April 25, 2013 - Full Moon Rising

A full moon rises over Seattle's St. Mark's Cathedral.

April 21, 2013 - Fremont Lenin

This 16 foot high, 7 ton bronze sculpture of Vladimir Lenin took Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov 10 years to complete.  It was installed in 1988 in Poprad, Slovakia, but quietly removed following Czechoslovakia's 1989 Velvet Revolution.  The statue was saved from scrap by Lewis Carpenter, an English teacher, who purchased it for $13,000 and moved it to Washington for another $41,000.  Mr. Carpenter died in a car accident in 1994 just a year after purchasing the statue.  His family had it temporarily installed here in Fremont.  The statue is for sale.

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representative of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament. " - V. I. Lenin "State and Revolution" 1917

April 21, 2013 - Freedom to be Peculiar

Adorned with the unofficial neighborhood motto "De Libertas Quirkas", Freedom to be Peculiar, if one is to believe the sign, the Fremont Rocket points skyward towards a waxing gibbous moon.  The rocket, actually a tail boom for a C-119 Flying Boxcar, was destined for the scrap heap from its home at a surplus store in Belltown when it was rescued by the Fremont Business Assocation in 1991.  According to the sign out front it actually took a lot of work to "get it up".  It finally touched down in its current location in June of 1994 in time for the annual neighborhood solstice parade.

April 5, 2013 - Guffey Bridge

The historic Guffey Bridge on the Snake River, south of Kuna, Idaho, was built in 1897.  It was built for the Boise Nampa Owhyee (BNO) Railroad to haul gold and silver ore from the Silver City Mining area.  However, the gold and silver ran out before the bridge was completed.  The classic Parker Truss bridge remained in use for decades.  It was saved from salvage and was renovated as a pedestrian bridge at Celebration Park in the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area (NCA).  The half a million acre NCA was established by Congress in 1993 and is home to North America's largest concentration of nesting raptors.  Over 700 pairs of raptors, including Prairie Falcons, Kestrels, Harriers, Ospreys, Peregrine Falcon, a variety of hawks and numerous species of owls, nest here each spring.