Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 after a number of Americans were murdered by the military during the Pullman Strike. After the massacre, President Grover Cleveland made reconciliation with unions a top political priority. Making Labor Day a national holiday was his form of reconciliation.

I celebrated Grover Cleveland’s political savvy and everything unions have done for this country and the memory of the 13 strikers murdered during the Pullman Strike by having the family over for a barbecue. Here are a few pictures:

Hope your Labor Day was as joyous as mine.

A few pictures from my trip to the State Fair with Nader. We met up with Mom, Carla and Alexis. Later we met up briefly with the Baiers. I won them some Upper Iowa University band aids. I’m guessing their “Thank You” is in the mail.

At the end of the day Nader thanked me for the best day he has had all year. Quite frankly I wonder why more people don’t thank me for such things.

Alexis’ cheerleading group ran through their routine, but didn’t do any of the actual dangerous stuff.
















Star Boars


This sand sculpture is actually more interesting than the movies.


I love this painting! I want it hanging in my house. Just not for $300 smackers.








Alexis won a medal in a tumbling competition that didn’t look the safest to me.


Nader seemed to think this sculpture was of him.


In one of my favorite buildings Pioneer Hall.




A “Mark Twain” style storyteller.

A few more pictures coming on the morrow.

“The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.”
-Abe Lemons

Sunday was my Mom’s retirement party. Here are a few pictures:

There are more pictures from the party in the Mom’s Retirement Party Album in the Snapshots Gallery.

Happy Birthday Alexis!

Every 100 or so posts, I like to make a list of the most popular pictures on this blog.

Here is the list of the 10 most popular photos in the Artistic Gallery.

1. Outburst of the Soul


2. Self-Portrait


3. Jen Relaxing Between Sets


4. Grizzly McAlpine


5. Rebecca – Senior Pictures


5. UnHingd Publicity Photo


7. Abandoned Piano – McCallsburg


7. Obama


7. Obama


Campanile Self-Portrait


7. Alexis – US 30 Flood

The 10 Most Popular Pictures in the Snapshots Gallery

1. Jesse and I with the World’s Largest Cheeto


2. Jesse eats a Bob’s Dog


3. Jesse and I at the Surf Ballroom


4. Jesse Kissing the Blarney Stone in Emmetsburg


5. Shannon reading map in Backbone


5. Jesse and I in Clinton


5. Jesse in the Surf Ballroom


5. Jen and Shannon making a deal at a Bonne Finken Concert


5. Cousin Amy, Sara and Jen at a Bonne Finken Concert


5. Sara and Jen at a Bonne Finken Concert


Robert checking out the view in Balltown

If you want to see how this list has changed since the last time I posted it follow this link:

I will check this out again in another 100 Journal Entries.

One other thing…

If you would like a Username and Password for either of the galleries, send me an email with what you would like your username and password to be, and I will get you set up.

Having an account to the Galleries allows you to Rate, Favorite and Comment on Pictures. Plus, it allows you access to the “Secret” Albums.

I broke Day 9 into two post because of the large amount of pictures, if you recall. You are about to see the rest of those pictures.

After all the flowers were planted, we all went our separate ways to wash up. Then the family reunited at the Stensland home to celebrate Mother’s Day a week early since Teresa was going to be in the Bluegrass State for Mother’s Day.

Here are some pictures of the celebration:

I know… I overuse this technique…

At this point, Alexis wanted to take some pictures, so I let her take some pictures.

Then Alexis gave me the camera back to take a few pictures of her hamsters.

The celebration concluded a pretty special week. I think I might be ready for vacation again though.

I’m going to split my final day of vacation into two posts due to what could be a large amount of photos.

After church on Sunday I went with my Mom to Northwest Greenhouse to get new flowers for the yard. I prefer perennials because I don’t really want to keep planting flowers every year, but I know that I have to have a certain amount of annuals to fill out my flower boxes, buckets, onion containers and various other miscellaneous flower holders.

We hung out with Mr. Salama for a small period of time. I was able to leave there with a testimony about how wonderful my Mom is from Mr. Salama and I stayed a good $40 bucks under my flower budget. (Although I also got a bonus this past Sunday when I scored a collection of free yellow and peach lilies and a couple of primroses at church. Now I just need to make the coneflower and daisy transfers from my Mom’s house and I will be practically done with flower planting for the year. Okay, I will probably make a couple of purchases as the Arboretum’s annual lily sale though…)

Here are some pictures of my Mom and Alexis planting my purchases from Northwest Greenhouse.

Alexis used to hate getting her picture taken. Now when she senses that her picture is being taken she stops what she is doing and poses. A little annoying.

Here are the submissions for last week’s theme, feet. Included is a new first time contributor – Alexis. That is good, because there seemed to be fewer contributors this week. Perhaps the subject matter scared some people away. I know not everybody likes feet. After all, most feet are kind of gross, but some feet are funny. Hopefully most people find these feet to be to their liking. (At least the pictures of the feet.)

Alexis Stensland

Michael Vest

Christopher D. Bennett

Becky Perkovich

Wild

As always, I will be interested to see what people do with this theme.

A couple of late submissions:

Dawn Krause


Justin Whitaker

I indicated in the first Personal Photo Project entry that the weekly Personal Photo Project wouldn’t always be designing and taking a new picture. This is one of those occasions.

This time the project was cutting and mounting and hanging Psyched Up (Not Out) on the wall.

Psyched Up (Not Out)

To get a print this large made isn’t chump change, so I enlisted the aid of Teresa because she has a much steadier hand than I do. I didn’t want to be on the hook for buying a replacement print if I butchered the cutting job.

Teresa cut the picture down to the dimensions of the window. Then I mounted it to a piece of foamboard, that Teresa had also cut. I placed the picture in the window and strung wire across the back of it.

It was a big enough spectacle that Carla, Johnathan and Alexis came over to witness the picture being placed proudly upon my wall.

Or it is possible that they stopped by because their laptop was broken, but I’d like to think that it was because of the picture hanging ceremony.

I now have a wall of Jill Gorshe body parts! I think that this is where that picture series will end. I’m not sure if Jill would be game for adding to the collection, but I guess if I figure out what needs to go with her foot and hand, I’ll test my powers of persuasion one more time.

This is entry number 750 in this online journal. I’d like to take a little bit of time to archive some data. It is one of my peculiar imbecilities that I love meaningless statistics. Therefore, consider these statistics:

Every journal entry falls into at least one of sixteen categories. This is how many journal entries have fit into each one of these categories:

1. Photography – 295
2. Friends – 269
3. Life – 238
4. Family – 98
5. Religion – 63
6. ISU Football – 41
7. Jaycees – 40
8. Movies – 39
9. Blogging 33
10. Sports – 25
11. Work – 25
12. House – 24
13. Writing – 23
14. Comedy – 20
15. Politics – 17
16. History – 12

If you measure popularity by how many times a picture is viewed, these are the 10 (or so) most popular pictures in my Artistic Gallery.

#1. Outburst of the Soul (26 Views)

#2. Untitled (23 Views)

#3. Grizzly McAlpine (22 Views)

#3. Untitled (22 Views)

#5. Untitled (21 Views)

#5. Jen Smoking (21 Views)

#7. UnHingd Publicity Still (20 Views)

#8. 1900 (19 Views)

#8. Untitled – (19 Views)

#10. Campanile Self Portrait – (18 Views)

#10. US30 East of Ogden – (18 Views)

I know these numbers are somewhat controlled by the length of time a picture has been in the Artistic Gallery, but I am pleased by the number of black and white images that are high in popularity.

But it begs the question, what is the most popular subject in the Snapshot Gallery. What do people like to see from the “Daily Grind of My Existence”?

#1. Jesse and I with the World’s Largest Cheeto – (25 Views)

#2. Jesse with a Bob’s Dog – LeMars, Iowa (23 Views)

#3. Jesse and in backstage of the Surf Ball Room – (21 Views)

#4. Shannon reading a map on our first road trip to Backbone. (19 Views)

#4. Sumrall catching a pass against A&M. I think this picture is so popular because it was a popular picture to get spammed when I was having spamming problems with the galleries.

#6. Jesse at the Surf Ball Room – (18 Views)

#6. Jesse kissing the Blarney Stone – (18 Views)

#8. Jesse and I in Clinton on The Eastern Iowa Road Trip – (17 Views)

#8. Jen and Shannon making some kind of deal at Bonne Finken – (17 Views)

#8. Cousin Amy, Sara and Jen at Bonne Finken – (17 Views)

#8. Jesse and Jay on The Eastern Iowa Road Trip – (17 Views)

#8. Robert enjoying the view of the Mississippi River in Balltown – (17 Friends)

#8. Jesse videotaping Big Jesus – (17 Views)

#8. Jesse and I at the Sgt. Floyd Memorial – (17 Views)

I think what I have learned from this exercise is that people like to see Jesse and I having adventures. I think I’ll have to look into us having a few more adventures in 2010!

I will have to check back in on this when I hit journal entry number 1,000.