It’s been a very long time since I’ve been excited about a new phone book coming out. I pick up the phone book maybe three times a year, for those few rare things that it does more efficiently than Google. But if there’s one thing that you could do to get me excited about the phone book again, they did it.
They put my photograph on the cover.
Early last year they reached out to me to submit some photos for consideration. They always try to stick to local photographers, and the work I do here at Around Carson caught their eye. So I went around the area trying to find something that could represent Carson City. I photographed deer running on the west side, I took pictures of the Capitol and the Laxalt Building, I got snow and pogonip and expansive skies. But then I remembered this lonely flag along Hwy 50 heading up to Spooner Summit. Someone put this flag up a few years ago and I always wanted to stop and get a photo, but it’s tough to stop along that stretch of highway. Last winter the flag disappeared and I thought I lost my chance, but when summer came around it came back. So it’s not just some forgotten flag; it’s kept up by somebody. I finally did pull over along the highway and took some photos, mainly to capture an image of the flag in case it ever went away again, but also in the back of my mind I was framing the shots so they would look good on the cover of a phone book. You know, just in case.
Fast forward a few months, and what do you know, the flag was the one they liked best. I think it works well for a cover photo, much better than last year’s dismal shot, that’s for sure.
All these times we’ve been going to Lake Tahoe we’ve always had to be so careful with our cameras, making sure they stay on shore and don’t get near the water. But this year we actually have a camera that we don’t have to be afraid of taking out on the water, so we’re able to get actual action shots from out on the water. The image quality isn’t the best (especially on the video – ouch!), but it’s better than not having these pictures at all.
This summer our big family trip was to spend two weeks at Disneyland. On a trip like this you take a lot of pictures, and then, as I’m finding out, when you get home it takes a long time to go through and process them all. So that’s why I’m here, six weeks after the end of the vacation, finally posting the first set of photos. Hooray for procrastination!
These aren’t the best eagle photos around, but the only nest nearby is way far away from the road, and access to the land is restricted. So this is about the best I could do, even with a telephoto.
On Monday, March 21st 2011, there was a rally in front of the Nevada Legislature Building. A bunch of college students from all over the state gathered to protest the budget cuts to higher education that were being tossed around the Senate and Assembly. I headed down there to check out the party and the spectacle, and I’m glad I did because over 1,000 people showed up! Some are saying that this is the biggest protest/rally that Carson City has ever seen. Students gathered on the lawn in front of the building, swarmed the halls, and even filled the visitor galleries in both chambers.
I have so many pictures that I’m going to split them up over two days. This is the first batch, and there will be more tomorrow.
Winter finally paid a visit to Carson City. After six weeks of Spring time throughout January and February, Mother nature finally decided to wake up and dump some snow on us. And it was a good size dumping too, at least 6 inches, more in some parts of town. We went to Lake Tahoe and I sunk in fresh powder up to my thigh! But it’s good to finally get some snow, even though we were getting a taste of Spring and got used to it. We’re having a few sunny days now, so all the ice can melt off the roads, but by Thursday we’re supposed to be back under the grip of another storm system. I wonder how long winter will last this year?
The last time I wrote about pogonip, I got a correction that these ice crystals should more properly be considered a hoar frost, or rime frost. It is the fog itself that is pogonip, from the Shoshone phrase for “freezing death”, the idea being that if you breathe it in the crystals will form in your lungs and bad things will happen. I think the etymology is probably correct, but we have built a regional identity around the word “pogonip”, taking this cool frost that forms in a lot of places around the world, and in some small way making it our own.
Around here we get this “pogonip” hoar frost in the heaviest amount close to the river, when a fog rises off the water on cold nights. Further from the river it’s less common. This morning the pogonip was clinging to every surface it could find around the river, and some steam was still rising, even though the fog had been burned off by the sun.
