Forget Aesthetics: Preserving History Builds Cold Hard Cash

Around 1980, I was talking to the then-public relations person for the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce about downtown Ogden and 25th Street.

At that time a huge block of buildings, where Karen's Cafe and Ogden Blue now stand, had been torn out for "renewal," and it was this person's opinion that the whole rest of the street should get the same treatment.

"Rip it all out and build new," he said.

He sort of got his wish with all the buildings where the Ogden City Mall went in. We all know how well that worked out.

Meanwhile, Two-Bit Street was kept, and the torn-out buildings replaced with others of the same style, and slowly, building by building, the street was rehabilitated and renewed. Now the street hums.

Latest example is "Alleged," a new bar (and restaurant soon?) put into where the El Borracho Bar used to be, at 205 25th Street. What was once a pretty seedy dive where people regularly found themselves dead is now a very nice watering hole, complete with roof deck. How cool is it?

Roof view from Alleged. Image stolen from Alleged Facebook Page. 

This all leads up to, and illustrates, an interesting talk I went to Thursday afternoon at Union Station, courtesy of the Utah Heritage Foundation, to answer the question of whether you can put a dollar amount on the value of preserving history.

As it turns out, you can. A lot of dollars.

Donovan Rypkema, the consultant hired to do the study, gave his talk at Union Station Thursday after similar talks in Salt Lake and Brigham City. He said Thursday's talk had "not only the best crowd" of all his talks, "but the coolest building."

Which figures. Union Station, of course, is a prime example of the very value of preservation that he was talking about. No, it doesn't turn a profit either for Ogden or the Union Station Foundation, but Union Station is a key economic magnet for other businesses in central Ogden. "Alleged" mentions Union Station in its advertising materials.

What Rypkema's studies showed was how much cash is generated, or saved, by the sort of historic preservation that keeps buildings like Union Station, or Ogden's many historic homes, or the old El Borracho, from being torn down and replaced by generic McBuildings.

Among other findings:

-- Rehabbing your average single family historic house instead of tearing it down saves 116 tons from having to go to the landfill. The amount of energy needed to tear that house down and build another one is equal to 12,338 gallons of gasoline.

-- If all the homes in Utah that have been rebuilt using historic building credits had been razed instead it would have generated 131,471 tons of construction debris, enough to fill three football fields 40 feet deep, and used energy equal to almost 14 million gallons of gasoline.

 -- From 1990 to 2012 Utah generated 4,969 jobs because of historic preservation.

-- Every $1 million in historic preservation generates 17 jobs, $847,000 in wages, $998,000 in secondary economic activity.

-- Hate the federal government? Every $1 million spent on historic preservation generates $200,000 in tax credits, money that stays in Utah instead of going to DC.

-- In four of five cities studied, historic districts were hurt less hard by the bursting of the housing bubble and retained value better afterwards. The one exception was Ogden, but Rypkema admitted that he included the recently added "Trolly District," which extends to Harrison Boulevard and from 20th to 30th Streets, containing large areas where no historic preservation has yet been done.

-- All cities studied had lower foreclosure rates in historic districts than outside them.

-- Cities that emphasize historic preservation have seen rapid and large increases in rentals, occupancy and businesses that generate sales tax revenue. Brigham City was high in this regard.

-- If historic preservation were a single business it would be larger than 98 percent of all the rest of Utah's businesses.

-- Direct and indirect spending by visitors to Utah heritage sites and historic events is nearly $1 billion a year.

And on and on.

This is just a sample. The summary I got last night is there now, and the whole study will be available at the Utah Heritage Foundation web site in a month. Meanwhile, as you ponder whether to preserve that old home you are living in, or think the city should tear out that old block of buildings and build new, think again.

The fiscally wiser, more conservative, more rewarding solution, may lie in preservation.

A KKK For Blacks, and other gems from old newspapers

Still working on Ogden's vibrant and fascinating history of trunk murders at Union Station, but while doing so I came across some fun little stories.

As you may have noticed, newspapers today are lucky to have three or four stories in a page. This morning's Standard-Examiner front has just four,  very typical.

Back in the 1920s, and into the 70s, you could expect to find a dozen stories, at least. Pages were larger, pictures were smaller, people apparently had the patience to read a lot more, but there was also a very practical layout reason.

You've heard the New York "Times" slogan, "All the news that's fit to print" lampooned as "All the news that fits." That latter was often true.

Type used to be laid out in large columns of lead type. If there was more type than would fit in the space allowed, the typesetter would find a convenient end of  sentence near the bottom of the story, chop off the rest of the type and that would be that.

The excess type went into what was romantically called the "Hellbox," on the floor nearby, to be remelted and used again. This is why, as a cub reporter, I was told to never, ever, put anything important at the bottom of my stories, the famous "inverted pyramid" style of news writing.

But what if a story was too short, leaving a gap?

The typesetter had two options. One was to insert small sheets of lead between lines of the story to make the story longer. The other, if the gap was long enough, was to plug the hole with a very small story. For this purpose he had several trays of small stories, already set in type with headlines, ready to go.

As you wander through old newspapers you find these at the bottom of the page. They are charmingly random and timeless, but also surprisingly informative. Reading them is like finding prizes scattered around the paper.

Consider this one, from March of 1924. Apparently the KKK was worried about a rival organization, The "Loyal Legion of Lincoln" formed by black people. Somehow "the LLL" just doesn't roll off the tongue easily, and a fiery "L" instead of a cross?

I did some digging. The Google thingy found a reference in a book called "African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio 1915-1930" that refers to this interesting blurb.

Apparently it was not blacks, but whites, forming the league, although the group was supposedly for blacks. Does that make any sense?  Considering the attitude of KKK folk to blacks, not really. Says the book:

"Ohio Klansmen even presumed to create a separate black branch of the Klan in 1924. Youngstown Klan officials, through a black agent, Paul Russell, organized the Loyal Legion of Lincoln, which was intended to be a national organization headquartered in Youngstown. The Loyal Legion shortly became defunct when Grand Scorpion Russell apparently absconded with funds collected from white Klansmen to finance the organization."

Sounds to me as if Grand Scorpion Russell pulled a neat scam. I hope he ran far -- lynchings of blacks were common news in the 20s.

From the "Some Things Never Change" Department comes this squib, also from 1924, saying that reading the Bible shall be mandatory in all Kentucky schools.

I see outraged Facebook posts daily about people being told they must join a church before they are allowed to immigrate, or Arizona's Religious Freedom Restoration Act that apparently protects religious folks right to force others to listen to their prayers and so on.

The ACLU gets involved in a lot of these (click)  because, in forcing one religion's "freedom," they end up denying another's. Muslims are getting a lot of grief in that regard these days.

But this is nothing new. Religious fundamentalism was far more pervasive in public policy in the first half of the last century. Government led prayer was common.  The 1920s saw (click) the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925.

So Kentucky threatening teachers if they didn't read the Bible in 1924 was pretty normal then and, sadly, still going on today in some form or other.

Finally, this fun blurb that just screams for a mystery or romance novel treatment.

Think about it: A lowly stenographer, bored out of her skull listening to continuous drivel from locally elected lawmakers, dreams of escape, glamor, the glitter of Hollywood!

I've sat through the Utah Legislature, a gang of idiots who I am sure are no brighter, or entertaining, than their Illinois counterparts of any decade. More than once I dreamed of escape. Can you imaging a stenographer's lot, getting writer's cramp taking all that bumpf down?

So one day in 1916 she disappears, heading across the American west to chase her dream.

Times are tough, but she works her way, learning to act, or dance, or sing, or something. Finally she's good enough for the cabarets of a small, tough, border town. She saves up a small stake, moves to LA, and makes her move, telling the local paper "Here I am!"

Did she make it? The normally very helpful Internet Movie Database (www.Imdb.com)  finds nothing with her name, which may or may not mean anything. I bet a lot of actors never got their names recorded back in those early days.

I like to think she found, if not fame, at least happiness. Anything, even singing in a bar in Tijuana, would be better that sitting through a state legislature's drivel.

A Cool House Gets A Facelift, Union Station Tries to Help

So I was pedaling down 25th Street to write about Ogden's trunk murders but got distracted by the slowly emerging gorgeousness of the house at 726 25th Street.

You know the place. It's the most ornate home in town, complete with onion dome and lots of gingerbread, an architect's fantasy, almost. Someone said "I'm going to do this one right," and did.

Over the last couple of months the place has slowly taken on a host of lovely colors -- blues and greens and rust reds and burnished golds. A network of steel scaffolding surrounds it and, today, there was a guy in blue athletic shorts standing on one, carefully daubing the woodwork.

That's Mylon Lauritzen, who bought the house a year ago. It is his dream house forever, he said, and he's trying his best to restore it to its former glory.

Mylon said he's lived in Utah most of his life, as has his wife. A few years back he started eyeing this place as one he'd want to live in, and a year ago things worked out.

It's a very cool house. The plaque listing it as a Ogden City Historic Place says it was built in 1890 by Andrew J. Warner, a former member of the Ogden City Council as well as cashier and clerk at the Reed Hotel, which used to be down on 25th Street across from Union Station. The plaque says it is a superb example of the Queen Ann style of architecture, the best remaining in Ogden.

In addition to living in the house, Mylon is hoping to dig up as much of its history as he can. One of his big frustrations is just trying to find a picture of the original owner. Warner  was on the city council, was a bigwig around Ogden and hung out with members of the Eccles family. Surely someone pointed their Kodak at him said "Hey Andy, SMILE!"

Musta been camera shy. When I got down to Union Station I dug through our archives and came up empty. I must note that our archives are not all that big, however, but Mylon said he also checked with Weber State's Special Collections library.

We do have one sheet of blueprints from a restoration done in 1977 by Ronald D. Hales, who was preparing the house to use as an office for his architects business. Mylon said the Hales family got hold of him after he bought the house and gave him files and pictures Hales took at the time.

Mylon said that, like most old mansions from Ogden's boom days, this one fell on hard times. At one time it was broken up into apartments.

Thankfully, nothing worse happened to it. The Jefferson neighborhood mansions are a good example of how far down some of those places can sink. One had as many as 20 apartments in it. Even as big as those homes were, they must have been very small apartments, little more than efficiencies, usually the last step before a fire or the wrecking ball.

Fortunately, Ogden is working to keep that from happening. The Jefferson district is lovely.

I didn't ask Mylon if he got city help to do his house. Either way, he's the guy on the scaffold in the hot sun, working to make downtown Ogden a better place, the same as the many volunteers at Union Station and all the nice folks opening their own businesses on 25th Street and areas nearby.

That's how we do things around here. Bit by bit, building by building, we're rebuilding our city ourselves.  I think that's just cool.

Next up: Ogden, trunk murder destination, or "You shipped us what?"

Why Marijuana Should Be Legal

Interesting article in my morning paper (sorry, can't find a link on the S-E's really badly designed web site -- sure wish that redesign would hurry up) about some marijuana ash found in a church classroom in South Weber.

Some ash, some soda cups and an empty 7-up bottle. Obviously, the work of hardened criminals!  Either that or a coupla teens goofing.

My bet? The latter.

Even so, it's obviously serious because it made the paper. In the story, says Weber Sheriff Sgt. Susan Poulsen, they found fingerprints which "will be held in the data base, so if any of the people involved want to come forward now, the consequences would be better than if we have to track them down or find them at a later date."

Track them down, for smoking pot in a church classroom?

Actually, this is not an idle threat. One marijuana conviction on your record can harm employment possibilities for decades to come, the current occupant of the White House not withstanding. And the current bruhaha over government snooping shows just how wide that database can go, and probably does.

Did you catch the deputy's tone in the paper? I have every confidence she is a good, dedicated law enforcement officer, but the quote in the paper makes it sound as if she, or someone, is going to take great joy in chasing down these drug fiends, even if it takes years, and throwing them in the slammer. Surrender now and it will go easy on you!

This already happens a lot -- 1.8 million drug arrests per year in this country, most for possession of small amounts of mary jane. The US already imprisons, at great expense, almost as many people as China, which has four times our population, because of the idiotic war on drugs.

None of this has to be. Legalizing pot -- let's hear it for Colorado! -- would stop a lot of that. The drug cartels would face vastly reduced profits, kids wouldn't have to sneak around breaking into churches, to use it, and deputies who find a little bit of ash from MJ would just say "It's just a coupla kids goofing," and let it go at that.

Which, you know, is precisely what the officer would have said if it had been beer bottles they found instead of ash and 7-Up.

Not condoning breaking into churches, mind you, but let's get a little perspective. Make MJ legal, treat stupid incidents like this like the stupid incidents they are.

Then  the law enforcement folks could work on more serious stuff, and those kids wouldn't have to worry about this silly incident ruining their lives in 20 years if they apply for a job that requires a security clearance.

Driver, Driver, Spare That Cyclist!

Now that I don't have my print column I can't run my annual plea for people to not run into people riding bicycles.

I usually try to include people on motorcycle on that plea -- fair is fair -- although I have yet to see any motorcycle group include bicycles in its annual plea.

They're zooming by at 70, I'm panting by at 15, maybe they don't see me. Whatever.

What got me thinking along these admittedly self-centered lines is a link WSU Physics Prof. Dan Schroeder put up on Facebook to this guy (click), a blogger who writes about saving money.

Pleas about safety and humanity haven't gotten either cyclists or car drivers to pay attention -- maybe appealing to cold hard cash will earn them some respect.

The guy who writes this blog saved so much so quickly just by being thrifty that he retired before the age of 40.  One of the ways he did so was to downsize to one used gas-sipping car and ride bicycles as much as possible.

He, as do I, hears people say bicycles aren't as safe as cars. He makes a very good argument that riding a bicycle is actually safer -- numbers and statistics are such fun -- although I have to admit he totally lost me. Still, I sincerely believe that I am safer on my own bicycle, and I do save a bundle riding it.

That's because the annual cost of owning a bicycle is really low, while the annual cost of owning a car is not. I just put $45 worth of liquid gold into my car, which puts  a real dent in the old Social Security check. That gasoline will last, maybe, three weeks.

I haven't spent that much on my bicycles all year, so far.

The problem most people face, of course, is living lives that allow them to use bicycles for anything other than recreation. We all grew up with cars and constructed lives around them -- our jobs are convenient to highways, our homes are an easy drive to stores and so forth. People who live in Plain City apparently don't mind driving 10 miles to buy groceries.

For a significant number of Americans to switch to bicycles, they'd have to shift their entire lives around. They'd have to find homes close to where they live and work (no more commuting from Ogden to Provo!)  they'd have to start walking, or running, or (wow!) riding a bicycle a little bit more each day so they are in shape for the average 2.3 miles Americans ride every day.

I'm fortunate in that my "job" at Union Station is an easy 10 minutes away by bicycle. My wife can walk to her job at Weber State University. If I just need one or two things, I can even ride to the grocery store -- and riding a bicycle is amazingly limiting on impulse purchases, another money suck.

It will not be easy, but everything counts. A Sierra Club fact sheet (click) linked to in the blog says even the less than 2 percent of Americans who do use bicycles for basic transportation crank out 9 billion miles a year. Divide that by average car mileage, multiple by the price of gasoline alone and you have a chunk of change saved. Total savings are even more -- around $4 billion, if you figure - as that article does - the cost per mile of a bicycle is 10 cents, while a car costs you more than 60 cents.

Personally, I think 10 cents is a bit high.  But then, I do my own bicycle maintenance.  My total cost is usually a set of new tires every three years or so, which is about $100, and worth every penny (buy Gatorskins!!). 

And I haven't even mentioned the cash value of health benefits of riding. Go by bicycle, save wads of cash in money spent on cars AND medical bills. As the MMM Blog says "It is not an exaggeration to say that a bicycle is a money-printing fountain of youth, probably the single most important and highest-yielding investment a human can possibly own."

If the number of people using bicycles to get around in Utah were to double, there might be enough voices to get the UDOT to spend less money on highways like that idiotic west Davis extension of the Legacy Parkway, and more on bicycle lanes/paths/trails. 

We'd save $600 million right there, all tax dollars that car drivers have to pay too. And that's just one road we wouldn't need if more people pedaled.

So, car drivers, if you see someone on a bicycle,  be nice -- that poor soul pedaling along is trying to save you money too.

Is This A Morrisite War Leftover?

One of the fun things about working in a museum is the stuff that just shows up.

For example, this thing recently walked through the door: A 5-inch steel ball weighing around 12 pounds.

Kein Swain, who lives in Roy, brought it in. He said he dug it up a few years ago while doing some excavating in South Weber, near where the toll road ends on the south side of the river. It was buried about three feet down.

Initially he gave it to his girlfriend, he said. Perhaps she felt a rusty steel ball wasn't the most romantic of gifts, whatever, but he finally decided to see if anyone could tell him what it was.

It looks like a cannon ball, but he wondered if it might also be something used to crush wheat, or in mining and milling ore?

The guys in the John M. Browning Firearms Museum had another thought: The Morrisite War.

As related in the 1940 history of Ogden (one of those wonderful WPA projects) Joseph Morris was a Mormon who got into trouble with the church for teaching "advanced doctrines" that he had discovered because, he said, God was speaking to him.

He split from the main body of the church and, in 1860, set up a small church in Slaterville, west of Ogden, and then moved to South Weber.

In South Weber he had all sorts of revelations and recruited a bunch of converts. This worried the LDS Church, which investigated and disfellowshipped 16 of Morris' followers. Morris responded by baptizing more into his own church and setting up shop in the small South Weber fort.

As the history relates, trouble soon followed. "The problem of living in a simple communism, complicated by the belief of the Morrisites that the second coming of Christ was imminent, obviating the necessity for sowing crops, led to dissension among the settlers. Even "Foreshadowing Day," on May 30, 1862, when elaborate rites were held to prepare for the end, did not still the difficulties."

Some who had turned over land became disillusioned and wanted to leave. They were taken prisoner and seized property. On June 13, 1862, local militia from the area surrounded the fort and a three day battle ensued.

Among the weapons the force had were cannon, although whether they had gun big enough to fire this particular round ball is in question.  Eventually more than 5,000 rounds of small arms and 100 rounds of cannon ball and shell were fired into the fort, which surrendered after three days.

Cannon balls can bounce anywhere. Lee Witten, chief archivist at the Union Station, is looking to find  experts in Salt Lake City who might have a better handle on whether this could be one.  It's also worth noting that this is a solid round shot, usually used to knock down walls, not really suited for shooting at people in a small pioneer fort.

Eleven were killed, including Morris, and many of the rest tried. The sect eventually scattered and died out. Is this steel ball a remainder of that whole mess.

Well, that's what we're trying to find out.

A Disheartening Editorial

The Standard-Examiner has an editorial on its web site (click) and in tomorrow's paper about the library bond, asking folks to reject it in favor of just repairing the Ogden branch and calling the rest good.

The "rest," of course, are tripling the size of the Roy library and doubling the usable space in North Ogden -- demands those communities make by overusing what they have now. The S-E would leave those libraries to do as they will, fearing that the future will make "bricks and mortar" obsolete.

Considering the role that Weber County's libraries play -- and will continue to play, as indicated by their 9 percent usage growth rate -- in providing education, community, stability and growth to our cities -- all things the Standard supports -- I find this editorial disheartening, to say the least.

Just how will we provide those things if we don't have libraries, which have worked for those goals pretty darn well for the last 150 years or so.

The editorial says we shouldn't lock ourselves into a future of buildings, but we don't know what the future will bring. 20 years ago nobody had a clue what the internet could do, and in the next 20 it will change life in ways nobody can imagine.

So, do we just toss away what we have, let it wither,  and hope for the best? I do not share that sort of confidence in the kindness of the future. I'd rather it be we who are in charge

Building now, and the resulting growth of community and stability around what we create, is a way to steer that future, to control it, to provide a place for it to be applied and accessed by all, instead of just waiting to see what comes.

Many people now don't have access to computers and the Internet except via libraries. Failure to support libraries -- and their growth into the future -- supports a two-tier economically defined system, with the rich having access and the poor not. Is education, learning, community, only for those who can afford it?

Does the newspaper think the debate is over the future is set, people should just sit home and use their computers or ebooks?

Such a narrow, lonely vision of the future. 

Plein Air Art Terrific

Sidewalk Art for the Art Fest

Get ur buns down to Union Station Friday or Saturday and check out the Plein Air art show. You will NOT be disappointed.

OK, the rest of the festival should be pretty cool too. And I am not saying this because they plied me with  Champaign and pot stickers Thursday night. They also had chocolate-covered strawberries.

Only In Ogden shoots Kristen Jamieson
 in front of her painting

The Plein Air show and auction is up Friday and Saturday all during the Ogden Art Festival, which kicks off Friday (today if you see this June 7). We got a sneak peek Thursday evening at the opening, more than 70 pieces by artists who slapped them all together between Friday morning and Tuesday. A few of the oil paintings are still damp.

These were quick, but not hurried. One of the purchase awards is a lovely sunset by the 21st Street Pond by Kristen Jamieson which she admits she did in fewer than the allowed 5 days because she started late, but she does a lot of those sorts of sunsets, she said, so it wasn't all THAT hard.

Yeah, right.

Another award was won by a painting/sculpture of the Wattis house on Eccles Avenue by Christopher Yancy. His medium -- a sort of epoxy putty -- is ideal for a quick competition like this because the stuff hardens in three hours, ready or not.

Viewers study entries

What is particularly noticeable is how the artists managed to find such amazing images to paint right here at home, in Ogden and environs. If you ever think your hometown is bland, check these out -- the beauty is there, you just have to know how to look.

I had fun checking out all the works housed in Union Station back where the gem and mineral museum used to be. All works are up for silent auction between now and Saturday afternoon, proceeds going to the Union Station.

Only In Ogden was there taking pictures, as per usual.

Jamieson's work.

Today and Saturday the rest of the Art Festival will also be going on. Music, art, movies, a play. You name it.

All that good stuff.

Union Stn. Director Roberta Bevelry, left, makes a point to
artist Susan Snyder at the Plein Air Show

Joseph Alleman's "Vacant Lot," one of the many
amazing works in the show

Eat A Hot Dog to Fight Crime? What the heck...

The scene Tuesday 

This is what I love about this town.

You can be riding your bike east on 25th Street, tired from an 18-mile ride, pondering the leftovers you have for dinner, when out of the blue someone on the sidewalk hollers "Want a free hot dog?"

I do. There's 43 years of living on a journalist's salary showing: Never pass up a free meal.

The folks offering the free food -- 2nd and 4th Tuesdays at 25th and Jefferson Avenue, 6-ish, are the nice folks at Ogden's First Baptist Church, that imposing red brick edifice on the corner there.

Pastor Karl Dumas said the idea came up about four years ago as a way to just get to know the folks in the neighborhood, an interesting mix of pretty well-to-do people living in the Jefferson District's renovated mansions and the street people who tend to hang around the Library, which is a convenient kitty-corner away.

Shirley Bowe persons the grill

But all are welcome -- very little preaching except when Rev. Dumas noted that the Bible does say to be generous when life has been good to you (Genesis, I think he said), and what's more Christian that being nice to folks wandering by?

Of course they invite you to come to church on Sunday, but you've already got your hot dog.

One of the members of the church, Connie, said they're trying to get the word out that their congregation is not just about sitting in pews on Sunday -- they have a youth ministry and are doing more outreach.

Rev. Dumas said the hot dog thing has been interesting. Little kids line up as soon as they see the grill out, and he said he knows some of them are school kids whose meals have been cut short since school let out.

Makes sense. Kids from low income homes (No, you can not support a family on a $10 an hour job) often don't get good meals except for those in schools, and with school out the kids only get lunch in the park.

He said he hopes he's just planting a seed with those kids. "I figure some day a gang is going to reach out to them and say 'Come join us, but you have to prove your worth by shooting someone,' and maybe they'll remember someone reached out to them before and gave them a hot dog without asking them to do that."

Local kid gets free hot dog

Sounds iffy, but you never know where friendship can lead or what will plant a tiny seed in some kid's mind. It says there are options.

I saw Rev. Dumas talking to a guy with no teeth who said he was "watching" a vacant house up on 27th street. Karl and I winked at each other at the neat reference to squatting, but they still gave him a couple bags of food, specially selected soups and fruits that he could handle.

It's like a whole different congregation," Karl said of the folks who stop by.

"They go to other churches, or they live at the Rescue Mission, which means they go to church six times a week," but here all they have to do is say "Yes," and they get a free meal.

Even if they're just passing by on a bicycle. I like that.

Rev. Karl Dumas

Plein Air Art Too At Union Station

Maya Peterson

Despite an ugly rumor on Facebook to the contrary, the Plein Air painting competition in the Ogden Arts Festival is taking place almost even as we speak, here at Union Station.

As I drove in I saw several folks out painting in the morning sun in Ogden's parks, catching that lovely morning light that Utah has in such abundance.

Reggie Peterson

It's all part of the Ogden Arts Festival at Union Station Friday and Saturday. You can find a full schedule and list of activities here (click) . The festival is all taking place around the fountain plaza and the station this year. There's also going to be a car show up and down 25th Street on Friday evening.

Plein Air means the artists have to do their work outdoors, painting something they see in plain sight (plein air) starting last week, deadline of 11 a.m. on Tuesday (today). It's fast and furious painting.

On 25th Street I ran into Reggie Peterson, Taylor, and his daughter, Maya, outside of Rovalli's Restaurant. Dad was painting Rovalli's while Maya was doing the Windsor Hotel. As they painted passers-bye stopped to kibbitz or admire, which is one of the fun things about doing painting outdoors instead of some stuffy old studio.

Plein Air schedule-click to view

You don't have to wander around town looking for folks -- even as I type this the artists are starting to bring their works into Union Station. There will be a reception for the artists -- OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, FREE -- from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday. From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, the works will be available either as a buy-it-now or on silent auction, so if you see something you really really need, you can get it for sure.

Or take your chances.

Kelly Donovan, Corinne, took honors for first to turn his work in at 10:30 a.m. because he had somewhere else he has to be. He turned in two paintings.

More are coming, and so should you.

Kelly Donovan

My Monday Was Fine, Sorry About Yours

This retirement gig is pretty sweet -- spent the day hiking Indian Trail and thereabouts, played around with an old camera, had some grandkid time.

Seriously, the rest of you should try it.

Sorry, don't mean to rub it in, but really...

-- Went hiking on the Indian Trail today. Saw some pretty flowers, Karen Thurber painting a picture, some kids hiking the trail and got photographed by a guy from the Ogden Trails Network, who put me on their Facebook page.

Anyone know if this flower I shot is a sego lily?

-- A year or so ago a friend gave me an old camera that he said needed a  home. I finally got around to taking it out and cleaning it up this week. It's made by Ansco, a New York Company that used to make cameras and film based in Binghamton,  New York, now long gone. In their day they made some quality cameras and this is one, an Ansco No. 3A, is a good example -- real leather covering, leather bellows, good quality shutter, and all still working lo these 100 years or so. Even has an adaptor to use glass plates.

But how to take a picture with it? Film that size in rolls is no longer made, so I cut a piece of photo paper to fit, put it in the back, did some calculations (paper has an ASA/ISO of about 5) and took a couple of test shots. I developed the prints, then scanned them and flipped them in photoshop so they're positives, not negatives, because we need to be more positive these days, right?

Very contrasty, but not bad. That old lens is pretty sharp.


I also spent a couple hours digging out elm trees in the back yard -- damn things grow everywhere and if you wait a couple of years they're permanent. Our yard is so overgrown they hardly show, but I still try.

The day ended holding my granddaughter Story again, 7 weeks old and growing like a weed.

So that was my Monday. As I said, this retirement gig is pretty sweet.