Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 70

astronauts taking photos

A student said one of the best things in class today. People were sharing stories they'd been told when they were young, and she recalled being at her grandparents' house during a thunderstorm. It was dark--no power--and it was thundering and the lightning was flashing, and all the kids were scared, and her grandfather said about the lightning, "Don't be scared--it's just the astronauts taking pictures."

The lightning flashes were the flashes from the astronauts' cameras.

Isn't that the best?

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Wednesday Reading

Before we went to the Everglades in 2016, I started reading Marjory Stoneman Douglas's seminal work on it, River of Grass. It was not only hugely informative but beautifully written. At that time, I discovered that she'd written novel for young people (I think we'd call it middle grade, these days) called Freedom River (originally published 1953). It takes place just before Florida becomes a state and features three boys: a White boy, a Black escaped slave boy, and a Miccosukee boy. I was cur...

marriages

I really love the work of the photographer James Morgan.** He takes me all over the world--like to a Newar wedding ceremony:



Mr. Morgan explains the photo:

Among Newar people in Nepal, young girls are first married to a bael fruit, as in this image. They will later be married to the sun. The third marriage is to a man
Source on Twitter; source on Instagram

Fascinating! I just can't stop thinking about the possibilities of consecutive marriages like this--it's sparked a story in me, I think. I can...

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I finished this and was deeply satisfied by it. I was in tears at the end! What a creative, compassionate well-constructed story.

What I really want to do is gloat about figuring out how the story would end, but I can't do that without spoiling it for people who are reading it or who might want to read it, and I have to say, I really enjoyed figuring things out on my own, and I want other people to have that pleasure too. So here's a link to my Goodreads review, which hides talk about the out...

total eclipse stamps

I thought these stamps were just cool because hey: cool image! Black and eclipse-y. I've received some on letters and I'd recently bought a sheet.



But then missroserose sent me a letter with this stamp and pointed out THAT IT CHANGES WHEN EXPOSED TO HEAT.

And I tested it, and it's TRUE. if you expose the stamp to heat, the silhouetted moon suddenly becomes pale and reveals all its features. SO COOL.

What a fun thing for the post office to do. Thank you, USPS.

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Wednesday reading

Oh look! It's Wednesday, it's before I start work (... barely), so I can do this.


What I'm reading now: Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, a science fiction novel that follows two parallel stories: on the one hand, the story of spiders on a terraformed planet who are "elevated" by a nanovirus that had been intended to speed-evolve monkeys (the monkeys all died), and on the other, the last remnants of humanity, on a ... not quite generation ship, but one of those ships where you spend all y...

The Ocean on the T

In the last nor'easter, the ocean got on the subway at Aquarium, and it hasn't gotten off. Like a phalanx of manspreaders, it's laid claim to all the seats. Like a voluble crowd after a Red Sox game/July Fourth fireworks/protest, it's filling the aisles--there is no room for anyone else.

By all accounts, it got on without paying. It seeped in through the roof and slid in under the turnstiles. It does not have a monthly pass; it did not stop at the machines to purchase a Charlie card. Like the...

things seen on my run this morning

A car, marigold-orange, with a black stripe on the hood, coming up the hill. It was low and sleek. "Must be some kind of fancy-pants car," I thought. "I wonder what it is."

As it came closer, I saw that it had "MUSTANG" written on its windshield in huge letters. So that's what it was. Thank you, car, for answering my question. If all cars would label themselves that way, it would be much easier for car-blind people like me to identify them.

A shadow of a bird, passing over me. I looked up but c...

Fell Beasts and Fair for preorder

Back in 2009 a story of mine, "The Gallows Maiden," about a crow girl, was in an anthology called StereoOpticon. It's been reanthologized in Fell Beasts and Fair, which is now available for preorder at Spring Song Press.

Thieves, dragons, nightmares, fairy warriors, pookas, enchanted bear-men, and other magical creatures will delight you in these unique tales of possibility, courage, and hope.

My impression, just paging through the ARC, is that "The Gallows Maiden" is an outlier in being dark,...

rainbow glitter and photo preservation

I thought I'd do a messages-in-bottles writing prompt tomorrow, which meant I needed to collect a bunch of bottles, so after work I just walked the main drag near where I live, and sure enough, turned up PLENTY of little nips bottles.

I cleaned them and covered them with glitter. Fingers crossed that the writing exercise goes okay.



I didn't post that image directly into Dreamwidth. I posted it to Flickr instead and then copied it from there into here. I pay for both my Flickr account and my Dr...