Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 163

Songs in the Shade of the Flamboyant Tree

I've always loved nursery rhymes and lullabies--they're one of the most evident examples of living folk traditions, wherever you go. I was looking for lullabies from Martinique the other day (because of a Mermaid's Hands folktale I'm writing up), and came across this lovely album:



It has traditional songs and nursery rhymes from Martinique, Guadaloupe, Haiti, and Reunion, and you can listen to them all here at the Secret Mountain website page here --just click on any of the song titles on the l...

Golden-brown world

I think I'm going to make many posts today--well, maybe three, anyway. This is the first. Welcome the sun at 6:45 am:



And here, from yesterday, are last year's cattails



Doesn't this look like a spinning wheel distaff, with a pile of roving on it, waiting to be spun?

Clockwork Phoenix 4--a partisan review

Clockwork Phoenix 4 is nearly out, and oh my goodness, the stories. There’s not a single bad one, and there are some amazing gems. I know whereof I speak; as the anthology’s proofreader, I read each one very carefully. (I apologize in advance if any typos got by me!) So, this is not a disinterested review, it’s a partisan recommendation.

I’m going to focus on just four stories, the stories I found myself thinking about for the longest time after reading them, but I‘ll have shoutouts for a hand...

Friday miscellany

How to be an authority figure: Carry a clipboard

After a band concert at the high school the other day, I was waiting with all the other parents for my child to emerge from the band room. It was a real confusion of people, families waiting, meeting their performer and leaving, kids talking to one another, adults talking . . . And in that, a kid came up to me and said, "Do you know where we pick up the butter bread? I ordered four loaves."

I was really puzzled--then realized I happened to (a) b...

The Peacock Garden, by Anita Desai

This Reading Wednesday I've just finished Anita Desai's The Peacock Garden. I read it in two different temporal mindframes--my childhood mind of about eight or ten, and my current mind, which contains several decades more of stuff. I loved the story in both.



I’ve wanted to read it ever since rachelmanija reviewed it, describing it as a “secret garden” book. About secret-garden books, she writes,

Some of my favorite books and shows and movies are in this genre, stories about people and places...

briar spiderwebs and chickadee spinners

Yesterday all the briars were glistening with dewdrops, the way they do after a rain. When the sun hit them, they were dazzling:



The briar barrier looked sort of like a giant spiderweb--spiderwebs string raindrops in the same way:



Careful where you take your sip . . .



Elsewhere, a chickadee was perched on top of the exploded cattail fluff from last year's cattails, pulling at it, as if it were fibers on a distaff, and he was intending to spin it. I didn't have a camera for that, but fortunatel...

Their Eyes Were Watching God: the hurricane

I was in awe of the majesty and terror of the hurricane Zora Neale Hurston wrote in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Its slow coming, its mercilessness, its destruction. And, as I said last entry, how so much of what she wrote could have been written about Hurricane Katrina. Crazy. Seventy years later and still so much the same--at least when it comes to the very poor, facing a storm.


cover illustration from the 1965 Harper Collins edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Before the storm...

Morning...

Their Eyes Were Watching God: the sensual world (post 1 of 2)

I've been fascinated by Zora Neale Hurston for a long time. She was a free thinker who led an unusual life; she did ethnographic research, collected folksongs, and wrote novels. I'd read some nonfiction by her, but I'd never read any of her novels. Recently I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I loved for lots of reasons, but rather than talk about all those reasons, I'm going to focus on just two things, in two separate posts. This post is a bouquet of sensual descriptions--trees,...

All the feels, as they do say on Tumblr

There are some days when everything seems turned up to eleven--today is a day like that, when even casual encounters seem to be thrumming with a note just above or below hearing range, when everyone seems to be supersaturated with light and brightness.

Let me share two things. One is a poem Carol Ann Duffy, "Prayer," that I came to thanks to flemmings , whom I didn't know before, but the strength of weak ties brings us together, people. Let us stop and praise the strength of weak ties. Let us,...

The Mysterious Benefactor

The city of Ishinomaki, Japan, was badly hit by the tsunami of 2011. Eighty percent of the houses were destroyed, and out of a population of approximately 164,000 people, more than 3,000 lost their lives. The city's been slowly rebuilding over the past two years.

Recently, a mysterious benefactor has made their presence known. They've been sending envelopes to organizations like the Ishinomaki Restoration Support Network and the Sunfish City Development Organization. Inside the envelopes?

Bars...