Kinetic Koterie

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: coterie.

I love the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race.

There certainly is an in crowd, a coterie, but everyone is welcome! Hapless tourists wondering what the heck is happening are protected by the virtuous and kostumed Kinetic Kops. The sculptures have to go by land, by sea and through mud. Some of them are heavy and with the silly costumes people forget to stay out of the way! The sculptures have a water test and a brake test, down a steep hill. There is a parade, competitive bribery of judges and fierce competition to win the Most Mediocre!

squat

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: squat.

What comes to mind is Taj Mahal’s Squat that Rabbit, a song that always makes me want to dance!

I also want to know what it means. There’s a rather nice discussion at mudcat.org.

The photograph is from the Kinetic Sculpture Festival. And here’s a bonus… Squat that Octopus.


person dressed as octopus
squat that octopus

family fishing

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: putrescent.

But it’s a family! Fishing! Our local five otter family, that I’ve seen before, pictures here and here. I can’t tell who is an adult and who is a child now, they are all pretty much the same size. They were swimming along and catching fish, heads tilted up to eat when they surfaced.

These are river otters, even though they are fishing in the Salish Sea.Β 

And why putrescent? Oh, they are delightful to watch, but they can leave some very putrescent gifts on the dock or in the boats….

sing

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sing.

Sing! This photo if from my birthday, some years ago. My father is the seated guitar player. He is gone and so is Andy Makie, standing.

Andy brought music to everyone he could in his last decade. Here is an article: Why music? He talks about it here and another version here. My daughter was in a classroom that received a box of his strumsticks and lessons in second grade and for a while he lived in a trailer on my father’s land and built the strumsticks in my father’s barn.

My father, Malcolm Ottaway, loved both classical and folk music. He was one of the people who started Rainshadow Chorale and I got to sing with him in it for 13 years.

This party was like my parents’ parties: a music party. Bring an instrument. Our age range was under 2 to 70s and everyone made joyful noise at some point. My son led the high school Chamber Orchestra to play too.


Townsends
players