Category Archives: play

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Satirical

I am looking through photographs looking for a Satyr. Or Satyrs. I know that I have Fauns on a frieze in a very peculiar old repurposed Elks Club in Portland, but Fauns are not quite Satyrs. And satirical is from a different origin than Satyr.

Really, though, I am surprised that no one was dressed as a Satyr at the Great Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race.

The costumes are always amazing.

Here is a sculpture with the rider. A Satyr or not?

This is the day before the race, with the parade and the brake test and the water test. The water is in the 40s or low 50s.

What do we call a female Satyr?

No, surely she is not one. Will the Judges permit Satyrs?

It does not appear that they will.

The cover picture is most satirical to me: the joyful silliness of the human powered race, on land, on sea and through mud, with a sailboat race in the background and Indian Island, with a crane and a military presence. Let’s have more more more joyful silliness.

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The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race: https://www.ptkineticrace.org/

This is the 2018 Race.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Satyr.

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always on your mind

This is a compilation poem from more than one song and more than one person I’ve dated. A friend and I really dislike a song her husband sings that has the “I wish that you had told me” line. We make faces at each other and whisper, “We wish that you had listened.”

Sometimes I am treated as an admiring audience by a male. At least, that is the role he would like me to play. I get pretty bored pretty quickly. If he doesn’t give me reasonable floor time, if he doesn’t listen, well, goodbye. Find another female slave. One male tells me that my poetry doesn’t matter. I think, oh, I guess it doesn’t matter to YOU, but it certainly matters to ME. There is a certain wicked enjoyment in writing poetry that references his words, heh heh. Enjoy!

October 8, 2022

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always on your mind

the songs you sing
I was always on your mind
you wish that I had told you

isn’t that a lie?
you told me never to ask you
to do anything. Ever.

what was always on your mind
you told me many times
you could read mine

what was always on your mind
you said you could read mine
I wish you had. Even once.

what was always on your mind
was your fantasy me
who obeyed your every wish

what was always on your mind
was that I would wait at home
available to listen or for sex

what was always on your mind
your terror of the ball and chain
that I’d entrap you into marriage

what was always on your mind
had nothing to do with me
I tried hard to tell you

what was always on your mind
had nothing to do with me
I tried hard to tell you

what was always on your mind
was a fantasy. Not me.
How can you be surprised I’m gone?

you wish that I had told you
you say I was always on your mind
I wish that you had listened even once

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I took the photograph on Marrowstone Island a few days ago.

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Superlative Spectacle

I am still enjoying my photographs of The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. Above we have a Kinetic Kop in action, just as the parade is starting! Stop the cars! The sculptures are on the move!

All of the color and costumes are so fabulous, especially after quarantines and isolation. Red, orange and yellow predominated!

Talents show up! Walking on stilts in costume with wings!

These racers are having a grand time!

A serious discussion on the Kiwanis Train.

Kop Kar, I mean, Kykle.

Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!

Waiting for their turn at the Mud Bog.

Superlative Feathers!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: superlative.

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Not snappy

Day 2 of the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. The race starts at “low noon” and winds up up up hill and then some downhill to the fairgrounds: and there is the Mud Bog. Each sculpture has to pick one of three courses. They are deep and muddy and rutted. The sculptures can be moved sideways but not forward or back. There is a time limit. It looks like very hard work!

There is a lot of standing around. In costume. Observing and commenting. Kinetic Kop presence.

I love this sculpture. Headed for the mud.

Others waiting.

He is fairly snappy.

Uh-oh!

He makes it and the buns are next!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: snappy.

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Dressed in yellow

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is red and yellow. It brings up a jump rope rhyme from when I was a kid and lived in Johnson City, New York. I am sure there are dozens of versions of this. Do you know one?

Cindareller, dressed in yeller
went downtown to see her feller
on her way her girdle broke
how many people did it choke?

And then we would count until the jumper tripped or lost her place. I don’t think we knew what a girdle was, either, except that it was not a respectable word to shout out.

The picture has nothing to do with the jump rope rhyme. I took this at the Farmer’s Market in 2014. The baby is much older now, but Gypsy Coffeehouse still serves delicious coffee. Such colors!

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patriotic lobster

…because the pants alone aren’t loud enough.

Another in my Outfits Inappropriate For Work series. It is difficult to type wearing my claws. Also patients would get distracted if I wore something too weird. I can’t think why.

I got the claws at a church sale yesterday. I was told they went with a game, “You’ve Got Crabs!” Turns out they don’t, but maybe they should! I went looking vaguely for a CD case for my car and got two: however they came with CDs. Everything from Cake to Spongebob Favorites to Johnny Cash to Disney Favorites. I am SET.

So who wants to play “You’ve got crabs!”?

Do you have an Outfit Inappropriate For Work? Is a Silly Selfie a Silthie?

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teen toys today

Um, you say, these don’t really look like toys.

I had friends visit last week. These are the thirteen year old’s toys: he enjoys fixing cell phones and computers and asked if we had any old game platforms. I talked to my son and the thirteen year old is taking the ones he wants. And what was he working on in the picture? Replacing the broken glass in my cell phone.

Now many of you are jealous and would like this teen to visit you. My cell phone has a lot of parts and many tiny screws. There was only one left over and the phone is working fine and the glass is unbroken! Wow! Toys of mine that were used in explorations and repairs included my vacuum and I provided the super glue.

I thanked him with a comic book subscription, since we share an enjoyment and appreciation of comic books.

One of the most useful toys I had growing up was a china doll. Useful you say? Yes. We sewed doll quilts and doll clothes and made our own furniture and hoped for the tiny books in the Cracker Jack boxes. How is this so helpful? Surgeons asked where I had learned my stitching techniques. It was quite delightful to reply, “Doll clothes.” It really did help. I made one old fashioned dress with miles of ruffle, all hemmed by hand. In the 1970s I was embroidering my jeans and adding studs and we dyed t-shirts with melted paraffin and crayons. My sister and I nearly burned down the kitchen once, but we did learn which techniques to use to stop wax fires.

I am not sure who made this dress for the doll. My grandmother Katy Burling sewed doll clothes for us and helped us make patterns and nine patch doll quilts. My other grandmother Evelyn Ottaway could knit the tiniest doll clothes on knitting needles: I still have some of those as well. A tiny stole knit out of a furry yarn and lined with brown satin. My mother was an artist and loved crafts as well but NOT sewing. Pottery yes, sewing no.

My daughter promptly illustrated her lack of the packrat gene by putting half the furniture and stuff away and having a spare and elegant doll house. She learned to sew but does not like it much to date.

What childhood toys and ideas contributed to your adult skills?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: toy.

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part time

I only dress like this part time.

#outfitsinappropriateforwork

A friend took this with my camera at my request. Thank you, friend!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt part time.