Locked In

President Obama announced yesterday he was freezing federal employee salaries for two years to help reduce the federal deficit.

While this affects my family directly and I'm not wild about it, the President makes a compelling case. Inflation is supposedly down, and the proposed COLA increase for 2011 was only 1.4%.

Meanwhile my wife and I were just talking yesterday about how much grocery prices have risen lately. I'm watching gasoline continue to creep up a few cents every day (I saw it at $3.14 today — yikes). What are the odds our health premiums will go down next year?

It sounds like further cuts are coming. I'm willing to do my part. Ask me in two years how it went.

Money Always Gets In The Way

Standing at the side of the Treasury Building you can look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

Before the Treasury was built, you could apparently see directly to the Capitol from the White House — it was a straight shot down Penn Avenue.

Maybe the symbolism is fitting these days that the capital is now on the way to getting to the Capitol.

Treasure

Flag and columns from the east side of the Treasury building, Washington DC.

St. John's Church

I've shown pictures of its landscaping, but I guess not of the actual St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church, in Washington DC. I find it an unusual church building because of its striking color, but St. John's is also distinguished because of its POTUS parishioners. The plaque outside reads:

Every President of the United States since President James Madison has attended occasional services here. Many of them were communicants of the parish.

St. John's is along the north end of the White House bordering Lafayette Park, and it's a beautiful landmark along my path between work buildings when I'm walking to and from meetings.

Walk in Shadow

Pennsylvania Avenue near the end of the day, Washington, DC.

Coliseum 2

Another speleothem from Howe Caverns which reminds me of another coliseum.

This time, it's the coliseum from Star Wars Episode II, where the flying termite bug-people all descend to watch three different monsters try to defeat our Jedi heroes and smoochy girlfriend. Not three of the same kind of monsters, but one of each kind. These drones really know how to have a good time.

Oops, Jango Fett, your helmet came off. Wait, maybe that's a good thing.

Coliseum 1

A speleothem 156 feet underground at Howe Caverns. It was formed as water-borne minerals dripped from the cave ceiling over hundreds of years. It quite reminded me of the Roman Coliseum.

We went to Howe Caverns around Halloween when it was set up as a spook alley, they pumped it full of fog and hired a few dozen kids to dress as zombies, act creepy and follow you around.

I would have rather had the real tour and heard about cave geology, but I was there with a bunch of teenage boys who came for the creep show.

Spectre

Straight out the camera, no tomfoolery except for underexposure.

They say stormy weather and fog are a photographer's best friend, but a close third is a smoke machine.

Taken 156 feet underground at Howe Caverns.

Steuben

As a former resident of Steuben County, New York I was interested to know about this statue I pass often in DC's Lafayette Park.

Baron von Steuben was a Prussian military officer that came to serve the American colonists as a general in the Revolutionary War alongside George Washington. He is called the "drillmaster of the American Revolution" for introducing military training and discipline to the Continental Army.

After his retirement, he had a summer home in Remsen, near Utica, NY, a couple hours west of us. He is buried there, at what is now the Steuben Memorial State Historic Site.

Southeast

A beautiful fall morning looking southeast from the middle of Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. The Treasury is in the distance behind the golden trees.

This would be a picture of the White House if I spun my camera a quarter turn to the right.

My Favorite Mistake

This was a mistake I made this summer at the edge of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

I was using my tripod to take these really long exposures, like 20 and 30 seconds.

After one picture I went to zoom my lens to change views. What I didn't realize was my camera was still in the middle of taking the previous picture. And this is what I got.

Boston Temple Trip

On Veterans Day I helped take 35 church kids to visit the Boston Temple (somehow we missed a carload for the photo).

I added the extra middle row seat to our Odyssey so I could squeeze in Malcolm plus six more 12-14 year old boys. It was hilarious to watch them work out the seating arrangements amongst themselves to stagger the younger, skinnier boys amongst the older, bigger boys for the 3-1/2 hour ride each way.

A few years back when we were shopping for vans, the Honda dealer of course gave us the test drive in the most extravagant model with leather seats and a DVD player. When we first loaded our kids in they were bouncing off the seats, folding them up and down, looking in all the little compartments, exclaiming about all the cup holders, and generally making a racket. In the glove box we found a boring sales DVD about the van's features. We popped it in to see what it would be like to have TV in the car.

Sudden stillness. Complete silence. Guess which van we bought?

Being stuck in a van with seven young teenage boys for 400 miles sounds like a painful way to spend a day off. But they watched movies the whole way and found other ways to entertain themselves, and the trip went right by. The one movie I had to turn off was "Toy Story" — so many of them had every line and nuance memorized and felt compelled to quote it the entire way through. They couldn't promise me they'd stop. Next film, please.

We had late lunch at a huge buffet, and from the adults' table I saw the boys go back for multiple Slurpees and dinner plates of cake and ice cream. It was fun to watch them laughing so much.

In the end I'm hoping their experience at the temple at least balanced out all the movies and dessert they pumped into their systems. I know I had a really great day.

I Was Just Leaving

I hate to tell you I didn't hike for hours to find this idyllic scene. Out our bedroom window our neighbor's trees rain these perfect golden leaves. Raise the window, pop the screen, tilt out the top window, and then it's shooting fish in a barrel.

I took this photo last Saturday, just before I sucked up the leaves on our side of the yard with my mower.

Happy Veterans Day

I work for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. One of the nicer things about my agency is its clear-cut mission. I'll be sitting in meetings and someone will say, "What would be best for our veterans?" That little possessive word "our" says a lot. I love that dedication to our citizen audience. I can happily report this attitude is ever-present.

This photo is from the front of VA's headquarters, which is within sight of the White House. The quote on the lower plaque is from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered a month before the Civil War ended. Lincoln used the occasion to make a statement on the nation's next "course to be pursued," which included caring for veterans and their families.

Lincoln's speech does not mark the start of caring for military veterans and their families on the American continent — it is evidenced among the Plymouth colonists and earlier American civilizations. And it is a priority VA helps lead today, which I am glad to be a part of.

Dappled

Facade of the Hotel AKA across the street from my office in DC.

Autumn in White

Last Friday in Washington DC. I had a morning meeting a few blocks from my office so I took my camera along to sightsee on the walk back.

Their fall is a little behind ours in New York. The sun was still low and golden — it was brisk but otherwise sunny and beautiful. Just a great time to be out walking around.

I'm used to seeing red flowers around the waterfall on the north lawn of the White House, so this was a little surprise I loved finding.

That's A Mouthful

I found a cool online app called Wordle that generates a "word cloud" based on the 150 most frequently used words in the text you submit. The larger the word appears, the more commonly it appears in your writing.

I input a text file with four years of blog entries from the Grandon Fan Club, and this is what it spit out.

So evidently the Grandon Fan Club's author is fixated on "got, get, one, time, see, around, week, and camera." As in —

"I've got to get around to see if I have time to get that one new camera next week."

Kind of reminds me of playing Apples To Apples, when at the end of the game everybody uses the green cards they won to describe themselves.

Spires Afire

One of the scenes from my trip last Friday on my way home from a week in DC — the Washington DC Temple.

What's amazing about this shot is it's a total grab taken at 65+ mph on the Beltway from the back of a bouncing shuttle through tinted windows. Despite the odds, when I saw the spires emerging the flaming trees I had to give it a try.

I want to kiss whoever invented camera vibration reduction right on the mouth.

Details, Details

Nighttime details of the incredible glass mosaics as seen from the outside of St. Stephen Martyr Church, in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington, DC.