Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 167

For those in the path of blizzard Nemo

Storycorps: Disability, parenting, and love

This morning's Storycorps interview was fifteen-year-old Myra Brown, interviewing her mother, Bonnie Brown, who, the intro told us, "is intellectually disabled with a low IQ."

The mutual love was so strong and affirming:

Myra: Did you ever feel like, I was too much to handle, like, ever?

Bonnie: No. I think because I'm different, it might seem hard for me, but I was going to give it all I got, no matter what.

...

Bonnie: I'm really thankful because you understand me, and you love me and you accept...

miscellany: vigilante espresso, snowfish, coins

Yesterday I woke up with two words in my mind: vigilante espresso. It sounded like the name of a tumblr blog, but there was none by that name, so I made one. Then that night, as I was going to sleep in my father's house, I saw a shadow on the wall--it was the shadow of my father's pet coffee plant, and what looked like a small man beneath it, with a long arm reaching toward him. A coffee worker, in the grip of God or Agribusiness? No: he is vigilante espresso.



The day before that, I saw evide...

collecting donations; a jihad for love

Collecting donations

Yesterday the healing angel and I spent some time out in the cold at a gas station convenience store, collecting donations for nearby food pantries. Lots of interesting people people came by, but two I remember especially.

One was the woman with the scratch tickets. She had been given a whole bunch of lottery scratch tickets for a present, and she was going to cash them in. "I'll catch you on the way out," she said. She was wearing a necklace that had smooth stones in it. S...

Golden Fox Demon

cucumberseed is creating a wonderful, terrifying bestiary. The entry on golden fox demons was begging for illustration:

In their initial form, they are very attractive, golden-furred foxes with pierced ears and a strong yellow aura. They will behave solicitously toward visitors to their realm, twine themselves in and out of your feet like cats, bark and whine. It's vitally important that you ignore them.
--cucumberseed, The Beast Fears Fire: Golden Fox Demons

A strong wind

There's a strong wind out there, pulling out the teeth of the night by the sound of things, and tugging at roof shingles and pushing at walls. I wonder what daylight will look like.

misty roads

All day, people were diligently navigating the mist, by foot or by car, groping along obscured routes and through transformed landscapes, some of them gulping dread or yearning for the space beneath the trees and blurred rim between here and there.





But the thin doors and the narrow paths were not, alas, for them, but for the swirling creatures sliding off roofs and rising from fields, these ones that gather by melting ice, sweeping in close to one another to exchange urgent messages, then part...

the hitchhiker and the psychic

So, on Friday, due to a communication error, I went off to do my jail volunteering, but it turned out they didn't need me. "Never mind," I thought to myself. "This just means that today can be the day I visit the psychic's place." (The place where I saw a young mom sitting waiting, lost in thought.)

So I set off along the long, rather depressing road that the psychic's place is on, and I scanned the roadside: Denny's, used cars, Ocean State Job Lot, dying strip mall .... "I've gone too far,"...

Some stuff from the Aung San Suu Kyi "Desert Island Discs" interview

I think this is mainly of interest to me, and not my friends list, so I'll leave you with the quote I liked best up front, and then some other things under the cut.

"When people have chosen a certain path, they should walk it with satisfaction and determination and not try to make it appear as a tremendous sacrifice. I think then it's like asking for something back, saying, 'Here I am, making this sacrifice,' and I don't think you should do it. Whatever you do out of your own free will, that s...

Three alsos

Also, both our cars have flat tires right now, which we only discovered this morning when we tried to go to church in one. (We already knew the other one had a flat tire.)

Also, Aung San Suu Kyi came onto BBC 4's "Desert Island Discs," and you can download the podcast of it here. I'm only just listening to it right now, but the interview questions and answers are most entertaining :-)

Also, I want to write about the hitchhiker and the psychic, but I'm being summoned off the computer, so who kn...