Yogi Takes the Challenge
Sandy Carlson of Writing in Faith or maybe her very talented daughter or both tagged me via Instagram to take the the Ice Bucket Challenge so Tuesday night I took it myself with son Logan getting to do the honors. Heather did a great job on the camera.
Tell you what, the only thing worse than seeing photographs of myself is watching videos of myself. So I posted this on facebook and called out a bunch of people and if you are reading this I challenge you also!! Too late to escape, I go the tracking tools and I know who you are.
I looked through Youtube for other ice challenges. I love Lady Gaga’s version, so cool. Plus a rare opportunity to see a video of her with all her clothes on. Taylor Swift also did a challenge but there was too much girly squealing for me. Really Taylor, really, grow up.
Michael Buble took the challenge in a stoic Canadian kind of way.
Oprah Winfrey lends authority to the challenge in her classy way. Come back Oprah!!
Go check out youtube dot com for other examples. You know for a rare disease there seems to be a lot of people I know personally with ALS.
Of Grain Elevators, Courthouses, and Bars
I was in the tiny little town of Flandreau, South Dakota. Flandreau, like lots of other small towns across the Midwest USA has grain elevators. They look simultaneously timeless and recently unused. They seem to be the tallest structures in town.
The grounds are neat and tidy though. Everything in the upper midwest seems neat and tidy.
Near the grain elevators is one of the largest quonset huts I’ve ever seen. It also didn’t look to be used but the grass is neatly mowed. The morning that I took all these pics the sky was as gray as the metal on the structures.
This is the Moody County Courthouse. Moody County had its few days in the national news early in 2004 when a jury sitting in this courthouse sent South Dakota’s Governor Bill Janklow to jail for manslaughter for killing a motorcyclist while speeding and running a stoplight. They are still talking about it in town. You don’t want to mess around with the citizens of the rural midwest. If you do they’ll send you somewhere where you can reflect on your actions, for a good long while.
Bars in South Dakota are serious business. You go there to drink. If you want to eat you go to you a restaurant. And no, your kids are definitely not welcome here. Here in Oklahoma if you want to have a bar you have to serve food also. The Bar-X Lounge in Flandreau is a bar’s bar. If you want to buy decent beer in Flandreau (no, Bud Light is NOT decent beer) you go the Bar-X Lounge and stand in a little alcove and get your beer. No unmasculine browsing or looking at a lists or anything, you stand up like a man and see if they got what you want. If you have a problem with that I think it best you don’t say anything about it. Not that I’m trying to tell you what to do or anything.
The best part of the Bar-X is that my Dad and his brother are friends with the owner (or one of the owners or a former owner, I’m not really sure.) Eddie is his name and he is a heck of a guy. I’ve been hearing stories about him all my life and finally got to meet him for a few minutes.
Hey, have you ever wandered around a small town early on a Sunday morning?
Check out the action in Flandreau here.
Our World – Up the Hill with Bob
Last Saturday Logan and I ventured up to All-Star Therapy Group in Ramona. Ramona is pretty close to Pioneer Woman Country. We got there and Cisco was getting prepped for Logan’s lesson.
We went outside, which is always my favorite and stopped for a brief photo op.
Bob, the guy that runs the place and who has an incredible heart for the kids that take classes there grabbed three of the kids and told me to c’mon and off we went across the pasture.
And then up the hill through the trees and brush. And these kids know that you lean forward in the saddle just a hair when you go up the hill.
We got to the top of the hill, where on a clear day you can see downtown Tulsa, and got everybody arranged and then told everybody to smile.
It was my turn to do my thing.
And then it was time to go down the hill. With Bob reminding everybody to lean back just a little back in the saddle.
InSPIREd Sunday – Sioux Valley Baptist Church
Sioux Valley Baptist Church is a small clapboard church sitting on a dirt road a few miles from Trent, South Dakota and right across the Big Sioux River from my Great Great Grandfather’s original homestead. He donated the land the church sits on. The church was dedicated in 1888 and has been in service ever since. It is a tradition in my Dad’s family that they attend services in connection with the annual reunion. It is pretty cool to see the church still holding services and knowing that my ancestors had a hand in getting it started.
The service is simple and heartfelt. The music is great. The prayers and praises concern thankfulness for a safe rodeo season and livestock showings at the County Fair, concerns about illnesses. Somehow the pastor, Rita Webber remembers everything and mentions it during the prayers. The sermon is likewise great.
Somehow this is all accomplished without powerpoint slides, amplified guitars, video segments and all that. Totally Old School and relaxing.
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William G. Milne House, Dell Rapids, South Dakota
Last week I went to South Dakota for a family reunion. The main activity is a big picnic at the City Park in Dell Rapids. I’m not very good with large groups so I am not one to mingle and merge and start conversations up. Nor am I into shoving my camera into the faces of people. After the picnic there is kind of an “afterparty” at the homes of one of the relatives and in this lot smaller group I’m a lot more comfortable.
The get together itself is great but the house also fascinates me. It has always seemed perfect to me. My great grandfather bought it in the mid 1940’s when he retired from farming and it has been in and out of the family ever since. I remember crashing in the living room one weekend in the late 1970’s during the reunion weekend.
So somebody at the get together mentioned that it was designed by an architect named Dow. So of course I start googling around and low and behold it I find out that it is a house with a name, the “William G. Milne House” and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Moreover, it is considered to be a Queen Anne Style house and was built in 1902.. It was designed by a Wallace L. Dow who apparently was a famous architect who designed a great number of public and private buildings during his career. Of course I felt a little guilty thinking about drinking beer on the back porch of such a distinguished house. Not too guilty, just a little guilty you understand.
I have a little history with the house. Like I said that my Great Grandfather owned it for a time. My dad has slides from a trip we took one Christmas in the late 1950’s.
This a family shot. I’m the good looking guy sitting on the lady’s lap. That lady is my grandmother. Brother Bob is the guy in red at the bottom of the photo.
And here is me on the staircase of the house. I can’t believe I had so much hair. Where did it all go? I love those suspenders also.
Anyway, I love serendipity. How about you? Have you made some interesting connections lately?
Foto Friday Fun – Shadows
The number this week for Foto Friday Fun is 3847. That turns out to be a hay rake (thanks David Hall for letting me know) that Logan and I found at Mohawk Park here in Tulsa a couple years ago during a geocaching expedition. I liked the shadows it made on the pavement during a sunny November day.
Skywatch Friday – Denver Airport Storm Spinning Up
Well, I have been not blogging for a week. Things have been unsettled. I had two thing going on last week. I had a customer event to attend in Denver at Coors Field. I was going to fly into Denver on Thursday morning. Watch a baseball game and then fly back to Tulsa. And then Friday I was going to fly to South Dakota to attend a family reunion over the weekend.
Well the first part worked out great! I flew to Denver and attended the Rockies game and rubbed elbows with customers and met some new people (well some of them were not that new, they were older than me, but they were new to me, but I think you know that is what I meant) and visit the the folks I already knew and drink a Fat Tire beer and eat something. Nice, right!? Yeah, well it beats a sharp stick in the eye is what I say.
So it was great!! Being paid to drink beer and watch baseball? Sign me up! Oops, I’m already signed up I guess.
Well anyway I took a cab back to the airport and found out that, despite there not being a cloud in the sky, United Airlines cancelled the flight back to Tulsa because of weather. The only thing that I can figure is that the weather was too nice to fly in. Better to kick back with some cold ones the crew said. Well, okay, I can get into that even though the flight that was cancelled was the last one to Tulsa that night! Oh well.
So I got me a hotel room that night and then used Uber to get me a ride to the nearest Walmart and got me some clothes and a duffle bag. Cuz you see, after talking to Heather I decided to just fly to South Dakota from Denver but I didn’t have any clothes. I have to tell you shopping at Wally World is a little different. The colors are strange, the styles are strange, it’s all strange. Don’t get me wrong I don’t buy fancy clothes, I’m into Kohl’s myself but Walmart was just disorienting. The prices are right though!
So I finally got through with Wally World and went outside and called up another Uber car. I felt really techno and with it. Uber is this car ride service where you get an app on your phone and can get rides from private individuals. It is wonderful. I’m never using a dirty old greasy cab again. In total, I had two regular cab rides this trip in Denver and two Uber rides. The cab rides were both very expensive the drivers refused to turn the air conditioning on. The cabs were filthy and the drivers borderline rude. The Uber cars were brand new and spotless and the drivers very courteous. I’ll be using Uber again.
So I gathered up my stuff and flew to Sioux Falls and met up with my Sister, Brother in Law and my Father so we could go to the Family Reunion not far away. However on our way to our destination my brother in law, Irv got a message that his father, who had been seriously ill, passed.
So, that kind of through me off my feed. Irv is a really nice guy and so was his father. His father was one of those guys was so full of life and very engaging with everyone he meets that it is hard to imagine life without him. Nobody can really know what other people are going through but I know that Irv loved his father and the loss is devastating.
So if you could keep Ellen, and Irv in your thoughts I’d appreciate it. This has been a hard week for them.
Foto Friday Fun – Horseback Riding Edition
Gaeylyn the Geopsy has a meme “Fotofun Friday” where a number is picked and a photograph matching that index number is posted. This is my entry this week. Logan has weekly horseback riding lessons and this is a photo of him taking such a lesson.
Skywatch Friday – Dogwalk in the Greenbelt Edition
I don’t live out in the country or spend much time on a beach or anywhere else where I have unimpeded views of the sky. I live in the burb’s of south Tulsa so my views of the sky are pretty messed up I guess. I’ve got powerlines and telephone lines and light poles and cell phone towers, ugly ass bradford pear trees, and my neighbors houses, and all sorts of other stuff occluding my view. I don’t worry about it though, that is where I live for good or bad. I’ll pick my shots to avoid the as much as the noise that I can and go with it .
I don’t worship unfiltered SOOC images either. I use all sorts of filters, effects, and treatments. Sorry about that but often the image doesn’t match what I see. I don’t even know what SOOC means any more with all the in camera processing available now.
Anyhow we were on a family dog walk in the greenbelt the other night and the sun was going down but I had all these powerlines in the way but what the heck!!
How about you? Do you go for the pure shot or settle for less?