Salt Lake Temple Renovation

Quoting from the Temple Square website;

Construction of the Salt Lake Temple began in 1853, but the building was not completed until 1893. The lengthy construction time was due to limited transportation for materials and a desire to make the temple perfectly beautiful and strong. In the meantime, the transcontinental railroad was completed with the driving in of the Golden Spike in Promontory Point, Utah, and many more people migrated to the area to make a fortune in the mines. In 1896, Utah became the 45th state in the United States.

To learn more see "Salt Lake Temple Renovation – What to Expect."

This photo was taken from the construction entrance on South Temple street on a very cold day in February 2020.

Renovation of the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

On a very cold, bright, and sunny day in February, here is a view of the beginning of the renovation of the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Walked along the west side of the construction and it looks like windows are being removed and the demolition of the South Visitors Center is almost complete. This photo was taken from the south side of South Temple street looking north.

The Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah

The Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah is the host of the annual RootsTech 2020 Convention for genealogists around the world. This will be the tenth year of this event. Except for the year my wife and I spent digitizing records at the Maryland State Archives, we have attended every year. The photo was taken late in the evening before the convention began and shows the architectural form of an outstanding center.

BYU Sunset

With our schedule at the Brigham Young University Family History Library, we get to see a lot of sunsets in both winter and summer. If Utah abandons Daylight Savings Time, we may miss one or the other depending on the way the law finally gets passed. The snow cover on the lower hills in the photo is indicative of how it has been all winter here in Provo, Utah. You can see the pile of snow on the walkway but the weather has been warm enough to melt most of the snow in the valley every time it has snowed.

Winter on the Provo River

This winter (2019-2020) there has been quite a bit of snow, but the weather in the valleys has been warm so most of the snow has melted. You can see some snow on the mountains, but the river is icy but not frozen. There is frost all over the rocks and plants. This photo is misleading. It was taken only a few yards from a very fast and busy highway up the Provo Canyon.

Cantaloupe

With the international year-round sales of fruits and vegetables, there are really no seasons for either. We get beautiful, ripe cantaloupe in February and almost every other month. These are probably a hybrid version because they don't look much like the ones we used to grow in our garden. They need to be completely ripe or they are hard inside and not too tasty. You can tell if they are ripe by the color and the smell.

Yellow Summer Squash

Now we can eat Summer Squash in the middle of the winter. Life has really changed since I was a young child looking at the Summer Squash growing in the garden.

Straightneck squash is a cultivated variety of Cucurbita pepo grown as a type of summer squash that is usually yellow-colored. It is also known as yellow squash, though other squashes, such as crookneck squash, may also be known by that name. See Wikipedia: Straightneck squash. 

Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts are probably not on the list of most people's favorite food. But when they are roasted or pan-fried with herbs they are delicious. Brussels sprouts are also high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They fall into the category of cruciferous vegetables or relating to or denoting plants of the cabbage family (Brassicaceae, formerly Cruciferae). Of course, there are very few foods that I will not eat or at least tolerate, but Brussels sprouts do not fall into the toleration category. I actually like them.

We have recently added another cruciferous vegetable to our diet; curly kale. However, I am not yet into eating turnips.

Tracks in the Snow

Living very nearby a National Forest on the side of a mountain has its advantages. Having a herd of deer in your front yard may seem picturesque but when they come up to your doorstep and eat all of the plants in your yard, they are not quite so cute. This was a cold and icy day and the deer are hungry from a long cold winter. There was ice under this skiff of snow.

At the Trailhead

Winter is still in full swing here in the mountains of Utah. This photo was taken at the winter end of the Alpine Loop, a scenic road through the Wasatch Mountains. At this point, the road is traditionally blocked by snow and closed for the season. But when there is an end, there is also a beginning. This is also the spot where a number of trails lead off the road into the wilderness. The snow is almost gone from the valleys but it is still lingering in the mountains. This may be our last look at deep snow for the year until next winter.

Sunset at the Harris Fine Arts Building, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

While walking around the Brigham Young University campus, I see some outstanding views and fortunately, I almost always have a camera with me. The Harris Fine Arts Center or HFAC is right next to the Library where we volunteer as missionaries every week. We had just attended a wonderful piano concert in the HFAC.

Wilkinson Student Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

We walk by this building several times a week but only go inside occasionally. It is the Wilkinson Student Center or "the Wilk." It has a huge food court, a bowling alley, a rather large store, large convention, and meeting rooms, a top-floor restaurant with a view, a theater, a beauty salon, lots of study areas, and a lot of offices. It is right across the plaza from the Harold B. Lee Library and I am standing approximately on top of the subterranean BYU Family History Library. 

Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University Campus, Provo, Utah

For the past, almost six years, my wife and I have been volunteering as FamilySearch missionaries at the Brigham Young University Family History Library which is part of the Harold B. Lee Library on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. With Daylight Savings time in Utah, we are usually on campus in the evening or into the night.  I thought this was a particularly beautiful view of the glass-enclosed entrance to the Library.

Sumer is Icuman In

From Wikipedia: Sumer is icumen in:

"Sumer is icumen in" is the incipit of a medieval English round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song.
The line translates approximately to "Summer has come in" or "Summer has arrived" (Roscow 1999). The song is written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer's identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264 (Wulstan 2000, 8).

Although this post is dated near the middle of February, we can look ahead and see Spring and Summer just around the corner. This has been a light snow year for Provo but the rest of the Wasatch Front has gotten buried on occasion. Here is a YouTube video of the song referenced above. 

Sumer is Icumen in

Fortunately, the song is quite short.

Colorizing Old Photos with MyHeritage in Color™

This is a wedding photo of my grandparents, Leroy Parkinson Tanner and Eva Margaret Overson Tanner. The original photo is below in black and white. The colorization took only a few seconds using the MyHeritage in Color™program on MyHeritage.com.

This is a fabulous new technology. I did make a few changes to the color image to increase the contrast and decrease the highlights, but otherwise, the photo looks great. Here is a short explanation of the process from the MyHeritage in Color™ website.

The colors are reconstructed by the colorization algorithm and may not be accurate. Consider this a technological simulation that gives its best guess on what the past looked like, by bridging between the past and the present. The model was trained by millions of example photos, and thanks to this it is capable of generating very realistic results. But there are cases where it has no way of knowing what the true colors were (for example, for specific items of clothing) and this may result in incorrect colors.

An Old Mystery Guitar

This is a very old guitar that has apparently been modified to have 10 strings. Unlike many of the existing 10 string guitars, this one does not have a fretboard or neck for the extra four strings. The extra strings were probably tuned to a particular chord. The pressure of the additional strings looks like it was too much for the extended bridge. From looking at the construction, I am guessing that the original guitar had six strings and that the extra piece on the headstock was added and an extended bridge added. Any more guesses out there about the origin or identity of this old guitar?

A Fall Day in Washington, D.C.

If it ever occurred to you to ask, I post photos taken from random time periods. This photo of Washington, D.C. was taken more than a year ago. Most of the landscape photos you will see on a "stock" photo website are highly "photoshopped" and stylized with dramatic lighting. Unfortunately, real life is not at all like that. I do not stage my photos, even the dramatic ones. However, I do travel quite a bit and I have a huge number of photos to choose from. I like to go back through my photos and pick ones that I missed posting at about the time they were taken. This photo was taken on our last trip to downtown Washington, D.C. before we moved back to the West. We lived for a year in Annapolis, Maryland digitizing records at the Maryland State Archives for FamilySearch.org.

Brigham Young University at Night

Ghost trees, random footprints, clouds and cold; a winter night on the Brigham Young University Campus in Provo, Utah. This photo was taken with an iPhone 11 Plus with no adjustment for exposure and only slight post-production processing. It was as cold as it looks.

Washington DC Metro Station

If you have lived almost your entire life in the deserts and mountains of Utah and Arizona, your experience in subways is probably rather limited. While working as a Church Service Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we lived in Annapolis, Maryland and had ample opportunities to ride the Washington, D.C. Metro from the New Carrollton Station. Fortunately, parking was inexpensive and with the benefit of a Senior Pass, we could ride the Metro for less expense than trying to drive and park in downtown Washington, D.C. I am not a newcomer to public transportation. I depended on buses for transportation when I was younger in Phoenix, Arizona and later in Argentina as a full-time missionary and in Salt Lake City, Utah while attending the University of Utah until I finally got a car. I have also used the buses and subways in San Francisco. But my interest in and utilization of public transportation hit a new high in D.C. I also had an opportunity to explore part of the subway and bus system in Paris, France. Now that I live in Provo, Utah, I sometimes find it convenient to use the bus system in this relatively small town.

Ornamental Bronze-colored Metal Lattice at the National Museum of African American History and Culture

The design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is strikingly different than the "traditional" Washington, D.C. buildings. Here is a short description of the building from the Smithsonian website:

From one perspective, the building’s architecture follows classical Greco-Roman form in its use of a base and shaft, topped by a capital or corona. For our Museum, the corona is inspired by the three-tiered crowns used in Yoruban art from West Africa. Moreover, the building’s main entrance is a welcoming porch, which has architectural roots in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora, especially the American South and Caribbean. Finally, by wrapping the entire building in an ornamental bronze-colored metal lattice, Adjaye pays homage to the intricate ironwork crafted by enslaved African Americans in Louisiana, South Carolina, and elsewhere. 

Here is a YouTube video showing the construction of the building.

National Museum of African American History and Culture Construction Time-Lapse 

Winter on the National Mall, Washington, DC

Washington, D.C. does get snow but the snow does not stay on the ground. This particular day was bitterly cold with wind, but it was also sunny. The average snowfall in Washington, D.C. is around 17 inches. The average snowfall in Provo, Utah, where we live, is about 43 inches. Even with our higher snowfall, nearly all the snow in the valleys melts in between the storms. We lived in Annapolis, Maryland and they get about 12 inches of snow a year but about 45 inches of rain. In Provo, Utah, we only about 18 inches per year. Most of our lives, we lived in Scottsdale and Mesa in Arizona. In Mesa, we got only about 10 inches of rain a year and that usually came in one or two rainstorms over a period of a few days. I have noted that people talk a lot about the weather but they usually live someplace for other reasons. I do know a lot of older people who move to the South in the winter and back to the north in the summer, however.

The Walls of Coca Castle, Spain

From Wikipedia: Castillo de Coca:

The ground plan of the castle is rectangular, and it has a three-tiered defence system consisting of wall circuits enclosed within a moat and a central keep. The central keep is situated in the northern part of the castle and is known as the Tower of Homage. There are two curtain walls that enclose the enceinte, but the outer curtain wall is not intact. Today there are traces of the outer curtain wall, as well as a number of towers – some in ruins others standing – that mark the boundary where the outer moat circled the castle. All of the outer towers were rectangular in shape. The second curtain wall has a gate near the inner keep with a high brick arch enclosed by a geometric border, the alfiz, which is a classic Moorish design feature. The inner curtain wall has several towers and a talus as well. It has centered cylindrical towers on each side and smaller turrets between them, while the talus is constructed all the way down to the moat. 

The towers on the corners of the walls are rectangular. The surviving wall is machicolated. This coupled with the talus served as a formidable defence. The battlements on the walls have been constructed as both ornament and as defensive fortifications, so they have been built with crests that jut out from the walls. Brickwork in Mudejar has been used here as well.

Red Rock Sunset

The light near sunset highlights the red color of the sandstone. This photo was taken on a short drive around the Red Hills Desert Garden in St. George, Utah. It seems like the more I travel the more I see to photograph. There never seems to be an end to the changing light and natural forms of the places I visit.

Driving on the Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation of northwestern Arizona and extending into Utah and New Mexico is "larger than any one of ten U.S. States:  West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island – and is less than one percent shy of being equal to the combined area of the last five (New Hampshire through Rhode Island)." See Wikipedia: Navajo Nation. We recently drove about 200 miles from the southern boundary of the Navajo Nation to the northern boundary. We often associate the type of rock formation shown in the photo with Monument Valley. But these formations are common across large areas of the Nation.