Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 165

Spirited away

Here is a sight that greeted me on the path on a snow-flurrying morning about two days ago:





No doubt the revelers drank to the health of the night, toasted the trees and the Milky Way . . . and then? Night-eyed, smiling visitors appeared out of the trees. The revelers, cheerfully intoxicated, offered the visitors some of their brew, and the visitors in turn invited the revelers to join in a mad race or a midnight dance--both things combined, maybe--round and round and round, faster and faster,...

Sunday Post No. 2: Foolhardy scammers

Ana Patricia works at the Boston Fed, where, among other things, she fights scammers who attempt to fleece people with fake offers for mortgage refinancing. One day, she herself received a scam letter. She and her colleagues in the Community Development section of the Boston Fed went to town, creating a video about the incident, starring Ana herself, and commissioning a one-page comic strip.

Comic strip here.

Video here.

Enjoy, and don't get ripped off!

Sunday Post No. 1: The Spoken Word

Let’s hear it for the spoken word, for words in the air as well as on the page, for reading aloud as well as in your head, for performances of stories and poetry, and for open-air debates as well as the fast and furious ones that take place online.

I’ve seen the benefit of reading aloud in both my personal life—I’ve talked about how much I’m enjoying reading A Tale of Two Cities aloud, and how reading it aloud makes complex sentence structures more comprehensible—but I’ve also seen it in my vo...

Who, and why?

Here is an attractive but dangerous bracelet:







Questions: Who might wear such a bracelet? And why would they wear it?

safe cracker

The safe cracker's work--she's brushed aside the snow, melted a round hole in the vault, and made off with the treasure. Now the winter prince may rage, and the winter prince may moan, but it is too late. The safe cracker is long gone and what once was ice is water.

A retold Fairytale from a friend: The Frog Prince

A puppeteer and graphic designer whom I have the pleasure to know shared this entertaining puppet-play version of The Frog Prince on the occasion of tell-a-fairytale day. I loved its gently risqué tone and its paean to the virtues of water and wetness and the merits of swamp life over statecraft. He gave me permission to share it, and so I present to you . . .

The Frog Prince, by Ed Atkeson

Source: Here

A play for one puppet in a pictureframe theatre. The setting is a leafy spot at the edge of...

Jiji watches a video of birds and squirrels

I was looking at a Youtube video of birds and squirrels eating peanuts, and Jiji stood at attention, watching. Then he jumped onto the desk and ran behind the computer screen, looking for them. No luck! He came back around. One of the birds flew up. Jiji's head shot up! But no bird! What the....?

It had the ninja girl and me falling down laughing. We took a video of him doing it:

Tell-a-Fairy-Tale Day

mnfaure says that today is tell-a-fairy-tale day. What an excellent day! Here is a gender-swapped version of Little Red Riding Hood.

Big Red


Big Red, they called him, a lanky boy nearing six feet tall already.

“Go make sure your Gran’s keeping warm,” his father told him, one bright winter morning. “Make sure she has plenty of kindling by the stove. And here are two rabbits I snared yesterday for her to stew.”

So Big Red strapped on his snowshoes and set off through the woods, whistling.

Wolf Girl...

Speaking in Bullets

Here is the poem Vigilante Espresso slipped underneath the door for me.

Speaking in Bullets

We spoke in words
In open air and print and bits and bytes
They replied with executive orders
Curfews, arrests, arrests, arrests
Indefinite detentions
So we raised our voices, at rallies and demonstrations
Spoke with rocks and gasoline-soaked rags
And they replied with tear gas, truncheons
Then tanks and troops and automatic fire
So now we speak in bullets
Scavenged rounds, stolen weapons
Power grows, the old chair...

a calligraphy lesson and no-churn ice cream

The town common floods, and there is ice. Some years, the fire department adds to it and makes an ice rink, but not this year.



So, since no one is here skating, we can try to decipher the characters in this . . . poem? Is it a pledge? A meditation? A declaration of love or yearning?

Run your fingers over it, or your toes, or your tongue. Learn the shape of it, and when you know it by touch and taste, perhaps you will have the meaning of it, too.



More tasty, though, is this no-churn espresso ice...