Two Man and a Dog

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”

And the origen of that infelicitous phrase? The online Urban Dictionary says, “The legend tells that years ago every casino in Las Vegas had a three-piece chicken dinner with a potato and a veggie for $1.79. A standard bet back then was $2, hence when you won a bet you had enough for a chicken dinner.”

That said, today’s little huzzah! Is my first place win in the video contest sponsored by Discover Your Forests.org/U.S. National Forest Service celebrating the 25th anniversary of Newberry National Volcanic Monument.

Prizes? Well, to me the big prize is having my video posted on the Forest Service website as happened when I won a similar call for videos at Denali National Park, but I got some cool swag, too:

  • $30. Gift certificate to the East Lake Resort Restaurant
  • $75. Gift certificate for boating on East Lake
  • 4 (one in each season) ranger guided hikes (isn’t that a cool prize?)
  • An owl pin
  • A decal
  • A framed Newberry NVM poster, hence the goofy picture
Sandy Brown Jensen accepting award
Peter Jensen went with me to the Film Festival and big awards ceremony in beautiful downtown La Pine, Oregon and was on hand to commemorate the moment with his camera.

Why was this fun? There’s something satisfying about completing a creative cycle. The second I saw the ad for the video competition, it isn’t that I wanted to win but that I wanted to do the project. I love Newberry National Volcanic Monument and have been going there since Peter first introduced me to it in the early 1990s. It’s beautiful. It’s intellectually intriguing. There are lots of fun things to do and see there.

Paulina Lake
We have been visiting Newberry since the early 1990s as evidenced by this photo of Mom, now ninety, and Peter on Paulina Lake in a sunset–we sat out there and drank a bottle of champagne and watched the sun go down. This was a FILM photo that was in a photo album that I just clicked on my cell phone
Bear at NNVM
While I was in the old photo album, I found this shot of a bear we saw in the campground on that trip with Mom back in “the day.”

 

A video contest just gave a focus to all the photography I had been doing around the park already.

Yes, it’s fun to win, but the joy is in the creating.

I made two videos for the competition–one is narrated; the other tells a story, which is why, I was told, it was selected over, honestly, a much better photographer.

Peter and I drove over to La Pine, about two hours away, where we found a rodeo, carnival, apple pie baking contest and Quilt Show all enlivening this otherwise sleepy little backwater, which nevertheless is at the gateway to Newberry. People wandered in out of the heat for our little film festival, so there was someone to applaud.

The sign of a successful poetry reading, Peter says, is there are more people in the audience than poets on the stage–so again, huzzah!

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Sandy Brown Jensen

I am a retired writing instructor and faculty tech specialist from Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. I still teach and am also a photographer, poet, blogger and digital storyteller (short videos).

2 thoughts on “Two Man and a Dog

  1. Alan Levine says:

    That’s well deserved, Sandy. Your video is full of gorgeous scenery, human presence, and a bit of wry humor. Congrats, though we all know that Cache made the movie a hit.

    I like the expression of “Newberry Eyes”– a lot is said there.

    Enjoy your prizes and your chicken dinner.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.