Tag Archives: joy

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The New Old Time Chautauqua

Funny how our brains work. I think of going to the other computer and then think I will look in this one for a moment. I have photographs from years past of the New Old Time Chautauqua. I open the file of Nikon photographs. There are 28 subfiles. I go to July 2018. At the end of the file, here is this motley parade. The New Old Time Chautauqua with our local Unexpected Brass Band and Other Friends.

I didn’t “know” that these photographs were even on this laptop. At least, not consciously. These are taken at the fairgrounds, August 11, 2018, in Port Townsend, Washington.

The New Old Time Chautauqua is the last one on the road. They are fundraising to go work and play with the Blackfoot Confederacy in Canada and the US. There are too many people dying from fentanyl, so the Chautauqua is part of the healing process. They are fundraising as they hit the road. I wish all of them the best.

And here is the Unexpected Brass Band at THING last year. You can hear them even if you can’t see them!

To donate to the New Old Time Chautauqua, go here. No, I mean back there. Right.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Chautauqua.

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Rhody, rhody, rhody

Oh, my gosh, the rhododendron’s are popping like popcorn.

The Rhody Run is coming up. https://runsignup.com/Race/WA/PortTownsend/JeffersonHeatlhcareRhodyRun

The Rhododendron Festival is also approaching like crazy.

https://www.jeffcountychamber.org/events/details/2023-annual-rhododendron-festival-1873

And our Sunrise Rotary Running of the Balls happens one hour before the Rhododendron Parade:

https://www.ptsunriserotary.org/page/our-fun-d-raiser-events

For Mother’s Day, my kids all called. My daughter sent tea and a card. A friend and I went to the Chimacum Woods Nursery and the rhododendrons there are mind blowing. They have been building the gardens there for over 40 years.

https://www.chimacumwoods.com/

For the next few weeks my flowers are going to be rhodys, rhodys and more beautiful rhodys!

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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catch

Catch

What bucket can catch this light and color?
None, I think, and then I think I am wrong.
A bucket lowered and set in the water,
Turquoise and blue and black, a song.
Lift the bucket and the turquoise is gone.
Reflected light, a dance on on the riffles.
It’s like the happiness for which we long.
Caught for a moment, containment stifles
the reflection of joy in our face and hearts.
The face that lights from music or dance
or a moment touched by another’s art.
Let joy come and go, take the chance.
The light on the water will be gone at night.
Joy wants to be free and not held too tight.

I heard the band The Winetree last September in Ohio.

Sonnet 17.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucket.

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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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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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Nano-influencer

I am thinking about what to say about what I do when I meet new people.

I am getting rather tired of saying I’m a family doc, but I am only working a little because I had my fourth pneumonia, on oxygen for a year and a half, blah, blah, blah. Too much information. I also am tired of the reaction to “doctor”. People are weird about jobs, they categorize and are often hierarchical.

So, how do I describe myself?

Disabled divorcee, not employed? Um, still TMI.

Writer? I have one friend who introduces himself as a “junk mail writer”. He won’t tell them that his clients are the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center and so forth unless they ask more questions. Some people just dismiss him instantly.

Blogger? No, I don’t think so.

I looked up an article on “influencers”. It is ostensibly written for companies looking to place products on blogs or whatever platform and it breaks the influencers down into groups. With 1000 followers, I am categorized as a “nano-influencer”. That cracked me up. I think it would be fun to see what reaction I get to that instead of to Family Practice doctor.

I just repaid my license for two more years. I still am very interested in working with Long Covid people, but I do not want to run my own business again. So, I am considering approaches. And do I really want to risk another pneumonia? Well, being alive is a risk, after all. And it always ends the same way.

Blessings from your nano-influencer!

_____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: influencer.

I took the photograph at the start of the Swinging by the Sound dance weekend.

Here is a fabulous video of a Shag Dance warm up and then couple dancing. Wow!

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Spin and twirl

Swinging by the Sound started yesterday afternoon. A dance weekend, with dancers traveling from all over, teachers and students. This is collegiate shag. I am not very familiar with it, I’ve done much more 6 count swing. I wish I were doing the weekend, but my shoulder is not up to it yet. Maybe next year!

The weekend started with Johnathan Doyle and friends playing at Vintage. They were fabulous. And some of the dancers were already there and warming up. I want permission to put some of the dance photographs up, but did not talk to anyone last night!

I love to spin and twirl and so does my daughter. She has been learning collegiate shag in another state.

Here is a shag routine sample. Shag can range from really bouncy to smooth, smooth, smooth. This one is choreographed, not the spontaneous partner dancing happening last night!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: spin.

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Winner

This tree was on the beach below Chezemoka park this week.

How can I say it is a winner? Someone had sawed through one end. This tree had a long life judging by the number of rings. Now it has fallen and probably gone down a river to land on the beach. It might be there tomorrow or the tide may carry it off again.

How do trees judge winning?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: winner. https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/rdp-wednesday-winner/