Tag Archives: Ragtag Daily Prompt

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Birds

Rainshadow Chorale is going to sing like Shakespeare birds on November 5th and 6th. I think this will be another delightful and really fun concert. I tried out for a solo wearing a cowgirl hat. My hat got a solo. I got a small group part. I’m too jealous of my hat, of my hat.

Why a cowgirl hat for Shakespeare? You’ll have to come to the concert to find out! We have composers ranging from Purcell to modern, all using Shakespeare’s words.

Anyhow, mark your calendars. My father was one of the initial eight choral members in 1997 and I joined in 2000. Sing on!

Here is our website: Rainshadow Chorale.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: birds.

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split

The pandemic splits the thin veneer of civilized behavior
like a heavy maul falling on delicate antique wood
and wild fear emerges and riots through the streets
while some hide, some stay calm
and try to sooth the selfish unleashed beast

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: veneer.

Taken in 2015.

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Songs to Raise Girls: three songs

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is memorize, and oh, what I have memorized! I saw a t-shirt at the Nowhereelse Festival in Ohio that said, “My memory is 80% lyrics.” Yes, me too, a mix of songs, poetry and books that I have read. My sister Chris and I were busily memorizing songs as soon as we could. Here are three very educational songs for young girls. The last one we learned from our cousin, who was a girl scout and a girl scout leader. She was in the calendar one year, making cookies. I was very very impressed and a little jealous.

I bought a four hour recording session at a silent auction and the recordings are me and my sister and my father. We did them in two sessions. We made a list of songs and lost it immediately so we all took turns suggesting songs. My mother had already died of cancer. My sister died in 2012 and my father in 2013. I am so glad to have these recordings. We called it Mocoko for Malcolm Ottaway, Chris Ottaway and Katherine Ottaway. We sang most of them just once and so they are not polished, but I still am happy to have them.

Bridget O’Flynn

I sang Bridget O’Flynn to my daughter when she called me about dancing. “Mom! I love to twirl!” Um, well, yes, your parents met at a contra dance at Glenn Echo Park in Maryland. We love to twirl too.

Late in the evening

A cautionary song, an old barbershop quartet song, that we sang.

Fascinating Lady

I wonder if the girl scouts still sing this.

The photograph is my son scaring me. Ok, that boulder is sitting there balanced BUT! GET OUT OF THERE! Taken in Palm Springs in 2011 up on the mesa. Beautiful.

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Boa Black in dishabille

This is my beloved cat who died in February 2020. She was named Boa Black or Feather Boa, depending on the situation. We got her as a tiny kitten at the pound. She had the softest fur and purred the instant I picked her up. She was 17 when she died.

For the Ragtag Daily prompt: dishabille.

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below the surface

I swim frantic
I am trying to escape
your beak piercing
my tender flesh
my heart pulsing
blood and death

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: pierce.

Taken yesterday morning at sunrise. The sunrise is affected by the fires, so a beautiful but ominous fire sky.

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Beach spook

You are walking on East Beach, Marrowstone Island. It is sunny. The tide is way out, with fields of bright green slippery algae. You stay on the rocks. Some of them are slippery too. There are crows and an eagle, on the beach, feeding. There is a great blue heron. You can see sea lions out on the rocks, though your camera battery has died, again.

Suddenly you nearly step in THIS:

You stumble away, horrified, knowing that the creature stranded on the beach is FOOD now. You hear laughter, soft at first. Suddenly you see the face above and REALIZE: the whole beach is giggling and laughing: BECAUSE YOU TOO ARE FOOD.

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Taken at East Beach, Marrowstone Island, yesterday.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: SPOOK!

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Civility is not dead

I am attending parts of the online Collective Trauma Healing Summit, led by Thomas Hubl. This morning I listened to two speakers, each about an hour long. The first was by Rev. angel Kyodo Williams, an African-American buddhist teacher and the second is by Tristan Harris, who is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

Mr. Harris gives me hope about humans learning to live with social media without continuing to be polarized and angry. He speaks about the way that many platforms work. We tend to click on things that worry us and that we are traumatized about, and the platform immediately starts feeding us more of that. In a way, Facebook and other platforms gas light us: the algorithm figures out what makes us upset and agitated and promptly feeds us more of it.

He advocates moving to more humane platforms, that aren’t built on feeding us trauma, and especially for schools and parents to do this collectively with children. He co-hosts the podcast “Your Undivided Attention” each week, so I will be looking in to that.

However, I have a second reason to be hopeful about social media. I am in more than one group now that has rules and that has administrators that enforce them. Kindness. An insect group that forbids people saying “squash it”, because it’s a group of people that are interested in insects. A physician mom group. A pacific northwest rock group and a women’s pacific northwest rock group. I am now one of the administrators for a local group and am fine with it.

Even though Facebook is still feeding us more trauma and horror if that is what we click on, people are starting to see through this and refuse. They are forming groups where insects and people aren’t squashed. Rural farm groups. Music groups. In these groups I feel that people are coming together and are working to be supportive and help each other, identifying rocks, discussing child behavior, singing together.

Each time that technology makes the world smaller and more connected, we have to relearn how to get along. With our family, then our small tribe, then a larger tribe, then cities, countries and now we can see each other the world over. If all we see is what we fear and what horrifies us in our feeds, then we need to turn it off, breathe, and look for something to calm us down. Knit. Silly cat pictures. Flowers. What gives you a feeling of peace and hope? Whatever it is, do more of it and share it.

Blessings and peace you.

I don’t know who the person in the tintype is. I think that it came from a box from my Great Aunt Esther Parr, when I was in my early teens. My sister and I divided the tintypes and used them as portraits in our china doll houses.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: obituary.