Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 177
October 9, 2012
The Night Crew
My local NPR station is having its fund drive, and it inspired this story
The Night Crew
“That’s 1-800 Let’s-end-this-now, folks,” intoned Indigo.
The night crew at WLHV Public Radio were getting a little punchy. It was the ninth day of the fund drive, and they were running short of enticements to bring in donations. Not that much could induce pledges after 8:00 PM, but the skeleton crew of volunteers were committed through 9:00—Daniel Stein, a veteran of twenty years of fund drives, whose high...
October 8, 2012
The Case of Tilly Mahan
Tilly Mahan collects angel skeletons, and she is happy to show them to anyone who asks. The problem--as religious authorities, newspaper reporters, and local children have discovered--is that Tilly's conception of angels and skeletons differs from most people's.
Her collection includes the following:
a plaster cast of a tire rut, taken from a not-yet-paved road in a stalled housing development
three charred fragments from a lightning-struck white pine
an old-fashioned brass key whose wards do, it...
Her collection includes the following:
a plaster cast of a tire rut, taken from a not-yet-paved road in a stalled housing development
three charred fragments from a lightning-struck white pine
an old-fashioned brass key whose wards do, it...
harvesting rice on the highway--literally
screenshots from the video at the NHK Newsweb site here. If you click through, you can see the video. Date is October 3, 2012.
Thirty meters up in the air, at the Ôhashi junction on the Tokyo-Meguro highway . . .
...rice has been growing since spring, and is ready for harvesting.
Fifth graders from neighborhood schools harvested it. For most, it was a brand-new experience:
stepping into the paddy
cutting with hand-held sickles
"The moment I cut the rice stalks felt great. I was really happy."
The fi...
Thirty meters up in the air, at the Ôhashi junction on the Tokyo-Meguro highway . . .
...rice has been growing since spring, and is ready for harvesting.
Fifth graders from neighborhood schools harvested it. For most, it was a brand-new experience:
stepping into the paddy
cutting with hand-held sickles
"The moment I cut the rice stalks felt great. I was really happy."
The fi...
October 6, 2012
A tangle of grapevine
In great festoons and low drapes, as one of the things supporting it is a huge broken red maple trunk and crown, which itself is now kept from crashing to the ground only by other grape vines.
poison ivy and Virginia creeper
The Virginia creeper is in crimson and scarlet, the poison ivy is in gold and green:
October 5, 2012
Strange Horizons annual fund drive
Strange Horizons is having its annual fund drive. As always, there are lots of interesting prizes, and many more will become available over the course of the month. Here are some of the things on offer right now:
A signed ARC of The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson: "a standalone YA science fiction novel set on the coast of Brazil, 400 years in the future."
Yes, it's Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes! Mmm, macabre goodness.
Limited edition hardback reprint of H.G. Wells' classic novel The Shape of...
A signed ARC of The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson: "a standalone YA science fiction novel set on the coast of Brazil, 400 years in the future."
Yes, it's Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes! Mmm, macabre goodness.
Limited edition hardback reprint of H.G. Wells' classic novel The Shape of...
October 3, 2012
Zeus, a patchwork truck, an anthem
I saw Zeus at work replacing siding on a house. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but there was no mistaking his beard:
Why was Zeus doing home improvement work?
Who are we to understand the ways of the gods?
There were three guys working on that house, possibly four--I am not sure about the divinity of the others--and three trucks out front. One truck was patchwork. A google search tells me that it was likely a 1973 or 1974 Chevy pickup. It was red, but with several very neat white patches on...
Why was Zeus doing home improvement work?
Who are we to understand the ways of the gods?
There were three guys working on that house, possibly four--I am not sure about the divinity of the others--and three trucks out front. One truck was patchwork. A google search tells me that it was likely a 1973 or 1974 Chevy pickup. It was red, but with several very neat white patches on...
October 2, 2012
False confessions and thoughts on interrogation
NPR had a story on this morning about Richard Lapointe, a brain-damaged man who confessed to a gruesome rape and murder in 1989 ("Brain-Damaged Man Wins New Trial in Two-Decades-Old Killing").
The story cited an interesting fact that the Innocence Project turned up in analyzing the 300 cases of DNA-based exoneration** in the United States:
The story cited an interesting fact that the Innocence Project turned up in analyzing the 300 cases of DNA-based exoneration** in the United States:
When the Innocence Project reviewed those cases, it found that in 1 out of 4, a defendant later proven innocent had at one point given a self-incriminating...
October 1, 2012
how it feels to be alive like this
When the sky turns to mother-of-pearl, when the sun is sinking, but not low enough yet to send the clouds into lavender or scarlet or the sky to gold--
--it's a Magritte time: the lower world darkening but the sky bright
It turned the walls of the house in the picture below into a shield of light.
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Too much beauty, sliding into the world, a shield of light, but it cuts like a blade. What protects you from the shield?
Never mind. I didn't know why I was aimlessly snapping pictures from t...
--it's a Magritte time: the lower world darkening but the sky bright
It turned the walls of the house in the picture below into a shield of light.
</a>Too much beauty, sliding into the world, a shield of light, but it cuts like a blade. What protects you from the shield?
Never mind. I didn't know why I was aimlessly snapping pictures from t...
September 30, 2012
a net of grass, ghost ferns
For catching moths and mist spirits, a net of grass, with raindrop weights:
The ferns are passing into the spirit world: they are becoming ghosts. You can leave an offering beneath their pale arches. Maybe it will bring you your heart's desire, or maybe it will simply avert woe. Or maybe it will let you walk among the ghosts, yourself, and still return again.
The ferns are passing into the spirit world: they are becoming ghosts. You can leave an offering beneath their pale arches. Maybe it will bring you your heart's desire, or maybe it will simply avert woe. Or maybe it will let you walk among the ghosts, yourself, and still return again.
