Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 174

Video for Donors Choose

Someone near and dear to me was involved in the creation of a video to promote Donors Choose, an organization that get supplies to underfunded public schools. The schools or classrooms can post their needs, and then donors choose which to give to.



The video is really moving; you can view it here.

Here are some screen shots and quotes:


“Our kids have so much potential; there’s just times when we don’t have the things we need to help them”


“The look of a kid who gets a new book—it’s just magical.”


“...

Five-cent Coke, and the thoughts it occasions

NPR had a great story this morning about why Coca-Cola's price remained a nickel from 1886 into the 1950s--some 70 years as the same price: "Why Coke Cost a Nickel for 70 Years"

It was because of a poor deal that the president of Coca-Cola made with two lawyers who wanted to buy bottling rights for Coke, back when selling soda in bottles was a brand new idea: he agreed to sell the syrup to the bottlers at a fixed price--forever.

Andrew Young, an economist at West Virginia University, says the p...

word play

A post of cafenowhere 's reminded me of a sign I saw when I was driving the healing angel to school. (Indeed, it was on that journey that I discovered the brakes were going to need fixing sooner rather than later, and hence the depositing of the car with the mechanic and the walk home in the rain.)

exit only, the sign said, but I saw an S in there, somehow, sneaky snaky S, insinuating in, active imagination, poor vision, I don't know! Anyway, add an S in the right place, and the message becomes...

rainy day

I walked up the highway in the rain, having left the car to have its brakes looked at.

I passed a house with a gazebo attached:



If I lived there, every time it was rainy, I'd sit out in the gazebo and drink a hot drink, watching the rain fall, and watching the hot water vapor curling off the drink and rising up to meet the huge and wild rain spirits all around. Born somewhere small and domestic, but off to explore the wilderlands.

Here is a house with paint peeling. I love houses in just this st...

two things seen in town

dog biscuits

They were in a basket by the drive-through teller's chair--I could see them from the customer side of the barrier between the customers and the tellers.

"You have those to give to dogs?" I asked the teller who was helping me.

"Yeah, if people drive up with dogs in the car," she said.

"You put them in the canister and shoot them through the pneumatic tube?"

"Or put them through the drop box. Some dogs know to expect them and get all excited when they realize they're driving up to the...

burning down the house

I have candles by the sink which I sometimes light when I'm doing dishes or cooking dinner. Today, shortly after I lit one, there was an unusual smell of burning. Or rather--since candles always have a burning smell--I should say there was a smell of unusual burning.

"What's that smell?" the healing angel asked.

"I've got the candles lit," I said from the other room--having walked away (just temporarily, mind! And the ninja girl was still in the same room with the candles, and lo, now the heal...

Mousekin's Golden House, by Edna Miller

I grew up with this picture book about a white-footed mouse who finds an abandoned jack-o'-lantern in the woods and turns it into his house. As I said in a past entry, it led to the tradition of my parents putting our old jack-o'-lanterns out in the backyard after Halloween. I've carried on the tradition, but in my current neck of the woods, squirrels have decided they love to eat pumpkins, so the jack-o'-lanterns never get to "close up" the way the one in the story does--they get devoured fi...

Little Springtime's first election

(Mousekin's Golden House will come later)

It's lucky when your first election is a presidential election. When we got to the polls at 8:15, the parking lot at the high school was full and a cop was directing traffic:



At the entrance to the gym, you also had the opportunity to buy a calendar to support the library's expansion fund:



We are in Precinct A:



The poll worker who gave us our ballots (he let me take his picture but regretted he was not wearing a tie!)



Our BALLOT!

[removed--as I just discove...

My water table is very high right now. Furthermore I am a...

My water table is very high right now. Furthermore I am a salt marsh.

Buuuut. I have a skateboarding helmet now. So that's something. I think . . . I don't know what I think about that. Yup. Just tried to type thoughts, and they were all wrong.

Moving along. For Halloween, the healing angel helped me make a candy-dispensing robot, which I had been daydreaming about making. Actually, what I originally wanted to make was an automaton that dispensed fortunes, but then I thought, well, but it wou...

"A Land of Deepest Shade" readable for free in its entirety

While talking with three_magpies yesterday, I realized a story of mine that's previously only been available to read completely if you bought the magazine (The Colored Lens) is now available for free. It's "A Land of Deepest Shade."

I've quoted the source lines for the title last time I posted about the story, but I'll do so again, because I love the quote

A land of deepest shade
Unpierced by human thought
That dreary region of the dead
Where all things are forgot

Oh yeah.

Okay then! Comment-enable...