I took this downtown last week. The cat was sitting looking out. As soon as it saw me it headed for the screen part of the window. I couldn’t quite pet it through the screen.
window cat
Monthly Archives: August 2018
blue pop
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt #75: blue.
We are having fire skies, with the sun setting through smoke, here. I took this blue photo at the same time in the evening, the polarized light acting oddly through the smoke. It enhanced the reds and the blues. The smoke makes me feel low level worry all the time and sad.
orange
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zest.
I picked the photograph, taken off the dock in Port Townsend in 2017, before reading the prompt. It doesn’t fit the prompt. Oh, yes, it does, it’s the color. Quite gorgeous to watch slowly swimming along.
On a foggy day.
And the opposite shore and even the ferry, can only sometimes be seen.
the ocean is never calm and still, but the depths are very different from the surface
Come in
It’s an ocean
Big enough for us all
Float under the bridge with me
Or wander out to distant ships at sea
Stay on the surface
Or come down in the depths
Leap out and crash back in whale form
Or surf the wake of a boat
Or in the waves to catch a fish
Storms come and rain and rainbows
Sky with clouds lightening sun stars
Climb a rock or lighthouse or cliff
Or stand on a boat
But then return oh love return to the sea
___________
from 2015
Mundane Monday #173: skies
For Mundane Monday #173, my theme is skies: not blue skies. Skies that worry me. This is a fire sky, the sun setting through smoke that we can smell. There are no big fires near us, so I don’t know if this is California, Oregon, Washington, or Idaho smoke…
Add a message with your post or a pingback and I will list them next week. There might be a delay, because I have some travel soon.
For the Mundane Monday #172 prompt: windy:
KL Allendoerfer joins in: https://klallendoerfer.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/mundane-monday-windy/
Stages of Grief: anger
I am thinking of the songs that comfort me in grief.
And thinking about the stages of grief. Five, right? Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Grief and Acceptance. My sister said, “They left out Revenge and Acting Out. ” She died of cancer in 2012 at age 49. Six days after her birthday and the day after mine.
Anger songs for grief. But denial is first, right? Not necessarily. These are not stages you move through in a certain order. This is more like a spiral, where you go from one to the next and back to the start, from day to day or even hour to hour.
I’ve already written about My Name is Samuel Hall. That is an angry song, unrepentant, that my sister wanted the last time that I visited her. I knew that she was furious about dying and leaving her husband and daughter. And me and her friends.
My mother sang:
“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms. Big fat slimy ones, little tiny wiggly ones, see them wiggle and squirm. Bite their heads off, suck their guts out, throw the skins away. I don’t see how anyone can live on three meals of worms a day… without dessert….”
She also taught us this:
“I don’t want to play in your back yard
I don’t like you any more
You’ll be sorry when you see me
Sliding down my cellar door”
My parents had songs for every mood I can imagine. There were moods they would not speak about but they sang them.
My favorite angry groups are The Devil Makes Three, Hank Williams III, The Offspring, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Sweet Honey in the Rock? Yes. They sing about death a lot. This song is not about death: it’s about a “bad” woman, wanted dead or alive. But listen to the song: they are singing about a real event and a woman who fought back against a rape. On the thirty year album of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the group says that their first “hit” was this song, played by news stations. “It was a hint that we were not going to be top 40.” The song is Joanne Little.
So here are three songs by the others:
The Offspring: Why don’t you get a job?
The Devil Makes Three: All Hail
Hank Williams III: My Drinking Problem
And how do families show anger? They fight. They fight with each other. They fight about how someone should die, what should be done about mom, whether dad can live alone any more, about the right way to grieve. They fight about small things or big things and they even sue each other. Before you wade into the fray, step back. Remember, families grieving are always a little bit insane, very stressed and it’s all grief.
Hank Williams III: Country heroes
Blessings on the people I know in hospice right now and on their families and loved ones. Third one today. Sending love.
Fair joy
I had Jefferson County Fair duty as part of the Port Townsend Sunrise Rotary, 2 hours yesterday morning and three at the Yellow Gate in the afternoon. I got to do the gate while it rained cats and dogs and that fairgate roof leaks like a sieve! It was a cold wet wood box with a door and two window holes wide open. I was dressed warmly enough barely.
But… back to the morning! Saturday started with a band parade!
I have lived in Port Townsend since 2000 and I am a musician, so I know at least half the people in this parade. If the masks were off, I might know more.
This is one of those very local parades that you can be in if you want to, whether you have a costume or not. And here is the incomparable Joey Pipia, our magician and improv teacher, with a young horse….
The fair is still going on, head on down today to enjoy!
I asked our Rotary Membership director the other day, how many of the adults in our town and county are in one or more local groups that help others: Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, American Association of University Women, the PTA groups, church groups, the Veterans Association, the shelter, the Band Boosters…. the list goes on and on and hooray for all of those people and a big thanks to them! The people who run the fair and who run the Rhody Parade! All of the many volunteers we have and donors.
At the fair!
I had fair duty yesterday at the Jefferson County Fair. Two hours in the Port Townsend Sunrise Rotary booth. We’re in the new Commercial Building. The day started out with a fabulous band parade. I got a few photographs, next post. The fair booth is to tell about our Sunrise Rotary and what we do in the community and the world! The list is the banner on the right, everything from picture dictionaries for every 3rd grader in the county, to exchange students learning about the world, to Polio Plus and Shelterbox and big and small projects in our county and other countries. Hooray for teamwork and for all the people who donate their time and energy and fellowship and money.
The booth is still up today. We are already selling tickets for our “Running of the Balls” fundraiser. We roll numbered golf balls down Monroe Street before the Rhody Parade and the winner and 2nd and 3rd get cash! $2000.00 to the winning golf ball!
If you buy five tickets for $20.00 at the fair, you go into a drawing to get 50 more numbered golf balls in the race. Stop by!
And for the golfers, we need more golf balls. We don’t have enough for next year. Some get away, darn it. Contact me or another Sunrise Rotarian to get rid of the old golf balls.
dish prayer
Beloved, thank you for these dirty dishes.
Thank you that I have hands to wash the dishes.
Thank you that I have water, clean water, hot water and soap.
Thank you that I have a sponge and a sink.
Thank you that I have a home, that it has not burned or flooded or been destroyed by war.
Thank you that I had food to feed my family and my self, to dirty these dishes.
Thank you that I have food to put on clean dishes today and tomorrow.
Please, Beloved, help me bring food to those who need it, clean water, soap, dishes, homes.
Please, Beloved, open our hearts to others in need.
Thank you, Beloved, for these dirty dishes that now are clean and for the circle of life they represent, clean to dirty to clean again.
The Olympic Peninsula only has one wild fire currently, but the sunset last night was lit by smoke.
snapdragons
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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