Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Come on, man.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

In my day, never was longer.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

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J R in WV

On The Road – J R in WV – Westward Look Guest Ranch Gardens

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J R in WV

My last trip to Arizona was January-February, 2019. My last WV cousin flew out with me and spent a week, which was how long he was willing to leave his puppy Indica in the Puppy guest ranch back home.

So his last day we drove into Tucson and spent the night at the Westwood Look Guest Ranch, which I had never stayed at as a guest before, although I had visited the resort for mineral specimen shows which are held there in early February each winter as part of the huge Tucson Gem and Mineral show, which does several billions of dollars of business in collectable rocks every winter over about 3 or 4 weeks, culminating in a huge show at the Convention Center downtown.

There are literally dinosaur and mastodon skeletons, precious gem stones, crystals, crafts and collectables from all over the world, in most every hotel in town. I have bought rocks from guys who spoke Zero English, we used a calculator we passed back and forth to show asked price and bid price until we came together. To this day I’m not sure which continent he was from!

So while we waited for dinner to be delivered to the room, I went out and took a few pictures of the gardens, which are quite different in feel from Lodge on the Desert, but surely as well done. A larger ranch with horses, pools, golf, etc, the Westward Look is about 6 miles north of the Lodge into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains. Tucson is squeezed in a basin between several mountain ranges, and two National Parks east and west of town.

I picked out these 8 pictures because they’re different from the Lodge on the Desert photos, yet similar in some ways.

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Westward Look Guest RanchJanuary 28, 2019

A very shady spot, unusual for Arizona, obviously the Westwood Look is much newer than the Lodge on the Desert, uses more modern building methods, but has good taste in gardens on the grounds.

Taken with an Olympus TG-5 camera, f3.2 for 1/640 sec at 32mm, ISO 100. I tuned exposures with an editing tool to get both the sunlit mountains and the shady foliage to look OK. You learn something every day!

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On The Road – J R in WV – Tucson Desert Garden photos

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J R in WV

When I saw the several beautiful garden posts, I realized that I had taken photos of “gardens” in Tucson, when I stayed at one of my favorite hotels there, Lodge on the Desert. This hotel was built way out on the desert floor, far from old Tucson, back in the 1920s or ’30s. Since then it has been enlarged, and the city of Tucson has greatly expanded past the Lodge.

Our tiny ranch in AZ is more than 2 hours SE of Tucson, so when we have business or pleasure in the city, we try to stay at the Lodge, which is very comfortable, and not expensive for the area. The plantings are full of local foliage and the buildings are very in character for the South West desert country — very thick masonry walls, very silent inside perhaps excepting overflights from the local USAF base right in town.

 

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Lodge on the Desert room interiorFebruary 10, 2019

This is a really nice room at the Lodge on the Desert. The fireplace is so traditional, as is the furniture and feel. I thought it might help some folks relax, as I always do staying there.

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On The Road – J R in WV – Election Respite, Southwest Edition

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J R in WV

These photos are mostly relaxing nature photos, all but one from the South-West, and I’ll talk about where they were taken for each photo.

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Cochise County AZFebruary 2, 2020

This is a picture of the clouds boiling off the mountains on the other side of the Sulfur Springs Valley from our tiny ranch in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains. We’re looking ENE toward the Chiricahua National Monument, about 30 miles away.

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On The Road After Dark – J R in WV – Roman Ruins Under the Notre Dame Parking Deck

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For our final submission to Paris After Dark, we have Paris Underground!

Monday is the start of our 2-day Farewell to Paris After Dark, where we’ll show a collection of some favorite places and photos from the series.

Then on Wednesday 9/23 we will head to Chile After Dark – with lashonharangue – who will take us on an 8-part road trip to Southern Chile while we figure out where we want to go after Paris.

~WaterGirl

J R in WV

By the time we reached Paris on this trip back in 2013, which was an AIA sponsored tour of ancient Cave Paintings in NE Spain and SW France, my Panasonic Lumix camera was out of commission, as I toasted the battery charger on European 230V power. So these pictures are from a Google tablet, which also served us as translator in Spanish and French… mostly Spanish as we were in the countryside more so in Spain.

This whole archaeological site was dug after the ruins were found incidental to construction of a new parking building near Notre Dame. Being big fans of ancient ruins, we went in here before we went into the cathedral. Being under the parking deck, it is darkish, especially for a tablet camera, although it was well lit for the naked eyeball.

There isn’t much to say about the ruins. Even the rocks look old, white limestone, which most of Paris still appears to be built from. Foundation walls, bits of basements, some remaining arches over doors. It was fascinating to see ruins of buildings from Ancient Gaul though, that were at least perhaps planned and built in Latin. Since some folks expressed a strong interest in the Paris Street Scene that ran on the evening of 9-11 I decided to post up the best of the lot.

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Notre Dame, Paris, Parking Deck basement Archaeological DigOctober 8, 2013

Ancient Ruins under a Parking Deck, at 1/8 of a second. Not sure if this shows steady hands or if I braced the tablet against a rail or post, which I learned early on really helps when you are shooting with available dark.

I thought this shows the gloomy creepiness of ancient basement ruins pretty well. For ~2000 years old, the stone work is still looking pretty good. If it wasn’t white limestone you wouldn’t be able to see a dammed thing!

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On The Road After Dark – J R in WV – Paris Street Scenes

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I love getting to see so many different parts of Paris… the classic landmarks, countrysides, parks, shops, street scenes.  Bakeries!  Today we have street scenes, which I am loving.  And the river, the gorgeous Seine River!  ~WaterGirl

J R in WV

At the tail end of our only trip to France, primarily to visit and tour cave art in the NE of Spain and SW of France, we took the train from Toulouse to Paris, where we stayed for two nights before flying home on Air France, highly recommended way to cross the Atlantic. The one day we had to sight see in Paris the Louvre was closed, but our hotel was in the neighborhood, so I took pictures of the area around the Louvre, and quite a few in and around Notre Dame, which I submitted quite a while ago.

We ate out for two dinners and two lunches in Paris, all the food was above average for the types of restaurants we visited, in fact all the food in Europe was pretty good. Roadside bar food was competitive with upscale American places, actually. I didn’t take photos of the restaurants, nor of the food, not my style of photography. Take my word, the Michelin starred place we ate just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower was gorgeous inside and out, as was the food both pretty and delicious — specialized in seafood!

It was a beautiful October day, and we walked or took a pedicab, and didn’t move too far from the hotel, across the street from the Louvre. Until the day we were loose in Paris I didn’t realize our ONE DAY there was the one day each week the famed museum was closed. Oh, well, not like there was nothing else to see!

We had a great time that whole trip. Ancient bones, art, tools, scientists, great food, beautiful scenery, mostly great weather, although that didn’t matter so much when the goals were underground.

I don’t have so much to say about the photos individually. Street scenes in Paris in the neighborhood around the Louvre.

All these photos were taken with a Google Nexus tablet, I burnt up the recharger for the Panasonic camera, so when that battery was exhausted, I just switched to the tablet. I think they came out pretty well, but there isn’t the depth of data to do much enhancement editing.

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Paris, FranceOctober 8, 2020

A walkway through the buildings around the Louvre, with views of art and architecture of the Louvre.

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Furry Friends – J R in WV – Current Fur Babies on the Farm

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It’s stilll not On The Road; we cheated and used the form again.  It’s looking like there will be one more installment from J. R. after this, with the kitties!  As it is with a good book, I will be sad to come to the end of his stories and photos.  Maybe we can convince him to write up some more, after he takes a break!

With John Lewis passing from this earth, we are blessed to have J.R.’s lovely stories and photos, and a post filled with love.  I am sure this will be a balm for all our souls today.

~WaterGirl

*****

Life with J R and Family: It’s a Dog’s Life on the Farm

by J R in WV

After Watergirl and I talked about pet photos, and I decided to do multiple sets, that first one really turned emotional for me. We really love the critters on the farm. At one time back in the ’80s we had 9 cats (after an accidental pregnancy and successful pregnancy, back before digital cameras) and 2 or 3 dogs. In a 4 room Jenny Lind farmhouse!!!

This one is also emotional, but all different emotions. These critters are happy residents right now, all rescued puppies. I’ll do one with the two current cats pretty soon… that seemed to be the natural once I had more photos than would fit into the On The Road submission tool.

Right now we have 3 dogs, one is senior older dog, two are “twins” from a litter of 10 dogs born to friends one county over.

Senior dog is a big ole white Lab mix and the junior dogs are a matched pair of black dogs with white markings from friends’ goat dairy. When they came here they had never been inside a house, but they were able to pretend to be adult and responsible… briefly.

This thread is all about the dawgs currently in charge of the household up our hollow.

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Goat Dairy, birthplace of BooBoo and CooCooApril 4, 2019

BooBoo and CooCoo at their first home, a goat dairy in the next county run by two good retired friends, who primarily make French-style soft goat cheese, not for sale. Neighbor had a young bitch dog who as is the way in the country got in the family way, at which point her first home kicked her out. Since the sire was their watch dog, a half-Great Pyrenees and half Lab nix, they took mom in. Mom was an Aussie cattle-dog with some blue- heeler in her, judging from Boo-Boo’s front legs and belly. They are about 8 weeks old in this April spring photo, born February last year IIRC.

They grew up in the dairy farmyard, and had never been inside a building beside the barn until A brought them over to our house, They suffer from extreme notion sickness in a car, but that was OK as their Subaru is equipped for hauling goats around. They are quite professional about everything, keep detailed records of their goats’ production numbers and breeding, and make any money to be had by selling much of the annual kid production to other goat dairies.

They didn’t learn to ask to come inside for weeks, would just stand outside the door looking all abandoned and sad, until someone noticed their presence and let them in. I guess they were unsure they really were going to be House dogs for a while there.

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Furry Friends – J R in WV – A Few Beloved Pets Of Our Past

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No, it’s not On The Road, we just cheated and used the form.  This is such a lovely set of stories and photos from J R in WV that I can’t wait to read them a second time.  It’s looking like there will be two more installments after this, and I couldn’t be happier.

If you think you might like to have your furry family featured here, please send an email to watergirl at balloon-juice.com.  If you check out the banner picture for Furry Friends, you’ll see that we’re not limiting this series to cat and dogs!

~WaterGirl

*****

Life with J R and Family: Boomer, Step Aside Clyde, Happy Dawg, Harvey, Ralph, and Rufus

by J R in WV

Some time ago Watergirl asked if I would be interested in writing about and posting pictures of some of the many pets we have had over the years. So, after searching through files of photos and editing some up for public display, here we go. There are so many worthies I’m going to do a first set with some of our beloved pets who have passed, and this is that set. This is my second time through, I lost my first submission to a network error, and so now I’m writing the whole thing in LibreOffice, and will paste in into the submission form when I’m done.

It was a surprising amount of work, and I hate that I lost it all. After 45 years of using computers in my various careers, (in the beginning it was holes in paper tape, each hole was a bit) you would think I had learned my lesson long ago…

We have been rescuing critters, mostly cats and dogs, all our married life, so there have been many dozens, and I’m only going to hit a few I have good photos for. Five, to be specific.

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Here on the FarmJuly 8, 2020

Boomer, Up Close

This photo was taken by a next door neighbor and great friend, it’s about as close to Boomer as you could get, too. Boomer was dropped off at their house as a puppy, with a sister (who never looked anything like Boomer) and after his tail was docked. They asked if we would be interested in adopting him, and we were. But Wife and I both worked long hours at the time, so we asked them to keep him long enough for him to learn about going outside for his business. We all live in the rural wooded hillsides of W Va, and so our dogs (and cats) are free to come and go. So they did, and we did. (His sister was also adopted by a friend a little further away.)

By the time we brought Boomer home, a journey of maybe 400 yards, he was a big, friendly mutt. Everyone who knew Boomer liked Boomer. And he loved most everyone he ever met, with a few notable exceptions. He always wanted to please his folks, which included us and the neighbors who were also free to come and go on our farm.

We were next door (other side of the farm) with a crowd of friends and dogs, when some of the dogs chased the family cat up the hill, Not Boomer, tho!!! Boomer jumped into Wife’s lap to let her know Boomer wasn’t chasing any cats, no way!! He weighed around 90 pounds, but there was no way to tell him he was not a lap dog.

That whole chase thing was recreational both for the dogs and the cat, who knew she could climb a tree, but didn’t care to. And the dogs all knew that actually catching a cat was way more serious than chasing one, with a potential for a bloody nose! That’s a big deal to a dog!

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