Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 80

this isn't how it's supposed to work

Little Springtime (who lives in Japan--I had better add that detail,or the story may be confusing) told me about an interesting experience she had in a bar. She's sporting a new haircut and looking pretty boss; she used to look a teensy bit like Taylor Swift, but now she looks a teensy bit like Scarlett Johansson with short hair.

...Okay, she's blond; that's it. She actually doesn't look anything like Scarlett Johansson--just, she's blond, and now has short hair and is looking slightly tough,...

another graduation

The other day I went to a high school graduation, but today was graduation for the people in the special program I help out in. There's some overlap between the two graduations, but a lot of today's graduates were not at the high school graduation.

I was standing near the front to try to take some photos, and who should I find at my left elbow at one point but the young mayor of Holyoke! I blurted out, "You're one of my heroes," and then told him the story of the girl pointing him out with pri...

Cryptids I have known: an occasional series

Today's cryptid is the Bandit Cat

Bigger than your average housecat, it weighs about as much as a Canadian lynx, but with a gorgeous bushy tail that is the envy of lynxes. A bite from a radioactive human endowed the Bandit Cat with a taste for McDonald's food and a desire to play percussion in a garage band. Its name comes from the mask it wears in a poor attempt to hide its identity. If you want to see the Bandit Cat, leave some McDonald's food or a drum set out--or just put the McDonald's fo...

some images from the past week

Things hanging from a line: it could be grape vines encumbering utility lines...



... or, this morning, it could be laundry. I like my new line-lifting pole (a fallen tree bough), it's like a mast.



Yesterday, our neighbor across the street was celebrating her daughter's college graduation. THIS GIANT RED BIG-RIG CAB was bringing all the boys to the yard. Literally.



Out back that same evening, ferns were green flames in the deep shade. I love ferns; they were my wings in childhood.



comments

Away for a few days

I'll be away for a few days and without any Internet, but back on Friday late in the day. Keep on keeping on in the meantime!

comments

Blessings

Last week I went to the graduation of one of the high school students I'd been tutoring. The high school she was at has a history of low performance, which probably contributed to the huge joy and sense of celebration in the air for this ceremony. Everybody was really, really rooting for these kids; each one represents a huge victory for everyone--the kids themselves, the families, the teachers, the whole community.

That sense of community spirit! The very young mayor of the city was there, an...

not your everyday dumpster-diving find

The reason I feel anxious when I dump off my papers in the paper recycling dumpster is because people like me will see interesting items and pull them out--as I did, yesterday. I was attracted by the fancy handwriting. The book in which it had been inscribed was falling apart, but I grabbed the first few pages to situate the dedication.



It might have been hard to decipher the name of the person who was making the inscription if it didn't happen to be ... the author of the novel!



Although he was...

Juracán

Here's something I just learned:

According to some of the chroniclers, particularly Pané and Las Casas, the Amerindians from Hispaniola recognized the existence of an eminently benevolent being. His name has been spelled in different ways, but in Puerto Rico it is commonly written as Yuquiyú. There was also a furious and malevolent being known as Juracán, from whose name the word hurricane is derived, which denotes the Caribbean's extraordinarily destructive storms.
--Fernando Picó, History of...

password

When I started off on LJ, I created a super-beautiful, idiosyncratic password that gave me pleasure to type. When I re-started a DW account, the password I created was ... way less beautiful. And yet it turns out that I feel just as happy to type in the DW password and to write an entry or read other people's entries as I did/do to type in the fancy-special password.

... I guess it doesn't hurt to make marvelous passwords that you love, but on the other hand, it really is just a password, and...

Mountain laurel is **not** shad tree

Well well well. Common names get thrown about and applied pretty randomly, so maybe **some**one calls mountain laurel shad tree, but I'd misunderstood my father: he wasn't saying that mountain laurel = shad tree; he was saying that there's another tree that blooms at the same time that's called that.

Searching on Wikipedia, I find that the genus Amelanchier has several species that get called shad tree or shadbush (they also get called things like serviceberry, a name I know I hear a lot).

As...