Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 146

Tangled webs

Images and information From Kate Evans, "Drop in Shark Fin Prices Lures People Smugglers," Australia Network News, 14 November 2013.

If you are Rahman Djalilan, a fisherman from the village of Papela on the Indonesian island of Rota, you go out to sea in a wooden boat with only a sail for propulsion--no motor.

Rahman Djalilan






You spend up to two months at sea, living on your boat, and you fish with long lines, for sharks, because shark fins are popular on the Chinese market, and until 2012, a mo...

Otters Revere Fish

Going down a research rabbit hole, wakanomori found a wonderful day in the Chinese traditional lunisolar calendar. This calendar, which other societies in the Chinese cultural sphere--like Japan--also adopted, has 24 "solar terms," which commemorate some seasonal or astronomical event. These in turn are divided into three "pentads," which commemorate some natural happening. The day Waka found is one of those pentads. [Wikipedia source]

It is 獺祭魚, "otters revere fish." On this day, which occurs...

very beautiful

very precious

I’ve always thought that education was one of the only things worth going into debt to obtain—and boy did I go into debt obtaining mine—but that was about the extent of my suffering for education. But for some people? We’ve all heard stories of hardship and sacrifice, but sometimes new ones can strike with fresh force.

This morning, I was blown away by a description an Australian educator shared of the dedication of Timorese teachers, seeking out instruction in English and Portuguese (bolding...

terraforming

Thinking about typhoon Haiyan (which also goes under the name Yolanda? I wonder how many other names it has), and the fact that with climate change, we're likely to get more and more superstorms, I was realizing that what we're doing is reverse terraforming. Instead of taking a planet that's only marginally livable and turning it into a green and pleasant land, we're taking a pretty dang excellent planet and turning the dials way up on harshness. We need more swaths of parched desert! Make 'e...

ghosts

The ghosts are present in broad daylight now.

Wednesday reading update

All my current reads are proceeding apace.

Frankenstein

Victor is, as we all know, a bad parent. On top of his many manifest failings, he hasn't learned that you're not supposed to reward behavior you don't like. He's currently chasing the monster up to the arctic, and the monster is clearly delighted to finally have his creator's full and undivided attention.

Monster (reminiscing): And then there was that time Dad and I played a game of transcontinental tag. Oh man, that was fun. Good times, go...

a thing I want to remember about the sky, yesterday

I tried to fasten this in my mind by telling folks at home, but I'll put it here too. The clouds last night were doing that thing of looking like what I usually think of as a plowed field, the thing that people call a mackerel sky, but this particular cloud looked more like a giant wing, with the scallops of feathers in the upper part, and then the longer feathers below... the coverts, I see those scalloped parts are called:


Image from Bobby Brinker, "Wingclipping and the African Grey," Winged...

Acorn cake!

Today I baked an acorn cake. I used my ground-up, leached acorns, and a recipe from Hank Shaw (posted here). The body of this cake is equal parts acorn flour and wheat flour.

And--it tastes fabulous. It has a flavor like molasses with a hint of ginger, and your tongue tingles a little afterward, like when you eat something peppery. rachelmanija , I wish I could send you a piece!

It's a tiny childhood dream come true--feasting on the abundance of acorns! (Okay, helped by honey, oil, and eggs, not...

Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer

Janni Lee Simner has done a great thing: she's reissued a book of hers that was originally sold with a bland title and a bland cover, only now with a fun title and fun cover. It's a short middle-grade story about a girl adventurer--I'm expecting it will be VERY FUN. I'll post about it when I've read it, but you can check out her excerpt and read more about the book at her website.