Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 129

a log entry

There isn't an entry for June 29 in Pen Pal, but there's an entry for June 28. It's from the ship's log of the captain of a boat employed by Loop Current Charter Fishing Tours--the first person to find Em's message in a bottle. Here's a fragment of his log entry.



And for fun, since there are lots of lovely images if you search "ship's log" in Google image search, here is an image of a ship's log from a page on the Royal Canadian Navy's website:

Today is also the start of Pen Pal

In addition to being catalpa day, today is also the day Pen Pal starts. On this day, Em and her friend Small Bill row out into the Gulf of Mexico, and Em throws her message in a bottle into the water.

Here's a (very amateur) picture to commemorate that.



In the next few months, I'll post pictures and things that go along with the letters and diary entries of Pen Pal--but without spoilers. I'm hoping to do a book giveaway on Goodreads, month by month, too, but I'm waiting for word from them, beca...

Catalpa

You know personal ceremonies or festivals, things you end up celebrating, year after year, just as an individual (or maybe, say, as a group of friends, or a family)--in other words, something that's not a broader cultural thing?

One of mine is the blossoming of the catalpa. SUCH A GLORIOUS TREE, with blossoms that look like they belong in tropical garlands (well, they are a bit pale, but so **fancy**), that rain down onto the street.

Here is the tree--can you see it is twice as tall as the room...

Ordinary folks doing good work

That title applies to most people. Most of them don't get celebrated much; most of their good works are too under-the-radar even to be noticed in articles about people whose good works are under the radar. Like, there's this guy at the checkout of the nearby supermarket--he's so engaging and friendly whenever I go through. I always come away smiling. He's definitely doing good work.

But these women in Rhode Island are doing slightly bigger-scale good work, but still not the sort of thing that...

goals for the week; peanut butter and ?

My time management skills are getting worse as I get older.

I have a writing goal and a nonwriting goal for the week. The writing goal is to finish this thing about bridges that I'm writing. It's short! I should finish it.



ISIS, the new smash hit in the alarming-geopolitical-news department

Who *are* these people who suddenly have control of a huge chunk of Iraq? How many people comprise their leadership? How did they all meet? I realize part (most? all?) of my ignorance comes from not paying a...

Solstice bells

Solstice bells were ringing when I stepped out this morning--



Everything was glowing





Across the way and elsewhere, rosa multiflora was in all its glory, bullying in its beauty--"you can't resist me; you know you can't. You love me--so don't complain about my thorns and the blood and pain. Remember this."






Happy summer solstice from the northern hemisphere!

male and female heroes in video games (being thoughts on a quote I saw on Tumblr)

“It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt . . . also a woman first.”
--Leigh Alexander, “What Did They Do to You: Our Women Heroes Problem.”

I was going to argue that although this is powerful rhetoric, I don’t think it’s true, but I realized I was thinking of the realm of literature, whereas the writer was talking about video games. Sadly, I think she’s pretty correct about video games.

What the article descr...

fairy jacket

I found a fairy jacket, hanging on a bush, and thought of "Scarborough Fair."



Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Sewn without seams or fine needlework,
If she would be a true love of mine.

Tell her to wash it in yonder well,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Where never spring water or rain ever fell,
And she shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,
Then she...

miscellaneous small pleasures and treasures

On my walk this morning I was thinking how on a walk some days ago, I'd found a robin eggshell. I looked down and found a cardinal eggshell. Further along on the walk I found a luna moth wing: it was a morning for sweet finds.



In the evening, as the sun was setting and streetlamps were lighting up, a cardinal came and perched on one. From newly hatched to adult in one day.

Later in the evening, when it was quite dark, I went to pick some cilantro, and the first firefly of the season was in the...

New Yorker fiction: Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel, "Gradual Impact"
[+, w/reservations]

This was both fiction and in cartoon format. I'd never read anything by her before, though the ninja girl had read, or at least dipped into, Fun Home, and told me about it (a little). I found it thought-provoking, with, as its title suggests, a gradual (and building) impact.

It's the story of a romance that the narrator resists, without understanding why, until other party, Tamar, asks, "Is it because I'm beautiful?" The narrator denies it, bu...