Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 139

just… doesn't … stop… snowing….

Second day off school for the healing angel, due to snow. Got up at 4:30 to try to clear the new snow and sleet that had fallen (and were continuing---and ARE continuing fall) so that the ninja girl could get to work for 6 am . . . Waka drove her in, roads were terrible, and her branch of Dunkin Donuts was closed and the manager hadn't bothered to call her and let her know -_-

So. Much. SNOW.

view from my window


10 am--now the sun is out

three winter days

Two days ago it was cold and the snow was sparkling, and I was looking at animal tracks:





Yesterday it was very very cold, and I blew a soap bubble and watched it roll around on the porch.


And today, it's just snowing and snowing and snowing. . .



I tried snowboarding down our hill earlier today (first time to ever try this), but the track I made has already been smoothed over by new snow, and my footprints are getting filled in.



All this soft new snow is exactly right for trying to snowboard. You...

transient messages

Someone likes leaving messages on the sharp canes of the rambling rose. They like that long but narrow-and-curved surface; they fill it with their minute script. They're voluble; they have a lot to say.



But they're writing in frost you say. It's all going to melt away as the day advances.

Well, true, but maybe that's long enough. And look: here someone at some point put some words--they posted a bill (probably a notice saying "posted," actually)--but those words, too, have melted away, and all...

Even after their fifteen minutes are up

In 2011, Little Springtime was in Japan, and on March 11, a huge earthquake hit, generating a huge tsunami and a nuclear disaster. Some 15,000 people died, and more than 300,000 people were displaced.

This year, she's back in Japan. Then, she was in high school; now she's in college. Toward the end of this month, she's going with other students of Hokkaido University to Tôhoku, the region worst hit by the tsunami to offer help and support, especially to the children there--because, even though...

very snow

Teju Cole called it a monotheism of snow, which I loved, and yet if you look, it's not as uniform as that--all kinds of dissenting snow and heterodox snow and syncretic snow and charismatic snow, I believe.



Plus there are black holes in the snow--holes filled with water in the process of transforming into ice.

A finding skill

From the time she was very small, the ninja girl has had a finding skill--she finds coins. Now she's working at Dunkin Donuts, where she's exposed to coins on a regular basis, and she has found some remarkable ones.

I remember when I was little, it was always *amazing* to find a coin that was older than my parents. I never found any coins that were older than my grandparents. But the ninja girl has. One day she found a penny from 1919. We were astonished.

And then she topped that feat: she foun...

The art museums' wager

I'm not a sports fan of any type, and I managed to avoid awareness of the fact that today is Super Bowl Sunday until about a week ago, and it was only with prepping from my sister that I could remember the teams involved

BUT

I loved this story, from yesterday's Only A Game , about how the Seattle Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Art are getting into the spirit of the competition:

"Seattle, Denver Museums Wager Works of Art on Super Bowl"

If Denver wins, then Kako Tsuji's "Sound of Waves"--with...

from pillar to polecat, pacing

You have heard of polecats? (They're actually ferrets--or the word can also be used to refer to skunks.) Well this is a postcat:



From pole to post --like pillar to post--driven from pillar to post--it's like pacing, pacing back and forth . . . and where better to pace than a widow's walk, with its view out to the harbor and the sea. Is that a ship's mast appearing over the horizon? Has the sea returned your beloved to you? A hurricane wind will push anchored ships ashore, and a really, really...

There are those who bear amulets

A bit back I posted about spirits that live in geodes in Timor-Leste. Here's a real-life example people interacting with the spirits. It sounds like something from an old folktale--only it's from 1994. I came across it in the memoir A Woman of Independence, by Kirsty Sword Gusmão. She, you may recall, is the wife of Xanana Gusmão, the current prime minister of Timor-Leste. In 1994 Xanana was in prison in Indonesia, and Kirsty was his English teacher and liaison. They were communicating only b...

How to resist tyranny, exhibit no. 1

Pete Seeger before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs, August 18, 1955 (Thanks to wakanomori for this)

MR. TAVENNER: The Committee has information obtained in part from the Daily Worker indicating that, over a period of time, especially since December of 1945, you took part in numerous entertainment features. I have before me a photostatic copy of the June 20, 1947, issue of the Daily Worker. In a column entitled "What's On" appears this advertisement: "Tonight-Bronx, hear Peter Seeger...