Several weeks back I headed up to Minnesota to celebrate Nora’s 2nd birthday. Took a few photos. Thought I’d share a few photos:
She is so cute! I can hardly wait until Christmas when I can giver her more books that don’t excite her.
A friendly reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is CITY:
A CITY picture is any picture of a CITY, like a cityscape or that is taken in a CITY.
Happy photo harvesting!
In case you don’t follow politics closely, one of the leaders of the March for Our Lives Movement is Emma Gonzalez. She is a survivor of the Parkland shooting in February. She has a very short haircut. Her sexual orientation is none of our business.
You may remember her from her March for Our Lives Speech for its 6 Minutes of Silence. You can watch it by clicking on the link below:
A Republican (surprise) candidate for the Maine State house named Leslie Gibson called her a skinhead lesbian because he doesn’t know what the terms “skinhead” or “lesbian” mean.
He also called David Hogg, another Parkland shooting survivor and leader of the March for Our Lives Movement, a “moron” and a “baldfaced liar”, because this is how he thinks adults should treat children who had 17 of their classmates murdered in front of them.
These comments (made on Twitter) by Leslie Gibson created a quick backlash against him. He had to end his candidacy. There is justice in this world, at times. Or as Martin Luther King Jr. put it much better than I*:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Amen.
You will see this unfortunate phrase tweeted by a bigoted politician in an attempt to demean a school shooting survivor in one of the pictures below. I want you to have it in the proper context.
Back on March 24, I went to the March for Our Lives Rally in Des Moines. Here is the beginning of what will become a wave of pictures from that event. Don’t worry, I will spread them out over the next few weeks.
If you aren’t familiar with March for Our Lives, here is a copy of their Mission Statement:
Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of an assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives.
This is not just schools, though. This is churches, nightclubs, concerts, movie theaters, airports, and more. A child should not fear a bullet on their walk home. We may be children, but we are not fighting for just children. All lives are precious, and our country must make the safety of its citizens a number one priority.
March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students of all ethnicities, religions, and sexualities across the country. We will no longer sit and wait for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass shootings.
The mission and focus of March For Our Lives is assure that no special interest group or political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country. We demand morally-just leaders to rise up from both parties in order to ensure public safety.Specifically, we are working towards…
1. Universal, comprehensive background checks
2. Bringing the ATF into the 21st century with a digitized, searchable database
3. Funds for the Center for Disease Control to research the gun violence epidemic in America
4. High-capacity magazine ban
5. Assault weapons banWe came together on March 24th and through continued unity, we will save lives. We will not stop our advocacy until we see the change we demand – a change that is necessary in order to save innocent lives across our nation.
More pictures from the March will trickle out in the next few weeks.
*Martin Luther King Jr. was probably referencing a sermon by 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker who wrote:
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble.
On Saturday I decided to look for Town Signs for THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT in the Story County area. Here is what I was able to track down:
A few things of note from this collection:
Roland has a “nicer sign” than the Roland Rocket sign, but if you think I’m going to choose a nice sign over a sign that celebrates one of the greatest Cyclones of all-time, you don’t know where you are.
Zearing used to have a sweet sign:
Then they replaced it with the lameness that is their current sign. This is the worst sequel since GREASE 2.
Bangor isn’t a town. I’d say it is a place where an agriculture company stores trucks and a park with a creepy swing set.
I literally couldn’t find anything that said Bangor. There were the remains of a sign post that may have held a sign at one time in the park. There is a Bangor church and cemetery just outside of what I would consider Bangor.
I just can’t figure out why there are several signs directing people to Bangor, but nothing telling you that you are in Bangor. I don’t know another unincorporated town that gets that much love!
Zook Spur and Xenia are both ghost towns. The best way to describe them is that there are maybe 3 or 4 houses that are closer together than is normally the case in the country. Zook Spur is just south of Madrid. Xenia is just east of Woodward. I wish somebody cared about Jordan enough to put a sign up around there. Unfortunately, Jordan wasn’t too tough to not die.
I don’t know that I’ll have time to go sign hunting again this weekend. I start a bunch of consecutive weekends of graduations and birthday parties and more graduations and Mother’s Days this weekend. But we’ll see. We will see.
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When I road trip on SaturdayS I listen to NPR. If you’ve spent time in a car with me on a Saturday morning, you already know this fact.
If you know that fact, you also know that one of the purposes of this here blog is for me to store things that inspire me, so that I can reference them again at a later date. Sort of an online idea box.
While I was cruising around the back roads of Story County (I was desperately looking for a Bangor sign) I was listening to the conclusion of THIS AMERICAN LIFE. The episode began with the story of a group of students of color, mostly black, that were painted as anti-Semitic by the media after a field trip to see SCHINDLER’S LIST went awry.
While this story was fascinating and scary, it isn’t the story that hit home hardest with me. That was the last story of the show.
The last story of the show was about the experience of a man, who’s sister was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, visiting the 9/11 Memorial a few days before it opened to the general public.
Part of it I found really poignant and I think it will strike a chord with anybody that he been through tragedy, which means pretty much everybody.
I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else’s past horror was my vacant diversion. And maybe I learned something, but I didn’t feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark– annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom’s last round of chemo didn’t take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend’s last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who just need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch that pain be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely.
There are three recording booths for people to tell their own stories of the day or remembrances of loved ones who were lost. A man exits one of the confessionals, sees me, shakes his head and says, “Amazing idea.” I enter, sit down, and stare at the screen and say Shari’s name and how I was 3,000 miles away that morning and didn’t even know she was working there until I got the call at 6:00 AM, and that I wish I had seen her more in those last years and remembered more about her and had something better prepared to say, and that I wished my kids would have known her, and that she’d think it’s pretty f*cking weird that I’m here talking about her to an invisible camera in the bowels of a museum dedicated to the fact that she was killed by an airplane while sitting at her desk. And at some point, the timer is up.
When this story was over, I just sat in my car. In Bangor, Iowa. Realizing that the way I look at certain museums has been changed forever.
The world wasn’t ready for these ARCHITECTURE pictures on Monday. I’m not sure the world is ready for them now, but I can’t hold them back any longer…
I took all of these photos while I was out looking for town signs. They range from Roland to Cambridge.
You’re welcome world!
A good week of submissions for ARCHITECTURE. I have no doubt that my outhouse picture inspired many a person to submit this week. This week, the Photography 139 Empire extended as far east as Chicago. As far north as Roland, Iowa. As far west as the Des Moines Airport. As far south as the Indianola area. There is some guesswork in these estimations.
The exciting development this week is that we have a first time contributor! Linda Clark submitted 2 photos. I’m expecting big things from her in the future!
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates. You came to see the submissions:
Carla Stensland
Linda Clark
Kim Barker
Linda Clark
Sarah Karber
Tamara Peterson
Tamara Peterson
Angie DeWaard
Andy Sharp
Andy Sharp
Shannon Bardole
Christopher D. Bennett
Cathie Raley
A solid week of submissions!
But enough dwelling on the past. Time to look to the future. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future! This week’s theme:
CITY! What a great theme! But what does it mean? CITY photography would be a picture of a CITY or a picture that takes place uniquely in a CITY. But what is a CITY?
Here is a handy dandy breakdown of settlement hierarchy Wikipedia:
Ecumenopolis – a theoretical construction in which the entire area of Earth that is taken up by human settlements, or at least, that those are linked so that to create urban areas so big that they can shape an urban continuum through thousands of kilometers which cannot be considered as a megalopolis. As of the year 2009, the United Nations estimated that for the first time more than 50% of the world’s populations lived in cities, so if these were linked, the total population of this area would be about 3,400,000,000 people as of 2010.
Megalopolis – a group of conurbations, consisting of more than ten million people each.
Conurbation – a group of large cities and their suburbs, consisting of three to ten million people.
Metropolis – a large city and its suburbs consisting of multiple cities and towns. The population is usually one to three million.
Large city – a city with a large population and many services. The population is <1 million people but over 300,000 people.
City – a city would have abundant services, but not as many as a large city. The population of a city is between 100,000 and 300,000 people.
Large town – a large town has a population of 20,000 to 100,000.
Town – a town has a population of 1,000 to 20,000.
Village – a village is a human settlement or community that is larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town. A village generally does not have many services, most likely a church or only a small shop or post office. The population of a village varies; the average population can range from hundreds to thousands.
Hamlet – a hamlet has a tiny population (<100) and very few (if any) services, with only a few buildings.
Isolated dwelling – an isolated dwelling would only have 1 or 2 buildings or families. It would have negligible services, if any.
Quite frankly, I don’t care what you call a CITY. I mean, unless you call Beaver, Iowa a city. If any of you send me a picture of Beaver, Iowa… God help you! But on the other hand, go nuts in Story City or Albert City or Charles City or Dakota City or Decatur City or Prairie City or Promise City.
As always, I look forward to seeing your interpretations!
A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 RULES DIVISION
1. The picture has to be taken the week of the theme. This isn’t a curate your pictures challenge. This is a get your butt off the couch (my personal experience) and put your camera in your hands challenge. Don’t send me a picture of you next to the Eiffel Tower, when I know you were in Iowa all week. I will point out that I have let that slide some in the past. I will not in the future. Since it is literally about the only rule.
2. Your submission needs to be emailed to bennett@photography139.com by 11 AM on the Monday of the challenge due date. It should be pointed out that this blog auto-publishes at 12:01 on Mondays. So it wouldn’t hurt to get your picture in earlier.
That is it, them’s the rules.
A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION DIVISION
The latest person to show taste, class, and sophistication and sign on for a Photography 139 Email Subscription is Linda Clark. I honestly don’t know much about her, other than she is a relative of Andy Sharp and he says she has an interest in photography. Welcome aboard Linda! If you see her, feel free to give her a knowing glance and teach her the super-secret Photography 139 Handshake.
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That’s all I got for today, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will commune right here again next Monday. Hopefully it will be a very urban Monday!
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.
The following images are from the folders 04-22-08, 04-25-08, and 04-26-08:
By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery I was able to restore these historic An Artist’s Notebook entries to their original glory:
The soap pictures were taken for Little White Lye Soap. If you wish to buy yourself some Little White Lye Soap (a product I endorse), click on the link below:
It appears, she no longer makes laundry soap, but you can also buy a high quality broom while you are there, but if Shannon ever shows up at your domicile, she lectures you on the proper way to store a broom. It is a trade-off.
If you want to see more pictures from the Sandbox Fill, click on the link below:
The shirt I was wearing was made by Lone Wolf Gear. It is clothing line designed and marketed by Jay. MDH stands for Modern Day Hero, a now defunct local rock band. Neither the band or Lone Wolf Gear have a website.
Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve more Little White Lye Soap, a stitching group, and some random other stuff. Get excited!
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:
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!”
A friendly reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is ARCHITECTURE:
An ARCHITECTURE photo is a photo of a building or a part of a building. That is basically all there is to it.
As many of you may know (and by many I mean very few) I am a big fan of photos of outhouses. One of my life goals is to make the hashtag #outhousesofinstagram a thing. The outhouse in the reveal is still under construction, but can be found at Andy’s homestead. It has a pink toilet set. Andy has a line on a two seat outhouse that I may photograph in the future. You may have a series of blogs call THE OUTHOUSE PROJECT in your future!
Get excited people!
Happy photo harvesting!
