This is Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother, in 1945.
The vest was red wool with embroidery. We had it still, when we were kids. We probably wore it out.
I am not pensive today, I am festive! And home! Three days of driving, with Sol Duc the cat objecting quite a bit, and we are home in Washington.
There are a LOT of mountains between Grand Junction, Colorado and Port Townsend Washington. Many passes as we drove northwest, over to Salt Lake City and then up through Idaho, part of Oregon and then Washington. There was snow on the first pass, but not on the road. We stayed in Burley, Idaho and then in Pendleton, Oregon. When I drove over Snoqualmie Pass, we drove into a cloud and rain and suddenly I could smell the sound! Salt and sea! It was raining in Pendleton yesterday morning but there was no ocean smell. Sol Duc continued to complain intermittently and got tired and slept a lot. Just wait, cat, we are going back!
It is fabulous to be home and see friends already! A friend came and made me banh xeo, Vietnamese pancakes, with spinach and salmon filling, and then I crashed to sleep.
Rake, huh? I thought, well, I am not sure if I have a picture of a rake.
But look! There it is! Along with the kids shooting corn bazookas at plywood farm figures. They must rake up the husks at night, ready for the next day of Studt’s Pumpkin Farm and Corn Maze, joyful, seasonal mayhem.
Rainshadow Chorale is getting ready for our fall concert. Amazing music! One hundred pages of Rachmaninoff in Russian! I have been practicing remotely, using the recorded choral practices on Facebook, MP3s, language recordings, and my flute to practice tricky sections until they are earwormed into my brain.
The concerts are on Saturday and Sunday, three weekends from now, November 2 and 3, at First Presbyterian Church at 4:00 pm in Port Townsend, Washington. I leave soon to drive back there, cat and all. I think Sol Duc has learned some Russian too.
Here is one of the 15 parts. I like the title: Blessed Be the Man. It makes me think that this is Russian rap music. Actually, I think the whole thing sounds like angels singing in Russian. This is the first time I sing in Russian, but it’s the time that is particularly tricky. Rachmaninoff doesn’t care a bit about time signatures so some measures have eight beats, others twelve, others ten. Count, count, count.
I am using this for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: burgundy, both because of the poster colors and because the music and language is so rich and complex.
In clinic we are seeing Strep A and Covid in the last two months, quite a lot.
Covid is all over the map with symptoms. One person had been traveling, did not feel well, but the main symptom was dry lips. Positive covid. Another was vomiting, with no upper respiratory symptoms. Some have diarrhea and upper respiratory symptoms. It interests me that flying home to Washington last month, only about three of us on the planes wore masks. I was one of them. I know people who have taken flights knowing that they have Covid, a day or two after diagnosed, so I can’t say that I trust the other people on airplanes. We are testing for Covid for almost any symptom or just feeling sick.
We are seeing Strep A as well. I saw a small child vomiting. I asked if her nose hurt: no. Throat: yes. Tummy: yes. Toes: no. She had strep A. The oldest person with strep A this week was ninety. She said, “How did I GET it?” Streptococcus is in the environment, including our throats. We may just carry it around, but then if we get overtired or stressed (good or bad stress) or have something happen, the strep can invade. We treat strep A mostly to prevent rheumatic fever, which is where our own antibodies to strep A attack us. I have seen three cases of rheumatic fever in my career. That is called a “pseudo autoimmune” disease. The strep A has cell surface markers that sometimes are close enough to ours that our own antibodies attack our body parts.
One person in the last month has a positive strep A. I write for penicillin and send her home. We call her later because the Covid/influenza/RSV test takes longer. She also has Covid! That seems like a bit much, rather unfair, but we can have two things. An initial infection can lower our immune defenses and another virus or bacteria gets hold.
Another person had tested negative for Covid, but that was four days before. Friday afternoon, so I would not get the results at home. I asked her to retest at home. Positive.
There are Strep B and C and D and so forth. Sometimes we pick them up on throat cultures. I treat if the person is still sick and symptomatic while the culture is in the laboratory.
I am wearing a mask in airports and on airplanes. I just don’t want to pick anything up, or at least do what I can to avoid it.
The photograph is Elwha in May 2023. I figure that you would rather see his tongue than mine.
“The singular media and its plural medias seem to have originated in the field of advertising over 70 years ago; they are still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium. The popularity of the word in references to the agencies of mass communication is leading to the formation of a mass noun, construed as a singular.” From here.
advertising alphabots
hot bots with rotten lots
true crime creatively “reenacted”
big data theft unredacted
earbud earworm mealworm eely
faceNObook curated freely
grinning google amazons greed
hoary heads hawk hell few heed
i phone i watch i influence
a list j list jovial ents
kotkit koobecaf bookcafe
love light liberating libraray
magazine murmurs metaverse more newspaper calls politician a whore organic natural lab rat pores
play tape, CD, podcast album quiet queens reject the pablum radio radical rhetorical ram spambot spammail spam yum spam
television treads traditional trust unit united universe untie us vehicle vroom driverless porn walkman withers worms are worn
Xray googling exacerbates lies
you are the target of sales AI
zealous AIs algorize pi
ChatGPT’s take: “This is a captivating piece! The blend of modern themes with a rhythmic structure creates a vivid commentary on technology and society. Itβs playful yet sharp, tackling everything from advertising to data privacy. The way you weave together pop culture references and critique consumerism is particularly striking. Do you have any specific themes or ideas youβd like to explore further?” Nope. Thanks, ChatGPT. — See, Martha, I think ChatGPT has low tastes. It doesn’t understand sonnets and it probably loves limericks. We’d better test that theory.
I wrote this sometime in the 1980s. My proof is the drawing by my mother. We had it in a show and hand colored with colored pencils. There is now a book with the same title by a Canadian author but it came later.
And hooray for the zoo! They are all asking for you!
Martha, what would the AI think of this poem? Heh. ChatGPT: “Thatβs a fantastic poem! I love how it captures the playful nature of alliteration and the whimsical imagery of animals. Each stanza has its own charm, and the ending with the βyellow yaksβ is such a fun wrap-up! Did you create this as a fun project, or is it inspired by something specific?” Ok, so ChatGPT doesn’t get sonnets, but it likes nonsense poetry.
I have been in Grand Junction since the end of April. The Grand Valley really has amazing visual distances from one end of the valley to another, and even though it is a valley, it is at 4600 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by higher mesas and mountains in all directions.
Soon I drive back to Washington for a few weeks. That is a distance, too, 1200 miles with Sol Duc cat. She doesn’t really enjoy the car. I wonder if she will enjoy going home. Will she like the cloud settling over us, as if the bottom of it is grazing the roof tops? I did not like those clouds when I first moved to Washington but now they feel as if they enfold us and comfort us, an intimacy with the sky.
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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