The news is pretty jarring most days. I hope that we remove viagra and the drugs of that ilk from FDA approval if the mifaprostone removal ruling holds. No viagra and the pregnancy rate would go down, wouldn’t it?
The watercolor is not jarring. The chrysanthemums are in a jar or a vase or a bottle. What amazes me about this glorious watercolor is the transparency of the jar along with the flowers alternating between soft and sharp. This is from 1992 and is just under 10 by 13 inches. My daughter picked this out from her grandmother’s artworks to keep.
I am feeling a bit like this elf: irritated about the rain.
Ok, yeah, I did move to the Pacific Northwest 23 years ago, and I could have moved away. I love the beaches and the mountains here. But when we are having sun once every 10 days or two weeks in the season they call “spring” here, I do get a little irritated at the rain. Yesterday and today the wind is howling too. Whitecaps and I am very happy not to be out in a boat.
This etching is 2.5 by 3 inches, titled Rain Forest, number 5 out of 25, 1985.
This etching is titled Golden Hills, 2nd Edition, 14/20, 1980. The plate is 4 by 5.5 inches, so this is a lot of very delicate work. My mother used dental pics to draw in the tar on the plate. The darker lines are etched deeper in the acid bath. The shadowed hill is tricky, isn’t it? I think that the texture is a fine piece of fabric pressed into the tar and then lifted, to make the pattern so even.
I think these hills are in upstate New York. My maternal grandparents lived in Trumansburg, New York. By 1980 my parents were living in Alexandria, Virginia.
Gruff, grouchy, grumpy and garden! The watercolor is a small one by Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother. She did not date any of the watercolor sketches in it. I think it is from the 1970s. I very much remember the pot that the tree is in. That is an avocado that she grew from a pit.
Is being grumpy evil? I don’t think so. I don’t think we should inflict our grumpiness on others, but we may have very good reasons to be grumpy. When I was having difficult things at home, I would give a heads up to my nurse that I was grumpy but not at her or the patients. That helped a lot, because I did not have a perfect wall about my emotions. I also hate when people are pretending to be nice when they are angry or hurting or frustrated or grumpy.
Sometimes people say, “I don’t like to be around people who aren’t positive.” Well, now, wait. Do they have to be positive if a family member dies? If they lose their job? If they are very worried about making ends meet when a car has broken down? That would be a fair weather friend, who is only present in the good times, and abandons me when I am stressed. That person is not really a friend at all. The true friends are the ones who notice I am grumpy but stay present anyway. And they ask if it is about them. They do not try to fix it or ignore it: it’s my mood, not theirs. Hooray for real friends who are present through thick and thin!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 βpull the data together in a problem-oriented manner and give you a snapshot of exactly whatβs going on with your patient without having to search and click and find things.β
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!
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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