Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 106

A long journey

What if when you journeyed, the road only appeared after you? I guess that's the case for explorers--they create paths behind them. So, snails and slugs are explorers.

... Also, when you see a slug's silvery path, you expect some amazingly lovely creature must have made it.

"And you'd be right," says a self-confident slug, maybe blushing a little that you should reach such a flattering conclusion.

shining trail


almost across the Great Hard Waste



more travelers

Isatou Ceesay, Miranda Paul, and One Plastic Bag

Do you know about plarn, yarn made from plastic bags? You can knit or crochet it and make beautiful, durable items--like this bag that darkpaisley made for me, years ago, from Stop & Shop bags.



Discarded plastic bags are more than just an ugly nuisance in the West African nation of the Gambia. There, plastic shopping bags kill livestock that eat them and provide a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitos. A woman named Isatou Ceesay found an ingenious solution. She learned how to make pl...

A few more photos, work, Readercon

Of course, just a day before I need to start the slow process of traveling to Readercon (first a journey to my dad's to pick him up), I'm inundated with work I need to do. I may have to take some of it with me to Readercon, which I haaaaaate doing. (I like typing all those a's though.)

But I'm still going to share some photos. This morning, as I set out for my walk, there was a whizzzzzz, like an electric car, only what it actually was was a guy with a backpack, bandana, and cigarette, sailing...

medley

Here are some thoughts and pictures I've saved up over the past few days. First, a picture of magnificent skies. Such weighty clouds, such gauze of rain over there in the distance, and such uncanny light:



Influential rain

Some days later, there was a walk alongside a canal. Rain was coming down, not severely, but--and we hadn't expected this--fairly unquittingly. It was watching its influence spread as it hit the canal water. Lots of little circles of influence:



Salamander
And here, in a photo by...

More on Windup Girl

The story won me over. I found myself caring very much about the power struggle between Future!Thailand's Ministry of Trade, which is eager to dance with the devil--the devil being the calorie companies, multinational Future!Monsantos that hold the world's perpetually famine-ready population hostage with their sterile seeds and their genetically engineered plagues--and the "white shirts" of Ministry of the Environment, which is sworn to protect the country from the same. In particular, I beca...

the spoilers and rants page (July 2, 2015)

Don't read this page if you don't want spoilers for The Windup Girl.

First spoiler--about seed saving

This is also what makes the end, with the monks taking the seeds from Thailand's secret seedbank to a new secret location, so moving:

And then the monks are streaming out of the seedbank, carrying the boxes on their shoulders, a river of shaven-headed men in saffron robes, bearing forth their nation's treasure. Hock Seng watches, breathless at the sight of so much genetic material disappearing...

Took a break from work to go out and pick some black rasp...

Took a break from work to go out and pick some black raspberries. There was a thunderstorm this morning, but now the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. I've let raspberry canes grow wherever they come up, and there are some right along the side of the house, in the sun. So many are ripe, and warm. Picking them, with the sun on my back and a breeze blowing, and a train calling in the distance, I really think: it's okay to be mortal and to die if there are moments like this--sweet berries,...

A Twitter recommendation, plus nonsensical YA fantasy blurbs

If you're on Twitter and you haven't discovered it already, I recommend @dystopianYA as an amusing parody account. Here's a typical sequence of tweets:

"They're against the revolution! Change scares people." Anthem says.
"That's dumb. I'm 16 and I can tell right from wrong," I answer.

Anthem and I are the first people from different Categories to ever fall in love.

I changed my mind. I love Ermias now.

On a similar theme, I read a blurb for a YA novel that made no narrative sense. The elements wer...

The language of instruction in Zanzibar

A couple of days ago, NPR had a story about a remarkable short film, "Present Tense," made by teens in the fishing village of Matemwe, in Zanzibar.



It was about the horrible educational bind they're in: having been educated in Swahili in primary school, they're expected to continue their education in English in secondary school. The courses are taught in English--but the students don't know English. Furthermore, neither do their teachers, as fluency in English isn't required of graduates from...

bad news and good news at the roadside farm stand

There are many farmers of Polish heritage in the area. Sapowsky Farms is within biking distance and on my way home on volunteering days.



Here is bad news--and good news--concerning asparagus:



And for something completely different, here is a tree that grows dust masks. They look like single-breast bras, don't they? People who want to do some illegal exploration in the abandoned building (and others like it) seen in the background can harvest a mask, so as not to breath in asbestos.



And my music...