Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 128

Today in Pen Pal, Em receives her first letter from Kaya

In her diary, Em writes

I got a letter! I got a letter today—it was in with a doctor bill and ads, a letter for me! And it came from a different country. The stamp has a picture of flowers and mountains.

Let's take a moment to appreciate airmail envelopes and lovely stamps:

airmail envelope

Source: here

datura on a stamp from Laos

Source: here

Indonesian stamp showing Tengger, site of four volcanoes

Source: here

And thinking of small post offices, and PO boxes . . .

postboxes in Maryland

Source: Going P...

milkweed fibers

I keep trying to extract the fibers from milkweed. They can apparently be spun, much like flax, and are very strong and beautiful. I've seen some videos on how to process flax, and I'm trying to do similar with milkweed, but there are so many variables, and I have very crude, and somewhat inappropriate tools, so.

Here are last year's milkweed stalks, which I left outside all winter so they'd rot somewhat. This seemed easier (and less smelly) than retting (where you soak the stalks intensively...

I dreamed I had to take a test…..

Oh no! It's an entry about dreams

Re-laying the track

A dream about train tracks being taken up and re-laid, in a slightly different place, while I'm on the train

A person in the dream asks, somewhat non sequiturially, given the circumstances (but hey, it's a dream!), but what if you're on the last car? And then the response was something like, so long as you're on the train, you'll get to the destination, but the route will change.

Ahh, the tinny sound of dream profundities. And yet, to actually...

The research station in W--

On this day in Pen Pal, nothing particular happened, but in the note that Kaya wrote her mother on July 4, she mentioned the research station in W--, where she used to work. At the research station, they test and develop new strains of cash and subsistence crops, as well as work on plants for soil replenishment, etc.

In Timor-Leste, Seeds of Life does this work. Here are two crops that were developed in Baucau, Timor-Leste, and that are among 11 being tested with local farmers:


"Deep purple" sw...

Another luna wing

What monster is it that is tearing the wings off luna moths, hereabouts?

Anyway, this morning I set out to do some guardrail balancing--I figured 7:30 on a Sunday morning would mean no one was about, but maybe it's because it's the Fourth of July weekend, but there were too many cars. I only did a little balancing.

I kept walking, though, and found this luna wing.



I'm wearing a shirt with a pocket, so I put it in my pocket--and it turned out to be a passport to the land of black raspberries. S...

Ancillary Justice fan tea

It IS ANCILLARY JUSTICE FAN TEA, YO.





I am drinking the Justice Blend. I don't have gloves on, though. If only it were a humid, sweaty day, I could pretend I was on Shis'urna, but in fact it's a cool and delightful day. Who am I?

When you played games set in story worlds, did you mainly pretend to be a character from the story, or did you create an OC and interact with the characters? I think I mainly did the latter, but sometimes the former.

THOSE OF YOU WHO'VE READ ANCILLARY JUSTICE, if you w...

July 3 and 4: On these days in Pen Pal

On July 3, Kaya's pet crow Sumi brought her Em's message in a bottle, and on July 4, she wrote to her mother about the experience--and she wrote back to Em.

Here is what she wrote her mother. She was staring into the fires of the Ruby Lake, and then. . .

I couldn’t keep looking at it for long, though. It’s too bright. It paints itself permanently on your eyes, the way the sun will if you stare at it. I closed my eyes and saw black spots where the lava had been especially bright, and when I open...

Wednesday reading

I've fallen a little behind in the New Yorker reading, because they had this issue that was nothing but fiction, which means instead of just one story, there's bunches. But now I'll report on two of those--the one by Haruki Murakami and the one by Karen Russell.



Haruki Murakami, "Yesterday" [+]

It's a story about changing yourself, gently funny. Interestingly, it touches on the issue of dialect and language dominance, which is especially interesting as it's presented in translation (I kept hear...

a cool book that's waiting to debut

csecooney is looking for an agent for a **very** cool-sounding book. Take a look-and-listen to this beautiful book trailer (click on the picture to get there)--are you intrigued? Don't you hope an agent picks it up?

book trailer for Miscellaneous Stones: Assassin

If we were walking together . . .

Every year I marvel over the tiny flowers of grass. Every year I can't resist taking pictures of them.



And every year I want to rub soft rabbit-foot clover on my cheek:



And make crowns of bindweed:



And I have nothing to say or tell you about these things, but if you were with me, I'd pull your arm and make you look at them, so here they are.

And then I'd say to you, do you know what I found out about, from khiemtran ? Fishing with helium balloons, and before there were helium balloons, fishing wi...