Monthly Archives: April 2023

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Daily Evil: X is for Xenophobic

Are phobias evil? A fear of strangers or of foreigners. I think a phobia can make someone behave strangely or dangerously and harm others. I think that the isolation of the pandemic has increased our fear, so it may well exacerbate xenophobia. Not only the pandemic, but inflammatory news and war and changing weather patterns and the news that one in five trees is dying in part of California, unable to survive the warming.

This is a watercolor, again no date, but I think it is of the Olympic Mountains. That means it was painted in the last four years of her life, between 1996 and 2000. She and my father bought five acres with a house and barn in Chimacum, off of Center Valley Road. She loved the views up and down the valley. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997 and died in 2000.

The mountains look like they have a crosshatching, Xes to indicate snow and valleys and places where the snow can’t stick. Or has fallen down.

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Goal achieved!

I am Elwha, cat.

I achieved an item from my bucket list today! My first prey!

I am in the cat cage in the wild outside. Mother opens the window some days. It has been cold and wet, but I go out anyhow. This time I see movement. I freeze and slowly stalk it. My hunt is successful and I make my catch. I squeeze through the door and carry it to the kitchen.

I put it down. I hope it will run, but it is slow. Still alive, though. Mother notices and admires it. I would let her eat it. She doesn’t take it.

Mother is proud, too. I hear her tell the phone “Elwha caught his first worm!”

I taste the worm but I am not that hungry. I left it but it was gone later. Maybe mother got hungry after all.

I bet I can catch more for her!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucket list.

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Daily Evil: W is for Wild

Is wildness evil? What sort of wildness? The forest and waves and wilderness are not things we think of as evil, but some wildness in humans seems very evil. Some is silliness, some is substances, and some is truly violence and cruelty and terror and evil.

This is another of Helen Burling Ottaway’s fantasy etchings, titled The Hunt, number 6 of 30, 1986. A merman with a trident and dogfish, with a variety of tails. The etching is 6.75 by 8, the paper 11 by 15. I like the lines of movement, of waves, from the escaping shark.

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Daily Evil: V is for Virago

Virago gives positive and negative definitions, but all female. The most positive ones are of a very strong woman, “like a man”. Is there a male word that means the same thing? A word for a man, where the most positive one is that he’s very strong, “like a woman”. Perhaps “like a woman in labor”. Let’s make one up if we can’t think of one. “Obstetico”, perhaps. A man who complains like he’s a woman in labor, but the positive definition is strong like a woman in labor.

This is a watercolor postcard. Helen Burling Ottaway painted a bunch of postcards, with wonderful detail. These snapdragons could be viragos or obstetricos or perhaps both. This is from 1999, two years into her ovarian cancer. So the song is the Bald Headed Blues.

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Local lions

Our local lions are sea lions! I don’t think of sea lions as being good tempered, with the movies of them chasing prey. But out of the water in the sun off of Marrowstone Island, they seem pretty calm and I did not see displays of bad temper.

Sea lions can dive more deeply than seems reasonable because they slow their heart rates, to use less oxygen, and slow digestion. When they arrive back on the surface, they can get oxygen quickly but getting rid of the CO2 is slower. They have to sit around on the surface and the head back posture helps. I’ll bet they can beat any high school or college student in a burping contest. And as you can see, some of these are just huge. We wondered how they got on the rock. Do they have to at low tide or do they just jump?

I do like to hear them roar. Hooray for our local lions.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: temper.