Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 82

The man with the chair

Last week, both with my high school tutees and with my students at the jail, I asked them to pick one of four pictures from Humans of New York to write about. The assignment was to tell me about the person in the photo, then to ask that person some questions, and then, in that person's voice, to answer the questions.



I got two deeply contrasting stories about this man from my students at the jail. One saw him as an "intelligent graduate, following his big New York dream ... which is to play in...

The rescue of Angeline Palmer

I was at an informational event on sanctuary cities and the Massachusetts Safe Communities Act this afternoon, and before it started, I was chatting with Cliff McCarthy, a wonderful local historian (I've shared one of his other stories in the past--a tale of poverty, murder, and arson). This time he told me the extremely dramatic story of Angeline Palmer, a free child of color "hired out" by the town of Amherst (Angeline was an orphan and ward of the town) to work for the Shaw family in Belch...

the fingerprints of mountains

Last entry I said my thumb would be a steep climb if the lines of its print were topographical. Here now are some mountains' "fingerprints."

I was imagining a person who had the fingerprints of a mountain peak. sovay asked who would have these. I'm not sure, but I can imagine an egotistical jewel thief or other flamboyant criminal who would mask their own fingerprints with the prints of a mountain.

Which one though?

Mout Rainier looks good:



How about K2?



The volcano Popocatépetl has a beautiful f...

cartography

If the lines inscribed on my hands and fingers were contour lines, what effort it would take to scale the steepness of my thumb.






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an icy embrace

A couple of weeks ago at the jail, there was a new-to-me CO, B--, at the programs desk. I was heading into the room I've been using for my tutoring when he said, "You know there's a ghost up here, right?"

Usually when people tell me things like this--in any circumstance, not just at the jail--I just go along with it amiably until I can get my bearings and figure out how I'm expected to react, but this time, I couldn't help it: I said, "This jail is only ten years old, and you're telling me the...

today is made of soft and shining

Out my kitchen window (... if not elsewhere in the world), the day is made of soft and shining.





What adjectives is your now made of?



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DJ Dumpling

Via Siddhartha Mitter on Twitter, and ultimately from Al-Jazeera English, this 1.35 minute video about DJ Dumpling, an 80-plus-year-old who works in the family restaurant by day and DJs in Tokyo clubs at night: here .

A still from the video:



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asakiyume @ 2017-04-12T00:24:00

I ate my lunch outside on Tuesday and saw two wasps tussling--they were locked in an embrace, face to face, and tumbling round; then they broke apart and one flew away and the other dusted itself off very carefully, opening and closing its mouth as if panting, and then it flew away, too.

I searched on "wasps wrestling" but came up mainly with high school wrestling teams... and one Youtube video that was actually of wasps, but engaged in, uh... a different kind of behavior. My wasps were defini...

inspired by a chladni plate experiment

In this video, a guy pours couscous over a plate and plays the edge of the plate with a bow to make musical vibrations, which then causes the couscous to move into beautiful patterns.




This inspired me to try similar, except I don't have a thin metal plate or a bow--or, right at the moment, couscous. What I do have is a cookie sheet, rice, and a saw. So!

Here's the rice on the cookie sheet:



Here it is after I shook the tray back and forth. The way I was shaking it, the rice all clustered together...

the leper's speech

In Princess Mononoke, Ashitaka tries to stop the assault Lady Eboshi is making on a primeval forest and the gods who live there. He's been cursed for killing a boar god who, maddened with pain and anger after Lady Eboshi shot him, turned into a demon and threatened to destroy Ashitaka's village. His cursed hand twitches uncontrollably when, upon hearing Ashitaka's story, Lady Eboshi mocks the boar god.

"Does that right hand of yours want to kill me now, Ashitaka," she asks.

"If it would lift th...