Jack Russell puppies for sale; the boy is not sad to see the St. Bernard pup go... reflective Mocha Moose coffee girl

I got this bad headache, I am tired and the skin around the top of my head seems to be contracting in a strange way. I just want to go to bed without writing even one more word... or maybe not one more after this... but I have already placed these pictures. I suppose I should add a few words to them.

So here's the story above: once again, I coaxed Margie up off her convalescent couch and took her out for a fast food lunch, just so she could see something besides the four walls that surround her. It is a little hard to get her out the door and it is scary when she steps off the porch and onto the packed snow and ice of the driveway, but we are careful and it is good for her to get out.

We drove to KFC-A&W for chicken and cut through Fred Meyer's parking lot to get there. Before we reached the chicken, I spotted this guy, Lenny, trying to sell Jack Russell puppies, so naturally I stopped. He was asking $400 per pup, which he assured me was a very fair price, but it was too high for me, so I didn't buy one.

Of course, if Lenny had been giving them away I wouldn't have bought one either. There is no such thing as a free pup.

Although the lady is having a good conversation with someone on the phone and it looks like she might be telling whoever it is that she is bringing a Jack Russell pup home, she and the girls were pupless when they left.

Jack Russell butt. 

Lenny called his pickup the Jack Russell Pup Mobile, or something like that. When you have a headache as bad as the one that now smites me, it is hard to remember such quotations word for word.

Jack Russell ear.

Just beyond the Jack Russell Pup Mobile was another vehicle and in it this boy held this St. Bernard pup. As you can see in the windshield, the pup was going for $600. If Lavina had been with us, she would probably have bought it. She fell in love with it when I showed it to her on the LCD to my pocket camera. That was yesterday. This evening, she was still walking around, thinking about this puppy and sighing, wishing that I had bought it and brought it home to her.

Jacob strongly insinuated that if I really loved my grandson, I would have bought it for toddler Kalib. But, if a free pup is expensive, think how expensive a $600 pup is.

As for the boy holding the pup, you can see how sad he looks. "It must be kind of hard to know you have to give up the pup," I said to him.

"No," he said, "It doesn't bother me at all."

I had more questions that I wanted ask, but a grim and solemn air permeated the St. Bernard Pup Mobile, so I kept my questions to myself.

If I had shot these as a feature for a newspaper, I would have had to ask the questions; I would have had to write down names. But since its a blog - my blog - I can do whatever I decide to do.

And I decided to leave it at that.

The puppy pictures are all from yesterday, but now this raven catches me up to today. I spotted it as I took my walk. It is so good to have all this sunlight back, to see such a blue sky, but it fooled me a bit.

I did not wear my earband. My ears got cold.

Even so, the increased hours of sunlight is finally beginning to drive the SADS out of me. I am still lazy and listless, but new energy is radiating back into me.

A snowmachine trail across Little Lake. Little Lake is not really a lake at all, but a pond, a tiny pond. When my kids were small, they named it, "Little Lake." They even made a sign that said "Little Lake." They posted that sign by Little Lake so that all who passed by would know its name.

Serendipity. Damnit. That hill used to be mine. 

This dog came running from a house, barking at me with joy. He was so happy to see me. Or maybe "she." I didn't check.

Today, to get her out of the house again, I took Margie to Taco Bell. Right next to Taco Bell is this construction site. It will be a Walgreen's Drugstore. 

Wasilla grows ever more mainstream, but in a haphazard sort of way.

The coffee girl at Mocha Moose reaches out towards her own reflection to take a customer's money.

Headlights coming down Shrock Road. Click on the picture, if you don't believe me. And that is all I have to say about this day, which for me, in its entirety, was spent right here, in Wasilla, Alaska. Maybe not all within the official city limits, but Wasilla, just the same.

Comments

[MikeT]

"As long as I did not interfere, I had every right to photograph what was happening before me."

Is that true? Can you disregard directives from a police officer?

Would it make a difference if you were not a "photojournalist" but an average "Joe the Plumber" with a camera?

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

Your question relates to the February 28 post, rather than this one, February 23, but you ask it here, so I will answer it here.

Yes, it is true that I had the right.

Anyone can disregard directives from a police officer, but one must always recognize that one does so at one's own peril. Whether you are in the right or not, that police officer has the power to arrest you. So the question becomes not whether or not you can ignore that directive, but whether or not you weigh the potential consequences and decide how important it is to you to risk it.

In this case, the individual shoot was hardly that important to my career, and yet the principle was. I recognized that she had the power to cuff me and cart me away in the squad car and could do so at any moment.

Furthermore, I also recognized that she was just doing her job as she interpreted it to be at the time. But I had a job to do, too, and the right to do it, so I had to challenge her.

I did not altogether ignore her directive, I did compromise and walk to the immediate area where she stood. There, she could not rationally argue that I was about to get shot, as this would mean she was saying that she was about to get shot.

It was tense and she could have arrested me at any time. Then it would have become a case of civil disobediance. I took a gamble that she would not want to risk that.

Constitutional rights of free speech apply to Joe the Plumber as well as to the journalist (which Joe is not, however much he might try to pretend). However, it brings up the old question of does free speech allow you to falsely cry "fire" in a crowded theatre? If there is something going on and every Joe the Plumber rushes in with their camera, it can become chaos.

Police have the responsibility - and the right - to prevent chaos.

Typically, boundaries are set at scenes of police activity and the public is not allowed to cross them, but journalists often are.

In this case, there was no crowd gathered. Chaos was not an issue. There were no notable boundaries, other than that police officer's judgment.

Had she have so chosen, it could have turned out very differently and I would have had to miss the afternoon work session.