Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 81

shad trees, shad restrictions

When I was telling my father about the fish elevator and all those shad, he told me that he'd learned from a friend that mountain laurel, which blooms around now, is known as "the shad tree"--because when it blooms, that's when the shad run.

(Here's a photo from Flickr of mountain laurel, by Flickr user Robert Ferraro--you can click through to see it larger.)


He also told me that there was a law in Boston in the 18th century that you couldn't feed apprentices shad more than twice a week... whic...

A trip to the fish elevator

Behold the powerful falls at the Holyoke dam. Holyoke Gas and Electric generates power here.



This dam is a barrier to fish that need to get upstream to spawn. There have been various means of solving this problem, but at present it's a literal elevator, a huge mechanism powered by giant turbines and with great chains that lift boxes of water, packed with fish, up above the falls. Yesterday Wakanomori and I went to see it--a marvelous experience!

It has very cute signposts:


In the informational r...

fights

It was one of the women at the jail who first told me that middle school and high school kids film their fights with their phones and then post them on Youtube. Then last week one of my high school tutees was talking affectionately about one of her younger sisters. "She's so bad," she said, laughing, and showed me a video on her phone of her little sister and another girl fighting. They had hands in each other's hair. "Ouch," I said, "that looks like it hurts!" "She's so bad," my tutee repeat...

May colors

A few photos of this lovely time of year







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a rescue

I saw a pickup truck pulled up on the opposite side of the road from me as I was driving to do the recycling. As I neared the spot, I saw a catbird just sitting in the road ahead of me, not moving. The burly guy in the pickup truck said, "There's a bird in the road."

I stopped. The guy's lanky companion, who was outside the truck, approached the catbird with a jacket in his hands, to pick it up gently and without touching it. Just as he was about to, the bird fluttered off the road and into th...

violets, a fairy tree, a beaver meal

I picked some violets after a run today--I saw them on a hillside, a really rich, deep purple. At home I have lots of violets too, but the purple ones are more washed out. Then there are the white ones with purple veins, and best of all, the speckled ones.

Here they all are in a little vase:



And here is a photo of one of those trees of gold that grow in fairy woods, along with trees of silver and trees of crystal. This one has been felled by a beaver. Look how beautiful its bark is.



And here is...

The Girl with All the Gifts

Have people read this? I had heard about it and was mildly curious because of the child protagonist, but not curious enough to overcome my dislike of zombie stories. Then I read Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's comments on the movie (here), which really interested me--so I read it.

I reviewed it on Goodreads. I did indeed like Melanie, the young protagonist. As expected, I didn't much care for a lot of the mainstay things that you apparently need to have in a zombie/horror story, but I could...

Not at town meeting

Today is town meeting in my town. I started to drive there--I'm all upons my civic duty these days--and then I turned around and came back. Why? Because I actually hate town meeting. Not the part where people get a chance to speak for or against something--that can be interesting. No, it's the part where people shout yay or nay to vote on things. Eleven years ago on this very day, I wrote an LJ entry about it.

I like a secret ballot. I **LOVE** a secret ballot. I am intimidated by public shou...

May

Everything smells beautiful right now, and the landscape is so many different colors; leaf hasn't subsided to leaf yet, and blossoms are everywhere.

My apple tree has never been so graced with flowers before:







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Crayola ... toothbrushes

Last night I was waiting to pay for some food at the supermarket, and ahead of me, a woman was getting two brightly colored toothbrushes, one purple and one orange, and I could see from the packaging that they were Crayola toothbrushes.

Crayola toothbrushes

Source: SmartPractice.com, a seller of medical supplies.

My first thought was, wow, that's a weird way to branch out your business. From 64-packs of crayons with colors like spring green, periwinkle, and raw umber** it makes sense to branch i...