Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 67

Readercon

I haven't attended Readercon since it switched venues, but it was nice to be back--even if the hotel is located on an Alcatraz-like hill that makes leaving it on foot feel like a jailbreak (... actually maybe that makes it kind of fun? Maybe the truth is I had fun making my getaways now and then.)

I was there for the second half of Friday, all of Saturday, and Sunday morning. I missed many things I would like to have heard, but I heard and participated in many fun things. Here are a few highli...

Unlocked, by Jerry Zaltman

I don't usually edit whole books, but every now and then it happens, and this was one such case: Unlocked: Keys to Improve Your Thinking. I really enjoyed working on this book and have used some of the exercises in it with students I volunteer with, always with wonderful, thought-provoking results.



The intention of the book is to get people thinking about how they think, to understand how things like priming and cues work, to learn about the faultiness of memory and the selectivity of attentio...

bike ride

Went on a bike ride with Waka in the sensual hot 'n' humid, where you really feel each patch of shade, like you're diving into cold water, and then into the heat again, and in all these places, so many smells--the smell of baking soil, of flowers and black raspberries and pine needles, also the smell of creosote by the train tracks, and the smell of swampy still water, and here and there the smell of garbage cooking in the sun.

We passed a father having a picnic with his daughter out the shade...

In Egipto--and some thoughts

Wakanomori got some pictures that capture the spirit of wanting better and trying hard that we could sense even standing just at the edge of Egipto.

Here is graffiti saying Egipto vive, right beside the church:



(click through to see it bigger)

And here is a shot up the hill that he got before we were warned away--you can't maybe tell, but on the right is a bright and hopeful mural, and straight ahead is a painting of a bird in flight.



... And those promised thoughts. This was a comment I left in...

es peligroso

A couple of times when we were in Bogotá, we ventured into places we shouldn't go. Both times locals swooped down like guardian angels to redirect us.

Once was when we started up a path into the hills, thinking vaguely that it might get us up Cerro de Monserrate, a mountain that's a pilgrimage site and from which you can see all of Bogotá. I wasn't super keen on being along on a trail in the hills, but Wakanomori pointed out that there was a grandfatherly-aged man up ahead of us, with a child...

fictional futures

I'm going to be on just one panel at Readercon, but it's a fun one:

Our panelists will discuss the fictional futures they find most appealing and would be happy to live in (maybe with some caveats). Does the work that depicts these futures provide a path or hints as to how humans might get there? What makes these futures worth rooting for and aspiring to?

I have some thoughts on the topic, but what I also have is a question:

What books have you read that are set in appealing futures? What books...

Paloquemao--and fruits!

While we were in Bogotá, we went to Paloquemao , a giant produce-and-other-things market. It's very popular as a tourist destination with colombianos as well as foreigners--one night when we turned on the TV, they were visiting there.

We went there, though, because it was one of the locations that La Niña was shot. The parents of Victor, one of the young medical students in the show, work there.

Apparently the way most people get to Paloquemao is to take a taxi or a bus, but we walked. And let m...

a strange little story

I was waiting at a park that I had gradually intuited was the place a protest against family separation had been moved to. It was about ten minutes before the protest was scheduled to begin, and not all that much was happening. There was a banner, though, with an Audre Lorde quote ("Your silence will not protect you"), and a few people hanging around, including about five very buff cyclists, clustered together on their bikes.

A woman, slightly older than me, came up to me. "Is this where the p...

a la orden

In Japan, even before you enter a store, an employee will call out "Irasshaimase!" inviting you in. In Bogotá it was "A la orden!" Around lunch time, employees of the eateries would cruise around with menus--at some distance from the eatery, even--and invite you in.

That's what happened to us with El Patron. Leonardo, who looked like a teen and had a brilliant smile, came up to us and ushered us up the street, around the corner, and into El Patron. When my Spanish got us only so far, he introd...

crunchings and munchings

We interrupt posts about Bogotá for a post courtesy of a second year of defoliatory levels of gypsy moth caterpillars.

You can hear them eating and pooping in the trees overhead. The ground is covered in caterpillar poops and fragments of leaves. Munch munch munch. I found myself thinking of Gurgi in the Prydain chronicles, who is always eager for food--crunchings and munchings as he calls them. Or maybe he says munchings first. Munchings and crunchings.

This is how I imagined Gurgi when I wa...