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.

As usual, more pictures can be found at Flickr. And let’s hope that it doesn’t take another size weeks to go through the second set.

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.

More can be seen at Flickr.

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.