Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 28

self-awareness and the desire to be known

I've been musing on self-awareness and on humans' desire to have machines be self-aware ever since the story about the guy at Google came out. My thoughts have run in all kinds of directions. For instance: about relationships up and down the awareness scale. Most of us likely have had relationships with beings more self-aware than we are (parents are generally more self-aware than toddlers, and all of us have been toddlers and had parents or others filling that role), and most of us likely have ...

malt

This entry repeats some of the stuff I said about brewing chicha in this entry , but consider this the revised, improved, and expanded version ;-)

In the rhyme "this is the house that jack built," there are these lines:

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built. (etc.)

The picture always is of a sack. For example...


(Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections)

I never actually knew what malt was.

Fast-forward t...

Intervista ho hakerek na'in/ Interview with the author

These questions are a mix of Tetun and English. Where they're in Tetun (probably riddled with errors), I've supplied English, but I haven't attempted to translate my English-language questions into Tetun. Similarly, where Nando answered in Tetun, I've translated the answers into English, but where he answered in English, I haven't ventured a translation. Ha'u husu deskulpa tanba la bele tradús hotu ba Tetun 😓

Nando da Costa Pires
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Nando da Costa Pires is the author of "Mr. Mau Leki Meets an Eel," ...

Mr. Mau Leki Meets An Eel, by Fernando da Costa Pires

This is a story that Nando (Fernando da Costa Pires), whom I met in 2013 when I visited Ainaro, Timor-Leste, wrote. Stories of special relationships between people and the natural and supernatural world are not uncommon in Timor, but this story is unique: it's part of Nando's own family history. I've translated it into English, and we present you with both versions, so that readers of both Tetun and English can enjoy it. Tomorrow I will post an interview with Nando.

Fernando da Costa Pires

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Versau...

Big news re: the story from Timor-Leste

You may remember that I encouraged anyone I knew from my visit to Timor-Leste in 2013 to send in a story to Strange Horizons for their Southeast Asian writers issue. They were specifically looking for submissions from Timor-Leste.

My call on Facebook didn't get much traction--probably because I'm not very active on the site, so it deprioritizes my posts in people's feeds--but one acquaintance reached out to me, a guy called Nando. I remembered his smile super-well. He's just one year older than ...

always desirable

A very charismatic ghost sign:

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And some carousel ponies. Two different moods?





I have all kinds of things I want to post about, but it all takes time, so I offer these as placeholders in the meantime. Which mood of carousel horse are you these days? And what, besides (apparently!) Ceresota Flour, is always desirable?

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🎶Whenever, Wherever

You've heard of USPS Forever stamps, but how about Wherever stamps?



I got a letter from my friend C, who was in Barcelona recently.

"Oooh, a letter from C from overseas!" I thought. Then I looked at the stamp and saw it was a US international stamp. I know these well, as we have family in the UK and Japan, so I buy them often.

"Hmmm, so, she must have sent this letter when she got home," I thought. "But in that case, why did she use an international stamp? ... And why is the cancellation in Spanish...

romance in a meadow, chicha update

There's a meadow near me that I love, especially in May and June. Yesterday I was driving home, and there was a couple standing in the pink mist of ragged robin, her looking like she had stepped out of a fantasy story, him looking enchanted. I turned the car around, pulled over, jumped out, and went plowing through the long grass toward them like some kind of zombie on the attack.

"You guys look so romantic, standing here in the long grass!" I said. They both looked understandably flustered, me ...

beaver pond

Perhaps you're in the mood for a change of pace?

We went for a walk through a landscape transformed by beavers. It's always been marshy; they have turned it into their own habitat. There are frogs in here, and red-winged blackbirds flying over the reedy parts, and redstarts singing in the skunk-cabbage parts.





We saw a great tree, SO TALL, that will soon be down:



Evidence (pond-facing side):



Some extra gnawing (trail-facing side):



Again, that tree is TALL:



So think of beavers. There was no pond before...

the home-invading do-gooder

I've been searching around for short films (10 minutes or under) on Youtube that I can watch with my tutee and then we can talk about--English practice! And if there's dialogue, listening comprehension practice! This one doesn't really have dialogue, but it has plenty to talk about.

Briefly, a woman has a drab, routine life (her closet has only gray clothes in it! The plant on her windowsill is dead!)--but that world map on her wall (only spot of color) lets you know that maybe she's open to more...