Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 4

acorn bread and açaí

acorn bread

The leftover acorn meal I had in my fridge had gone moldy! Ah well. Fortunately I had acorns left over from last time, so I ground those up, leached them, dried them, and yesterday made a loaf of ... well it's mainly white bread--three cups white flour--but also a cup of acorn meal. So I am going to call it acorn bread, the same way you call a thing banana bread even though it's not mainly bananas.

Behold its majesty!



I still have leftover meal from this batch of acorns, but I will not ...

two women

The first woman

At an intersection in my father's town, there was a woman with multiple signs. She cycled through them, holding them up. One said something along the lines of don't-throw-away-the-constitition, another said something like no-grift-jets. There was another relating somehow to 9-11. Her clothing made me think of a bee or a hornet: she had on a black T-shirt, a yellow jacket tied around her waist, a yellow baseball cap, tawny shouder-length hair, pale-ish freckled skin.

"You have a lot...

El río creciendo

A tale of two rivers. Here's high waters on the Amazon....



And here's high waters on the Connecticut. This road (Aqua Vitae Road! Great name!) floods easily:



The speed limit sign enjoins you to drive your water-worthy car no faster than 25 mph:



The high waters create our very own "selva inundada"



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only connect

Holy moly, a person from the Tukano Amazonian people just friended me on Bluesky, and she's learning Tikuna too! I was able to say to her that I thought Tikuna was tagarü mecuraum (a beautiful language). I apologized for my poor orthography (Tikuna is rendered into letters differently in Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, but what I write is not even correct by the Colombian orthography because my teacher is pretty random about spelling). This woman then kindly gave me the correct (for Brazil) orthogra...

bug city

Yesterday morning I saw a construction across the asphalt path that runs through the common area in our neighborhood. It was a long stick, and leaning on the stick were smaller sticks and twigs, bits of lichen-covered bark, and moss. It looked as if ambitious small-scale beavers had decided the path was a flow of water and were attempting to dam it.

Later in the day I was passing by again, and three little kids, two boys and a girl, were happily at work on it. It was, they told me, a bug city, co...

being drawn to an author by an interview

Due to household habits regarding the radio, I end up hearing a LOT of radio and a lot of author interviews. Some of these people are funny, charming, surprising; others are self-important grandstanders, others make you wince with vicarious embarrassment, on and on.

The other night I heard an interview with Chloe Dalton, the author of Raising Hare, about her experiences during covid raising a newborn hare. She was a happy urbanite, contented in her life, not the sort of person who does animal reh...

The movie Flow

Maybe you've seen the trailer for this wordless animated film about a black cat in a post-human world. (If not, here's a link. ) The visuals were so evocative and beautiful--and the cat so like my own cat--that I was very excited to see it.

Yesterday I did see it, and it was indeed beautiful to look at ...

(  but...  )

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handle with care

I arrived at the post office today as a postal worker was bringing a wide, low rectangular box out to a car. The box had holes, and I could hear peeping. As we both walked into the building, I asked, "Were those chicks?" And indeed they were.

The post office was very quiet at that time of day--except for cheeping and peeping! From the back room.

"I know I can't go back there," I said, "But can you take my phone back and take pictures?"

Well, he did better than that. He brought out a box of ducklin...

An Art of Noticing

Over on Mastodon I was made aware of the existence of this beautiful little zine, done in the traditional way (all printed on a single sheet of paper), Meditations with Insects: An Art of Noticing, so I decided to order it.

It came in a brown envelope with drawings of a beetle, small bird, and owl on it, and the sender was "Unfolding Connections."

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It was everything I hoped for and more. The main text directs readers to quiet, curious attention to creatures often ignored or disliked:

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And then, won...

I present to you "The Bee Wife"

Today “The Bee Wife” is available! You can get it from all the usual suspects ( Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Kobo , Apple, etc.) for 99 cents, or if you’d prefer to get it directly from me, drop me a message here or by email.

It’s the story of Florian, a beekeeper whose wife (Joy) has just died, and the swarm of bees that attempts to comfort him. Here’s what they do (this is what I read at the Mythic Delirium 25-plus-one-year anniversary reading):

(  Death is a law that cannot be broken  )

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