Buttons & Logo

I took this photo for some posters I designed for Valerie for the next Historical Society exhibit.  I also created the logo below for the exhibit, which will be at the Lansing City hall for a few months.

Constantine The Great

It's been a few years since Valerie and I visited Rome and I took these photos.  We discussed Constantine the Great the other day in Sunday school at church and I decided to look back at some of the photographs I took while in Rome.  These are of a giant statue of Constantine that once stood in the Basilica of Maxentius.  The photograph at the bottom of the page is of Constantine's Arch, which resides next to the Colosseum.

Inside The Knapp's Building

Throwback Thursday - Russian Market 1994

I am not one for all of the internet fads like "Throwback Thursday" and any other series of words that are shortened and to which a "hashtag" has been added.  However, I came across two of my most favorite photographs from Russia a while back and scanned the negatives.  I knew that I wanted to post them someday, but sort of forgot about them for a while.  I had them in a folder in my photo editing program and noticed them again the other day.  They were both taken on the same day in February 1994 in a small town in Russia called Volzhskiy.  The photograph above is one of my favorite photographs of all the hundreds of thousands I have taken over the decades.  I have always mused that it would be the one photograph that I would submit to National Geographic, if the magazine ever came calling for my work.  The picture below is one that makes me wonder where those boys are today, two decades later.  The followed me around while I was at the market, because they thought I was an American journalist.

Zachariah Chandler Statue

This statue of Sen. Zachariah Chandler stands in Michigan's Constitution Hall, downtown Lansing. Chandler was very influential in 19th-Century American politics. He helped found the Republican Party in 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. He was a strong abolitionist and vocal opponent of the secession by the southern states during the Civil War. He opposed the payment of pensions to retired officers of the U.S. Army that fought for the Confederate Army after the end of the war. It was believed he would have been the 1880 GOP nominee for President, but he died on November 1, 1879, nearly a year before the election. This statue previously stood in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol until it was replaced several years ago with a statue of Gerald Ford.

Chandler was the quintessential statesman of his time, yet, sadly, most Michiganders and even fewer Americans have ever heard of him. He wrote a letter to Michigan's Governor right before the American Civil War began that many historians call the "Blood Letter", because it advocated for the shedding of blood to free the slaves in the South. He ultimately spoke those same words in a heated session of the U.S. Senate, which many southern Senators protested. Within a few months of this letter and his speech, the southern states started to secede and actual blood was spilt.

Fort Michilimackinac Windows

Last weekend we stopped at Fort Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City.  For some reason, the windows on all the buildings seemed to fascinate me and I took photographs of several of them.  I also photographed one solitary door.

St. Mary's Church - Dayton, Ohio

Doolittle's Raiders

During World War II, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle and a band of seventy-nine other airmen flew a top secret raid over Japan on January 2, 1942, less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor as a morale boosting maneuver.  They flew their B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier, bombed Japan, and then ditched their planes in China.  They did not have enough fuel to make the return trip to the aircraft carrier, so they had to continue to China.  Seven men of the eighty airmen survived the raid and went on to fly again throughout the war.

After the war, the surviving members of "Doolittle's Raiders" held an annual reunion.  A donor made eighty silver goblets with the names of each of the eighty raiders engraved on both sides - one name facing toward the top of the goblet and the other name facing downward.  The cups facing up are the men that are still alive and the ones facing down are those that have died.  Once there are only two members of the Raiders still alive, they are to open the cognac bottle and have a toast to their comrades.  The goblets are housed at the Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio.  As of our visit to the museum last week, four goblets remained in the upward position.

Space Stuff At Air Force Museum

Apollo 15 Return Capsule - All Three Crew Members Attended The University of Michigan

"Houston, We Have A Problem... You Removed Half The Gauges And Dials From My Spaceship."

NASA's Single Largest Failure

Museum of the USAF - Dayton, Ohio

Valerie and I visited the Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio last weekend.  I have not been to the museum since Dad was still alive.  In fact, the last trip we took together was with the Boy Scout troop to the museum just a month before he got sick.  A third building has been added and a fourth is planned.  After nearly two days of wandering the museum both of us were on overload, as there is so much there.

The Plane That Dropped The Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki

REOTown Advertisement Uncovered

I photographed this fading advertisement on the wall of an old building in Lansing's REOTown.  The building is located on South Washington Avenue directly across from what once was Kwast Bakery.  Until recently, the advertisement was hidden by the adjacent building that has been demolished.  I hold out very little hope that this will remain visible long, as it appears some work is being done on the now vacant lot.  My other fear is that some punk will decide to embellish it with graffiti.

Old Schoolhouse

This old schoolhouse resides next to the Victor Township Hall in Clinton County.  This is the third location for this building.  The schoolhouse was originally located on what used to be Centerline Road, but now is a part of the trail system of Sleepy Hollow State Park.  It was moved once inside the park property and then eventually relocated to its current spot during the construction of the park's campground.

Colonial Williamsburg Miscellany

Old Richmond City Hall - Richmond, Virginia