Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 64

with fl--

I turned off the radio in the middle of an ad:

"The newly renovated Albany Marriott, with fl--"

--with fl-?

what could it be? What does this newly renovated Marriott have?

flocked wallpaper in every room?

flight simulators available for all guests to try?

flambéed eel, as a dinner speciality?

What do you think?

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guns!

Guns and art! First was this painting, by the South Korean-born artist Mina Cheon, who also takes on the persona of a North Korean artist, Kim Il Soon. sartorias and I saw this at the Smith College Museum of Art. It's titled "Squirt Water Not Bullets!" The artist paints herself in North Korean military garb and paints her son in duplicate, representing Korea's current split.



And the second was this screenshot from the Sudanese film AKasha, from director Hajooj Kuka.


(image source)

The brief BBC...

more on It Happened at the Ball

I’ve finished reading It Happened at the Ball—very interesting to see the directions the stories took the theme.

I have to start with Sherwood Smith’s story, which is the crowning jewl of the collection. It’s a novella, which means you can really sink into the place, the characters, and the situations. If you’re familiar with Sherwood’s Sartorias-deles world, this story shows how Colend became its own nation—but if you’re not familiar, no worries at all. This story is completely comprehensible...

Novelette birthday today

Today The Inconvenient God is available for purchase, from multiple sources and in multiple formats! Andrea Johnson, the Little Red Reviewer, gave it an excellent write-up

The Inconvenient God touches on lost history, colonialism, the best (and worst) ways to chat with divinities, culture clash, and how to enjoy the new without forgetting the old.

I love the chatty style of Andrea's reviews. This made me laugh:

To be honest, when I read the back cover copy, I thought this was going to be about a...

traveling

For reasons that would make a good story, which I will tell any of you if I see you in person, but which I won't go into here, we made a journey to Canada yesterday.

That is a long trip for a day trip, may I just say, but anyway. We encountered some interesting people along the way.

The Leaf Lady

She was from England. We encountered her at a a rest stop and information center on the interstate in Vermont. She was here, apparently, for the foliage, which is looking pretty magnificent in northern...

tiny whirlpools

Went walking with the healing angel along the narrow causeways in the Ashley Reservoir in Holyoke. On one side of one causeway the water level was higher, so it was flowing through pipes to the other, lower side, and as it did, it was forming tiny whirlpools.



Here's a closeup on one--it's like a morning glory, and the reflected sun is a bright bee.



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small bouquet of things

Thing One: Marathon
Over this past weekend, Wakanomori ran a marathon in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom (I love that name--what a name!), way up by the Canadian border. Even though the mountains there are not 14,000-foot crags like in the Rockies, there's a high, lonely, mountainous air to it--you feel Up There.

It was a very tiny, intimate marathon. Here is the group taking off--not just marathoners, but people running a 17-miler and a half-marathon as well. There were also bicyclists, but they...

Wednesday reading, plus a promo

I finished the Timor book, Eden to Paradise. It continued as it had begun, being very satisfying when it was talking about Timorese customs and lifeways and very irksome when the author's biases became too intrusive. Do people still use the word "pacification" unselfconsciously, when talking about colonial adventures? And she's got a section where she talks about how hard it is for the Portuguese administrator to deal with all the Timorese interpersonal conflicts. Oh hey, I know a way to solv...

seen at the B'town fair yesterday

Mrs. B., retired kindergarten teacher that two of my kids had, who also ran a 4-H group that one of my kids participated in. She and her husband also had a farm in town and sold produce at local farmers markets--he's passed away, and she doesn't do that now, but she was in the 4-H tent, next to the baby calves, holding an adolescent duckling, with silky black feathers, cradled in her hands, a smile on her face.

"How are the kids?" she asked, and I talked about the two who are in Japan, and she...

It Happened at the Ball

It Happened at the Ball is out--an avowedly escapist, feel-good anthology whose stories all center, in one way or another, on a ballroom. sartorias compiled it with the intention of providing a pick-me-up in the face of the relentless grimness of current events. Here's the table of contents:

The Şiret Mask ~ ~ Marie Brennan
Just Another Quiet Evening at Almack’s ~~ Marissa Doyle
Homeworld Stranger ~ ~Sara Stamey
Kerygma in Waltz Time ~ ~Charlotte Gumanaam
Dancing Bangles ~ ~ Irene Radford
A Pl...