Bridges, Birds and Basketball

Can it really only be 13 days until the Fat Man sings? The twins will be coming home on Friday for the holidays and I still haven't gone Christmas shopping. Thing is, I never shop before the week of Christmas so I'm still in good shape.

I pass this barn every few days for the last 20 years and this is the first time I've stopped to take a picture. Looks pretty in the snow!

About a month ago, I was standing on this 116 year old bridge shooting pictures of the Clearfield Creek which runs under it. This week, while plowing snow and salting the local roads, a Pennsylvania State highway truck, according to Pennsylvania State highway investigators, reportedly hit the side of the bridge with the blade of a snow plow and before the driver was the whole way across the span, the bridge started to collapse. I'm not a reporter, I don't know all the facts. To learn more about the story, you can read all the details at http://www.tribdem.com/ or http://www.altoonamirror.com/.

We came across this blog on Friday, 14December2007 from the son of the folks who live close to the bridge http://booksandbrains.blogspot.com/2007/12/dysart-bridge-collapse.html. This Dysart, Pennsylvania bridge collapse has made the national news.

This is a picture of the bridge shot just a few days before Thanksgiving of 2007. On this day I crossed the bridge at least four times and at one point had even stopped in the middle of the span to take a picture of the creek.

Over the creek and through the sticks to Grandmother's house we go.

Rock Ice.

Red-bellied Woodpecker and Black-capped Chickadees at the sunflower feeder.

Now that football season is over it's time to head indoors for some hot hoops and it looks like I'm once again on a two-game a week schedule for the next few months. Most of the photographs from the games I will be covering will be printed in the Star-Courier, one of five weeklies published by Mainline Newspapers. This will be my second tour of duty with the newspaper since 2004.

Glendale High School was the host of this game against the Huskies of Bishop Carroll High School from Ebensburg, PA. Victor Tranquillo of Bishop Carroll goes up for two over the guard of Sam Yirgling of Glendale.

The Huskies' Luke Paronish takes a jump shot to clear the outstretched arms of Vance Kimberly during Saturday night's contest.

Once again it's the Huskies Luke Paronish working inside the defenders of the Glendale Vikings.

We have at least 5 different woodpeckers in our woods. Here are three that stay all year around.

Male Hairy Woodpecker

Female Downy Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker, just taking off from the feeder. If you look closely at the picture, you can see a sunflower seed being kicked up from the birds takeoff and a seed clasped firmly in it's beak.

We live in the Northern Cambria School District so it will be nice to cover the local basketball games for the local newspaper. No one, and I mean no one, covers the high school JV games, so I thought it would be nice to be different this week and show three pictures of the Northern Cambria JV game against Penns Manor. The last three pictures are from the Varsity game.

Northern Cambria JV Lady Colts vs. the Lady Comets of Penns Manor over in Indiana County.

#14 Jessica Rocco goes against her counterpart Penns Manor's Amy Clavenger for control of the ball.

Lady Colts #5 Ashley Kirsch blows by Emily Leib.

#23 Jenae Dunchack of Northern Cambria and #10 Autumn Mattis of the Lady Comets fight for control of the ball.

Going into the air between two of the Lady Comets' defenders is Brittany Sedlock.

Working her way to the basket #13 Ariel Rocco of Northern Cambria gets hemmed in by #11 Erica Holby and Jessica Heidenthal of Penns Manor.


Junk Yard Truck.
I shot this photograph when I went over to Elias' Recycling Center to get rid of 75 pounds of aluminum cans. Don't laugh. Aluminum is going for 60 cents a pound these days. I made $43.

Merry Christmas!