Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 17

happy news

The other day when I was harvesting some milkweed, I found a monarch chrysalis on a leaf. From what I've read, the caterpillars prefer to make their chrysalises elsewhere (for example, there was one on the siding of my house--sadly, that one never hatched).

So I put the stalk in a sheltered place and waited with trepidation to see if it would hatch. We had three days of rain. Today, it's gloomy, but not raining. And I went outside, and instead of a chrysalis, there was a monarch female, resting ...

Spores, by Joshua Barkman (False Knees)

Joshua Barkman draws four-panel comics under the name False Knees--you've probably seen his images used in memes ( like this one ).

Some time ago he put a comic called Spores up on social media--it's a really lovely story of what happens when a meteorite crashes to Earth in the northern woods in winter...

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And extraterrestrial fungi spread....

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And creatures eat them.

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It leads to creatures being able to communicate across species, and -- well, it's a really great story. And now you can order it at the ...

the story continues

When Crinklewing (as my husband dubbed him) was blown away, I thought that was the end of the story, and so I made the entry with that endpoint.

But stories keep flowing! So much of storytelling is about deciding where to begin and end your tale ...

Later that day, I found Crinklewing again in my yard. All through the day, I took breaks from work to continue what I described in the last post, taking him to different flowers, tempting him with sugar-water. As evening came round, he climbed up on m...

wrinkled wing

I've spend the last two-and-a-half days thinking about and trying to care for a butterfly who came out of its crysalis with a malformed wing. It's as if something got wrapped around the wing and pinched it. Here's the picture I took on the day I noticed it (two days ago):

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That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.

So it w...

the poetry of "big"

My Tikuna teacher was explaining to me about the different words for big, and it was so poetic. She said:

There are three words for big:

tauchiii
for slippers and shoes
sandals, bags, caps, and t-shirts

taama
for hugs, kisses, smiles, and greetings, my friend

and tapuneechii

friend, this word is used

for very

big

trees

(my translation of her texts, with minimal liberties taken)

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Low low low

Do you remember I compared low-ish water in July 2022 with high-ish water in March 2023 for the little tributary that connects Letícia to the Amazon?

(  Here the two photos are again, as a reminder  )

September is a very low-water month, close to the lowest, if not the lowest. And here's what that same area looks like now:

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Barely any water at all. The buildings on the left are the ones that were floating in the other two pictures.

(Photo from this Facebook page. )

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iNumber Number: Jozi Gold (2023)

If you enjoy a good heist movie and have Netflix, I highly recommend iNumber Number: Jozi Gold**(directed by Donovan Marsh), a heist flick out of South Africa. It gives you a very entertaining foursquare of lawful/chaotic good/evil alignment, humor, fun characters, truly luminous cinematography in a most likely unfamiliar landscape (unless you're from South Africa). (Also violence, but less than in American films.) The protagonists are cop buddies Shoes (straight arrow, gentle family man) and Ch...

warm to the touch

I brag from time to time here and elsewhere about the big apple tree in our yard, which we grew from a seed and which blesses us with tasty apples--even though there's no reason that should be the case: apples don't grow true to seed, so if you grow an apple tree from a seed, there's no telling what you'll get. I don't remember what kind of apple's seed I planted. But it grew into a three-trunked tree that towers over us now. And deer come and eat the windfalls.

Today wakanomori and I collected a...

a focused reader

On Saturday, Steven Brewer, author of the Revin's Heart series of steampunk novellas that I've enjoyed, had a tent set up at the farmers market the next town over, to sell the novellas and also some of his writing in Esperanto.

I went to see him and took a 10-second video. (Warning, those Youtube shorts play on repeat--click away, click away, or else you will be stuck in a time loop!) Afterward, while we were talking, a haggard man, older than either of us (I reckon, but who can be sure?) came b...

Do you want to eat pineapple?

In order for me to learn how to say things in Tikuna, my teacher sends me short recordings over WhatsApp. I then save them in files on my phone and computer and listen to them over and over and try to copy what she's saying.

These recordings are so, so charming, they always make me smile. She starts off with good morning, good afternoon, good evening (in Spanish), and in the background there may be music, or kids playing, or the sounds of cooking, or the sound of rain, or birds and insects. Somet...