Shortly before I left work Saturday evening, this newspaper’s weather alert radio warned Republic County residents of thunderstorm possibilities. Neither Jewell nor Nuckolls counties were included in the alert and I dismissed it as something I need not be concerned with.
It was past most people’s supper time, when I decided to head home and complete preparations for a Sunday School class I had agreed to teach the next day.
As I left the newspaper office, I was surprised to see cotton candy thunderheads that had formed in the southeastern sky were in the setting sun’s spotlight. I regretted not having a camera and considered going back for one.
I knew my supper was ready and decided to go on home. As I bicycled between work and home, I looked over my shoulder at the clouds. I decided to delay supper and try to get a cloud picture for possible use in this newspaper should a storm develop.
I got a camera and went out but the clouds were changing and the picture I had seen earlier was gone. I walked about six blocks trying for the perfect, alternative shot but was never pleased with what I was getting for results.
I decided I had made two mistakes. I should have gone back into the office for a camera before going home and I should have ridden my electric trike and been able to more quickly scout for locations.
I gave up and went home to a long overdue supper.
My preferred eating location always includes a view of the outdoors and I was in that location Saturday night.
Having to look outside should not be important today but it was important in my childhood.
Growing up on Blauvelt’s Hill, it was understood my father always got the best place at the table from which to watch the gasoline station drive. If Dad wasn’t home for the meal, someone else was expected to sit in his chair. When I was little, the duty fell to my mother. As I grew older, it became my duty.
If the station crew got behind in serving the station’s customers, the house was to send someone to help. I’ve forgotten how many running steps there were between house and station but I once knew.
When customers called, I would run out the front door, take every other step while going off the porch and dash to the station. I was never a long distance runner but I had sprinting practice.
Back to the present.
As I was eating supper, I watched the clouds and lighting change until I couldn’t continue to sit in the house and ignore the beautiful pictures being painted outside.
I left my unfinished plate, picked up the camera I had left on the piano bench and went back outside.
I hadn’t learned from my first foray of the day. Thinking I would just go across the street and make a quick shot, I left my bicycle at the back door.
That proved to be a mistake for I again walked farther than I had planned. This time the sun and clouds were more cooperative. As I moved about looking for the right combination of foreground and clouds, I was firing the shutter.
Back at the house, I finished supper, and finished the Sunday school lesson, before connecting the digital camera to a computer and looking at the images I had captured.
None met the mark I had set for a newspaper photo.
I concluded I had wasted my time but began to consider what alternatives I had for the pictures before erasing the camera memory card.
If printed with black ink in this newspaper, they would at best be ho-hum photos. If printed in full color, I concluded some would be acceptable. Late Saturday I posted six of the better ones on a social media site. Some of my friends who follow that page have found them acceptable.
Thanks to the miracle of the internet and social media, people all over the United States haveseen what those of us living in Southern Nebraska and Northern Kansas got to see Saturday night. I’ll have those six pictures attached to this column when this week’s e-edition of the newspaper is posted on the internet. But I don’t plan to print them in the paper. At this writing the plan is to include one taken at Lovewell Lake by a co-worker, Clinton Christian.
Free access to the e-edition is included with a subscription to this newspaper. But e-access isn’t automatic. You must request access and give us your email address. With a request and some electronic hocus-pocus, this newspaper is available around the globe most Wednesday nights.
The e-edition doesn’t replace the printed edition but it is a nice addition. It lets us share stories and pictures we can not include in the print editions.
The printed editions offer a permanence that electronic additions will never have.
This week, while preparing the memories story for the Nuckolls County Locomotive-Gazette, I learned 100 years ago my grandparents, along with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Edna, were dinner guests of friends in Nelson.
Since helping with the publication of the northern Nuckolls County paper, I’ve learned a number of things about both my mother’s and my father’s parents.
On Monday, a former resident of Superior asked about a story we published more than 20 years ago. The story was about boys finding and catching a snake near the Lincoln Park Pond. The sheriff was called and an officer went to the writer’s home and got the snake.
Most copies of The Express published since its founding in1900 have been recorded onto microfilm and are available at the Superior Public Library.
The pictures I posted on social media were drawing attention on Sunday and Monday, but few will see them this late in the week and I doubt they can be found in 20 years.
The Express has stored important files since our first computer typesetter was installed in 1970. The first files were stored on punched paper tape. Then we progressed through 8-inch floppy discs, 5.25 single and double-sided discs of regular and high density, two-different sizes of 3.5 inch discs, magnetic tape, thumb drives, cd’s and dvd’s. Now we are storing files in the cloud.
Monday morning I was looking in our computer parts storage area for a USB card. The old computer, I prefer to use for writing, will only save stories on floppy discs and floppy discs are no longer made.
While looking for the card, I saw file cabinets filled with electronic files stored in formats that are no longer readable by the computers we use daily.
But I can still read about my family in newspapers printed 100 years ago in Nuckolls County.
While I treasure the printed media, the electronic media can be valuable.
Last week I was surprised to see a national electronic news organization had picked up a story written by Sandra Foote and published in an early September edition of The Superior Express. It gave me a good feeling to think an unknown editor working in an electronic newsroom in a distant location was following what we are printing in Superior.
I learned long ago to not be surprised over what catches another editor’s attention. As a college sophomore, I wrote about a multiple-day, around-the-clock telephone conversation between two college dormitories. It wasn’t a big deal. After writing that story, reporters from around the globe called for updated reports.
This reporting job can be fun somedays.
Reader Comments(0)