Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 123

The whale shark

Why do you hurl yourself ashore,
star charts etched in your skin
for us to use as augury?
Why sacrifice yourself
for aliens so barely literate
in the symbols you employ?


Photo credit: Antara/Indrianto Eko Suwarso

The whale shark, and his star charts, in the depths
Source

September 10 in Pen Pal: Em thinks about her big brother

On September 10, Em was remembering how her big brother used to play with her and her sister:

[He] would swim with us on his back and let us jump from his shoulders into the water . . . He once brought home a magnet from inside a computer and showed us how it would gather up all of Tammy’s bottle caps.

(Have you ever seen how strong a hard drive magnet is? It's strong!)


Do you have siblings? Older or younger? (Or both?)

If you have siblings, what's a good memory of something you did with them in...

Sea Hummingbirds (and Bee Sharks)

On September 9, Em imagines sea hummingbirds for her sister Tammy:

Maybe you can start a whole new genealogy. The sea hummingbirds, who have scales instead of feathers, and both lungs and gills

Here is a sea hummingbird:



And--unrelated to this day in Pen Pal-- some time ago I also promised a picture of a bee shark for Benjanun Sriduangkaew, @bees_ja on Twitter:

Using book discussions to enhance a literacy program

In New Hampshire, there's a literacy program called Connections, geared mainly to nonnative English speakers new to the United States, that supplements its curriculum with book discussions:

A four-part book-discussion series, Connections augments the curriculums of established literacy programs by bringing content-rich children’s literature with thought-provoking themes to students from around the world. New readers meet with teachers and Humanities Council–trained facilitators to learn new vo...

Evacuation centers--September 6 in Pen Pal

On September 6, Em writes Kaya from Jordan's Waters Fellowship Church.

Churches often provide shelter in the event of natural disasters. Here Jah-Torrian Spriggs, age three, takes shelter in Triumph Church in Beaumont, Texas, in advance of Hurricane Ike in 2008:

Photo: Guiseppe Barranco; source: "Preparing for Hurricane Ike", Beaumont Enterprise.



Here, evacuees from Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in 2013 take refugee in a church in Tacloban, in the Philippines:

Photo: Caritas International; source: "We...

And speaking of fire--September 5 in Pen Pal

I am still a day behind in Pen Pal posts.

On this day in Pen Pal, Kaya saw tiny fires burning in the night, on the rim of the volcanic crater over which her lotus hangs.

Bardarbunga's lava

Perhaps this morning you would like to see the dancing lava of Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano? The photo is by RTH Sigurdsson and ran in the Guardian's online edition on September 4 (Will Coldwell, "Bardarbunga Volcano Erupts in Iceland: Spectacular Photos Taken from the Sky")





For large-size, glorious effect on that first photo (four times bigger), check out the actual article, here.

August winners in

Goodreads has chosen the winners of the August giveaway, and I'm happy to report they were from five different countries! Granted, three of those were the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, but the remaining two were the Philippines. . .





and Macedonia!







Once I've sent out copies to the winners, I'll relist the giveaway, to take us through the last month of Em and Kaya's correspondence. Thanks for entering, everyone, and if you follow along on the blog, I'll be continuing to post non-spoilery things related to what's happening on this day in Pen Pal through the end of the year.

September 4 (belatedly): hurricane advisories

On September 4 in Pen Pal, there were hurricane advisories on the radio.

We've all heard storm advisories of one sort or another, those computerized voices. It was interesting to read through the text of bunches of them, to see the format and what language was used.

2005: Hurricane Katrina


Here is the warning for Hurricane Katrina at 1 am on August 28, 2005:

ZCZC MIATCPAT2 ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM
BULLETIN
HURRICANE KATRINA SPECIAL ADVISORY NUMBER 20
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
1 AM CDT...

September 3 in Pen Pal: wading to school

If you live in Mermaid's Hands, sometimes you walk to the mainland across the mudflats, sometimes you take a dinghy, and sometimes you wade. On September 3, Em and her sister waded:

The water was not quite knee high as we waded over. We had our shoes tied together by their laces and slung around our necks so we didn’t have to try to fit them in our backpacks.

In some communities in the Philippines, kids weren't so lucky as to have dinghies for the days when the tide was high--they would swim-wa...