Category Archives: words

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The color of fame

I never thought I would be famous. I never thought I’d be a zombie either, but a famous zombie? In demand for murals?

When the zombie illness first hit, hundreds of years ago, we were hunted nearly to extinction. The discrimination was terrible and we were killed in heartless horrific ways. We hid and never ever spoke to humans. We often starved. And the movies that depicted us! We were never saying “Brains!” We were saying “Pains!” And get over the idea that we want to bite you! We don’t. It just hurts so much when we are hidden in the deserts and can’t get food, that we bite in despair. After all, our neurological fine motor skills only work when we are fed. Not with brains but with color! Color, crayons, paints, pencils, glorious and exquisite color.

Doesn’t this pain you too?

Browns and greys and tans and muds. The blue sky helps a little and the yellow of the sign, but any zombie suffers horrifically in this sort of environment. Parts of us start falling off! You think we are rotting, but you humans are wrong so often. You think you know everything.

But we finally managed to communicate! Someone threw their paint cans at us, a graffiti artist, and we were off. He was a mere amateur with color. No one can color like a zombie! The humans are jealous and beg us to teach them. A few have even begged to become zombies, so that they can see color the way we do. No way. We aren’t stupid enough to do that. You’ll just have to keep paying us to paint the beauty that feeds us and that you long for now too!

I am so proud of my art and proud that we zombies have been freed and at last are welcomed by humans.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: colorful.

The previous zombie story is here.

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Goal achieved!

I am Elwha, cat.

I achieved an item from my bucket list today! My first prey!

I am in the cat cage in the wild outside. Mother opens the window some days. It has been cold and wet, but I go out anyhow. This time I see movement. I freeze and slowly stalk it. My hunt is successful and I make my catch. I squeeze through the door and carry it to the kitchen.

I put it down. I hope it will run, but it is slow. Still alive, though. Mother notices and admires it. I would let her eat it. She doesn’t take it.

Mother is proud, too. I hear her tell the phone “Elwha caught his first worm!”

I taste the worm but I am not that hungry. I left it but it was gone later. Maybe mother got hungry after all.

I bet I can catch more for her!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucket list.

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After the bear

I visited an old friend in Europe last March. I talked about the Olympic Peninsula and he was impressed with the cougars and orcas and bears. “We don’t have any large predators here.” Well, only humans.

They used to, though. This is from a local museum: a bear skeleton from about 7000 BC from the country. A very big bear fossil. There were other fossil predators including a wolf like creature.

So this is the succession where he lives: humans living after the bears.

What comes next?

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: succession.

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Inadvisable

Don’t be flippant with this one.

Taken on Marrowstone Island earlier this week. I was so busy watching this eagle that I tripped over a rock and face planted. If I’d hit a rock I would have lost teeth or knocked myself out. Luckily both I and the camera did fine.

I tend to spot the eagles in the trees by sound. I do watch for them as well. This one called to another, who circled towards the tree. Sound locates them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flippant.

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Valedictionary

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is valediction. Perpetua is starting the first (to my knowledge) Valedictionary, of letter sign offs. Cool beans.

Valedictionary is a new word. Mine, all mine, but you may use it! I will generously allow everyone to use it! It is valedictionariable! Another new word. I will accept suggestions as to the meaning. For now it will mean whatever I want it to mean when I use it. Words being malleable.

Now, Perpetua, you sign your post “Yours Robotically”. What does that valediction mean? You are an AI? You would like to be an AI? You are a robot? Your post was written with ChatGPT? I am curious.

How do I sign letters off?

Yours sincerely
Yours truly,
Love,
SWAK,*
Respectfully submitted,
Your corporate policies grieve me,
My father has been dead for 13 years, stop mailing him your catalogs,
Holy cats,
Holy catwoman, batman,
Aaaaarghhhhh,
Love.

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*SWAK stands for Sealed With A Kiss, and we used that when we were kids. Not recommended for professional mail or during outbreaks of covid, influenza, RSV and other plagues.

Isn’t a real piece of snail mail a treasure now? I have quite a lot of blank cards that I’ve collected over the years. Good thing, because cards are now $4-8.00 each! OUCH! I mailed letters to all my children yesterday with recipe cards, from Maline’s memorial. A friend put her photograph on one side and copies of her recipes in her handwriting on the other. Maline was a fabulous cook, fine artist, record collector, made earrings and jewelry from antique buttons, I could go on and on. It was lovely to send the recipes to my children.

I took the photograph in Marshall, Michigan in March. I would LOVE to work in a ridiculous department. Hooray for Dark Horse Brewing Company. Next time I go there, maybe I can have a tour.

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Muskrat swimming

In Michigan, I was sent to the river trail, and that is where I saw this muskrat. Wikipedia says in one place on the muskrat entry that they primarily use their tails to swim and in another that they primarily use their back feet. This looks like tail, mostly, but I can’t be sure.

There was impressive storm damage, a lot of trees down or broken.

This is part of the North Country Scenic Trail, that goes from Vermont to North Dakota! Eight states. I want to read more about it and hike some of it.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: muskrat.

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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: