Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 130

joy at being alive

stretch and sing, seedling

My magical realist experience reading a classic of magical realism--documented with photos

On Goodreads, it says I started reading Love in the Time of Cholera on June 5--which is when I committed to reading it (it's my book group's next book)--but in fact I didn't start it until this past Monday, the 9th. As it happens, I started reading it in a church chapel, the day after Pentecost. As it happens, the story opens on Pentecost--an interesting coincidence.

I was having a hard time getting into it--I read maybe fifteen pages that day.

Today I sat down to read a little more.

I sat down...

Floating villages in the Tonle Sap

Tonle Sap is a lake in Cambodia that expands and contracts dramatically, depending on whether it's the rainy season or the dry season--it goes from being no more than a meter deep and 2,700 square kilometers in area to being 9 meters deep and 16,000 square kilometers in area (says Wikipedia). The floating villages of Siem Reap, on one of its feeder rivers, are well known, but on the lake itself there are also floating villages. When dudeshoes saw this New York Times article ("A Push to Save C...

work and family

I had to take the healing angel to school yesterday as he missed the bus. Several of the schools in town are clustered near each other, so after dropping him at the high school, I cut through the parking lot of one of elementary schools, in time to see a bus park. The bus driver, wearing a vest with reflective tape on it, came out, and with her came her toddler son, also wearing a reflective vest.



Childcare in this country--it's catch as catch can. She has her son with her while she works. I h...

Some anime-manga cats

I'm teaching a twelve-year-old a little Japanese. She loves anime and manga, so I brought together these four cats from anime and manga for us to use in practicing この、その、あの (this, that, and that over there), as well as "Who is this cat?" and other fun things.

Who is this cat?

One is Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service, one is Luna from Sailor Moon, one is Kamineko, from Azumanga Daioh, and one is Kyô, from Fruits Basket, in cat form. Do you know (or can you guess) who's who?

letters

If you type "Pen Pal" into Google (which I've been known to do from time to time . . .), you quickly come to pages for prison pen pals. Prisoners, not being allowed email access, are probably one of the few demographic groups in the country that still write and receive paper letters regularly.

When I went to the jail last Friday, the guy at the main desk was sorting the mail. So many letters. All the envelopes were handwritten, ballpoint pen, black and blue ink, some in block letters, some in...

the creek, the guardrail, the cars, and the shadows of leaves

There is a tiny creek that I love to pass by; it's a little cleft in the land, and it's protected from automotive intrusion by a guardrail. This winter, the guardrail was not sufficiently strong to prevent a wayward car from forcing its attentions on the creek:



For several months thereafter, the guard rail lay like that, much more intimate with the creek than it had every been before. Finally, the highway department put in a shiny new guardrail.

. . . But the other day I went by and . . .



This...

Laura's Wolf, by Lia Silver

Laura’s Wolf makes me think I should take up reading more romances—but maybe I should just take up reading more Lia Silver. I hear she’s at work on a sequel to Laura’s Wolf, which is excellent news, because these characters are **wonderful**, and I could read about them all day.

I never thought of myself as a potential romance fan, much less a paranormal romance fan, but I loved this story about a werewolf marine. If I say “werewolf marine,” you’re probably either already sold on the notion or...

fishing in the sky ocean, fast and fugitive

This is the season for tiny green inchworms to be suspended from nearly invisible strands, which they're climbing either up or down. Someone in the sky ocean is fishing.

fishing (photo by Chris Kendig)


I suppose the fisher might catch some worm-eating birds? Robins, maybe, or starlings. Or maybe a bluebird. They generally eat insects and berries, but they "have also been observed capturing and eating larger prey items such as shrews, salamanders, snakes, lizards and tree frogs," says the Corne...

parking lot, bus-hive

Sometimes the most ordinary of places is beautiful. This parking lot, with those big clouds, in fresh after-rain light.

It's just a parking lot, but there's a big sky up above it and trees on its margins, and even its asphalt seems . . . all right.

(It's another phone picture. My phone takes impressionist paintings. My phone's name is Cezanne.)


I had to pick up the healing angel from a friend's house. On our way home, we passed a bus-hive. All the school buses were there, all yellowy-orange and...