Time to hit up the backlog again. This time, to my quick trip through Badlands National Park with my Mom:
More pictures from Badlands are in the hopper. Same Photography 139 Channel. Possibly a different Photography 139 Time.
Badlands Vol. 1
Category Archives: Mom
Tomorrow Belongs to the People Who Prepare for it Today
Every day is a good day to start a post with a quote from Malcolm X.
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
I start with this quote because yesterday, Logan graduated from the finest university in all the lands. On flat earth and on globe earth. Iowa State University. To celebrate Logan I’m releasing some photos from a head shot photo session that has been in the back log for almost a year.
This is probably exhibit 45 as to why I’ll never get heavily into the portrait business. I like to take 5 times more pictures than necessary. Half of them strange. Then half of the other half I like to edit in what I’ll call a non-standard style.
Now that Logan has a degree from the finest university, he will be looking for a job in his field. He has also started his own photography business called Third Generation Thumbnail. He is currently specializing in real estate photography and videography. Although, we are shooting a wedding together at some point in the near future.
These photos were taken for his professional pursuits.
If you have any real estate photography needs, I can hook you and him up!
Here are a few cruddy cell phone pictures from the Graduation Ceremony:
Maybe someday, you’ll be lucky enough to be related to somebody that graduated from Iowa State University!
04-30-08
The following images (and this collection is all over the place) came from the folder 04-30-08:
Karen
One of the bitter parts of this collection is that Karen has passed away since this picture was taken. Many of these pictures were taken during Olivia’s Stitching Time. A sewing circle that Teresa started and ran for a year or so.
I don’t believe I used the Little White Lye Soap pictures for anything, but I did take them. The tulips are in my Mom’s yard.
By adding these photos to the Photography 139 Photography Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic An Artist’s Notebook blog entries to their original glory:
Cheese Subscription
By restoring those entries I have now restored every blog entry from April of 2008:
APRIL – 2008
Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve more Little White Lye Soap and gymnastics,
Graceland
Time to hit up the back log. These pictures are from Russell, Jesse, and I’s trip to Memphis to watch Iowa State stomp the Memphis Tigers in the Liberty Bowl.
I am a fan of Elvis. I get that from my Mom. From her I grew up listening to Elvis and Kenny Rogers. I love them both. I never quite inherited her love of The Beach Boys, but I do also enjoy them. From my Dad I got my love of old country. Johnny Paycheck and Tom T. Hall in particular. If you don’t love Tom T. Hall, you’re doing something wrong.
Before we left for Memphis I had done some research on places to visit. Graceland was number two on my list behind Beale Street. My research showed that an actual tour of Graceland can take over 3 hours. While I was willing to spend the small fortune it costs to tour Graceland, we just didn’t have that time.
However, I read that they open up the grounds of Graceland from 7:30 – 8:30 for people to pay their respects to Elvis’ grave, for free.
I convinced Jesse to wake up early and check this out with me. Russell wasn’t buying waking up early on his vacation. He stayed at his hotel.
Here are pictures from Graceland:
When I was trying to figure out where in the back log to hit up, I was considering the trip to Mount Rushmore, March for Our Lives, or the flowers of Donna Jones. However, recently HBO has been playing a 4 hour documentary on Elvis called ELVIS PRESLEY: THE SEARCHER. I knew it was time to reveal my photos from Graceland
If you are a fan of Elvis, music, or history and have access to HBO or HBO GO, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve learned quite a bit about Elvis and his musical influence. I think it is unfortunate that because of the way he dressed, the antics, the way he died, and the horrible movies, I think sometimes it gets lost what an extremely talented musician he was. Also, what a completely unique voice he had as an artist. I don’t mean that in the way that his physical voice was unique. I mean the way he expressed himself as an artist.
Can you imagine an artist in modern times that would record entire gospel albums at the height of this popularity? Some Christian artists will crossover, but they certainly never come back. I don’t know of an artist in modern times that could weave so many musical influences in to their own unique sound.
Could you imagine going to a modern rock concert and then BOOM! here is one from the hymnals!
Elvis Presley is the only royalty that I will ever recognize!
Any other Elvis fans out there? Let me know what your favorite Elvis song is in the comments section of this here blog!
I’ve decided when I start working on the party soundtrack for my birthday party in 2019, there will be a full hour of Elvis music.
No! Not Bird Defecation AND Excretion!
Since the weather outside has been turning less frightful, I’ve been trying to take Naima on a walk or at least an adventure about every day.
At last week’s Friday Night Supper Club, I nearly nodded off after consume massive amounts of Casey’s Taco and Hot Sausage pizza, while watching the Academy Award winning documentary ICARUS. When Willy knocked off to call it a night, there was still enough time in the day to take Naima for a walk. Which she badly wanted to go on.
However, I needed to crash. The excitement of buying King Kong Cola at the area’s premiere craft soda proprietor earlier in the evening had wore me out. I made the following deal with Naima. On the morrow, we would go on TWO walks.
She doubted that I would follow through on this deal as sometimes I’ve been know to welch on our deals, but she reluctantly agreed.
Saturday morning at 6 AM I sprung out of bed, clapped my hands and said:
“This is going to be a great day!”
I looked at Naima and poked her in the heart and said:
“If this is empty.”
Then I smacked her on the head:
“This doesn’t matter.”
She doesn’t love Dicky Fox quotes as much as I do, but she was excited to load up in the car and we headed to Dickcissel Park for an adventure.
Once we got there, I was excited to to see that there were geese on the pond. Last time we had come out there with Willy, there were no geese. I wanted to see how Naima reacted to the geese. She was moderately interested in them. They were infatuated with her. They followed us all around the lake. Honking at us. Naima would occasionally stop and look at them. Sometimes getting in the pond, but they never held her interest for long.
As we were walking along the south shore of the pond, Naima came across a smell that intrigued her. Intrigued her enough that she decided to flip on her back and start rolling in it. I made her got up and realized quickly that what she was rolling in was some form of bird poo. It was all over her back. Great.
We finished our walk. Got loaded back up in the Camry. We stopped at my Mom’s house, so I had some help in getting her cleaned up.
I was pretty sure we got her cleaned up, but it was hard to tell because Mom also sprayed her down with Febreze, so that is all she smelled like.
While writing this blog I found out that the reason bird poo is booth white and black is because birds both defecate and excrete.
The defecation is the black part.
The white part is the excretion. Excretion is the getting rid of metabolic waste products.
Knowledge bomb coming your way:
Here’s the chain of events: an animal eats and the food is being digested. Whatever content can be used is absorbed from within the digestive tract into the blood in the form of molecules. Whatever food content cannot be used is thrown out through defecation. The molecules that were absorbed from the food travel through the body in the blood system and then enter the cells. Here they are used for all sorts of things, e. g. to generate energy, build proteins, whatever. And of course, this means the molecules will be split and changed in many ways. This creates molecular waste products, in particular nitrogenous wastes. And this waste needs to go, pronto. From the cell into the blood and through a filtering device (the kidneys in mammals, birds, and birders) to the outside world. That’s the clear, transparent pee in mammals. And the white mushy part in bird poop.
Thanks to the following website for this bird poop knowledge:
Source URL: http://www.10000birds.com/what-is-bird-poop.htm
Here are some cruddy cell phone images from our adventure:
Naima rolling around in bird poo was not how I wanted to start my day, but as Dicky Fox would say:
“Roll with the punches. Tomorrow is another day.”
BONUS NAIMA PHOTO
Sunday’s adventure was taking Naima to Andy’s farm. Naima met a goat! They weren’t exactly fans of each other, but they didn’t hate each other. I feel with time, they could become friends. Naima also met some peacocks, chickens, and horses. The peacocks and chickens were terrified of her. Naima was terrified of the horses. I don’t think they will be friends any time soon.
I’ll just close with wishing you “my kind of success!”
Miller Estate Auction
This is one of probably 2 entries for An Artist’s Notebook about my Saturday morning last. This is about the later part of my morning, but you must know a little bit about the early morning to understand how this strange turn of events happened.
The earliest part of my morning was spent at Dickcissel Park with Naima. Things there went slightly sideways and I ended up having to be late for my normal Saturday morning breakfast with my Mom. We normally breakfast at The Whistle Stop Cafe because they have tasty pancakes (and I’m what you would call an expert on tasty pancakes #pancakelife), good service, and they are literally the only breakfast game in town since The Legal Limit shuttered their doors.
I mean, a person could lower themselves to eating at The Avenue of the Saints Cafe, but it is the answer to the age old question:
Is it possible to make something worse than Golden Corral?
Answer: Yes, The Avenue of the Saints Cafe.
The main drawback to The Whistle Stop Cafe is that it is tiny. There are maybe 4 booths, a couple of tables thrown up on the side, and maybe 10 or so counter stools. When we drove by the Whistle Stop Cafe, we were saddened to see that it was overflowing with customers. We needed a new plan.
We decided to head out to the Don Williams Clubhouse. It is about a 15 mile drive from Boone, but it served breakfast and it is under new management. We wanted to see if the new management has game.
The easiest way to get from the Whistle Stop to Don Williams is to head by Water Works and on past Fraser. However, on Wednesday night, Carla contacted me to let me know that there was a flock of swans (possibly) at the J. Carlson Wildlife area, between Boone and Ogden.
On Wednesday night I went out there and had a peek. It turned out that it wasn’t a bevy. It was a brief or a pod or a pouch or a scoop or a squadron. It was a group of pelicans is what I was getting at. On Wednesday I efforted to get a photo of them, but I couldn’t get a good angle on them.
On Thursday, I went back. They were gone. However, I did get a photo of an egret, so not all was lost.
On Saturday morning, I decided to take Old 30 to Ogden and then up County Road P70 to Don Williams to see if those pelicans had returned. They were, but none of that is important to the story.
Due to the chosen route, we picked up Carla and made our way towards breakfast.
On our way through Ogden, at the intersection of Old 30 and P70, we stumbled across a sizable auction. My people have auction in their blood from way back*. Possibly why I had a cousin once state:
I’m impressed how well you and your siblings turned out, considering the white trash you come from. #neverforget
But you know that he has the complete and utter moral ground to make statements like that. It isn’t like he ever ended up in prison or anything like that. I can’t hate.
While my tummy made the decision that we didn’t have time to stop at this auction at this time, there was little doubt that we would hit this auction on our way back to drop Carla off at her home.
Breakfast went fine. The new management serves a tasty breakfast. My one critique would be that portion sizes are somewhat small. However, the small portion sizes are reflected in the prices. The 3 of us ate breakfast for something like 18 dollars, American.
On the way back we stopped at the auction and this is where things got a little bit strange.
As I was walking around the auction, I noticed that some of the stuff seemed a little familiar. There was a Patio Pros (represent!) car in the driveway. There was a ton of plumbing and heating and cooling type stuff in the auction.
I began to suspect that this was an estate auction for Olivia’s Grandpa Dean. He passed away a few months back and I was a pallbearer at his funeral.
I saw Olivia’s cousin Jim there and approached him and he confirmed, this was indeed Grandpa Dean’s Estate Auction.
I took a few photos while I was there:
I never would’ve stumbled upon this auction IF:
+There weren’t pelicans at the J. Carlson Wildlife Area on Wednesday.
+If the pelicans would’ve been there on Thursday.
+If Naima hadn’t decided to do something stupid on Saturday morning.
+If the Whistle Stop Cafe wasn’t super packed.
+If Carla didn’t move out between Boone and Ogden.
+If the Don Williams Clubhouse hadn’t just re-opened for the season.
It was not the Saturday morning I envisioned when I closed my eyes and went off to slumberland on Friday night.
I didn’t buy anything, but Carla purchased a few nuggets. Grandpa Dean had his own plumbing business. Carla purchased a whole package of his business calendars from 1975 and 1976. Never opened. I’ll be giving some of those to Nate and Bethany next time I see them.
*I was almost born at the Hillbilly Auction after all.
The Town Sign Project: Vol 5
On Friday and Saturday of last week I did a little bit of Town Sign harvesting. The full story will follow the new signs, but I’ll just say that I on both trips I made some (by my standards) pretty cool discoveries.
Elkhart, Iowa
Huxley, Iowa
Cooper, Iowa
Jamaica, Iowa
Dawson, Iowa
Angus, Iowa
Rippey, Iowa
Berkley, Iowa
On Friday after I clocked out and put down my axe at the Computer Mine I traveled down to Rocket Fizz in Ankeny. I have been in Elizabeth’s debt for something like 4 months. I have owed her 2 Pepsi’s in glass bottles. My usual source in Boone has dried up lately, so decided it was best I get to Ankeny’s leading proprietor of craft sodas to end this problem.
On my way back to Boone, I swung through Elkhart to harvest their town sign. Until Friday, the only thing I knew about Elkhart was it was the home of this gross dude I knew from my ill-fated time in the Jaycees. After my trip on Friday, now I know that and that some person has a working pop machine in their front yard:
Based on its (ahem) rustic appearance I didn’t throw any money into it, but I believe it works because the sign attached to the front reads:
If you have any problems with this (unintelligible word) please call (redacted) or come to the door. Money or pop will be refunded.
Some day, I will save up my quarters and give this machine a shot.
I have nothing really to say about going through Huxley. It is a speed trap masquerading as a town. The only reason I acknowledge its existence is because the Baier fam lives there.
I had an eventful Saturday morning, but I’ll leave those events for a future entry in An Artist’s Notebook. It will be sufficient to say that I met Teresa and Mom in Jefferson at A&W for lunch. After we parted way, I headed south to see what I could see.
The first town I came across was Cooper. Cooper doesn’t have what I would call a conventional town sign, so I snapped a picture of the sign that welcomes people to Cooper on the bike trail that cuts through town. I really enjoyed cooper, mainly because of this sign:
Cooper really seems to have a sense of humor. According to the census, they are down to more like 30 citizens now.
The other town I really want to point out is Angus. Angus is a ghost town now. Only, as near as I can tell, the only thing left of it is a cemetery a sign and marker that reads:
Whiskey Row in Angus
In the 1860s, when Angus had a population of about 7800, sixteen saloons were on this road which is the Greene-Boone County line. Several of the bar rooms were centered on the county line, hence in case of trouble patrons could move from one side of the barrom to the other side and avoid arrest by the officers of the first county.
Although Angus once had almost 8,000 citizens, within 100 years it was completely gone.
Reminder, you can look at all the THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT pictures by clicking on the link below:
THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT
I hope to be on the prowl for more signs this weekend!
Cluck Cluck Noodles
Last Sunday the Methodist Men had our annual Chicken Noodles Brunch. I took a few photos of the event:
You may recall that the weather last Sunday was less than idyllic. Loads of snow dropped on the metropolitan Boone area and the temperatures were cold as well. The turnout for worship service was very low. However, almost everybody stuck around for our brunch. What I thought was going to be a disaster turned out to be a great success.
The Chicken Noodles Brunch is by far the most ambitious Methodist Men project. Everything is made from scratch*. On Thursday the noodles are made and cut. The chicken is picked. On Saturday, the potatoes are peeled. On Sunday, starting at 7 AM, everything is put together.
I’m glad so much effort was rewarded!
*If you don’t count our trademark red applesauce.
One of Nature’s Masterpieces
Time to hit the backlog again. Here are some family pictures we took when Elainie was in town… back in March… 2017.
Unfortunately, the weather was terrible that day, so we were trapped inside. Hopefully, next time we do a family portrait, the weather will be more cooperative.
+++++++++++++
A Minor Announcement
Just wanted to let everybody know, as we are now less than one month from my birthday, that I will not be having the birthday party this year. Time just escaped from me and I don’t have the time to plan such a shindig. Better luck next year.
I Get So Frustrated, Take A Look at What I Created, Time is Wasting and I Ain’t Waiting!
The world wasn’t ready for these ROAD TRIP photos on Monday. The world still wasn’t ready for them on Tuesday. I’m not sure the world is ready for them now, but I can’t hold them back any longer:
After Jewell, I tooled through Ellsworth. From Ellsworth I moved onto Radcliffe. Radcliffe is notable for the shortest water tower I have ever seen. From Radcliffe I went through Garden City. Garden City gave me a DELIVERANCE type vibe. I’ve only really felt that similar vibe, to that degree in Beaver. Beaver, Iowa creeps me out. There is a reason why I once created a series of photos called “The Beaver Machete Massacre” I don’t believe those photos are online anywhere. So don’t go looking for them.
In Garden City, I realized I was going to be late for my supper appointment with some of my favorite miners. I pressed on the gas and made haste for Marshalltown. Only stopping briefly in Zearing.
If you have never been to Zeno’s in Marshalltown, I would highly recommend it. Zeno’s gets the Christopher D. Bennett Endorsement. In particular, I can’t recommend the BBQ Brisket pizza enough. Smoked beef brisket, red onion, peppadew peepers. Drizzled with sriracha bourbon bbq sauce. It is even more amazing than it sounds. Even people with questionable taste in food products like Elizabeth endorse it. She normally only likes meat paste pizza.
The final picture with my Mom (dinking with her phone like a millennial) was taken on our way back from Wingstop on Sunday after our post-church lunch.
That is all the ROAD TRIP alternates I have. You’re welcome world!