Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 101

Ancillary Mercy: completed

I adored the book. My review is here. The one thing I'll add here on LJ is this: In Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, there's some urgency about making sure that the Presger translators understand that organs, viscera, blood, etc., are supposed to be kept *inside* the body--sometimes with humorous effect, sometimes with pathos (and always with a hint of anxiety: this is a basic fact of how humans need to operate that we'd like others to understand about us).

That got me thinking about imagi...

welcome, traveler

May I offer you a plate of rain?

Find a penny

Lesser-known lore relating to roadside coins.

If you find a penny and you *don't* pick it up, more good luck accrues to it. So, the more people walk by a penny (or other coin) and don't pick it up, the luckier it becomes--but only if they deliberately don't pick it up. If they simply fail to notice it, then it doesn't count.

So you can use this as a good-luck savings account: See a coin, but don't pick it up. Wait a number of days proportional to the amount of good luck you'd like to collect. A...

Irom Sharmila speaks directly to the world

Irom Sharmila, whose hunger strike has just entered its sixteenth year, is kept in isolation. If reporters want to talk to her, they must go through a bureaucratic rigamarole. International reporters must request permission to see her a month in advance. It's not surprising that not many do. Then, too, neither English or Hindi is her native tongue, so she speaks slowly in both--reporters can be impatient or condescending.

In an effort to share her thoughts and feelings directly with the world,...

leaf convention

They spend all their lives up in the air, up in the sky, attached to twigs attached to branchlets attached to branches, but in the autumn they all come to the great convention center at ground level. They are all so excited, swarming and rushing about, gathering in clusters, playing mad games. This is their carnival, their great parade, their festival of a lifetime. We ground dwellers--grass and snakes and dogs and people, etc.--smile indulgently and don't mind at all how they take over every...

leaf things I forgot to say last time

Neighbors were talking about when leaves fall (some early, some late), and one said, "My father always used to say about oak leaves, 'They don't like to fall until they smell the [Thanksgiving] turkey in the oven.'"

(Some hang on longer; they wait until the next generation come along and give them a push.)

Also: catch a falling leaf and you can make a wish, but what if a falling leaf catches you, and hangs on? This happened to me the other day. Does it get a wish?

oak leaves

I like the white-oak leaves because each one has individual variation.





If I get to looking at them (or snapping pictures), then I end up thinking, "Oh that one--and that one--and that one."

Are they people and the tree is their nation? They seem more that way than they do like, oh, say, strands of hair that might fall from someone's head, or like skin cells sloughing off.

... Of course, no one thing is perfectly analogous to any other thing, so there's that too.

The red-oak leaves are pointy. Thi...

reading Ancillary Mercy--halfway mark

Note: I don't consider what I talk about spoilers, but if you want a completely virgin experience reading Ancillary Mercy, then save this entry for after you've read it.

I'm really, really loving what ann_leckie is doing with Ancillary Mercy. I'm about halfway through, and the two things I love most are the abundance of AI characters, with distinctive personalities, and the presence--hurray!--of another Presger translator, Zeiat. And what Ann is doing with both these is exploring personhood, b...

Mother Teresa and the strawberries

"How many of you remember when Mother Teresa visited this area?" our priest asked, this morning. It's All Saints Day, and various parishioners were dressed up as various saints and telling their stories. We'd just had Mother Teresa, which was what prompted this reminiscence.

A couple of older people raised their hands.

"It was about thirty years ago," the priest went on. "I was a diocesan secretary at the time. Mother Teresa gave me a medal, and I had my picture taken with her. After that we we...

Halloween 2015

Quotations from visiting trick-or-treaters

(taking a package of Smarties)
"My mom loves these, and it's her birthday, so . . . "

(child with a blue Mohawk and wearing a giant Minions costume)
"Have I been here before?"

(Indicating one of our jack-o-lanterns)
"I'll remember this pumpkin because it's epic."

(A mother, after her child picks a piece of candy)
"He never picks anything I like."

(A father, after encouraging his child to take a piece of candy)
"But normally you don't take candy from stran...