is that a local custodian is hired to maintain the physical operation of the transmitter for an out-of-state owner, without doing anything related to content. A satellite receiver is hooked to a transmitter, and voila’ – instant TV station. So…could this be a case of a receiver turned to the wrong transponder?

I don’t see any mention of Iran Aryaee TV on the EICB TV website. Hopefully my friend gets a response back from the parties he emailed soon, I’d love to hear the story behind this one – at this point I’ve got more questions than answers!

Visit ND. Drink booze, score with heavyset chicks, go home with a story. Wait…what? (updated)

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I kid you not: that’s pretty much the implied message this bizarre tourism ad for North Dakota delivers. I’m still trying to figure out how this could have seemed like a good idea.

Since they’re willing to take this bizarre (and tasteless) approach to luring visitors and tourists to North Dakota, maybe they’d like to try my attempt from a while back:

When the Will Smith movie “I Am Legend” came out, I had a little fun with its post-apocalyptic movie poster by applying it to North Dakota’s then-fledgling “I Am Legendary” campaign (again, who comes up with this stuff).

At the time I thought I’d made a somewhat funny, but oddball and questionable attempt at a tourism poster. It has just been demonstrated that it’s possible to do much worse.

(Update – While rubbing two brain cells together to generate a comment on the Great Plains Examiner site, I came up with this barely coherent screed…)

I understand that the “Leave a Legend” campaign is the underlying theme…that tag line with this photo was simply a BAD combination. Without the “leave a legend” text on this ad, you take a LOT of wind out of the critics’ sails. Even so, it’s not a great tourism ad.

I’m a North Dakota Ambassador, and as such I think we’ve got far better things to promote than downtown night life. Even if one wants to dispel any perceived misconceptions that we don’t have any thriving metro areas, why not find a more family-friendly setting such as a unique restaurant or something with broader appeal? Who are we trying to attract to our state, and do we expect them to bring their families?

We locals may tire of promoting things like Teddy Roosevelt’s sojourn here, but let’s not forget that we have something unique that people want to come and see. Despite North Dakota tourism’s inexplicable ad buys within the state, our campaign should be targeted at the tourists we wish to attact to North Dakota, not at the locals. If you want to encourage tourism within the state, Marketing 101 should tell you to generate a separate campaign for that separate objective.

By the way, aren’t we telling local youths that there’s more to do around here than drinking? I sure am…I’ve been spinning that broken record since the 1980s. So now we have an ad touting the bar scene. Great.

Hopefully this will cause some folks at ND Tourism and their favorite ad agency to step back and take a fresh look at some things. In that case, some good will have come from this blunder.

Moon upon the left

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So there I was: blazing down a gravel road at sunset, working my way back toward town. The sun had descended past the horizon, with only the purples and pinks in the eastern sky remaining for another couple of minutes. It’s a magical, fleeting moment that occurs after the brilliant, blazing light of the sunset has passed…and it’s a marvelous window of photographic opportunity in its own right.

That’s when I saw this sign, locked up the brakes, and hopped out into the ditch with my camera and tripod. I had to wander a bit to get just the right angle, but it wasn’t difficult. I had just enough time to try a few exposures before the light began to fade.

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I often like to make musical references in the title of my posts. In this case, I’m referring to the song by folk singer David Mallet. Here are a couple of lyrical samples:

There’s a moon upon the left,
And there’s a star upon the right.
There’s a nightingale a singin’
To the wondrous summer night.
There are gentle deer a grazin’
In the meadow with no fright.
And there’s no past and there’s no future, only now.
We have chanced upon this fragile scene somehow.

…

Now there’s a cottontail a’watchin’,
O’er his lady as she sleeps.
I’m a lover of tradition,
Here’s my heart it’s yours to keep.
Won’t you take me as I’m giving,
We’ll be lovers in our flight.
Cause there’s a moon upon the left,
And there’s a star upon the right.


The days are already getting longer and even though (presumably) we’ll have a cold snap to brave our way through before winter’s over, those calm moonlit nights are just around the corner – perfect for those hand-holding walks with my sweetie. Soon, I tell myself…soon.

Sanstead mulls re-election bid…could it hinge on voters discovering his department’s pro-homosexuality agenda in public schools?

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The Bismarck Tribune recently ran this article stating that Wayne Sanstead hasn’t decided on whether or not he’ll be running for another term as head of North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction. He asserts that health and tradition play a factor. I’d like to see another very important factor come into play.

Wayne Sanstead’s DPI is persistent in trying to fly a pro-homosexuality agenda under our collective radar and into our children’s classrooms. The groups they affiliate themselves with are the same cadre of twisted freaks who got busted teaching “fisting” and “rimming” to school children in Massachusetts in 2009.

Here’s my post from the first time they tried to sneak this garbage into our schools. People found out about what was planned to take place, they notified their legislators, and the DPI folks colluded with their out-of-state partners to hunker down and wait for the legislative session to come and go. And that’s what they did.

Here’s my post about when they actually pulled it off, just like they’d planned. The Bismarck Tribune, by the way, printed a glowing article making DPI’s Sandra Tibke look like a cross between a martyr and a modern day Mother Teresa. It’s no wonder that, if you try to comment on the Sanstead story highlighting things that concern you about this garbage taking place during his term of service, those comments never reach the light of day.

I admit, I only visit the comments section of the Bismarck Tribune website very infrequently…and only when I find myself with a few dozen extra IQ points I want to shave off by subjecting myself to the comments posted therein. But this time, when I decide to chime in with something that doesn’t fit the agenda, it never got posted. The Bismarck Tribune is very transparent on where they stand on the issue.

If Wayne Sanstead does choose to run for re-election, this needs to come out. Regardless of your views on homosexuality, is the public school classroom really the place for advocacy? Do we really want to put our teachers in that position, whether they want it or not? Do North Dakota parents want to cede parental authority in matters of morality and sexuality to their children’s schools, whose view on these matters is obvious and agenda-driven? Under Sanstead’s leadership, DPI’s position seems to be in the affirmative on all counts. We need to stop this, and put an end to his term as head of DPI.

Not what I was looking for, but satisfying nonetheless

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I love old pieces of equipment like the one pictured above. I was out on a photography mission, one in which I came back empty-handed, but I spotted this little gem beside the road during my travels. As it turns out, I caught it just as the sun was starting to splash its pre-sunrise color across an otherwise dreary landscape.

My photographic mantra is that any photo trip is a success if I come back with even one image that I like. That holds true for trips like this one, where I was looking for a very specific shot but couldn’t find the location…I came back with a few different shots that I really like, so I don’t really mind that they weren’t the one I was looking for.

The photo I originally sought evaded me, but only because I got a late start. The sun sets pretty early right now, even though the days are steadily growing longer. Next time, I’ll head out earlier and hopefully get lucky, stumbling upon the photo I’m chasing!

A special calendar…just for me?

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I really appreciate when local print shops do certain things such as in 2011, when Image Printing made those posters with the American flag on them and distributed them around town. One other thing they do, and this is a good business tool as well, is distribute free office calendars as a promotional item. They’re very handy, high quality, and should be appreciated as a valuable gift.

I was taking down my calendar from last year (although I discovered it had 2012 on the back) to replace it with a new one, when I spotted something interesting: at the bottom of 2011 it also had smaller boxes containing Janaury and February 2012, for those of us who don’t change our calendars on time! Wait, what? Janaury?

Yes, mine had January misspelled on it. I checked the back to see if the same quirk existed on the 2012 side (with little January and February 2013’s on it), and it did! As a proofreader I found that noteworthy, so I checked other calendars in the building which hadn’t yet been replaced. As it turns out, I’ve got the only one with the error. Hmmmmm…that’s odd.

In addition to the giant poster-sized calendar, I also had an 8.5×11 version. That had the misspelling of January as well…yet I couldn’t find another calendar with the same typo anywhere! Weird.

I’m one of those people who could look at a printed page and have any typo errors leap off the page at me almost instantly, as if I was looking at one of those 3D computer-generated posters. As a result, I find it appropriate that I seem to have the one calendar with this particular feature.

Before any conspiracy theories abound, I’d like to point out that this calendar was hung three months before I moved into the office where it was hanging. I don’t believe in fate, but if I did I would surmise that perhaps this calendar and I were meant to find each other!