Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 11

Wednesday reading two weeks running!

I finished Rebecca Fraimow's Lady Eve's Last Con, which was rollicking good fun from cover to cover. A couple more quotes (nonspoilery) from further on in the story:

"I’d given her plenty of time to put me back in my place; she’d be faster on the draw next time around. It’s a bad habit to let yourself get caught tongue-tied. Life’s too short for should-have-saids." (51% in)

"I stuck my chin up, and tried to look like a person who was trying to look brave." (91% in)

I got one hilarious surprise, whi...

catbird and red currants

I love catbirds. They are so friendly! They come very near to people and just start chatting. When I hang up laundry, when I go out on my porch, when I'm looking at my plants, along comes a catbird.

The catbirds also like to eat my red currants. The season is pretty much over now, but I drew a chalk drawing in the 90+ degree heat to commemorate catbirds and red currants. I had it on good authority from the weather people that it wasn't going to rain until tomorrow at the earliest, which meant th...

taking turns

On the first day we spent together, my friend took me down to the edge of Yahuarcaca. That name goes with a group of lakes connected to the Amazon, los lagos Yahuarcaca, but she calls it/them río--Río Yahuarcaca. Like the main river, it inhales and exhales. The waters are at their highest in April or so, and then begin to recede. In June (when I was there this time) they're not at their lowest, but they've receded a good bit. So as you walk beside the water, you're walking in places where you'd ...

Who can be on campus? An agouti, for one

I spent two days together with my friend and Tikuna tutor this past June. I'm going to post about those days in reverse order.

On the second day, we rented bikes and rode past the airport (the airport in Leticia is adorably small and you can walk from it into town if you want) to the Leticia campus of the National University of Colombia. Wakanomori and I had tried to do that when we were there together two years ago, but the former president of the country had been speaking there and no one was ...

Wednesday Reading

I have so many saved up for this! And I'm actually writing on a Wednesday. Wohoo, win condition!

What I've just finished

A Family of Dreamers, by Samantha Nock. radiantfracture put me onto this collection by quoting one of the poems. Samantha Nock is an indigenous poet, and her poems reflect that heritage, but also explore family relations, love, self doubt--you know: the stuff we write poetry about.

(  Some quotes  )

* * *

Ideias Para Adiar O Fim Do Mundo, by Ailton Krenak
This has also been translated...

Cho-co-la-te

I love hand-clapping games; they're such a wonderful example of truly folk transmission through the generations.

While I was visiting my friends in Leticia, two of the kids were doing one. The rhyme went

Choco, choco
la, la,
choco, choco
te, te,
choco-la
choco-te
chocolate!

You clapped sometimes with the palms of your hands and sometimes with the backs of your hands--it was great!

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When I got back to Medellín, at one point Wakanomori and I passed a line of people waiting for pancakes at a pop-up pancake...

Semper Vivens: Published!

I am back from my holiday, and will have many things to share, but while I was gone, my Amazon/Annihilation story "Semper Vivens" slipped into the world, so that's what I'm going to talk about first.

It's in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine issue 95, and behold, the cover is an illustration for it!

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A terraforming disaster, tragic cultists, and frustrated researchers collide...

Twenty-five years ago, catastrophic failure in a seeder ship’s systems had resulted in its entire cargo of LifeMatrix being d...

a trip, a graphic novel

A trip

Come Saturday, Wakanomori and I are going on a trip to a language school in Medellín, Colombia, to (a) improve our Spanish and (b) visit a new-to-us city in Colombia. And I get to peel off for a very short side trip to Leticia to visit my friends there.

My friend and Ticuna tutor and I had a video conversation today. "It's cold here right now," she told me. "Na buanecü" ["it's cold" in Ticuna.]

"Oh yeah?" I said. "What's the temperature?"

"24 degrees [75 Fahrenheit]"--which is indeed pret...

The Antigravity Stone at Tufts – April Grant

April Grant runs an occasional series on her Youtube channel in which she talks about weird and wonderful true stories in and near Boston. Her most recent one was on Roger Babson (1875–1967) and his war on gravity, "our enemy number one," as he termed it.

You see, Roger Babson lost two loved ones to drowning, and of course therefore he blamed ... gravity.

In addition to founding the Gravity Research Foundation (which to this day holds a gravity-themed essay contest with a $4,000 prize--April tel...

The McKinnock Hill Fox – a flash story

There was this place where the sidewalk pressed right against the flank of McKinnock Hill. Walking that section of sidewalk, you’d have ferns dropping moisture on your shoulders. It was a narrow sidewalk: you couldn’t walk on it and hold your left arm out straight. Too much McKinnock Hill in the way. But if you bent your arm, you could press your hand into the hill’s thick moss.

You could also kiss a bare patch of stone. That was the kind of thing we’d do when we walked home from school as kids: ...