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Daily Evil: W is for Wild

Is wildness evil? What sort of wildness? The forest and waves and wilderness are not things we think of as evil, but some wildness in humans seems very evil. Some is silliness, some is substances, and some is truly violence and cruelty and terror and evil.

This is another of Helen Burling Ottaway’s fantasy etchings, titled The Hunt, number 6 of 30, 1986. A merman with a trident and dogfish, with a variety of tails. The etching is 6.75 by 8, the paper 11 by 15. I like the lines of movement, of waves, from the escaping shark.

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Daily Evil: V is for Virago

Virago gives positive and negative definitions, but all female. The most positive ones are of a very strong woman, “like a man”. Is there a male word that means the same thing? A word for a man, where the most positive one is that he’s very strong, “like a woman”. Perhaps “like a woman in labor”. Let’s make one up if we can’t think of one. “Obstetico”, perhaps. A man who complains like he’s a woman in labor, but the positive definition is strong like a woman in labor.

This is a watercolor postcard. Helen Burling Ottaway painted a bunch of postcards, with wonderful detail. These snapdragons could be viragos or obstetricos or perhaps both. This is from 1999, two years into her ovarian cancer. So the song is the Bald Headed Blues.

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Local lions

Our local lions are sea lions! I don’t think of sea lions as being good tempered, with the movies of them chasing prey. But out of the water in the sun off of Marrowstone Island, they seem pretty calm and I did not see displays of bad temper.

Sea lions can dive more deeply than seems reasonable because they slow their heart rates, to use less oxygen, and slow digestion. When they arrive back on the surface, they can get oxygen quickly but getting rid of the CO2 is slower. They have to sit around on the surface and the head back posture helps. I’ll bet they can beat any high school or college student in a burping contest. And as you can see, some of these are just huge. We wondered how they got on the rock. Do they have to at low tide or do they just jump?

I do like to hear them roar. Hooray for our local lions.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: temper.

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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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Daily Evil: U is for Unlikely

Unlikely isn’t evil. Well, I am tired of evil, so U is for Unlikely because I am tossing in a monkey wrench. U for unexpected, too.

Back to etchings: U is for Unicorn. This is titled “The Virgin and the Unicorn II”, number 10/75, 1986, H. Ottaway. The etching is 7 inches by 8 inches and the paper is 11 inches by 15 inches. She would often frame them mounted but not matted, in frames that have a slot to hold the glass away from the picture. She did her own framing and especially disliked cutting glass. I knew when a show was close because she would be framing and grumpy.

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Daily Evil: T is for Thief

Time is the evil thief I am thinking of today. This is my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, painted by Helen Burling Ottaway in the early 1970s. Time has stolen both of them.

This is another watercolor, over a pencil drawing, 10.5 inches by 14 inches.