Photo Non-Contest #151 -- Rough

I'm not feeling too creative with this theme.  It seems that every other blog I've checked has had much better ideas than I do; nevertheless, here's my take on Written Inc's theme for this week.

Rough water and rough rocks at Devil's Churn on a misty morning on the Oregon Coast last summer:

These look a LOT better when they're enlarged.  Please click on them to see them full-sized.

A Little Visit To Wasatch County

Today Max and I drove up to Wasatch County in search of Kodak moments.  We drove through both Midway and Heber City, braving the heat and the wind to click the digital shutters over and over.  I took 117 shots, but I'm sure that was nothing compared to what Max did.  (After all, I'd made a visit just last March and already had a lot of good pics.)
Here are my favorites from today:

No, I didn't photograph a Thomas Kincaid calendar; it's just a ditch in Midway with a nice little fuzzy matte around it to squeeze out the water pipe that was actually in the lower left hand corner.

Remember the Sinclair dinosaur?  I do.  And here's a vintage one at the Fill'er Up Coffee Shop in Midway.  We didn't go inside, but there was plenty to photograph outside.

This is an antique toy car in front of a home-spa called Paint My Piggies.

Max and I wandered the Heber cemetery, he in search of funky tombstones to photograph and I in search of my relatives' graves.  This set (no relations to me) looks exactly like a chess set from a distance.  Definitely a Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone moment here.

A little tinkering with this shot got it looking like I'd taken it with my mother's old brownie camera.  I've titled it "Instant Vintage."
The shot is of the old Tabernacle in Heber City, which now houses city government offices as a re-purposed building.
Remember to click on the photos to enlarge them.
(Here's the link to Max's post on our trip.)

My "Kids" And Their Kids

I can't post pics of my students anymore, but no one said anything about not posting pics of my FORMER students, especially the ones who are adults now.
This week I went to a wedding of a former student, and, since I taught her, her brother, and her three step-brothers, I got to see quite a few of my former students at the wedding.
I took this pic of the brother of the bride, holding his second son:

And then I started playing with it:

And again:

Then today I went with another former student to take two of her kids to Red Butte Garden.  I took three snaps of her baby boy eating a rice cake near the sandbox -- and of course I had to play with those pics as well.

And, no, it's not mislabeling for me to have "academic team" on this post; both the former students in question played on the school's academic team.  :)

(Remember to click on the pics to see them full-sized.)

Photo Non-Contest #150 -- Signs That Make Us Wonder

Written Inc's theme this week is about crazy signs.  I can SO do this theme.
Forgive me, but some of these have been on my old site in earlier times.  But, here they are now, all together, for your enjoyment, ladies and gentlemen!!

Let me begin with my absolute favorite ever, an old poster pulled from the walls of the school where I teach in 1995.  Yes, the local high school's dance director was an English teacher -- but she apparently didn't like to proofread.

Yup.  Best lesson on "why it's important to learn to spell" ever.  Kinda makes you wonder what you're getting for the 6 bucks, doesn't it?  ;)

And my other favorite is this one:

Duh.
Okay, to be fair, this was taken at the Great Salt Lake several years ago, during one of the drought years.  No doubt if I went out today, that sign would make a lot more sense.

And here's one posted at a resort condo with an addition by an apparently tired guest:

This one comes from Cedar City, Utah, where one of the other English teachers from my school demonstrates the DUH factor here.  This one makes you wonder why that sign became necessary....

And this one's a label, but it does show why British and American English are not interchangeable.  Also, my students LOVE this.

For those of you who believe a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a great sign from Astoria, Oregon, explaining very succinctly why it is hazardous to ride bikes on the dock.

Again, it makes you wonder why this sign became necessary.  :0


And here's another one near and dear to my heart.

Enlarge the photo by clicking on it to see the sign better.  This is from Edinburgh, Scotland.  And, yes, there's a craft fair in that kirkyard every year during the festival season.  Gotta love it.  :)

And this is just a doofy one that made me do a double take in a parking lot one day.

This one was also in Oregon.  ;)

Lagoon!

Today our school's academic team went to Lagoon.  Of course I took my camera.

This is quite a tall Ferris wheel.  Each of those baskets holds about 6 people.  True, it's hardly the London Eye, but it's tall enough to give me the willies.  I've only ridden this one once, many years ago.  And that was enough.

I much prefer this Ferris wheel, called the Paratroopers.  The chairs are fastened at the top instead of the sides and the seats rock and swing as you go around.  But it's not very high, so I'm good with this one.

I much prefer roller coaster rides.  The most famous roller coaster at Lagoon is known as the "old white roller coaster," and it was built in 1921.  It's rickety and awesome.
This spiral one was added in 1972, if my memory serves me correctly.  It's called the Jet Star 2 and is fairly fun.  Mostly I just liked the colors and shapes in this one.  (I don't know any of the people riding it in this shot.)

And this one is of three people on the Sky Coaster, although it appears to be of a centipede on a string.  
I just like the way they're all soaring into the sun here.  :)

Photo Non-Contest #147 -- Got The Blues

Written Inc's theme this week is "the Blues."  Now just last December we did the color blue as a theme, so I have to stay away from that.  And I had this great shot of 2 of my academic team boys looking depressed when a game wasn't going well, but I can only post kids' photos on the school blog now, so that's out.
So, cemeteries.
Yup, that's what I came up with: cemeteries.
I actually have lots of European cemetery photos taken with a film camera, but not so many with digital, so here's one great got-the-blues/death-is-sobering snap of a lonely cemetery in Orphir in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland.  The light's nice on this one, I think.

And, in contrast to this green cemetery on an island (the sea is right over the hill), here's a dry, dusty shot taken on an autumn day so hazy you can't even see the mountains across the valley.

The sandstone headstones here are unmarked because very little is known about the people they represent.  (The small ones are children; the larger ones are adults.)  In the 1980s, construction workers in downtown Salt Lake City found a small burial plot that turned out to belong to some of the earliest white settlers in the valley.  Long before DNA testing was available, it was impossible to verify more than a couple of the identities.  Originally, the plan was to put the bodies in the city cemetery, but then someone suggested that they be placed up the mountainside from Old Deseret Village, a living history museum at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, which was the entrance point to the valley before roads and trains came through.  So, the graves overlook the valley their inhabitants once traveled over a thousand miles to find.  It's a bittersweet tale, just right for the blues, I think.
(Remember to click on the photos to see them full size.)

Photo Non-Contest #145 -- Vehicular (Part 2)

Written Inc's theme this week is "vehicular."  Yesterday I did boats, so today it's a different form of transportation:

I took this last summer.  It's a row of replica handcarts on a street in the living history museum of Old Deseret Village in Salt Lake City.  Between 1856 and 1860, ten companies of Mormon pioneers who were too poor to afford covered wagons and oxen, which were the favored mode of transportation for those coming West, traveled with their belongings in handcarts, which were basically just big, wooden, wheelbarrows.  Obviously, many of these people died along the way, and, in retrospect, it does seem incredibly foolish that these poor immigrants didn't find work in the East first and earn enough money to come West with more stable protection.  However, the handcart pioneers are revered by most Mormons today, and the handcart has become the symbol of pioneering, faith, and endurance.
Personally, I'm glad that my ancestors had the sense to come by wagon, as every last one of their families made it to the valley in reasonable health, but folks like that don't seem to get the glory of the less sensible ones.
In any case, these particular handcarts are dragged out for a parade every 24th of July, which is Pioneer Day in Utah, a state holiday that marks the arrival of the first Mormon settlers on July 24, 1847.  The irony is, of course, that the first handcarts didn't make it on the scene for nearly a decade after that date.
Anyway, I like the wheels in the picture.