Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 57

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!...

butterflies, rainbows, time

Here are two monarch butterflies in an intimate embrace. Sexy butterfly times, mmmm.



Today my siblings and I, and selections of our children, gathered at my father's house. On the return journey, there were rainbows everywhere. I mean everywhere, including one that spanned the highway perfectly, ushering us into the promised land of ... maybe West Stockbridge, MA? Somewhere around there, maybe? It was spectacular; it seemed like you could dye clothes in it or eat it or something.

A book I was...

Food trucks --with poetry

This past Friday was Food Truck Friday in my town.



So many marvelous choices! (This is just a sampling)



I got empanadas from La Mesa and some fried plantains from a Caribbean truck (not pictured). People were picnicking, but I was bringing my goodies home for family.

I did, however, stop to get a "wicked short" poem from Attack Bear Press 's poetry vending machine:



I got an untitled haiku by Melissa Silva:
sun-shade dappled path--
beeeee-bzzz-see-seee-seee-dz-dsee
Blue Winged Warbler sings

Jason Mo...

She-ra

I never watched the original 1980s She-ra (though I was aware of its existence), but I'm loving Netflix's reboot. It's a real delight! The characters are mainly teens, and there's a friendship-oriented, work-together quality that reminds me of My Little Pony or Steven Universe. Instead of the female characters having identical Barbie-doll bodies and features, everyone's unique, and their personalities are a lot of fun.

The set-up is that Adora (OMG the names, but they're artifacts of the origi...

summertime

Today I didn't have to go to work, so I picked red currants. My bushes are full, bowed down.

branch bowed down


underneath


And the berries glow.


There was life everywhere all around while I was picking--tiny life, little spiders, a daddy longlegs, tiny caterpillars, mother mosquitoes hoping I had a meal for them, and also bigger life, orioles singing up high in trees, invisible, and robins and bluejays, and next door, the neighbors' grandkids, splashing in a pool, and under my feet and knees as I...

shrine

For two days early last week, it was hard to turn onto the long, uphill driveway to the jail because workers were repairing--replacing, it turned out--a utility pole right at the entrance. The day they finished and cleared off, this shrine appeared by the new pole:



I've seen roadside wreaths and flowers and crosses, but the mass of candles was new to me and moved me.

I asked the officer at the lobby desk if she knew the story of it.

"Yeah, last week we were doing our outer,"** she said, "and thi...

Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee

Thinking again of what rachelmanija said about posting when we finish books, I thought I'd share my Goodreads review of Pachinko, an intergenerational novel about a Korean family that emigrates to Japan in the 1930s. The story goes up to 1989. Japanese racism toward Koreans is a big part of the story (though the characters in the novel are a pleasingly mixed bunch--not all Japanese are evil villains; not all Koreans are long-suffering heroes), but it's more about how people face their problem...

quick post

I missed my window of opportunity on the weekend to post, so have an early Monday morning post instead. Jiji is sitting on my chair--he wishes to encourage me in the standing-desk habit:



Thinking about the news, the children underfed and shivering on cement floors. We want to be able to buy a plane ticket, go to one of those places, wave aside the guards, open the doors, take the kids out, give them a good meal and a gentle hug, and find their relatives and reunite them. None of which we can d...

one more story I don't want to forget

This week just past, the week between the two semesters of my jail job, we visited the Robert E. Barrett fishway again, to show the healing angel the fish elevator, and this year there was a marvelous docent there, Walter, a retired professor who grew up around here and leapt and jumped his way from rock to rock across the shallows below the dam when he was young.

He told the story of fishing for a lemon shark when he was a young man--he had wanted the jaw of the shark as a souvenir. But when...