Category Archives: women

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Daily Evil: F is for Frustration

F is also for Final. Death is frustratingly final. I can keep talking to the person, but they don’t talk back, except maybe in dreams. Even then, it’s my version of them.

F is also for fine art and father. This is a drawing of my father in college by my mother. My mother did art all the time and carried a sketchbook around nearly all the time. Every so often she mislaid it, searched, and started a new one until the old one surfaced. I was two when she did these drawings. My impression of fine art was that it involved continuous practice. My mother thought about art most of the time, as her diaries confirm. I love the sketch books.

These two drawings are on notebook paper. My mother sent them to her mother with letters when I was two. My grandmother was in Europe.

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Daily Evil: E for Ephalump

Oooooo surely it’s evil to make up new words. Or to verb words.

I think that my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, was thinking about Winnie-ther-Pooh’s Heffalumps when she made this. This etching is another small one, 3 by 2.5 inches. She did many tiny fantasy etchings. This is a proof, for me. An artist’s proof is an experimental run, before the final edition. She might change the ink color, or put the tar mixture back on the plate and change it.

I have had this album since I was very little. Winnie-ther-Pooh with a Brooklyn accent, but really really wonderful!

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Daily Evil: D is for Dragging

It’s a draggingfly. No, a dragonfly.

This is a tiny etching, 1.5 by 2 inches. The title is “For Temp”. This is number 27 out of an edition of 35. The plate needs to be reinked for each one and run through the press. Diddly, as my mother would say.

Temp is Fred Temple Burling, my mother’s father. He made a dragonfly sign for his name, since you can see a T, an F and a B in the shape of the dragonfly. My grandparents had a potter’s wheel in the basement and made some beautiful pottery. I have a few pieces. My mother did pottery as well later in her career.

Let’s see, is dragging evil? Sometimes people complain that others are dragging them down. But I remember a counselor saying to me, why are you responsible or affected by your husband’s moods? They are his. You do not have to fix them or leave the room. I thought, oh, that is true though at first it was quite difficult.

And what about dragging in drag racing? Some people may be very much for dragging.

I am still a little stiff today, since stiff muscles normally last about 48 hours after we’ve overused them. It feels like normal muscle stiffness, not like my post pneumonia chronic fatigue weirdness. That muscle fatigue starts when you use the muscles and it feels very painful and like they just don’t work. Then they feel dead for a while. It is very peculiar and hard to describe.

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Daily Evil: B is for Brag

Ooooo, B is for Brag. I can brag about my mother artist AND I got to do work with her. In the 1980s I ask if I can write poems that she will do etchings to illustrate them. She had done a series with a friend when I was a baby. I was jealous and wanted her to illustrate mine.

“Yes, BUT,” she replies, “The poems have to rhyme. I don’t like free verse.”

I laugh, because the man she did etchings and poems with before did all free verse.

This was right after I had finished college and wanted to write, but was certainly rather terrified about submitting anything. My degree was in Zoology and Scandinavian Studies, so I did not exactly have the writing connections.

I sent my mother ten poems, all rhyming. One was written with a finished etching in mind, but she did etchings for the rest. Almost all are about animals.

She had a friend who runs the Lead and Bread Press print 50 of each poem on etching paper and then started running the editions. We had a gallery opening together in the 1980s in Alexandria, Virginia. This did not make me rich but it certainly made me pleased and proud. Bragging rights are mine. The prints and poems are in a book as well, of women sibling artists. We got in even though we were mother-daughter rather than siblings.

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Daily Evil: A is for Anger

Welcome to April Blogging from A to Z.

A friend of mine died in February. She has known me since I was born, because she was in college with my parents. In fact, my father got arrested for having her graduation party, though it was thrown out of court. Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1963, and the problem with the party was that it was mixed race. Luckily there were no drugs and no minors drinking. I was the youngest minor, age 2. My mother was left with me, terrified that she could be lynched.

Anyhow, this friend is an artist, like and unlike my mother. I spoke to her daughter-in-law a few days ago and she says she is in the anger stage of grief. Yes, I know what she means. And new grief brings up all the old grief. How annoying. March 29 was the day my little sister died of cancer, so that all comes up too.

I keep reading that we should be positive. I hate it and I disagree. Sometimes we can grieve and go through stages of grief. Anger can be an indication that we are in a bad relationship or that we are being mistreated. Sometimes it is connected to old past anger, though, that needs to be cleared out. Have I succeeded with that? I don’t know.

Is anger evil? I do not believe any feelings are evil. Acting on them may be evil, but it’s complicated. Feelings are information, part of our senses. This doesn’t mean that we always interpret things correctly, so sometimes we need to check. “When you said this, I interpreted it this way. Is that what you meant?” I usually have to wait a week if I am upset about something, so I can have the feelings calm. I get better and better about not acting on anger. I do not mind feeling it.

A is for Adam and Eve as well. This is one of Helen Burling Ottaway’s etchings, titled “First Valentine”.

For the process of making an etching, read here. This is from 1982, number 29 out of 35, a limited edition each run and signed by the artist.

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Theme for April: Daily Evil

I have been thinking in a desultory manner or perhaps not really thinking about the A to Z April Challenge. I want to have a whole month of my mother’s fabulous art, but what is my theme? Mothers? No. Women artists? No. Discrimination against women artists? Sigh, no. Oh! I read an article yesterday about how the negative and nasty headlines get the major clicks. Today I read another very nice kind blog post about putting something nice into the world. So that gives me my theme! My mother’s art and daily evil impulses.

Impulses, not actions. Don’t we all feel those nasty impulses? Now I am interested in my own theme: how does that tie into my mother’s art? You don’t know? I don’t know either, but I know that many of us have complex feelings about our mothers. You might too. What does her art reveal or what does it trigger in me? And you get to enjoy her art, while you react with prim or gleeful horror at the Daily Evil Art Impulse.

Happy April!

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The first photograph is of one of Helen Burling Ottaway’s watercolors. It is signed, matted and shrink wrapped. Date: 1996. She died of cancer in 2000. I do not know the title, but this is Lake Matinenda, in Ontario, Canada. My maternal family has land there and I have gone there since age 5 months.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: placid. Heh.

Ooooo and later:

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Passe

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is anachronism. I guess that would be Helen Burling Ottaway’s watercolors, since an AI can do them, and my work as a physician. The American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) wrote: “So, the AAFP looked into an AI assistant for clinical review that can β€œpull the data together in a problem-oriented manner and give you a snapshot of exactly what’s going on with your patient without having to search and click and find things.”

Um. Ok, I am thinking of a patient who was about to be transferred from our small hospital to a bigger one. His notes came across my desk. I called the hospitalist. No less then four physicians during the hospitalization, starting with the emergency room physician, had written that his abdomen was “flat, soft, non-tender, no masses”. What this told me was that 1. Not one of them had done an exam. 2. Not one of them had read my notes nor the surgeon’s notes. 3. The bigger hospital was going to laugh themselves silly if they did an exam. Why? He had an 8 by 8 inch enormous umbilical hernia present for 20+ years, which had not gotten fixed yet because of other medical issues.

Great. So let’s make it worse by having an AI pick out what is important from the patient record and have it make up exams, which people are too lazy to do. Physicians are too lazy to do. People, you had better read every single note your doctor or nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant writes, because you want to go on record in writing when they get it wrong. It is an absolute horror show. Read your notes, because your doctor is most likely not reading the notes from the specialists. I find it amazing, horrifying and sloppy.

I learned to paint watercolors from my mother. I am not primarily an artist, but I learned all sorts of techniques from her. We do not learn from plugging an idea into a computer. We learn from doing. And yes, it is work to learn techniques, but it is worth it!

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National Museum of Women in the Arts

I took these photographs at Christmas 2017. My daughter and I visited my son and my daughter-in-law in Maryland. We went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It is fabulous. They have been closed for renovations, but I hope they’ll be open next time I visit my son and daughter-in-law.

The Smithsonian is also working on a museum about women and about time, too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: museum.

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Small wounds

Small wounds over and over.

“The band is invited to Arizona. We’ll be on the radio. And I am trying to set up a recording.”

She keeps her eyes down. Tries not to hope. She has time, she could take time off. She has saved so much vacation, hoping. They would have to have someone stay with the kids.

“It’s going to be a great trip. I haven’t spent anything from the last big sale yet, been saving it for something like this. I was hoping we could record.”

She is wiping the counter slowly, over and over.

“That sale was amazing, just when I needed it. Debts paid and caught up.”

She works in the local government. Steady. It gives them health insurance. Secure retirement. Nothing spectacular. She turns to the sink, to rinse the cloth. The counter is clean enough. She isn’t going to think about it any more.

“That is great.” She tries not to hate the band. “At work–“

He is behind her and hugs her. “You are so great, here for me. We are going in three weeks. February. Perfect time for Arizona, I can’t wait for some sun.”

She tries to feel comforted by his hug and yields to it, as always. She is silent.

“Now make sure you don’t let the kids talk you into giving them too many things while we’re gone.”

She nods.

He kisses her head. He lets go and gets his guitar and coat. “Have a good weekend. I have to practice.” He is headed for the trailer, in the next county, alone for the weekend, to immerse in music.

She turns and watches as he leaves.