This page (which is of course much more interesting than the professional stuff) contains:

• Things I do besides the obvious
• Favorite useless talents
• My very own FAQ (with kartinki)
• A link to my Poetry Page, if you managed to miss it until now

For what I mean by "obvious," see my marginally less shameless page of Professional Self-Advertisement.

• Singing (soprano, mezzo, sometimes alto; useful range something under 3 octaves), harmony improvised free of charge (inadvertently with grocery store or elevator Muzak), and even free of theory; range dependent on rhino viri and the gradual accretion of allergies living in the beautiful Delaware Valley and the species-rich Scott Arboretum, coterminous with Swarthmore's campus. They told me it would happen, though I grew up breathing clear dry air (suitable even for the consumptive) and did not believe them.
• Instruments I play, in order of expertise:
  • Guitar ("classical," meaning that steel strings hurt my fingers) -- really pedestrian, but it's folk music after all
  • Bayan (Russian button accordion), still learning but mit Gefuehl
  • Recorders (soprano, alto, tenor)
  • Piano -- vestigial
  • Drums
    (chip on shoulder because couldn't afford lessons with a real teacher as a child.)
• Reading Tarot cards; efficacy varies with phase and sign of Moon and quantity of caffeine and/or alcohol consumed -- but I'm a damn sight better than the computer programs.
• Reading astrological charts, from the point of view of basic psycho-social orientation. The story about my friend's (Lutheran) minister goes in here.
• Amateur massage:

Favorite Useless Talents

Of course, what is truly useless between here and eternity, right? You never know which talent might suddenly deliver you from misery or danger -- Scheherazade's family probably thought she was too voluble and suffered from a hypertrophied narrative imagination. And so perhaps I should say instead, "Talents That Have Seemed Useless, So Far."

• Whistling through curled tongue (combining practice and genetics)
• Other unexpected styles of whistling (but it's bad luck indoors)
• Juggling chilled tins of caviar -- three, four, maybe five...
  (wait, maybe I'll manage five this time, they're made of metal after all so I won't damage anything, and if I dent one that's a good excuse for opening it...)

My very own FAQ, with pictures

Return to Sibelan Forrester's Home Page.

This photograph was taken in the kitchen of the Profilaktorii in Petrozavodsk by Francoise Rosset, who kindly made me a copy. The plants are mostly grapefruit, planted from seeds the Profilaktorii staff found in actual grapefruits sold at the market in Russia; you can tell they're citrus from the distinctive leaves. My favorite part is the glass of the jars drying on the kitchen table. What you can't see is the sink with the water filter (off to your left) or the electric stove (behind you to your right). One great thing about the "midnight sun" is that you can put plants in all your windows -- though they still don't grow quite as well if the window faces north.