Dogs; Democrat; original Tea Party supporter with a new alternative monthly paper; cat snot on my lens

As I walked down Seldon, Dodd Shay pulled over to talk. He had a new pup riding with him. Dodd is the fellow who owns that part of the marsh where I most recently photographed two moose, property where certain sorts of snowmachiners and four-wheeler drivers ignore his "no trespassing" signs, charge in and tear up his property.

Dodd wanted to let me know that he plans to start going to Metro Cafe at 10:00 AM Thursdays and would like it if Democrats would come and join him for coffee and conversation.

Cars kept coming, so he pulled off Seldon onto Tamar and he and the pup, Scotty, got out of the car.

As we chatted, this car turned onto Tamar. The occupants were very taken by Scotty.

Scotty. Dodd and his wife Carol raise dogs that assist people with various needs. Dodd hopes that Scotty will become a breeder.

As they say, "lucky dog."

That's Jared on the left and his fiance on the right. She told me her name, too, but I forgot it before I could take it down. Jared showed both Dodd and I where he lives and said if we ever need any help with anything, just come knocking.

Someday, we may get a chance to talk more and maybe he will tell me about the tattoo. 

I was driving toward Metro Cafe at 4:00 o'clock when I spotted this dog ahead. The dog made no attempt to get out of the way of any cars, but just kept running in a straight path. Drivers honked their horns, but the dog just kept coming at them until they pulled to the right.

I slowed way down, because I did not know the dog would do.

Sure enough, just before I reached it, the dog changed lanes and then started running down the road, directly in front of me. It ran and it ran and it ran. I had to drive very slow. I only honked when there was no immediate traffic coming in the opposite direction, but my honks did not phase the dog.

Finally, it left the road and ran off.

I do not know where it was going and I don't think it, did, either.

I hope it reached its destination safely.

Longtime readers have probably observed that I come upon dogs in bad situations all too often. I can't judge, because I do not know the circumstance that resulted in this dog running down a busy road.

Through the Window Metro Study, #1961. That's Josh Fryfogle. He is "Editor and Writer" of a free monthly publication called Make-A- Scene: The People's Paper. He points at the paper's logo on his shirt. I must confess, I had never heard of Make-A- Scene before. He gave me a copy. It is newsprint on an 11 x 11.5 format. Part of what Josh does is to seek out valley stories on restaurants, businesses, and the great political stories of the day.

Inside the pages, I found three articles with Josh's byline: Jalepeno's - his account of dining at Jalepeno's, where I sometimes dine as well. He had praise for Jalepeno's and I would agree with that. The second was titled, Belly Dancing, and it described an adventure he had with his ten-year old son on a Saturday night at Bombay Valley restaurant. Although we haven't since last Father's Day, we sometimes eat at Bombay, but there have never been belly dancers.

Josh says they are going to be there every Saturday now, so I guess I will have to go see them.

He describes it as a pretty wholesome experience - oh well; I'll go check it out, anyway. One of these Saturday's. Maybe not this one. But perhaps.

We will see.

Tea Party Bait and Switch was the third story. I was going to suggest that if you want to read it, you could go the website, but I just went there and it is not yet up, although another of his stories, The Man-Made Religion of Climate Change is, so you can read that, if you want. Summarily stated, with a number of quotes from the University of East Anglia email scandal, Josh counters the contention of what some say is 98 percent of the research climatologists who think that we are in a potentially disastrous period of climate change brought on largely by man-made activities.

In Tea Party, as an early supporter of the movement and a man who waved signs for Ron Paul and waved at Sarah Palin as she drove past, Josh laments that the Tea Party is being co-opted by "the Neo-Conservatives who had previously taken over the Republican Party." He is pretty disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans and, while he once had hopes for Sarah Palin, is disappointed in her, too.

It would take too much space for me to try to sum up all that he said in the article, but I suspect it will show up on the website, soon. He does say, "I am ready for real revolution and, if need be, I am ready to invoke the Second Amendment! And I know I'm not the only one... 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable' - John F. Kennedy."

So there you have it - in the morning I come upon Dodd Shay who wants to start getting together with Democrats at Metro Cafe and in the afternoon, I meet Josh, Tea Party original, who is ready for revolution.

I wonder how such revolution would unfold here in this valley that Josh, Sarah Palin and I share with a whole bunch of others of many and varied political and religious belief? 

In this valley, most of us do own guns, be we left-wing, right-wing, middle-of-the-road, apathetic. It seems to me that we have all been exercising our second amendment rights all along, but what does it mean that the time might come that we need to "invoke" them? That we get to shoot each other, because we do not all see the world the same?

Is this what John F. Kennedy meant?

Be assured, Carmen is a good person and in running her cafe, she needs to keep her door open to everyone, liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, extreme, moderate, mainstream, fringe.

Maybe some interesting discussions will take place inside. May such discussions always be peaceful and civil, even if some of the minds thus engaged are turbulent.

As I drove home in round-about fashion, I saw this girl running alongside the road.

I don't know if anyone overtly noticed, but each picture in this post has a soft, hazy, area. It's most pronounced when there is some backlight, such as in the picture of Jared and his fiance.

It's because of this guy, Pistol-Yero. I was trying to get a close-up of him when he touched my lens with his nose. I could not find any lens-cleaning cloth for a long time. Now I have found some, but I am not certain that I got it all. The tiny, recessed lens of this s90 pocket camera is very hard to clean.

I will always love Pistol, though, no matter how many cameras he messes up.

There's Royce, walking behind him. Royce is hanging tough.