I need to start this post off by wishing Lowell a happy birthday. Happy birthday Lowell!
I hope it was as happy as you wanted it to be!
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Here is another collection of pictures from when I travelled to Manhattan to take pictures of the Millers. These are mostly post-park pictures, where I was just playing around. Which is what I do best:
There is one more collection of photos from this day still in the hopper.
I need to start today by wishing Jesse a happy birthday. Happy birthday Jesse!
I could post a thousand pictures of Jesse from thousands of adventures we shared. But you only get 5 and have to imagine the rest.
Jesse, I hope your birthday is as amazing as you want it to be!
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Today’s collection of recreated old-timey postcards are of buildings that were built to house white collar criminals. Banks. Some of my best friends are bankers. One of my closest blood relatives is a banker. But you know my commitment to the truth. They are all white collar criminals.
One of the buildings still holds bankers. The other one houses local Klan meetings, I would guess. I’m not going to go into much history of these buildings. The building that currently houses U.S. Bank, replaced a building that was destroyed by fire in 1914. Construction on it was finished in 1916. You will notice in the original postcard, that there is no brown beltcourse on the building. That was added in the late 1970s when the addition was added to the east side of the original building.
I can literally tell you nothing about the other building. It has never made its way to the National Register of Historic Places. It is the second tallest building in Boone, if you don’t count the grain elevator. If you do, I’m not sure which is taller.
The postcards for the Boone National Building:
13597 Boone National Bank Bldg. Boone, Ia – Redux
Boone National Building – Modern Interpretation
The postcards for the building I will always call Citizen’s National Bank:
First National Bank Building – Boone, Ia – Redux
U.S. Bank – Modern Interpretation
Something I’ve noticed in the old-timey postcards is that they they like to throw a flagpole with a big American flag on top of these buildings. I don’t know if these flagpoles ever existed. But the current U.S. Bank Building is the only one that still has a flagpole on top of it.
There are a couple of old-timey bank postcards out there to recreate. I’m sitting on the fence on those. One is because I’m still trying to convince myself of the location of one of those buildings. More research!
I need to start the day by wishing a couple people a happy birthday. I need to start with my nephew Brandon. Happy birthday Brandon!
I hope your birthday is as amazing as you want it to be!
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It is also Frank’s birthday. Frank was instrumental in getting this website up and going. Its first home was the webserver living in his basement. He helped get it set up originally and hosted it for free and helped with the domain registration. I don’t think I’ve seen Frank since the pandemic started, and that really sucks. Happy birthday Frank!
I hope your birthday was as amazing as you want it to be!
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I started my freezing flowers in blocks of ice with your standard daisy. But I thought I would try some flowers with more color. So next I tried Brown-eyed Susans and Zinnias.
I wasn’t done playing with this idea still. So there are more ice block flower pictures yet to be curated.
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This is your reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is FOOD:
A FOOD photo is any image of FOOD or people eating FOOD or ingredients to make FOOD or people preparing FOOD or people cleaning up after eating FOOD.
Happy photo harvesting!
I should start the day by wishing Suzie a happy birthday. Happy birthday Suzie!
I hope your birthday was as amazing as you wanted it to be!
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I made a recent decision to start breaking down town in the TOWN SIGN PROJECT by county. I’ve used the Wikipedia and a Iowa Gazetteer to start this process. Well, it seemed rather obvious that the first county I should cross off the list is the county is the county I live in.
Here are the town signs from Boone County.
Madrid, Iowa – 2,543
Ogden, Iowa – 2,044
Sheldahl, Iowa – 319
Boxholm, Iowa – 195
Pilot Mound, Iowa – 173
Luther, Iowa – 122
Fraser, Iowa – 102
Beaver, Iowa – 48
Berkley, Iowa – 32
Mackey, Iowa – Unincorporated
Moingona, Iowa – Unincorporated
Centerville, Iowa – Unincorporated
Napier, Iowa – Unincorporated
Ridegeport, Iowa – Unincorporated
Boone County has a couple of unincorporated towns that have no sign to mark their existence. These are Jordan and Logansport. Some people claim that Zenorsville is an unincorporated community, but I would consider it a ghost town. Same way I would consider Coal Valley a ghost town. Elk Rapids a ghost town. However, there are still people living in Jordan and Logansport.
The next county I plan on doing is either Story County or Greene County. Cause, proximity.
Back in August there was a small birthday party for Kanoa. I took a few pictures, but mostly just pictures of Kanoa eating his cake. Which he apparently enjoyed very much.
Here are some pictures:
I did get to see Kanoa again on Saturday, but that is a topic for the future.
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This is your reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is ART:
An ART image is any picture of a piece of ART or an ART supply or somebody making ART or a gas station attendant named ART.
Happy photo harvesting!
I need to begin today by wishing Elainie a happy birthday. Happy birthday Elainie!
I hope your birthday is as amazing as you want it to be.
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Back in late October, we got a bit of unexpected snow. I took a few flower pictures afterwards.
Fortunately, fall weather wasn’t done with us yet. But that snow pretty much did in all of my flowers.
The pictures in the folders 2010-04-22, 2010-04-24, & 2010-04-25 are mostly interconnected. The grand majority of the pictures were take on the first day I took of vacation back in 2010. A ton of them are tulip picture. But there are also some frog pictures. Flowertography and frogtography in one post? Get out of Dodge! Especially, if we’re referring to Fort Dodge. That town is terrible. They think Taco Tico is real food. As if!
By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:
Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 18
Next Saturday’s walk down Memory Lane will involve more from that same vacation. Including images from Minnesota and Iowa State University.
I need to start today with wishing Dae Hee a happy birthday. Happy birthday Dae Hee!
I hope your birthday is as amazing as you want it to be.
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The main collection of pictures from today are alternates for last week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme SELF-PORTRAIT. A few of those pictures were taken on the roof of my house. I climbed up there without anybody holding the ladder or spotting me.
I bring this up, because I acknowledge that is dangerous and foolish. I bring this up, because a guy I know recently fell off a roof and broke his back. He is now in need of help with the medical expenses that come with that kind of injury and our broken health care system. If you are interested in helping out with his medical expenses, you can make a donation to his GoFundMe page here:
You may remember Mike as the lead singer and bass player for Derrick’s band. He’s a good guy with a long road to recovery in front of him.
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Here is a collection of SELF-PORTRAIT images that I took for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE, but didn’t use on Monday. They are mostly cruddy cell phone pictures, but a few were taken with Rodan139.
The pictures taken down by the river are with the remains of the bridge that Kate Shelley crossed to save all those lives, all those years. If you don’t know the story of Kate Shelley, don’t worry. You will at some point.
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This is your reminder that BLACK AND WHITE is the week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE:
A BLACK AND WHITE image is a picture of any subject that is taken in BLACK AND WHITE, sometimes called monochrome.
Happy photo harvesting!
I need to start today by wishing my cousin Sarah a happy birthday. Happy birthday Sarah!
I hope it is as amazing as you want it to be!
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Back when I was on vacation, one of the State Parks I visited was Walnut Woods in the Des Moines area. I’ve driven by the sign for the turnoff to Walnut Woods hundreds of times. It seemed like I should finally make that turn and see what it is all about.
I didn’t get to spend much time exploring Walnut Woods, but by far my favorite thing I found there was the bird blind that overlooked about a hundred bird feeders. The bird blind is closed because of the badly mismanaged pandemic, but you could still stand near the bird blind and enjoy the birds. I probably didn’t have the exact lens I would have wanted, but I still took a plethora of bird photos. Even took some I liked.
This trip to Walnut Woods inspired me to want to buy my own portable bird blind. I’m going to get right on that after I buy a larger external hard drive, 3 new monitors, and a new projection screen. Maybe a retired Iowa State football locker. It is definitely on the list!
I need to start today by wishing Shawn a happy birthday. Happy birthday Shawn!
I hope your birthday is as wonderful as you want it to be!
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I do love pictures of SIGNS. My sister-in-law Laura once told me that this makes me a hipster. She is wrong about that, but even if it did make me a hipster, I’d still love pictures of signs. Battered. Beat up. Barely hanging on. My kind of SIGNS. With that in mind, here are the alternate pictures for last week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme SIGNS:
I also took a couple pictures of unincorporated towns in Boone County:
Ridgeport, Iowa
Unincorporated
Here is an interesting fact about Ridgeport. It was originally called Mineral Ridge. It took that name from the ridge that the town sits on. It was giving that name because the surveyors that were exploring the area, their compass wasn’t working correctly. The figured that this was because the ridge was filled with minerals. Turns out that they just had a broken compass. At least this is what I read in the latest issue of “Trail Tales”.
I wish more of these unincorporated communities had signs like Centerville. I looked for one in Logansport and didn’t find one. Also looked for some kind of marker where Zenorsville was once located, but found nothing. However, of all the unincorporated communities in Boone County, the lack of any kind of marker for Jordan makes me the saddest. Not just because of my family connection (I also have a family connection to Centerville) to Jordan, but because of its historical significance because of the Jordan tornado. C’est la vie!
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This is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is SELF-PORTRAIT:
A SELF-PORTRAIT is simply a picture where the photographer and the subject are the same person. Obviously, there are some creative ways to get around that, if you don’t like take pictures of yourself. Even if that doesn’t make sense to anybody else.
Happy photo harvesting!
