WHO LIVES HERE?

Guessing from the two bicycles, one a woman's frame 

and the other a man's frame with a rear child seat, 

I think it's a young family of three. 

The laundry hanging on the second story supports my guess. 

What do you think? 

This was a photography two-fer for me--

hanging laundry and bicycles--two favorite subjects. 

It's always important to look up as I walk. 

If I hadn't, I could have easily missed this shot.

Taken on Lido di Venezia, 7-mile sandbar in Venice, home to 20,000 residents. 

It is also a favorite summertime weekend getaway for Italians and foreign tourists alike.

SCENES OF LAUNDRY DAY

There's something about the sight of hanging laundry that appeals to my photographer's eye. The articles being dried reveal tiny glimpses into the people who wear them, enough to create characters for each child-sized striped T-shirt or brightly colored soccer jersey. I also love the banner-effect of the colorful array of items suspended from a clothesline.

These are pictures I took while on the train between Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco. We were returning to the airport to (hopefully) retrieve Doug's suitcase that had been lost somewhere between Paris and Casablanca. 

To anyone who has ever taken a train between major cities whether in the USA or elsewhere, 

you know that railroad tracks rarely go through the nicer sections of town. 

Traveling has taught me not to judge a dwelling by the look of the outside. 

Not everyone in the world is as concerned about curb appeal as western culture, or more specifically, as we Americans.

It's easy to notice the open pipes extending from what appears to be street level or just below. 

I don't know if they are for surface drainage, household grey water, or sewage. I would hope not the latter.

Sadly, this is a sight I see all too often in my travels, particularly in the less prosperous countries, or in the smaller towns and villages away from the bigger cities. Garbage, mostly plastic shopping bags and bottles, have been tossed carelessly and repeatedly over a back wall or down a ditch.

ASSEENBYSUSAN BLOG: Home is Where the Heart Is

Where I Belong

For those readers who also follow my WallaWallaDailyPhoto blog, this is a repeat of my end-of-the-year theme post for City Daily Photo. My apologies. But I think it is a good way to re-start this blog by filling in a few blanks for new readers. I invite you to follow along as I share my life and travels in pictures and words.

I have lived in the Walla Walla Valley since 1987 when I moved here with my husband and two young sons. It was a nostalgic return for my husband since his great grandparents homesteaded here in the mid 1800s, and he was born in Walla Walla in 1930. For me, it was moving to what I would soon refer to as a quintessential small town with good schools, a quaint downtown, and nice homes on tree-lined streets. In short, it was a good place to raise a family.

Nearly 30 years later, it is still a quintessential small town, although both the town and I have undergone significant changes. I divorced after 20 years of marriage, and my children have grown to be thirty-somethings now. As for the Walla Walla Valley, miles and miles of wheat fields interspersed with commercial pea, onion, and asparagus fields have given way to wheat fields and vineyards. . . lots of vineyards. With that change, old-time mom and pop stores in the downtown corridor went out of business and have been replaced with tasting rooms, upscale restaurants, and a variety of retail shops geared more for the new wine tourist than the local customer. But that's not all bad because overall the town and valley have been revitalized with an aesthetically pleasing, low impact wine industry while keeping the charm of a small rural town in Eastern Washington. 

The schools are still good, the downtown is quaint, and the streets remain tree-lined. 

So it's a win-win.

This photo epitomizes "where I belong" for a number of reasons. First, it's been my home for 30 years, longer than I lived in any one place including my childhood home in Birmingham, Michigan. However, it hasn't always been my favorite place. On my first visit to Walla Walla in 1977 while on my honeymoon, I wasn't so enamored. The drive here from Seattle through miles and miles of seemingly lifeless and dry high desert blinded me to the beauty of this tree-filled oasis nestled in the Blue Mountains. To me it was the armpit of the world. It took 10 years along with a new perspective on life as a parent with two school-aged children, that on a second visit to Walla Walla in 1987 I saw its charms. And they captivated me.

Second, it's an aesthetically beautiful setting. The Blue Mountains in the distance hold the valley in a cradle and change visually with the season, the light, and time of day. Likewise, the wheat fields that undulate north into the heart of the Palouse are ever-changing. The curves and folds of the hills are sensuous embodiments of Mother Earth herself--whether under plow, under snow, under combine, or under sunlight. I have had the pleasure of traveling to many beautiful places in this country and the world, but no single place is any more beautiful than the Walla Walla Valley.

And the open road is an important metaphor in my life. I bicycled up and down this very road for years when I was a passionate and younger road cyclist in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The ride toward the mountains reminded me that life is always going uphill even if it appears flat, so it's best to keep my head down and pedal, pedal, pedal. And while the trip away from the mountains was much easier, it was still best to keep pedaling to maintain my momentum. Then in the summer of 1998 this life lesson that I learned by riding on Walla Walla's roads was repeated for 47 days and 3,254 miles on my 1998 Big Ride Across America: 

Roads go up and roads go down, so it's best to just keep pedaling.

Finally, the open road symbolizes my love of traveling. I don't travel on the seat of a bike anymore after a stupid bike accident in 2010 left me with a shattered wrist and shattered confidence. So now I travel in the air, on the sea, in a bus, or on the back of a camel to see the world. But no matter how far I travel or what I see, I always love coming home to the Walla Walla Valley and to this sight. 

It is where I belong. 

ASSEENBYSUSAN BLOG: 2017 REBOOT

I began this blog AsSeenBySusan nearly two years ago in March of 2015. At that time, I was looking for a way to share my travel photos and experiences with an online audience of friends, family, and anyone else who wanted an armchair view of the places I visited. With this blog, my intention was to go more in depth with my descriptions and photos than I was able to do on my Facebook page which I pretty much limit to travel posts in real time while I am traveling.

At the same time in 2015, I started a second blog, Walla Walla Daily Photo-AsSeenBySusan, as part of a worldwide photo blogging community known as City Daily Photo. Here I post photos and commentary exclusively of my beloved home town and the surrounding Walla Walla Valley. Readers may access that blog by subscribing to it, by going directly to the City Daily Photo website and/or Facebook page, or by opening the links that I post on my personal Facebook page.

Although not "daily" I continue to actively post to my Walla Walla Daily Photo blog as often as my time and my spirit move me. I enjoy the regular challenge of photographing both the unique and the common aspects of our valley and sharing my photographs and commentary with an audience. However, I have not been a very regular steward of my AsSeenBySusan blog for a host of reasons that I'll refrain from listing here, other than to announce that as of today, I am setting out to change my ways. It's not really a New Year's resolution despite being suspiciously close to the turn of a new year. In fact, it's something I have been thinking about for a long time. It's just that now I am finally ready.

After changing computers from a PC to a Mac nearly a year ago, I thought organizing my growing photo collection would be a snap. It wasn't. In truth, it has taken me months and plenty of frustrated tears to export my 61,000+ photos that are in the iCloud, and hence on all of my iDevices, to permanent storage on a dedicated hard drive. In doing so I was reminded of all the wonderful places I have had the good fortune to see and experience and that I would like to share with an audience. 

So in the spirit of adventure, I re-dedicate this blog to the armchair dreamer and traveler as you experience the world As Seen By Susan. 

AN ADDENDUM

When Will They Stop?

Stupid is as stupid does. Great parental role models, NOT!

Both photos are courtesy of No Love Locks which you may "like" on Facebook or visit on their website: http://www.nolovelocks.com/

STREET ART, GRAFFITI OR VANDALISM?

Which view do you prefer?

This . . .

The Pont des Arts as it looks today sans locks as seen by Wazim Photos.

 or this?

Love Locks. People either love them or hate them. But everyone seems to have an opinion. I admit, before my first trip to Paris in 2013, seeing pictures of the Pont des Arts bridge adorned with thousands of padlocks was on my list of "to sees" along with the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the quaint outdoor cafes as seen in every movie or tourist promotion. Yes, all the typical tourist stuff.

While I remember crossing the Pont des Arts, I think it was on a bus, so I wasn't able to take a picture of the locks that lined both sides. But I did walk over the passerelle Leopold-Sedar-Senghor (formerly the passerelle Solferino) and took this picture of a growing collection of locks. The pattern and repetition of the parallel rows of colorful locks pleased my photographic eye, not giving a thought to any potential harm or danger. And I easily passed the vendors hawking their cheap locks to those passers-by who came unprepared with a sturdier lock of their own and resisted any temptation to affix a lock myself, as my fascination was more visual than romantic. 

Passerelle Leopold-Sedar-Senghor is a footbridge that links the Musee d'Orsay and the Jardin des Tuileries on opposite sides of the River Seine.

According to several internet sources, this ritual did not originate in Paris, contrary to Paris being nicknamed the "City of Love." Rather, it started in Rome after the 2006 publication of the book I Want You by Italian author Federico Moccia. Inspired by the book, couples inscribed their names on padlocks then attached them to the Ponte Milvio while tossing the key into the Tiber River below. By 2008 the practice moved to Paris.

However, in the spring of 2015, the City of Paris began removing the thousands of pounds of locks that were beginning to damage the physical structure of the bridges. That, and the potential catastrophe if a lock-laden panel fell on a passing  boat or pedestrian meant the final death knell for the locks.

But removing them was no easy task.

As an interim measure, the city commissioned street art "love" panels to replace the padlock panels. Whether that was a visual improvement is debatable, and made many people ponder the difference between street art, graffiti and vandalism.

For me, I've had a reversal of my original fascination with love locks. What clearly started as an innocent, almost cute idea for couples to "lock" their love to a bridge, be it in Paris or Rome or the umpteen other similarly adorned bridges and monuments around the world, has gone too far. I agree that the locks detract from the artistic aesthetic of the bridges which is part of the architectural heritage of a city. And the accumulated weight poses an immediate danger to people. 

Plus one look at the gorgeous photo by Wazim of the unobstructed view of the River Seine along the Pont des Arts speaks for itself. Au revoir, love locks. Bon debarras!

HELLO-O-O-O, I'M BACK!

Yes, it's been a very long time since I wrote and posted on this blog. What was meant to be a short hiatus while I traveled in May, became weeks and then months as I traveled again in October and then faced the task of sorting through thousands of accumulated photos (i.e. 20K+) of scenes from Turkey, France, Italy, Morocco, Germany and Iceland. How do I even start? 

When I chose the title for this blog about a year ago, my intention was to leave it broad enough to allow me to grow or expand or even bird walk from time to time about topics that interested me, with traveling and photography being at the top of my list. And so I began by posting photos along with my commentary about places I traveled and things that I saw. And unlike my Facebook travel posts in which I would post my reactions in real time, my objective for this blog was to be after-the-fact and more in depth. Sounded easy, or so I thought.

Then along about March I was enticed to join an online photo community--City Daily Photo--to begin a second blog about my own hometown, thus WallaWallaDailyPhoto.blogspot.com was born. And that has been a commitment. Posting a daily photo challenged me to see my town in new ways. I started off strong, but admittedly, 'daily' eventually became weekly with spurts of daily photos when I found a particularly interesting topic. And it did dilute my creative energy with this blog taking the biggest hit.

But like the paperwhite narcissus that stores its energy inside itself only to grow and blossom when given light, with the increasing light of this new year, I am ready to blossom again. 

*     *     *     *     *

PALOUSE FALLS STATE PARK, WASHINGTON STATE

Palouse Falls is always a beautiful sight, no matter the season. But with a dusting of snow and freezing temperatures, the falls and the surrounding stark landscape is even more stunning and very worthy of an afternoon drive to see it.

The falls, a part of Washington's Palouse Falls State Park, lies on the Palouse River which is a tributary of the Snake River in southeast Washington which in turn is a tributary of the Columbia River.Thus, the Palouse River and its falls are a part of the Columbia River Basin.

On February 12, 2014, the Washington State House of Representatives passed HB 2119 unanimously to make Palouse Falls the official state waterfall in Washington State. The proposal for the bill originated when a group of elementary schools students in the nearby town of Washtucna lobbied the state legislature.

The canyon at the falls is 377 feet deep, exposing a large cross-section of the Columbia River Basalt Group. 

 The Palouse Falls and surrounding canyons were carved out during the catastrophic Missoula Floods of the previous ice age known as the Pleistocene Epoch. But early in the 20th century, this was not a given. In fact, J. Harlen Bretz sparked one of the biggest debates in geologic history when he proposed his Ice Age floods theory in 1923.

Bretz spent decades meticulously documenting evidence to support his theory that massive Ice Age floods carved the Channeled Scabland of Eastern Washington. But the geologic community only ridiculed and scorned his work, that is, until they saw the evidence themselves.

As a curious aside, on April 21, 2009, Tyler Brandt ran the falls in a kayak setting an unofficial world record for the highest waterfall run.