April 2026

A Certain Kind of Light
Jackson, Wyoming
2014

A foggy, rainy day with a bit of lighter sky poking through the clouds now and then.

Elk Fence
National Elk Refuge, Wyoming
2018

Bouncing around in my photo archives, I keep finding “unused” images from years ago that seem to deserve some attention. I assume this is a fence to constrain elk given it borders the National Elk Refuge, although most elk fences I’ve seen along highways are full field fence setups.

Braided Stream
Rochester, Minnesota
2025

This tar-patched asphalt reminded me of an aerial view of a river or stream wandering across some flatlands creating many islands. I took the photo shortly after it rained and oddly enough all the pavement was still wet, except for the “islands.” I’m not sure why they would dry out faster.

I like this photo but it has no great meaning to me other than I just happened to notice it on one of my camera’s memory card the other day and realized  it was the last photo I took before entering the Mayo Clinic one year ago next week. It would be some six months before I got out and was able to take my next photo as a “free man”.

A Few of the Many
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
2026

We drove to Yellowstone and over through Lamar Valley yesterday. Along the way we saw probably well more than 1,000 bison. Every new view along the drive seemed to contain a small to medium sized herd (generally less than 100). These smaller groupings  went on for miles. One day I hope to come across a view of 1,000+ bison all in one single view. Until then I’ll just have to photograph a sampling of the population.

Cucucahoo
Venice, Italy
2008

I came across this photo while perusing the Way Back Machine on my computer the other day. I skipped over it as far as printing it or posting it as a POTD back then. But it struck me as deserving of a bit of attention this time around. The title likely needs no explanation for many of you, but just in case, listen to this:

One of the comments on today’s POTD was about the busy (gaudy?) roof-line of the house. That spawned a whole train of thought in regard to why I like this particular house (waif in the window or not), including the roof-line, so I thought I’d go through it here for fun.

Back when the design for our mountain house was little more than a gleam in the corner of my eye, I happened to read Richard Brautigan’s novel The Hawkline Monster. The cover of the book looked like this:

Given we were wanting to design our house to be sort of a neo-Victorian design, we were really drawn to this image. Note that the complicated roofline and the lightning rods and other roof attachments shows a remarkable similarity to the house in today’s POTD, shown again here:

I would have build a house just like the Hawkline Mansion on the book cover–except that very real money, time, skill, and size constraints, as well as general inclination, scaled down the look considerably. But, except for the roof-line fixtures, you can perhaps see the book cover’s influence on our result here:

At some point in the design of the house, when I was still researching Victorian designs, I stumbled across this 1930s photo by Russell Lee from the depression era archives of the Farm Home Administration:

Clearly the cover of the Hawkline Monster was painted based on the photo of this house, complete with the roof accoutrements (again similar to the waif house in today’s POTD). One year I was going down to Wichita Falls, Texas for an exhibit opening of some of my photography and realized I was going to be near Comanche, Texas where this photo was taken. So I took a side trip there to look for the house. Comanche is a small town, but I drove all around the place and could not find it. Finally, I stopped into the local library and talked to the head (only?) librarian there and she knew all about the house, except that she’d never seen the painting on the book cover. She told me the place was torn down sometime after the end of WWII, but she told me exactly where to find the location.

When I got to the corner where the house used to be, there was an architecturally uninspiring house from the 1950s or 60s. I did see this partial fence around the lot which I imagine was part of the original build:

I was pretty disappointed in the house being torn down so long ago, but I did get a bit of a feel for the old neighborhood by looking at the house across the street:

So that’s a roundabout story of roof-lines and home designs. But if you think the roof-lines of the waif house and the Hawkline Mansion are busy consider this photo of the roof-line of a building in Venice, Italy that I took back in 2008:

Waif in the Window
Nevada City, Montana
2026

This is the kind of old house I’d really, really like to take a look inside. Unfortunately this place is heavily fenced and signed “No Trespassing.” It’s not clear if anyone is currently living there, other than the waif in the window of course.

The Torch
Virginia City, Montana
2026

Apparently if you’re really carrying a torch for someone, you can also use this place as a wedding venue.

Patriot’s Dream #93
Virginia City, Montana
2026

Lectio #87
Virginia City, Montana
2026

Taken through the window of a locked building, I couldn’t actually page through these books and I couldn’t read the title of the top book in the photo. But the second book is “Reluctant Rebel” by F. F. Van de Water (about pre-Revolutionary War apparently) and the bottom book is “Complete Stories of the Great Operas” by Milton Cross. Both books were published in the mid-1940s and apparently neither is particularly popular these days given the dearth of reviews of them online.