This is Donkey Oatie and Sancho Panda. Helen Burling Ottaway did a series for a book or a show or something in the early 1990s. I do not know if it was ever published. There is no date on this. This is colored pencil and the drawing is 9 by 12 inches. I think she did larger watercolors as the final project.
Is being ridiculous evil? I read that today is National Humorous Day. We need humor to let go of stress and blow off steam and to go from the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic relaxed one. Humor is a really good way to go. So watch those silly cat videos and laugh. Ok, not when you are at work. But even at work, my office manager and I needed to blow off steam and laugh. One day she was playing whale songs. I heard her say very seriously into the phone, “Oh, those are whale songs. Dr. Ottaway insists on whale songs.” I howled, because she had picked them. For revenge I made whale noises at her between patients all day. Anybody walking into clinic might have thought we were loons. I can do loon songs very well, better than whale songs.
I know a slightly different tune for The Dummy Line, a variation. There seem to be a bunch!
Taken on Marrowstone Island earlier this week. I was so busy watching this eagle that I tripped over a rock and face planted. If I’d hit a rock I would have lost teeth or knocked myself out. Luckily both I and the camera did fine.
I tend to spot the eagles in the trees by sound. I do watch for them as well. This one called to another, who circled towards the tree. Sound locates them.
When is it evil to be quiet? When you are witnessing bullying or injustice or someone being harmed. Have you witnessed bullying and stood by and does it bother you?
I am at a dinner, invited. It turns out that the agenda is to talk a partner into staying, because she has quit. Partner one wants partner two to stay. Partner three and I are horrified and don’t want her to stay, but we do not want to say that to her. We frankly can’t wait for her to leave.
The dinner turns in to partner one and two bullying partner three. I am the newest and don’t know what to do. The next day I am ashamed and think, why didn’t I take partner three and leave? What is the matter with me?
Part of it is that I revert to childhood. I survived a complex household with people who were loving sometimes and horrid and drunk at others. Clamming up and being quiet was how I survived. But I am an adult now and I can leave. I can also speak up and say, “Stop. This is not fair. This is an ambush.”
Today’s watercolor is flowers. My mother loved flowers, had a wild and delightful garden, and painted them often. This is a small watercolor, 7 by 10 inches, no date.
I am thinking about the latest shootings. Aren’t we supposed to welcome strangers, for they may be angels in disguise? What did you stock up on during the pandemic? A gun didn’t occur to me. I bought more water filters and wished I could buy for the whole county. I bought seeds. I bought rice and beans. You can’t eat bullets and they aren’t good toilet paper either. I studied local edible plants. What did you buy? So many people are so afraid.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: nothing. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Again, this might be evil in some situations and not in others.
I interviewed at the National Institutes of Health in the mid 1980s, with Dr. Steve Rosenburg. He asked how good I was with details. I said it depended. He asked what I meant. I said that I was excellent and persnickety when it came to science experiments, but at my present job I had trouble caring about the exact margin widths that the director of the non-profit I was working for wanted. He said that might be important. I said that I agreed, but I would be better off in a lab. He hired me.
I was excellent and persnickety in the lab and went from there to medical school 3 years later.
Etchings are profoundly persnickety. You can’t even do the drawing until you have tarred the zinc plate and then you etch the drawing in acid, take the tar off, ink the plate, run it through the press with paper and put more tar on the plate after you wipe the ink off. And once you get what you want, you have to re-ink the plate for every picture. This etching has two colors, which makes wiping enough ink off to get the lines right very tricky.
This is “Those are the pearls”, 4 out of 25, 1981, Helen Burling Ottaway. The plate size is 8.5 by 11 inches.
I am having to be persnickety about photographing my mother’s works. I am getting better at it, but it’s tricky to get the light right, without shadows. The cats always want to help. Today they are out in the box watching the birds, since they kept walking over the etching. I am jealous of the professionals downtown who have a camera on a frame and can be very very persnickety about the photograph. I may try my tripod, as a weak second. I have my mother’s slides too, so I could try digging those out. She did her own mostly, so I am not sure about them.
I take this climbing Mount Townsend with my son and a friend in 2017. We are up high enough to see a sea of clouds over the sound and the mountains on the other side.
This is in June, so the robins are back: tree toppers.
Merle is in his tiny cabin. The cabin far away in the woods. He is holding his guitar. When he realizes where he is, he puts down the guitar, carefully.
He hears crashing outside right away.
He looks. Bear. It rises onto it’s back feet. It is a sow, with cubs! Three!
No, thinks Merle, two cubs. And: “Kurt!” he yells, “Run!”
Kurt just looks at him and turns back to the cubs. The sow is looming outside. This is wrong, why isn’t she attacking Kurt? Kurt is pushing and wrestling the cubs, who are large.
The sow knocks on the cabin wall. “Merle?” says the sow.
Merle doesn’t say a word. This is all wrong.
“Merle?” says the sow bear. She is talking in bear noises but it’s also words in his head. “Well,” says the sow, “you said you could read my mind.”
Merle does not answer. He shakes his head. “Kurt.” he whispers.
The sow bangs on the wall again with a great paw. “You said you’d always be my friend. I miss hiking with you. The rest of it, forget it. Phone, texting, the other stuff. Let’s just hike.”
Merle remains still.
The sow drops to all fours and then sits, her front paws on her back paws. The forest is greening at the tips of the conifers. The grass is electric green from the rain. Kurt and the cubs roll around. Kurt looks ok, really.
“I gave it 50/50 from the start,” says the sow. It’s a meditative growl, if that can be imagined. “I thought you could choose. It was a lie that you could read my mind. You read what you wanted to read. I let you. I thought you’d either keep your promise or break it. I thought you could choose, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe that’s the thing about trying to control other people: if you realize that they are not controlled, you never speak to them again.” The bear rocks forward and back a little. She does not look cute. She looks lethal and smells like bear.
Her mouth opens wide and tongue lolls. “After all, I think people can change and you think they can’t. If you change, then I am right.” She coughs. Merle realizes that it’s laughter.
One of the cubs barrels into her, rolling. She swats it away. Kurt is right behind the cub, but she catches him. She sets him aside, standing up.
“Up to you,” says the bear. She turns towards the woods to the north. Kurt gives a wave and he and the cubs scramble after her.
Merle struggles out of the dream like a diver coming up from the deepest possible dive. “Kurt,” he says, “you said you’d come back and tell me the truth.” He shudders and gets up.
OOOOOO, ornery. What a lovely word! It can be purely negative or it can be positive and joking, or it can just mean stubborn.
This is one of Helen Burling Ottaway’s self portraits. My photograph, through glass. This is 20 by 26 inches, pastel chalk, dated 1979.
I had this up in the guest room, but a guest said he felt nervous with her watching. I laughed and said, “Ok, yeah, I can see that.” I moved it. My mother always looked fierce when she was concentrating. She captures that expression very well. People often thought she was angry when she was teaching, but it’s just concentration. I could tell the difference but the students could not.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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