Category Archives: Places

Transmogrification

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We here at *The Institute know from the many cards and letters we get, that many if not all of you out there wake up nearly every morning with one word in your mind. And Yes, that word is Transmogrification.

Transmogrification as I don’t have to tell you, means to Transform in a surprising or magical manner. So here’s the deal. It seems a lot of you wake up to the following scenario or something like it regularly. You overslept so you didn’t hear Cantu, your piebald Great Dane, whining to go out and now you have a large, gently smoking pile of Cantu’s delight that he off-loaded onto the rug next to your bed and casually spilled over the top of your left slipper so that now you have to take him out in the freaking cold with one bare foot. The toaster oven welded your bagel to its surface and in trying to scrape it off with the butcher knife you didn’t put away last night, you inadvertently touched something in there that carries a large amount of electricity, and now you have cut great huge rents in the kitchen curtains and several of the cabinet doors while in your electrically induced Gran Mal seizure.

You look out of the window and see that someone has stolen the windshield and back seat out of your Prius and spilled those little batteries it uses all over your lawn. This of course caused you to take a cab to the Emergency Room because the Samsung 7 you tried to call the police on, went off in a glorious fireball and now you need an ear graft and one new finger.

There is more but you get the picture. Some of you will have less or greater amounts of these events dependent on how you got along in your past life. You have only yourself to blame for that. However, the one saving grace in the midst of this vale of tears we call our life, is the ability to draw on, you guessed it, Transmogrification. By uttering this word over and over in a clear but steady voice what you see around you will slowly turn itself into the exact image of the picture above and you can draw on its soothing colors and quiet stillness until your life matches the calmness and serenity you see above.

This is a proven and effective technique used daily here at The Institute as the scenarios mentioned above are like the calmness of the surface of Walden’s Pond compared to what goes on here every moment of our day. So use it, use it whenever you feel the need and your day will change we guarantee it. And try and live a better life as this will greatly help you in the next one.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

When Yellow Trees Shine Brightly

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Arches National Park is not really known for its forests or its trees. In fact you can walk a good long way and not see a single one. But when you do it is a marvelous surprise. To see the strong dark trunks rising up out of the arid plain, limbs with their lime green leaves in the spring, bright riotous yellow in the fall, is more than a special sight in this water-less, some say desolate place. It is nearly miraculous.

Although the deep earth tones of the sand and rocks are beautiful in their own way, the addition of these brightly colored wonders make them even more so by the contrast between one lifestyle and another. The hot enduring reds of the cliff faces, the firmly grounded tans with its shimmering heat waves rising up towards the heavens, the occasional dusty burst of color from a flower are the mainstay of this country, but  there is always the special place hidden in a shadowed arroyo where water flows slowly and fitfully under the ground and in rare miraculous occurrences on top of it, that allow the trees, especially the cottonwoods to grow and survive, when by the look of the place they shouldn’t be here at all.

Such is the case with this image taken in late October in Arches National Park. For the high desert it is cool now, the water coursing along beneath the earth as it has been too hot earlier for it to flow on the surface. The sun has been kinder the last few weeks and the trees noticing, have changed their colors to prepare for winter when all things except the wind and snow and occasional jackrabbit and the coyote following it, stop, and it is quiet and still throughout the dark days and nights of that long season until the warmth of Spring returns and the cycle begins again. But that is still a time in the future, right now when yellow trees shine brightly it is a good time to be alive.

A Duck Flew Over Jersey

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Every so often we here at *The Institute like to present some new tidbit of information that our readers don’t know anything about, but that we’ve known about for moments. Today it isn’t really about ducks as the image above may imply, but it’s about Jersey, the country, not the state with all the exits.

Let us back up a moment and explain. First did you even know that there was a country named Jersey. Bet you didn’t. We did because today at our early morning staff meeting we were going over and analyzing the stats for BigShotsNow the blog and there on the report that shows which countries had visited the blog today, was Jersey. Jersey, the country. Many of our younger staff members thought it was a mistake and that the program had dropped the “New” part off of its name. It was those members that had flunked Geography continually right up until they had graduated from college that were most amazed that there could actually be a country named Jersey, and if there were, why had it been named after our American state of the same name. The “E Street Band” is well-known and certainly well worth it, but could it cause a whole country to be named after it? We don’t know, it’s possible I guess. That just goes to show you the value of the “No Child Left Behind” program where entire classes could be promoted to the next grade not knowing if they had walked to school, or wound their watch, as my dad used to say.

Now to use a phrase from one of our more forgettable vice-presidents those “nattering nabobs of negativity” will say “There is no country named Jersey. This is one of those con-jobs you Institutions pull to make yourself look smarter than us.” Well, that’s simply not true. It isn’t, really!  As proof we offer the flag  2016-09-24jerseyflagmap of Jersey, and a real map not drawn by us 2016-09-24jerseymap of the country of Jersey itself. This is a real map not some made up fake one that you see at other Institutes. As you can see by the inclusion of the five cities that are the primary habitation of the 100,000 people that live there. Our favorite is Bouley Bay, pronounced Boo-Lay not Bool because it sounds cooler. It’s our favorite just because it is fun to say. “Bouley, Bouley Bay, OK, OK.” See? We’ve been saying that all morning just as soon as we saw it on the map.

Yes, but what about the duck and the title “A Duck Flew Over Jersey”? If you’ve been a reader of the blog for more than five postings you know that we use a picture as a lead-in to our posts. Normally there would be a more obvious direct tie-in of the picture to the story, but we had this picture of a duck and then those guys from Jersey dropped in and well, we had to do something. So we asked around and sure enough a duck like this, or at least one similar, had flown over New Jersey and by using simple logic, which we might add we excel at, if a duck flew over New Jersey then by rights it could have flown over the country of Jersey too, so, then, well there you have it.  Note: the duck flying over Jersey, the country, may look significantly different than the one pictured above due to the fact that the duck pictured may not even live around Jersey, the country. We didn’t have time, or frankly the inclination, to check that out. Tenuous connection maybe, but so what.

So we say to you folks from Jersey the Country, thanks for stopping by. It was great to have you here and thanks also for lending us the word “bailiwick”. When we were kids we remember old people, those in their 40’s and the really old near-death ones in their 50’s, say things like ” They’re not from around these bailiwicks.” when confronted with strangers, as if where we, the normal good people, lived was a collection of places grouped together that were separate and of course better from the rest of the countryside surrounding us. That meant that if you were from that other weird bailiwick, you could very easily be people of little worth. Of course now with all the political correctness going on we don’t do that anymore, as all people are equally good and worthy. It’s a great time to be American isn’t it.

To all you Jersians, come on back, bring your friends, bring your flag, we’d like to see it close up. Spread the word that although you are a bailiwick-ian you’re always welcome here.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

So, Where You Been Then

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“So, Where you been then.” That is just one of the questions we’ve been asked regarding our dearth of posting for the last month. In fact, pictured above, is Ms. Euclidia Hanson asking it again. “Where you been” she asked ” you don’t write, you don’t call, where you been? I didn’t pay good money to be treated like this.” and so on. (Note: In checking our records we found that Euclidia didn’t pay any money to us at all, and in fact owes us for service since the first of the year and all of last year. We’ll be contacting Ms. Hanson about that just as soon as the rut is over)

But regardless, we have a good answer. This summer has been the summer we have been hitting the powwow trail with a new event occurring almost every weekend. Starting back in April when we attended the Gathering of Nations, the largest inter-tribal powwow in the country, through the summer, and ending with the Crow Fair just last week.

We are working on an exciting new project that we’ll be announcing in the near future that requires lots of photography of the people and events in the powwows that occur throughout the summer. This has produced literally thousands of photographs that have to be processed and evaluated for inclusion in this exciting new project. More on that as we get closer to our release date.

When we are out in the field we run into several problems with posting to the blog. Most notably a lack of decent wi-fi in the areas where the powwows are held. Since that unfortunate incident where our satellite truck went over both the Upper and Lower Yellowstone falls and bent the roof dish all to hell and back and the generator had a total meltdown due to embarrassment or something, leaving us with nothing but an iPhone with a cracked screen, we have not been able to reliably send our posts back to *The Institute for reissuing to the world at large.

Plus now the Park Service is all cheesed off about satellite truck pieces scattered up and down in the Yellowstone river and has made us send people up there in hip waders collecting those parts for reassembly, kind of like they do with plane crashes, to determine how much they want to fine us. I’m not even getting into dealing with the satellite truck rental people, especially after the intern we sent to pick it up didn’t sign the insurance papers for it. He said he saved us $51.00 a day by not taking it. The satellite truck with all the equipment in it was only worth about $750,000.00 so he’s lucky that we can’t get into his hospital room. We’d rearrange his traction equipment for him.

Aside from that it was a great trip. We got incredible images of the different events, even with The Director getting run over by a stampeding horse and knocked tail over tea kettle in the Indian Relay Races at Ft. Hall, Id at the Western Shoshone/ Bannock rodeo. More about that in a separate post coming soon to a monitor near you.

So briefly that was why there were very few posts last month. Sorry. But! and it’s a big one. Watch for postings covering the various powwows and western events we attended this summer. They’re going to be great.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

How Not To Listen For Ground Squirrels

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There are several things wrong going on in this image of Otis Onebear listening for ground squirrels. First is after digging a fairly large-sized wallow in an exploratory gesture to see if ground squirrels were even in the vicinity, he assumed a posture that is very uncomplimentary to bears. Second would be listening for ground Squirrels when it is really hot out.  Sound travels through the earth at a much slower rate when the temperature is above 90°, so you have to wait longer to hear it. Third is leaving your great big bear head in the same place too long instead of moving it all over the place sampling for ground squirrel activity.

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Of course the end result of all of this is preordained. The ground feels so good. The buzzing of the flies is hypnotic. The heat was bearing down on that big shaggy black coat. His butt weighed way too much to be held up in the air like that for very long and the inevitable happened. His big butt slowly and embarrassingly sank down into a pleasant resting position and he was instantly plunged into heavy sleep. Busses full of tourists came by laughing and pointing, taking flash pictures of him in broad daylight. Someone tried to sneak up on him to pin a “Kick Me I’m Sleeping ” sign on him but his tour translator caught him in time and explained about the negative result of “pinning” bears, even if it would be funny back home.

Eventually Otis Onebear woke up, wobbling to his feet and looking around with that baffled expression of  “What?” before heading off into the trees with the vague idea of campsites, lickable empty tin cans, maybe one of those tied up dogs they leave to bark in the afternoon while they’re off falling into geysers and what not. Anything would be better than listening for ground squirrels.

First Light

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Its been a while since we visited the canyon. The sunrise was so beautiful his morning that our image selector here at *The Institute would not even consider any other picture but a sunrise. The Image selector is a tricky beast. It is actually a small device that sits on the desk of our Image Selecting Department head and chooses the images we use here on the blog by a complicated method utilizing algorithms, coin tossing, electroshock, and a gut feeling of what you the viewer would like to see. The Department head uses a selection method based on Eeny Meeny Miney Mo.

Consequently many times there have been heated arguments over which image to use. The Department head, a wizened little gnome with only one eye, will insist on a particular image while ” the Selector” the little black box with the flashing led’s on the front of it will want another one. There is little compromise between a heartless electronic device and a heartless, mean little man. When it gets right down to the nitty-gritty the Department head will often hit the Selector stoutly about its flat back surface until it yields, or as a really last resort yank its little plug out of the socket. This is very effective, however it has its downside. The next time the department head turns on the selector it will send a spike of 440 volt electricity through the keyboard out of spite. It has a long memory. After losing the first department head they rapidly learned to turn the selector on wearing those heavy, made to avoid electrocution, thick rubber gloves. Since 440v is the same electricity that is used to run hotels, huge electric locomotives, and the setting on the coffee machine at McD’s, it is very dangerous stuff.
The Selector chose this image, the department head signed off on it and there  you have it. Beauty for you and for me. This might just be a good day.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

You Might Have Missed’em Already

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We do not usually issue dire warnings here at *The Institute but we felt that this new discovery warranted immediate publication. Many of you know from friends and family or seeing old videos on the Travel Channel that we  have a world-famous collection of Sand Dunes here in America. In Colorado in fact, down near Alamosa in the southern part of the state.

You can find them right next to the road and stop and look at them for absolutely no cost for as long as you want. This a right given us by Mother Nature and signed off on by the Colorado House of Representatives, the State Senate and by our Governor as well.

However the problem and hence the unexpected issuance of the dire warning has to do with a problem that our team of Sand and Gravel and Indigenous Rock researchers have come across. We have researchers that travel the U.S. picking up rocks of all types, big, little, round, flat, those shaped like Uncle Skid’s nose, nicely colored ones, ugly ones, a few that are so large we can’t cross bridges with them on our flatbed trailer we haul along behind one of our research vessels. Consequently we have to dump them alongside the road at the first sign of a bridge. This research is critical to determining just how many stones, rocks and other hard things of a sedimental-like nature we have laying around on our American soil.

As the team proceeded with their gathering of rocks along the edge of the Great Sand Dunes they made a startling discovery. Each morning when they returned to begin picking up rocks they noticed that the dunes had moved father to the right. That’s right the whole darn dune. To test their theory they left a rock right up next to the edge of the tallest dune at the end of the day and sure enough the dune had moved to the right significantly. “Holey Pantalones” they cried. ” The Dunes they are moving. Wowser!” ( I know, we don’t always get those cool quotes you hear those fake scientists in the movies make.) They were stunned. If this is accurate and who says it isn’t unless you came out here and did the work yourself, hauled your own rocks and had to drink warm Tang and everything to keep from collapsing in the noon day sun, then we might pay attention to what you think.

These are real live scientists from The Institute here and if they say the dunes are moving we think you should listen up and pay attention. What for, you might ask. How does this directly affect me? Well, consider this. You’re sitting home in your Barcalounger drinking watered down EverClear and the love of your life comes in and says” Cranston, You’re a fat slob. And you’re drunk too. We’re taking the kids to the Great Sand Dunes on a vacation. Go gas the car.” There is absolutely nothing to be said to that so you go gas the car. Two thousand miles later because you probably live in Pennsylvania or one of those funny little shaped states up near Maine somewhere that would fit in one of our garages out here, and you’ve got all seven of the kids with you and they already pulled all the stuffing out of the backseat to make a campfire on the console because they want to make s’mores and you won’t stop. You’re looking for the turn off to the Great Sand dunes and when you finally see the road you take it and what do you see at the end where all those dunes are supposed to be, nothing. The dunes have moved dude. They are like way the hell and gone down to the right. That’s correct, two thousand miles, screaming kids, your wife is telling you she is going to get a tattoo as soon as she gets home, and no Sand Dunes. Whatcha gonna do now.

If you had listened to us and paid attention when we said the dunes are moving. You would have gotten here, seen the dunes, sent the wife and kids off on a hike into the bear infested woods along the dunes where the compasses don’t work because of the high metal deposits concentrated under the sand, and it would be quiet again. Blessedly quiet. You could head back home through Vegas, yeah we know that’s a little out of your way, but so what. Get a room, play the quarter slots for a while, then point it back East listening to Springsteen and other people your kids hate. So, you going to listen to us, or what. We don’t do all this hard work for nothing. We do it for the good of the nation and the people that live in it. Don’t be a doofuss, pay attention when we tell you stuff. You never know when it will help you out.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.