Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 57

a couple of random thoughts and pictures

I heard a quote last week from Lynn Margulis, of Gaia Theory fame: "Life is matter that chooses." My immediate reaction was that I liked it ... but then I started having doubts. It's appealing, but what does "choose" mean? If a single-celled organism moves toward light or engulfs a food particle or away from a predator, is that a choice? In what sense is it a choice? How is it different from a shadow's movement across the ground in response to the movement of the sun earth around the sun? For...

also...

I have a short story in this!



The story is called "The Boy on the Roof" and has to do with desperate remedies for climate change.

I don't think you can buy single issues of the current issue; you can buy back issues, but this isn't a back issue yet. Eventually the stories become available online to read for free, and when that happens, I'll link.

The contributor list is awesome and includes a story in Spanish, poetry, and essays. Very cool. Plus the illustrations are gorgeous.



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a hinge or a lock

It's a beautiful weekend here, and it's the weekend of the town fair, and I've been taking so many pictures of so many things, but here are just a few.

First a question that popped into my head as I was admiring the hinges on this building at Cold Spring Orchard, when then my eyes fell on the lock.

Are you a hinge ...




or are you a lock?



(Oooh, that binary thinking! How about neither/both? How about not-applicable/unsure? How about could you please rephrase the question? )

The next picture I incl...

Peter Sís, bees

mallorys_camera and I went to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where we enjoyed especially the art of Peter Sís, who has a way with fine lines, labyrinths, and rich colors (especially his blues I love). His art was better as paintings on a wall than as illustrations in a book; somehow they were diminished in book form, which isn't always the case with picture book art.

Here's a picture from a book he did about Tibet (his father got lost in Tibet for two years).



And here's one of birds...

belated notes from a wedding

In August I went to the wedding of a dear friend, someone who's like a daughter to me--a treasured part of my family. She was the tall one's first girlfriend (if you look for a tall teenager with a much shorter teenager in this slideshow from more than a decade ago--that shorter teenager is her).

As it happens, the person she married is a woman (a wonderful woman who seems like an *excellent* life partner). In the marriage ceremony, the couple expressed gratitude to those who had come before t...

the real thing

Here is the flower stand, with flowers in the hole of the cinderblock. You can see that I got the rainbow umbrella wrong--it's rainbow along its latitude lines, not its longitude lines. I didn't remember!





Today the students arrive back at UMass, and at the nearby Big Y supermarket, Our Family Farms, a locally based milk company, had a little Jersey calf there to welcome and entice the students. A sweetie!





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flowers!

I keep on meaning to do a real post but work keeps keeping me down. But only four more weeks now, yay!

Anyway, you'll be happy to know that today the cinderblock from last post had two beautiful flower bouquets, sitting on top of it. The rainbow-colored umbrella had blown into the road, so I stopped my car and retrieved it, and doing so, realized I couldn't see any way to pay for the bouquets. There probably is one? I didn't look hard. Or maybe the flowers are being offered for free. (But prob...

flowers?

I saw this odd little scene two days running, a very tiny makeshift stand by the side of the road, a rainbow umbrella, a sign, a cinderblock (and probably a moneybox somewhere, but I didn't notice--I was in a car), so I made a cartoon (?) about it:





Flowers: a flexible term!

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thoughts on the way to the supermarket

I'm going to be away this weekend, when I'd normally post, so I'm putting a little something up now.

... My students this time around (this is the second cohort; the first group graduated in June) like to get me to Google things for them, and I like doing it, but one student asked me for information on stress reduction, and oh man, no quick and cute list of things is going to do it for you, my friend. I was pondering this as I walked to the supermarket this morning. About how easy quick recip...

notes from a land of delight

I pass this veggie stand on the way to work every day, and I always contemplate stopping, but until last Tuesday, I never did.



A big old tree provides shade, and two elderly white guys sit in outdoor chairs by it, every day. Tuesday was a steamy hot day. I bought some green beans--"first of the season," one of the old guys told me--and a beautiful eggplant. I was able to see their rambling garden back behind the stand. Wonderful.

As a goodbye remark, I told them to stay cool. "I love the heat!...