Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 148

some thoughts in the midst of reading Frankenstein

The monster, talking to Frankenstein (at great length! with a nested story of cross-cultural love! and a reading list for all auto-didacts out there: Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther) about the cottagers near whom he's been sheltering, says,

The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affectio...

Part one of cafenowhere's great series, Writing Latin@ Characters Well

Originally posted by cafenowhere at Writing Latin@ Characters Well, Part 1. What are you? --comment there!

Are you writing a Latin@ character? Or are you writing a Hispanic character? Maybe both? Or maybe you're writing a Chican@ character? A Mexican-American? "Just" a Mexican?

How do you know?

And, you may be asking, what is up with that @ symbol?

Nota bene: I am not a linguist. This is the quick and dirty version.

I'll start by explaining my use of the @ symbol. In Spanish, no...

Mary Shelley on writing and imagination

I'm reading Frankenstein with the healing angel, and sartorias suggested I read Mary Shelley's own foreword to the 1831 edition. It's fascinating! So gratifying to feel emotional kinship with someone who lived so long ago--which was what happened when I read about the imaginary tales she used to weave for herself as a child:

I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonder...

at the sewing machine repair shop

A while ago, I took my sewing machine to get it repaired. It was quite a drive; not many people do work like this. It was an older guy; he charges very little, and he'll be retiring soon, and then there will be one less place that repairs sewing machines.

Here's his door.



Inside were all the machines he was working on, plus a high shelf where expired irons live.





But best of all were a series of dioramas that his now-deceased mother-in-law had made, all relating to sewing.

Here is a fabric store:



A...

Wednesday reading!

I can do the Wednesday reading meme this week!

I have two ongoing books, which are the same from last week, Ty Nolan's Coyote Still Going and Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light.

In Coyote Still Going, Bear just hosted a feast without having oil on hand...

sang his Song and as he sang he rubbed his hands together. Now bears have a lot of fat underneath their skin, and the heat of the fire started to make the fat melt, and it dr...

He walks the line?

I was driving the ninja girl to work in the pre-sunrise dark. At one point, a bright light--weaving a little--appeared up ahead. A bicyclist? A person with a very bright flashlight, crossing the road?

When I got closer, it became clear that it was a person, a man, an older man, in dark, loose clothes, with bright LANTERN in his hand, walking along the double yellow line.

What?

There was no chance to pause; the ninja girl had to get to work on time.

But what was going on?

Was he drunk? Was he suic...

javelina!

I know that javelina is actually the name of a kind of wild pig, but when I first heard the word, I imagined a spearwoman, and something about the word made me think of the southwest, and so I imagined a Hopi spearwoman.

red berries

Some things are so red and inviting that they beg to be tasted. These are fruits of some sort of hawthorn--you should have seen the thorns; it was painful even looking at them.

The fruits were sweet and flavorful, a consistency something like cherries, and there were five tiny seeds in a flower shape in the center.

I checked at home to see what you can do with hawthorn fruits, and it turns out all sorts of things (examples here), but it also turns out the seeds are poisonous, so I'm glad I didn...

Pen Pal navigation page

Here's a little mini-version of what the navigation page of the Pen Pal website looks like, and, if you can click on it, you can get to the website.



Of course, the *book* isn't out there yet, but at least it has a comfy place to sit when it does come out.

Website up!

So I'm ready to share my Pen Pal website. It's still under construction--I haven't added the pages for messages in bottles or language preservation, for instance--but I imagine it always will be.

Here are the text and images from the "About Pen Pal" page (and if you click on the link to the left, you can go to the actual site). It's my advertisement :-)







... I might post one more entry with links to the website, just because I want an excuse to show off all the images.