My semi-annual rant about this problematic holiday in a place that has been sacrificed to tourism. "What to the land is the 4th of July?" getting-dirty-anthropocene.com/2024/07/08/b...

The sign of my people:

We're having our first normal cool June in years. It's a balm.

In 25 years on the border of Yellowstone, being charged by a young bull moose is still my most terrifying wildlife encounter. And we had these guys emerge from our irrigation ditch last summer (if I hadn't been on the porch, they'd have taken #1).

William Baffin has entered the chat

Happy Pride! Grateful that my family has always been proud of our gay ancestors. Here's my great-aunt Marie, known in Chicago as "The Duchess" who ran a Catholic settlement house for 50 years. Two of her brothers, also probably gay. On Dad's side, gay uncle, lost to AIDs. Deeply loved, all of them.

When the Ponderosa can't be saved, despite all your efforts, you decorate it instead

It's snowing outside my window too! This was our morning dog walk.

Oh my heart! Reminds me of my Hank when he was a baby (grew up to be an 80lb old baby! Border collie/aussie/Pyr)

Taking over French Worker jackets is rich. Those are not your people you Palantir dickheads.

If Late Night comes back, and I'd like it to, can we please make sure it's not five white guys in suits? As funny as they are (well except for Fallon, who's a hack).

I love Baby Hugo. Have you seen Baby Hugo and Baby Doncic in Spain 8 years ago?

People of blue sky? Would you like to see a black bear skull my beloved found yesterday?

There might be hope for my sour cherry crop after all.

More snow than we've had all winter...

ARGH. There goes this year's plum, apple and cherry crops. It's just my backyard orchard, but I can them up and eat them all winter. Deeply bummed.

Spring has sprung

Spring is 2 months early but as a result, I have GREENS!

Ooh! Look what the postman just brought me!

Reading the absolutely bonkers "Staying with Relations" by Rose Macaulay. A delight.

I've done the wrap, pry open the jaws, stuff a pill in, clamp the jaws and blow in the nostrils. Who knew a 9lb cat could be such a force? Eventually I wound up crushing thyroid pills into wet food, but they were small. (RIP Betty Boop, we miss you).

I'm so old the "cool" Catholic youth minister wore this T-shirt, in our white, wealthy conservative town. A lot of us protested Chile, and the Central American wars, and Iran-Contra, but the post 9/11 fucking patriotism surge erased most of it.

French Murder Stairs in this episode of a French Murder show (but no one is being murdered on the stairs).

We finally got a little snow. The elk seemed happy, and entirely unbothered by the coyote pack hysteria just to their right

Wet Hank with random elk bones is here to congratulate you!

Hello world!

Since I had to see it, and it cracks me up, here's tiny Mom, about 2 weeks before her demise from the Covid the pulmonologist's office gave her, raising a newly-empty 11am glass of vodka to finding out she didn't have lung cancer despite 70 years of smoking. (I used it for her funeral announcement)

One of her former staffers chimed in on a Reddit thread about it (www.reddit.com/r/MontanaPol...)

My maternal grandmother was the star grandparent. Debutante w/ drunk husband who went to work at Parker School for tuition for her 4 kids, stayed 50 years. General factotum, field hockey coach, bus driver, farmer, polo player, horse trainer, snowmobile enthusiast, danger gran.

Hank is guarding his 2 new baby chicks