Category Archives: Stealthie

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Intransitivity

Intransitive verb

Intransitive? But you know
sometimes it will snow snow
sometimes it will snow sleet
while I’m awake or when I sleep
it may be snowing sleet or snow
but really I’m not sure I know
if it can also sleet snow

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Intransitive

He’s intransitive, just so annoying
Intensitive bastard, good old boying!
Sentensitively prosing about bird wings!
Insentivizingly verbing almost all things!
So intransitive, just boycloying
Intensitive batshard, boyhowannoying!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: intransitive.

There is a red headed woodpecker in this picture, though it is not a very good shot. No, it’s not a red headed, they are east of the Rockies. A red breasted sapsucker? https://wildyards.com/woodpeckers-in-washington/

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Sand and crabs

Let’s see: sand. We have lots of sand, but the beach here is mostly cold. The water temperature is 45 degrees F today. It ranges from 45-55 here over the year. Wetsuit, drysuit or well, my daughter and her friends would go in. Brrrrr.

I love walking the beaches here though. We can walk 6 miles from North Beach to Cape George if we time the tides right. Marrowstone Island has miles of mostly deserted beach as well. Sand and agates and rocks and eagles and great blue herons and coyotes and sea lions in the water.

Not everyone likes sand though. Here is an example:

And while we are at it, another sea ditty and a favorite: The Crabby Song. I used to sing it at work under my breath. Very professional, right?

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Sterling too

I grow up with sterling.

My mother has a set of sterling. It is important to her. It is an emblem, a badge. She does not have as extensive a set as her mother.

My sister and I know the silver is special because of our mother. We like the tiny spoons best. They are silver with gold on the bowl.

“Can we use the special spoons?” we ask. For ice cream.

“Yes,” says my mother, smiling.

We run to get them, the small spoons, heavy for their size. Silver is heavier than stainless steel. The spoon also gets colder than stainless steel and tastes different. We eat our ice cream with our special spoons very happily.

We know that the silver is sterling. I don’t know what that means for a while. It means it is not plate. Plate? But these are spoons.

My mother shows us the stamp on the back of each spoon. “See? It says sterling. That means it is silver all the way through. Plate has silver over another metal.” She shows us the back of another spoon. The bowl has a worn spot. “The silver has worn away. And it does not say sterling.” We both study the two spoons and weigh them in our hands. The plate one is lighter. My mother is scornful of silver plate.

My mother is an artist and goes to museums. She comes back from one laughing. “They have an exhibit about homes and decoration. There is a room with tv trays and very few books and wall to wall carpet and a large color television. I thought it was so dull and ugly. Then I went to the next room. Oriental carpet and books and a guitar and no television and art!” She laughs. “They have me nailed. I am such a snob and it looked just like our house!”

We do have a tv but it is the smallest black and white that you can get. And my father knocked it over one night. Now the picture is cup shaped. The top of heads are wide and swollen. Neither of my parents care enough to get it fixed or replace it. They spend their money on art supplies and books and music. Friends visit. “What is wrong with your tv?” I look at it in surprise. I am so used to the deformed picture, I stopped noticing long ago.

Once we are at my mother’s mother’s house. My mother tells another story. “I found mother sweeping to get ready for guests. She swept the dirt under the edge of the rug! I said, “MOTHER! What are you DOING!” Mother just looked at me and said, “It’s a poor mistress who doesn’t know the maid’s tricks.” My mother’s mother did grow up with servants. But not here. She was born in Turkey because her father was a minister, running an orphanage and school. My grandmother lived there until she was sixteen and the family was exiled from Turkey at the start of World War I.

I give my mother’s sterling to my niece, after my sister dies. My children are not very interested in sterling. That is ok with me. Things change and values change.

I still have some special spoons, and think of my mother and father and sister when I eat ice cream.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sterling.

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Gleam!

Gleam used to be a toothpaste. Apparently there still is a gleam toothpaste, but the one I remember was not “all natural“. The advertisements were all sparkly teeth. Bright white sparkly teeth was the goal.

My father said that “natural” could be anything, including anything made by humans. My clinic had a plastic skeleton named Mordechai. I said that she was natural and plant based. My daughter says, “MOM, she’s plastic and made in China!” I said, “Well, plastic is made from oil and oil is from tiny plants and animals, squished together millions of years ago until they form oil. Therefore she is natural and plant based.” My daughter thinks about it and says, grudgingly, “Ok, mom, I guess you are right. Sort of.”

I don’t know when I took this selfie/stealthie. It has gotten separated from the other photographs. Often I can date by the haircut, but not in this one. Anyhow, I think it gleams.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: gleam.

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Reblog: Desertification

I don’t want to argue about global warming. Let’s talk about deserts instead. Overgrazing, cutting down all the trees and losing topsoil: we have seen this in the United States, with the dust bowl. We have a lot of people in the world to feed, even after all the deaths from Covid-19. We need to take care of land.

https://desertification.wordpress.com/2022/10/08/healthy-forest-project-launched-to-protect-mongolia-forests-for-future-generations/

Ok, I am lame, that is embedded, not a reblog. I will have to figure out the difference. Feel free to laugh at me. My problem with technology is that it is NOT intuitive. I was horrible with computers until I realized that they are linear and stupid. That is, they only follow the exact right command and they have very little capacity to guess what I mean. I decided that computers were glorified hammers and very very annoying and that the manuals are usually written by people who speak computer, not English. That made it much easier for me to work with computers.

Anyhow, plant a tree. Blessings and peace you.

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Practicing Conflict

An essay from my church talks about the writer avoiding conflict, fearing conflict and disliking conflict. This interests me, because I do not avoid conflict, I don’t fear conflict and actually, I like it. Our emeritus minister once did a sermon in which he said that when you are thinking about two conflicting things at once, that is grace. I have thought about his words many times, especially when I am not in agreement about something.

Does this interest in conflict mean I fight all the time? Well, sort of, but not in the way you think. I don’t fight with other people much. I fight myself.

What? No, really. Most topics have multiple sides. Not one, not two, but many. Like a dodecahedron or a cut gem. Hold it up to the light, twelve sides, each different. I argue the different sides with myself.

I learned this from my parents. My parents would disagree about something, they would discuss or argue about it, and then they would bet. Sometimes they bet a penny, sometimes a quarter, sometimes one million dollars. Then one of them would get up and get the Oxford English Dictionary, or the World Atlas, or some other reference and look it up. This was pre-internet, ok? 1970s and 1980s.

Sometimes my parents would even pay each other. The penny or quarter. My father spoke terrible French and my mother had lived in Paris for a year after high school, so he could get her going by insisting that his French was correct. It wasn’t. Ever.

There were other arguments in the middle of the night that were not friendly and involved yelling, but the daytime disagreements were funny and they would both laugh.

Once my sister is visiting after my mother has died. My father is present. My father, sister and I get in a three way disagreement about physics. I’m a physician, my sister was a Landscape Architect and my father was a mathematician/engineer, so we are all three talking through our hats. However, we happily argue our positions. Afterwards, my gentleman friend says, “That was weird.” “What?” I ask. “That was competitive and you were all arguing.” “It was a discussion and we disagreed.” “I won’t compete.” “We let my dad win, because it makes him happy.” “That was weird.” “Ok, whatever.”

My gentleman friend is also shocked when my teen son challenges me at dinner. My son says, “I am researching marijuana and driving for school and there isn’t much evidence that it impairs driving.”  I reply, “Well, there is not as easy a test as an alcohol test and it was illegal, so it has not been studied.” We were off and having a discussion.

Afterwards my gentleman friend says, “I am amazed by your son bringing that up. We weren’t allowed to discuss anything like that at dinner.” I say, “We pretty much discuss anything at dinner and both my kids are allowed to try to change my mind. About going to a party or whatever.” He shakes his head. “That is really different.” “Ok,” I say.

This habit of challenging authority, including adults, did not go over well when my son was an exchange student to Thailand. It did not occur to me to talk to him about it. He figured it out pretty quickly.

Back to my internal arguments. If I take a position, I almost immediately challenge it. I think of it as the old cartoons, with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. The devil will make fun of things and suggest revenges and generally behave really badly. The angel will rouse and say, “Hey, you aren’t being nice.” Then they fight. The internal battle very quickly becomes comic with the two of them trading insults and bringing up past fights and fighting unfairly. When it makes me laugh inside, I can also be over the driver who cut me off, or someone who spoke nastily, or whatever. My devil is very very creative about suggested revenges. When the angel says, “You are meaner than the person who cut you off!” I am over it.

When I was little and disagreeing with my family, my sister could tell. “You have your stone face on!” That meant I was attempting to hide a feeling, especially fear or anger or grief. Siblings and family are the most difficult because they can read us and see through us like glass. My physician training also teaches control of feelings. I have sometimes wanted to grab a patient and scream “Why are you doing this to yourself?” but that really is not part of the doctor persona. I am doing it inside, but I can put it aside until later. Then the devil goes to town! And the angel tries to calm the devil down.

Maybe we all need more of this skill. Pick a mildly controversial topic. Argue one side of it. Then switch positions and argue the other side. Go back and forth until it gets ridiculous. Let each side get unreasonable and inflammatory and annoying. This can play in your head and not on your face. Once you can do a mild topic, move on to something a bit more difficult. If you only know the arguments on your side, read. You can find the other side, the internet is huge. Start gently.

A friend says, “You always argue about things.” I say, “I prefer to think of it as a discussion.” “You always take the other side.” “Well, it interests me. And if there is no one to discuss something with, I discuss it with myself!” “Weirdo,” says the friend. I think he’s jealous, really I do. Don’t you?