Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 94

Articles on a bouquet of topics

One of the day-job hats I've been wearing recently--one that's kept me busy--has been guest editor of a magazine on community development, mainly in New England. The first issue with me as guest editor is out! The cover story is "Growing Inequality in Life Expectancy and Benefits for the Elderly" --basically, protections that are in place to help people in their old age end up benefiting the wealthy more than the poor, because the wealthy live longer. Even taking into account their greater inp...

Marilyn Monroe as a tattooed lady; a bell and its stories; mailboxes, loitering

Marilyn Monroe, the Tattooed Lady
Just over the border at the south end of town is a tattoo parlor with some great associated art, including a series of circus-poster-style portraits of various random famous people that the artist must admire. Here is Marilyn Monroe as a tattooed lady--she has JFK on her left shoulder and the legend "Enter if you dare" on the ribbon underneath her. (Click through to see details.)



The artist also painted this much-tattooed guy menacing the van beside the shop:



A...

early-morning sunlight

Puddle of light


Fringing ferns


shining through a poppy

letters to the world

Since he was five years old, Toby, who is in England, has been sending letters to strangers in countries around the world. He and his mother read up about each country, and based partly on that reading and partly on Toby's own interests, he comes up with questions he wants to ask. He handwrites the letters and sends them off. (The names and address of people to write to seem to come from well-wishers on the Internet and probably friends of friends of his parents.) So far he's sent out 906 let...

Where the Heck Is Matt? Why, in South Amherst!

Today Matt, of Where the Hell [now toned down to Heck] Is Matt fame (videos here and here), came to dance in South Amherst.

I was one of the first people to arrive, but gradually more and more people came, until we had a small crowd. There was a woman whose name was Forest--not Forest Something, or Something Forest, just Forest. She's a dancer. There was a young meteorologist, and an acquaintance of mine who does shape-note singing, and a pastor who is going to let me go up into her belfry to...

a sweet grass of May

I first tasted this grass when walking with teenybuffalo one May a few years ago. It tastes like a combination of vanilla and the scent of a mown hayfield. I love it. And each year since, I enjoy it, and then it fades from my mind until the following May, when I see it, remember, and am delighted anew.



It is in bloom right now. Tiny tiny flowers.

the limits of clouds

tell me the limits of clouds
because I hear they are not spheres
and not the cheeks of angels
but I don’t know
what other boundaries
may not be crossed
with clouds

Birds, butterflies, and a postcard

I was thinking just yesterday that maybe this year we'd have no orioles, because I hadn't heard any, and then! I heard one. And then! I saw one. So I'm happy. And it wasn't only an oriole I saw today. I also saw this lovely warbler, which I discovered is called a magnolia warbler. (I have no magnolias. He was flitting between lilacs and apple blossoms.)

Photo by Gregory S. Dysart


Meanwhile, amaebi told me that fritillary butterflies are called that because the Latin word for dice box is "fritil...

spider timeshare

At around 7:10 in the morning, I saw a spider clamber over this lemon. Apparently I timeshare the kitchen with a spider. It takes the wee, quiet hours, and I take the noisier daylight ones. As you can see from the photo, the spider is now nowhere in sight. It may be chilling on the far side of the lemon--maybe that's the best spot in the whole kitchen? The whole point, from the spider's perspective, of participating in this timeshare? Or maybe, aware of overstaying, it's tucked itself away so...

wisps of thoughts

You know how dreams can be hard to recall? You can think you have them--you can still be reverberating with them--but then when you try to go through, piece by piece, they melt away? Well, I had thoughts over the last few days of things I wanted to share, and they've gone the way of dreams.

Like, one was cars with names that are also . . . . What. Oh, I remember: math terms. Nissan Numerator (also Nissan Denominator). Toyota Sine, Cosine, and Tangent. Ford Asymptote.

There were other things to...