Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 25

Frutero ~ an enthusiastic advertisement ~

One of the things I loved when first we went to Colombia was the fruit--so many fruits I had never heard of or tried. And one of the things I loved when we went to Leticia was the fruit--so many *new* fruits I had never heard of or tried--and also: the fruit as ice cream.

For instance, at Helados Nai Pata (not actually in Leticia but in the town of Puerto Nariño): You can have araza (Eugenia stipitata), camu camu (Myriciaria dubra), and copoazu (Theobroma grandiflorum), none of which I'd heard of...

Na Viro, by Gina Cole

This is an imaginative and ambitious book.

What I loved most was its worldbuilding, so rich and overbrimming. It takes place in a high-tech, Pacific-centered, post-apocalyptic future. It’s a future in which people are given prosthetic irises at birth to compensate for damage omnipresent radiation would do to their eyes, and in which the Pacific islands that are protagonist Tia’s ancestral homeland now lie 10 meters underwater. Even tiny wordbuilding details are delightful, like lakescreens, films...

Hot Chocolate Run 2022

After a hiatus, I'm running the Hot Chocolate Run and raising money for Safe Passage, an organization in western Massachusetts that "[builds] safety, hope and justice for families who have lived with domestic violence." As I did in 2018 , this year I'm collecting wishes to run with. You don't have to be a donor to make a wish--just post it here, and I'll run with it attached to me ( like this ).

This year Wakanomori and I are doing this as a team, so ...

here is a link to our team page .

I do have a p...

Preparation of fariña among the Tikuna

This is one thing I want to go back to the Amazon for: to join in in this (if there was a community that wouldn't mind that). The screenshots here are taken from a gorgeous 21-minute video made by the Department of Intangible Heritage of Peru's Ministry of Culture (the Tikuna/Ticuna/Magüta people's ancestral lands encompass portions of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil).

Here's a link to that video: Uí, preparación y vigencia de la fariña entre los ticuna

It starts by situating us in relation to the fore...

Best friend?

I started to post this as a tweet and then thought, This is ridiculous; there are too many aspects to the question and too many long potential answers. So I'm putting it here!

When you were little, did you have best friends? Did you have several at the same time, or only one at a time? Or did you not use that term?

If you did use it, do you continue to now? If not, what changed, do you think? If you're someone with one or more life partners, how does having that person or people figure into the e...

On Indigenous Peoples Day I ...

I didn't set out to do anything other than catch up with housework today, but then on a morning run I stopped to pick up a walnut fruit, and then that got me thinking about the staining capabilities of walnut, and then that reminded me of the Magüta/Tikuna people, who use the huito fruit (Genipa americana) to dye skin black. For babies there's ceremony where they're washed with its juice for protection. The juice doesn't start out black, but it turns black in the air:

(Screenshots from a lovely 1...

Fernando

My dad had to have some surgery last week, so I've been staying with him. (He's recovering just fine--drove to the supermarket today--but he's 91, so I want to be sure he feels completely stable before I leave.)

When he was still in the hospital, we took walks around the unit, and we passed a bulletin board that had comments that people had left, thanking and praising the nurses, nurse assistants, and techs. These two for Fernando caught my eye:

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[text: "Fernando is an asset to your work unit. He b...

B'town fair, 2022

After cancelling in 2020 and 2021, the Belchertown Fair was back this year. Little Springtime took ~ her new wife ~ to see this piece of Americana. They signed the "How far have you come" board in the exhibit hall, and I sincerely doubt there will be anyone who has come to the fair from further away:



The exhibit hall had some lovely homemade things, including this magnificent quilt:



There are some details ( under this cut )

The design isn't 100 percent original: there are patterns out there that ar...

Wednesday reading, fish 'n' birds, and messages on trucks

In Aventura en el Amazonas both Mayam and Nashi are learning about the chain of life--Mayam when her mother talks to her about piranhas and other carnivorous fish, and Nashi when he sees a cayman gobble up a roseate spoonbill.

"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."

And

"Nature knows how to do its...

window to sky

This was a beautiful moment, yesterday




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