Tours

We, the media, were invited to tour the University of Arkansas' newest chancellor's residence and visit with the newly installed chancellor. The house is beautiful and I can imagine it has been needed for years, given it was only recently that the UA stopped providing its chancellors with a housing allowance and provided housing.

Tours of newly constructed buildings are tricky sometimes. The folks holding the tours are normally quite proud of the structure they have built and we, at times, struggle with finding people to put in our photographs since most times there are no people in the building and those who are there worry they are in the way. At the end of the day, I can't run a photo of an empty room no matter how nice a room it might be.

Speak of the devil

Work continues to take down the former stadium and playing surface that was once home to the University of Arkansas' baseball and, more recently, softball fields and make room for more parking. The point of running this was to let everyone know that, in addition to the old stadium being torn down, the parking lot adjacent to it would be closed for nearly a month to allow for work to be done.

I saw this as a good opportunity to show this site in transition, and I like that one can still see the faint remnants of the old diamond. It's not terribly compelling as a photograph, but I still really like it. Funny, but Sarah Berrett, a good friend who works for the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, and I had a conversation about this very thing last night.

This was the site of countless ball games since 1976, and it is good to make a record of a place after it spent so long being so important to the town and the UA. Most times, photographs need to play by the rules. Moment. Story. Composition. Whoever coined the word 'photojournalist' put those two words together in that order for a reason. Yet, sometimes the photographs we make need to serve as record that places such as this existed in the first place and to show these places in transition as they become something else. A photograph that may be more interesting on its own merits — be it a record of some interesting play with shadows on the ground or of a worker on the site — somehow lacks the wisdom of knowing when to stop and take note as time marches by.

Bargain

Conservative estimates put the price to renovate the former St. Joseph Catholic Church building in Tontitown at around $2 million, but the Tontitown Museum would like to purchase the building from the church, secure funding for the renovation and move in. And who could blame them? What a neat old building.

Though it's on the National Register of Historic Places, its current state of disrepair has many in town wishing to tear it down. I can't imagine that, but stranger things have happened.

Rain barrel demonstration

Quite a lot of folks turned out for the first of three demonstrations produced by the Beaver Water District showing how to construct a rain barrel out of a food-grade barrel. These are really powerful in saving water by collecting rain from your roof for use in the garden.

I was so sleepy for some reason this morning and I shot so poorly. I missed a few interesting photos by being too slow or missing focus. It reminds me how much concentration making photographs requires, even for something as simple as this.

Fundraisers

The United Way of Northwest Arkansas and the United Way of Fort Smith are working this weekend to raise school supplies for the needy by parking a school bus outside a Wal-Mart Supercenter and collecting donations from shoppers to 'stuff the bus.'

Jason Ivester of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I waited for nearly two hours before this woman came by to drop off a donation.

4-H turns 100

4-Hers from around the state have converged upon Fayetteville for their annual O-Rama, but this year's event celebrates 4-H's 100th anniversary.

And if you think these are just a bunch of country kids with cowboy boots and big belt buckles, well, you're only partially right. Those kids are (thankfully) still there, but there were quite a few kids who were a bit more mainstream.

Times have changed.

Saved from being a weirdo

It's a slow time of the year for us, and that means that we spend more time than usual looking for photos on days when we can't scare up enough assignments to fill the paper. Today I had the choice of going to the pool or going to the library to find a photo of something going on. This sounds fun, and perhaps easy, until you have spent a few hours skulking around watching kids and feeling like everyone thinks you are really creepy.

Luckily, I found a nice woman working in the gardens at the library, saving me from being the weirdo taking photos of kids in the children's library.

Back just in time for the hottest day of the year

Drew Stewart won his second straight club championship at Paradise Valley Athletic Club on my first day back from vacation and what turned out to be a hellishly hot day.