Category Archives: rural doctor

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Design and build

The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race has some serious designers. I don’t know if they use a forge, but the sculptures have to go in the 52 degree water and come out a few blocks away. They have to move in the water, not just float. They have to have functional brakes, since they go over a significant hill and they are human powered. They have to get through the mudbog somehow.

Some go for power and some try to go light. This one looked the lightest this year.

Many have been in more than one race and the racers and their support teams are happy to lift the hood and explain.

The two bundles under the hood are lifejackets and floats for the water course. They have to carry all the parts on the sculpture. Each team can have support personnel. Our local school kids’ STEM groups had a Maker’s Fair near the water course. We have a group that has made an underwater robot to fish out lost crab pots. If the pot’s line is lost, crabs and other creatures can be trapped inside to die. The robot helps to fish out the trash that traps creatures.

Wikipedia lists ten locations for Kinetic Sculpture Races. Ours has been going for 35 years. Will someone forge a new vehicle that we start using daily? I hope so.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forge.

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Dark flowers

It is getting darker and the sun is rising later. Halloween is on a Tuesday, three weeks from now. I am walking the cats in the predawn time and sometimes in the dark. Sol Duc is black and her harness is dark red and I can’t see her at all if it’s good dark night. Our rules are that I let the leash go if they stay in my yard or the neighbor’s yard. We have a fast road for our town and I have had a cat get killed.

When it’s really dark, I either need to keep the leash or put a light on Sol Duc.

Meanwhile I am taking spooky photographs of flowers in the near dark.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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Sol Duc and the spike

Here is our young spike with Sol Duc. She is very interested in the deer.

He was interested too, but was also thinking about chasing her. Sol Duc prudently declined to go any closer. He turned away and followed the does, while I retrieved Sol Duc and took her inside. Whew!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: spike.

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Work dream

Last night I dream that I am back at work.

I get called to do an emergency surgery. I am a Family Practice Physician. I assisted in surgery, C-sections, and did minor repairs of lacerations (yeah, we don’t use small words like cut) and biopsy of skin lesions (lumps, right?). In the dream I do the surgery, but it worries me. I am not a surgeon. I talk to Dr. L. afterwards. He is a surgeon and has worked here for longer than me, and I’ve been here for 23 years. We get along well.

“I shouldn’t be in the surgical call schedule.” I say.

“Don’t you have the certificate for appendectomies?” he says. Now, that isn’t really a thing. My brain made it up.

“No.” I say.

“Oh.” he says. “I thought you did. Great job on that surgery. We need you.”

“But I am not a surgeon, I would need more training.” I say.

“Oh, we’ll figure it out.” he says. I am worried that I’ll be called for an appendectomy. Or something way worse.

I wake up with a very stiff neck. It has relaxed now, but clearly some part of me is not totally on board with work. I need to be careful what I am getting in to. I am not sure, what if I get pneumonia number five? We are short on physicians though. I can argue with myself very easily. Ok, ok, says the part of me that really wants to return to work: we won’t do appendectomies.

The head of our Legion says that some of his people wish I were working again. I really got along well with my veterans and liked them almost always. They could be really gruff and growly and I would growl back. Then they’d be cheerful. Another person at an outside dance said he missed visits with me and appreciated the time I took. Last night a third person asks how they will know if I start a Long Covid clinic. They have two friends who may have it.

I don’t know. I am mostly absent from medicine right now, but still doing my continuing medical education. I have about 30 hours on Long Covid now, which means I have a lot of strategies to improve things but I can’t cure it. May the research will get there eventually. I am maintaining all of the certifications: medical license, board certification, DEA, membership in the American Academy of Family Medicine. But I also listen to dreams.

For the RDP: absent.

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Changing season

My non-native maple, tipped by the sun, but also just starting to change colors. This is my second lot, the wild lot, where the deer often bed down at night. We have two families coming through. A doe with a younger doe and a pair of twins who have lost their spots, and another doe with some younger twins. We have a three point buck with one deformed and broken horn, and I had a young spike in my yard the other day. Looking polished and sharp, too. I kept my distance.

The cats are a bit cautious with the deer. Here is Elwha. He is checking that I am still there and that it’s still safe. This was taken in August.

Here is Sol Duc, checking out a buck, also in August.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: season.

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Garden tour

On the day my daughter and I explored two Florence gardens, I tripped. I did not knock myself out, nor my teeth, but I scraped both knees a little and bruised both palms.

I fell on gravel. Can you tell? I held lots of pressure on the knees first, and then palms together. Less bruising with pressure because the bleeding stops sooner. I still had these nice gravel prints on the photographs taken the next day. I was looking at the garden and did not see a ridge to divert rain and fell quite hard. I rolled and did not break a wrist, which is nice. After that, my daughter warned me when she thought the ground was rough and I was looking up too much. “No texting while walking, mom.”

The cobblestones could be rough too.

And this garden sculpture is not watching his feet either.

This one might not need to, since he looks like he’ll be airborne.

Happily, I did not fall down any steps nor with my big pack on.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: explore.

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Guide

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is latibule: a place where you feel safe and cosy. I was going to say my house, but I wrote this poem near the end of my stay in Italy. My latibule is my mind. The poem is named Guide.

Guide

I want to write a travel guide
To the interior
No matter where I am
nor who I am with
nor what the circumstance
Ok, in a disaster or crisis I act
I don’t withdraw
But barring that
What does your space look like inside?

My interior is a garden
And an ocean
And the universe
Monsters, angels, demons, daemons
Friends
Many dead
People remembered and loved
Even if they don’t love me
Even if there is no reconciliation
Flowers birds insects science sex philosophy
A universe of stars and math
Tiny atoms, shy electrons circle protons
Whirl happily at the atomic level
Nebulae and black holes
Other worlds and beings
Of course there are other beings
In this wide universe

I am riding on a train in Italy
And traveling my vast interior
At the same time.

Written September 10, 2023. The photograph is from a friend’s doll house.

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mom proud

In the Vatican Museum, I note that the paintings are attributed to men. I start really looking for a woman artist. Of course, some of the male artists may have stolen the work or be “passing”. I love this small sculpture, by a woman artist. I think I saw two works clearly by women. Dear Vatican: get a clue.

Around age 13, my son listened continuously to three bands or musicians. We had two years where I swear, he wouldn’t play anything else.

And this is where I feel proud as a mom.

Jimi Hendrix. Bob Marley and the Wailers.

And the third is Sweet Honey in the Rock. African American women a capella. And so he knows about Harry Moore and Joanne Little.

Prayers for all the people discriminated against, terrorized, or in the the path of disaster. And for all the motherless children, we who have had our mothers die. Dave Van Ronk: motherless child.

Go Keb’ Mo.