Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 20

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.



comments

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

[image error]

comments

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...

making uí (fariña)!

Last year, when wakanomori and I went to Amazonas, one thing I really loved was fariña, a preparation of cassava made by grating it, then roasting it. After returning home, I found a great video on the making of it among the Tikuna (I wrote about it here ; the entry had screenshots from the video). And I knew that was something I really, really wanted to participate in if I ever got the chance.

And I did get the chance, and it was (a) just like the video and (b) lovely, and (c) I made a great fri...

World's smallest Coca-Cola bottling plant (maybe)

Among a bouquet of interesting links offered by conuly was one on the economics behind why soda cans in Hawaii are slightly differently shaped from soda cans in other parts of the United States. The video is here , but it comes down to the fact that Hawaii is an island, so most of the inputs for manufacturing have to be shipped there; that, and the fact that because soda is mainly water, it's most economical, in terms of shipping cost, to make it very close to its market--rather than, say, ship i...

Wednesday reading

Putting off the Amazon posts because it's Wednesday and I actually have two books to report on, which I read in airports. They're both novellas, Malka Older's The Mimicking of Known Successes and Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune. The former is newly out this month; the latter has been out for quite a while but I only just now got to it.

I'm a fan of Malka Older's: her stories are full of interesting ideas that the characters talk about in interesting ways. This one was billed as "cozy Ho...

Back from the Amazon

I have so much in my head that the words pile up behind... my mouth? or my typing fingers? jostling to be first to come out. So before I try to say anything, I'll just share two clusters of photos, first an assortment of four I shared on Facebook (but you guys here get more context!)

( The Facebook Four )

And here is a lower-water, higher-water comparison. The first photo is one I took in July, when we went when the water was low, but not as low as it gets. The second is a photo in the same spot t...

Nando answers questions about his stories

I created these questions are based on comments people left in response to Nando's two stories, but especially the more recent one, "Mauko Meets a Monkey." If they sound a little stilted, it's because it's my translation back into English of what I sent to him--I'm not good enough in Tetun to ask highly subtle, highly nuanced questions. You'll see that his replies are sort of adjacent to the questions rather than direct answers, again, most certainly due to my inability to express myself adequa...