Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 20

planting an egg

It's been a while, but I finished the next illustration for my Semillas y Huevos picture book, where the kids plant an egg and put an avocado seed under a chicken to hatch.

It took extra long because I finished one drawing but was dissatisfied with it, so had to start over. (I like this one better)

Here the kids are, planting the egg.

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learning Tikuna

My friend Francy is looking for work, and I am eager to learn Tikuna without taking advantage of her, so I proposed to pay for a month or so of lessons (I don't want to saddle her with a long-term obligation and don't know how long I can afford to do this) as a source of income while she looks.

I should have known from how graciously and easily she taught me words when I was visiting that she'd be an excellent teacher, but I've been truly blown away. She's made me two diagrams of the forest field...

Jennifer

A kid came up to me in the early evening of my first full day in Letícia as I was going into an eatery. She was skinny, with hair going every which-way and dark patches on her face that might have been bruising or dirt or a birth mark. She said something to me that I didn't quite understand--but I suspected that she was asking for money, so I opened my purse to get out some money.

"No, no," she said. And then something else ending in "sopa" (soup).

"You want me to buy you a soup?" I asked.

She nod...

cassava-based plastic packaging substitute for Letícia

When we went to the Amazon in July, we took shelter from a downpour at the Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas SINCHI--the Sinchi Amazonic Institute of Scientific Research, "a nonprofit research institute of the Government of Colombia charged with carrying out scientific investigations on matters relating to the Amazon Rainforest, the Amazon River and the Amazon Region of Colombia for its better understanding and protection." There we met Dr. Clara Patricia Peña-Venegas , who gave ...

more banyans, more flooded forest

When we went to the Amazon in July, I took this photo of a banyan, also known as an arbol caminante, or walking tree, because of how it spreads. The water was low at this point--you can see the ground beneath the tree.



Now here are some banyans in March, when the water was much higher. You can no longer see the ground! But you can also see the high-water mark--that's how much higher the water will rise.



( I promised some pictures of me in a banyan... )

We went in a canoe with no motor, just paddle...

cultural appreciation

Little Springtime is just starting a masters program in early modern Japanese literature at Tokyo University. It means she’s in the Kokubungaku-bu—the National Literature Department—because of course in Japan, Japanese literature is the national literature. She was remarking ruefully to us that the department can attract right-wingers. Not solely, of course! But people with a nationalist stripe can be all about glorious literary heritage, etc. Whereas Little Springtime, who isn’t Japanese, loves...

no death, only transformation

In the Amazon, everything is always falling apart as soon as it's made: termites attack wood, metal rusts, roads disintegrate. And everywhere, new life is always pushing up. This is true everywhere, I realize... just slower

...Here, grass is sprouting on the canoe I was in. (Apologies to those of you who have seen this photo already on Twitter) A good image of resurrection.



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Semillas y huevos, 2nd picture

Two posts in one day! What?!

Here is the picture for page one: a boy shows his cousin the two avocado seeds

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Low(er) and High(er)

I discovered I have a pair of photos that makes a good comparison of the lower water levels of the Amazon in July and the higher levels in March. Same location, different times of year! (Note: this isn't the actual Amazon, it's a little ingress--you navigate out of this and to the main river.)

Look at the difference between how much land there is between the houses on the far shore and the water. At peak water rise in most years, the water will cover the island those houses are on. (You can clic...

semillas y huevos

I'm making a six-page (counting the cover...) picture book for the kids I met on my trip (they're all siblings and cousins of each other). It's about planting an egg and having a hen hatch an avocado seed. Here's my cover image: two avocado seeds and two eggs :-)

... Hoping you can tell (but would not be surprised if not, heh) that the top two are the avocado seeds and the bottom two are the eggs. I'm biting my tongue to not-say all the things that are wrong with the picture. Mainly I like it ev...