The south of Africa’s exotic landscapes and incredible wildlife have provided me with an endless source of inspiration. The more I write, the more I recall about what we saw and experienced.
I fell in love with the traditional baskets and – something I never, ever do – I sought them out and purchased some to bring home. It’s a rare desire for me. My rule of thumb when we’re traveling is to keep reminding myself: “Jadi, you own an apartment, not a big house! Where are you going to store anything you bring home?” So, I limit myself to one beautiful item, and try to make it an object that’s useful.
But, the baskets. I bought the first one at a Living Village, excusing the purchase by telling Uwe I wanted to support local arts and artists of the Kavango.
I picked up and held at least half those baskets one by one, trying to decide. There was no one else there so I could take my time.
Later, when I was seeking out small stands with traditional baskets, I told each shop keeper, “I’m sorry, but I’m a slow shopper…. I’m waiting to hear which of your baskets speaks to me.” They all smiled when I said this. I think they liked the idea of a tourist who was willing to wait until a piece of handmade work reached out to her with something to say.
I’d connected with the history and artistry and continuity and passing on of tradition – and love – that each basket contains. At some point very early in our trip, Uwe and I fell in love with these countries and this part of the world and its people. Most places and people are wonderful, of course; but this area of southern Africa touched us in a deep immediate way.
The Living Villages in Namibia are staffed by local San people who want to keep the old traditions from fading from memory. A joint Namibia/German project, the Living Villages promoted community-based tourism.
boys practice with hewing small boats; as adults, they’ll know how to make the real onesclay for cooking vessels and toysprepping reeds
Sometimes traveling we feel like we bear witness to a culture that’s changing so fast it will soon be gone. The Mbunza Living Museum got me interested in the region’s basketry – a tradition that’s still very much alive.
I bought my first basket here. 5 more followed.
My first basket on the left, from the Mbunza Living Museum. Pattern: Tears of the giraffe
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Anaïs Nin was born on February 21, 1903 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She wrote essays, diaries, short stories, novels, and erotica. She befriended and promoted fellow author Henry Miller. Her work is strong, feminine, and unapologetically sexual. In her honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after we visited an amazing temple complex in India: Khajuraho. – Jadi
When we visited, Khajuraho could only be reached via a long trek on bad roads. Since we’re talking about India, this means the roads are bad indeed.
Where’d the road go?Down here maybe?
The driver we’d hired was there to meet us at our hotel in Agra, and off we went. Five bone-jolting hours later we reached our destination.
Along with its inaccessibility, Khajuraho is notorious for 1,000 year old, perfectly preserved, UNESCO World Heritage erotic carvings.
Somehow this site survived a millennia (millennia, people!), in a spot that had no fortresses or fortifications to speak of. The temple complex existed simply for the purpose of worship.
And what worship. Every single inch of the temple buildings are carved in high relief, depicting gods, tender lovers, voluptuous attendants, monkeys, elephants, assistants for the sexual act….
Hundreds of skilled stonemasons were hired to build the site. The Khajuraho region has excellent sandstone, and the sandstone temples were built with granite foundations. All were constructed without mortar! Instead, gravity holds the stones together with mortise and tenon joints.
Some of these stones are megaliths weighing up to 20 tons.
The glory of sandstone is that it loans itself to delicate carving. Even viewing the temple walls from the ground we could see the wrinkles in Ganesh’s trunk; the fingernails of the apsaras and the beads in their strands of jewelry; the sheer layers of veils over their thighs and buttocks.
Uwe vanished almost immediately with his camera, leaving me alone with the young male guide. I could feel my face go red, and it wasn’t a hot flash or sunburn. I was terribly afraid of how embarrassed I was going to be. But the guide pointed out the various depictions of the act of love and spoke in a clear calm voice, explaining the significance (pull your minds of out the gutter, dear readers) in terms of energy, religion, and esoteric philosophy.
It was mid-January, past the usual Christmas tourist season. It was also a two-week period when northern and central India get swathed in fogs – something smarter tourists than we knew. As a result we had the pleasure of being two of the few Westerners at the site.
Most of the others were Indians on holiday, and I was touched to see that at Khajuraho, this meant young married couples. They walked around the compound, standing in front of particularly erotic carved panels, heads together in discussion.
How about the next panel?Is that a new yoga position?
While only 10% of the carvings depict sexual acts, you can guess which panels elicited the most commentary. These were the love-making couples known as maithunas. Other carvings depict everyday activities: playing musicians, potters, farmers, soldiers on horseback, etc.
Musicians
The temples were probably built in the one hundred year period between 950 and 1050 AD, during the Rajput Chandella dynasty. According to historical records, by 1100 Khajuraho contained 85 temples covering 20 square kilometers. Roughly 20 temples still stand. They were located 60 kilometers from Mahoba, the medieval capital of the Chandela kingdom.
Khajuraho was mentioned by the Arabic historian Abu Rihan-al-Biruni, in 1022 AD, and by Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveler, in 1335 AD.
When Muslim rulers took control, heathen places of worship were systematically destroyed. Ironically, even centuries ago the remoteness of these temples helped secure their survival. Nature did the rest as vegetation and forest reclaimed the site. For years the temples were covered by dense date palm trees which gave the city its name: in Hindi, Khajur = date. (The more ancient name was Vatsa.)
The scenes explain Hinduism’s four goals for life: dharma (right way of living), kama (aesthetic enjoyment), artha (prosperity) and moksha (liberation). The complexity of the geometric layout and the grid pattern of the temples with their circles, squares and triangles, the importance of geographic orientation and bodies of water and the carvings’ iconography is beyond my very weak grasp. Instead, here is an excerpt from the UNESCO website:
Greatly influenced by the Tantric school of thought, the Chandela kings promoted various Tantric doctrines through royal monuments, including temples. Sculptors of Khajuraho depicted all aspects of life. The society of the time believed in dealing frankly and openly with all aspects of life, including sex. Sex is important because Tantric cosmos is divided into the male and female principle. Male principle has the form and potential, female has the energy. According to Hindu and Tantric philosophy, one cannot achieve anything without the other, as they manifest themselves in all aspects of the universe. Nothing can exist without their cooperation and coexistence. In accordance with ancient treaties on architecture, erotic depictions were reserved for specific parts of the temples only. The rest of the temple was profusely covered with other aspects of life, secular and spiritual. Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC
Khajuraho remained forgotten by the outside world until 1838 when a British army engineer, Captain T.S. Burt, was carried in via palanquin. I laughed so hard when I read that the Victorian officer was shocked by what he found….
Khajuraho!
In memory of Anaïs Nin, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V scene I: “…There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings….”
my cherished Complete Works of William Shakespeare Illustrated by Rockwell Kent
According to the Royal Shakespeare Company, ‘[t]he title page of the first edition of the play, printed in 1600, states that it has been ‘divers times acted by the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants’. The first recorded performance was at court on Shrove Sunday, 10 February, 1605. King James and his courtiers must have enjoyed it because it was performed again two days later.’ [1]
Here, in honor of The Merchant of Veniceand the Immortal Bard, is my original post about the music of the heavenly spheres.
Schwedagon Pagoda, Rangon
In 2009 we spent 4 weeks in Burma, the maximum time permitted on a visa. For years we’d debated back and forth about whether to go. Does one travel to a repressive regime? Just the year before, monks were shot for demonstrating peacefully in the streets. In the end we decided to go and bear witness. A country closed tight and ruled with iron fists, the poverty and corruption are unbelievable… as are the loving kindness of the Burmese and the beauty and magic of their land. I have been pondering what to post about our trip to Burma and how to write it, because Burma is unlike anyplace on earth.
But these are only words.
Let me begin again, this time with a story:
Sacred Pali script
On our very last day in-country, in Yangon we stopped at a café on a busy street with outdoor tables. All of the tables were filled with other tourists. The locals did not have the money for anything so extravagant. A beer, a pineapple juice, and hot green tea arrived; I wrote out some last post cards. Hovering in the street were the post card seller, a hawker for newspapers (used and days old), and a skinny boy with an endless “Hello? hello! Hello? hello!” When a tourist looked his way he said “Eat,” and mimed someone putting food in his mouth. He hovered looking over the wall dividing the café from the street, persistent with hunger.
I became aware of an ethereal music swimming its way up from the background of my consciousness. I thought someone down the street a ways with access to a power generator was playing a recording of a beautiful, haunting voice. Then the sound came nearer, and it was a young Burmese person. At first I thought it was a man slowly making his way down the road. It was a woman: she had her hair up under a cap and thanaka paste on her cheeks to protect her skin from the sun.
A voice from the Heavenly Spheres
She halted and stood very still as she sang, or chanted verses, or recited a Buddhist prayer. It wasn’t clear if she was singing or speaking and didn’t matter. The purity of that voice pierced all barriers and reached all hearts. Every so often the little metal cymbals in her fingers went ching! in a perfect counterpoint.
When she stopped, the entire café burst into spontaneous applause. People kept getting out of their seats to put bills in the can on a string around her neck. I checked my wallet. I knew my last offering in Burma was going to this young woman with the voice that sang with the music of the spheres. This music usually can’t be heard. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras of Samos believed the movement of planets (heavenly spheres) creates ethereal and earthly harmonies; Shakespeare wrote often about how these harmonies affect events. All I know for sure is that on that afternoon, in a dusty street in Burma, a young woman was channeling that music for us to hear.
I walked out with a 1,000 kyat note, stepped around the restaurant’s retaining wall to donate – and saw my singer had just one leg. She was propping herself up with a rough plank of wood.
This is my final image of the country sometimes called Myanmar. This is my avatar for Burma: a transcendent voice beyond language, standing with only one leg, singing gloriously, regardless. [3]
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. He recorded when rhythm and blues was moving into the more mainstream rock & roll, and ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ brought rock & roll into scandalized living rooms across America. His long string of hits began with Heartbreak Hotel and include the exquisite Love Me Tender, his final hit Burning Love, and of course, Return to Sender. (I don’t have room to list all his hits and the influence he had!) Elvis sold 146.5 million certified album sales in the U.S. alone. He is among the best-selling singers of all time. In his honor I am reprinting the post I titled Return to Sender. – Jadi
One year in the middle of the month of April, not one but two Christmas cards I mailed off (both on the 17th of December) came back to me.
They carry yellow stickers. Return to Sender. Not Deliverable as Addressed. Unable to Forward.
One is a card for a friend I worked with in San Francisco in the early 1980s. We were secretaries in the Marketing Department of what at that time was a national-wide not-for-profit insurance company. Those were heady days, of alcoholic lunches when the bosses took you out at noon and you returned to the office several hours and many rounds later. After work, life meant meeting friends for drinks or beers at the neighborhood bars, and more restaurants and cultural events than you could count. I was in my twenties and living in ‘the big city’ for the first time.
San Francisco was a candy store, and I was a wide-eyed child with a big appetite.
The second returned Christmas card is addressed to the retired librarian from the University of Washington Health Services. I worked at UW in the late 1980s. I was going to massage school in my spare time, and my friend was keenly interested in what I was doing, as she was in anything to do with the world of healing. Traditional or alternative medicine: she always wanted to know more. She suggested we do a trade. I gave her massages right there in her office at lunch time. [1] She did document searches for me, tracking down peer-reviewed medical journal articles about massage in the days when massage was still a dicey career choice. (I was asked more times than I care to count what the name of the massage parlor was where I planned to ‘work’.) (Hah. Hah. Hah.)
My friend the librarian ran a working farm. We also traded those massage sessions in her office for packages amounting to half a lamb each spring. Once she snuck in a package of goat meat. “But how do I cook goat meat?” I protested.
“Really? Congratulations, Jadi. This is what people eat in a lot of places in the world. Figure it out!” I passed THAT package along to friends when I went to visit them. The husband is one of the best cooks I know, and Jim would have a solution. [2]
So here I am, firmly settled in Germany with my Swabian husband. I send out yearly Christmas cards along with a letter and a current photo taken by Uwe [3]. It’s my annual production, each letter hand stamped with glittery snowflakes. Because my mom made the most wonderful Christmas cards in the world. She had a husband and three very active little girls, and her cards were magic.
Mom would recruit us to help her color in the cards. I don’t know if this hand-painted card smeared then or later
My own, less clever Christmas cards are a way to remain connected to my mom’s tradition. And the cards are my way to remain connected, if I can, even if just one day out of the year, with the people who were in my life in various places at various times. Each of them helped me with their friendships more than they’ll ever know. Each year a few cards come back, and another friend has dropped from my life.
I still miss and love them all. [4]
In memory of Elvis Aaron Presley, January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gómez was born on December 21, 1947 in Algeciras, Spain. He became famous as Paco de Lucía, the guitarist and composer. De Lucía was one of the world’s greatest flamenco artists, a musician who expandeded jazz and classical guitar as well. In his honor here is the post I wrote after Uwe and I visited Sevilla and listened to flamenco on the streets. – Jadi
Uwe and I spent a holiday in southern Spain. My first trip to Andalusia took place when I was barely 17, and the memories that flooded me so many years later are all from deep recesses in my senses.
We traveled by bus between Granada and Córdoba, and later to Sevilla. I didn’t remember a thing about what Sevilla looks like. Memories came back anyway. In Granada they involved spatial proportions; in Córdoba, infinity and water. In Sevilla, my recollections arrived with sound.
Parque María Luisa
We strolled through the lovely Parque de María Luisa to the Plaza de España.
Plaza de España
The Plaza was constructed in 1929 when the city of Sevilla hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World’s Fair. A building façade curves, with lovely tilework depicting each Spanish state. Uwe took photos while I admired the details.
I heard an insistent, rhythmic clacking: a young man with castanets stood in the plaza. Near him a guitarist played as a dancer’s heels pounded out a hypnotic dance.
She was astonishingly poised, with the self-confident grace required of flamenco dancers. Her skirts swirled as she dipped and turned. Her dance in the square the pluck of guitar strings the click clack click clack clack clack clack of castanets…. I was thrust back in a relived moment so deeply entrenched that I cannot tell you when or where it first occurred.
For as long as I recall, flamenco always moves me to the edge of tears. I never understood why until my mother told me that she’d developed a short-lived taste for flamenco guitar music when she was pregnant with me. After I was born the craving promptly disappeared. So do these relived audio memories come from the womb? From that first trip abroad so long ago?
I had my coins out and ready when the dancer came around with a hat. I was surprised to see how young she was under her make-up. She might have been 17… just the age I was when I first visited this beautiful region.
Perfect. She and my faulty memory were perfect.
In memory of Paco de Lucía, 21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. Books make great gifts!
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Stuttgart has two former castles. The new castle was styled like a palace and is now city offices. The old castle became the Landesmuseum, a fantastic archeology museum. At one time it had a moat!
The Landesmuseum contains finds that span thousands of years, from 35,000 years ago, when the inhabitants of this area in southern Germany drilled holes in bird bones and played them as flutes. We’ve got lots of traces from when this area was Roman and elaborate ceramic remains. And the Landesmuseum contains a Celtic prince, dug up in nearby Hochdorf.
Below is a massive – and massively heavy – torque with ram heads. No one is quite sure what it was used for. Was it ceremonial? Did someone actually wear it? In the background is the oldest life-size, anthropomorphic stone grave marker north of the Alps, dating back to the Iron Age. He’s known as the Warrior of Hirschlanden and guarded a barrow with 16 graves. [1]
And these aren’t even the highlight. They say history is written by the victors, and for centuries the Romans handed down an image of the Celts as savage and uncivilized. The discovery of the Hochdorf Chieftain changed everything….
The drinking horns had all been used and weren’t just grave goods. The largest is made of iron and the rest are made of auroch horns.
The drinking cauldron was imported from Magna Graecia over two and a half millennia ago. Two of the lions that adorn it are original. The third lion is a replacement (also ancient) and of Celtic design. The bowl was filled with 400 liters (100 gallons) of summer flower honey mead when the prince’s barrow was closed and sealed. [2, 3] Archeologists also found traces of marijuana in his tomb. That must have been one hell of a party, 530 BC style!
He was laid out on a well-used waggon couch. The wheels are topped by female figures embedded with precious stones. The waggon itself is hammered bronze.
As to the prince himself, Wikipedia says “[h]e had been buried with a gold-plated torque on his neck, a bracelet on his right arm, a hat made of birchbark, a gold-plated dagger made of bronze and iron, rich clothing, amber jewelry, a razor knife, a nail clipper, a comb, fishing hooks, arrows, and most notably, thin embossed gold plaques which were on his now-disintegrated shoes.” [3]
Was he a prince or chieftain? A high priest or Celtic shaman? I don’t know those answers, but I do know that whenever I visit this museum, I go to his rooms and pay my respects.
My forthcoming book The Taste of Your Name was one of six finalists for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award. Stay posted: The Taste of Your Name will be available soon!
My previous books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
THE CUPID QUESTION by Jadi Campbell featuring THE NEATLES on Monday, October 7 @ MERLIN!
Girl Groups of The ’60s – Pre-Beatles Queens of The Pop Chart
THE NEATLES – Jasmine Thorn, Gabby Nelson, Vanessa Wagner, Jasmina Dordevic, Elena Gallego Jimenez, Ashley Remus, Samantha Mohr, Paula Gil-Casares, Charles C. Urban – Photos by Uka Meissner deRuiz
THE CUPID QUESTION by Jadi Campbell featuring THE NEATLES & Storyteller Derrick Jenkins
Girl Groups of The ’60s – Pre-Beatles Queens of The Pop Chart
“The Girl Group music was perhaps the most carefully, beautifully crafted in all of Rock & Roll – one reason why none of the twenty or so best records in the genre have dated in the years since they were made.” – Author and Music Critic Greil Marcus
In Pop Music History, the phenomenon between early Rock & Roll and the mid-1960s British Invasion is known as the Era of the “Girl Groups.” They offered a style rich in vocal harmonies that was eagerly embraced by a wide audience. The girl group era produced a clearly identifiable hybrid of gospel, rhythm & blues, doo-wop, and quirky pop that epitomized the ebullient hopes of early 1960s culture and feminized rock music, providing a model for male beat groups such as the Beatles, who covered many Girl Group hits on their early albums.
Flourishing between 1958 and 1965 – between Elvis and The Beatles – Girl Groups were genuine, authentic Rock & Roll! The music of The Shirelles, The Angels, The Ronettes, The Chiffons, The Marvelletes, The Shangri-las, The Bobettes, etc. thrived in the fallow years of Rock & Roll while much of the rest of the music in this time grew tame, predictable and dull.
The original sound was characterized by raw-edged lead vocal, echoing harmonies from the backing vocalists, fulsome string arrangements, and a driving beat. Groups sang of teen concerns like romance, sexual etiquette, and marriage, as well as love, loss, and abandonment. It was music of celebration – of simple joy, of innocence, of sex, of life itself. It was utopian stuff – a utopia of love between a boy and a girl, a utopia of feeling, of sentiment, of desire most of all.
The sound exploded in 1961, following the release in late 1960 of The Shirelles’ WILL YOU LOVE ME TOMORROW – the first girl group single to reach number one. Over the next five years, hundreds of girl group records were released. During the Classic Girl Group Period, between 1961 – 1965, when this distinctive sound filled the radio air waves, some 750 Girl Groups put singles onto the pop chart. This is some of the most timeless, transporting pop ever recorded; when you hear a Girl Group hit today, you feel like it’s 1963 all over again.
Author and Music Critic Greil Marcus states: “The music was perhaps the most carefully, beautifully crafted in all of Rock & Roll – one reason why none of the twenty or so best records in the genre have dated in the years since they were made.”
THE CUPID QUESTION by Jadi Campbell featuring THE NEATLES…!
PERFORMANCE – Monday, October 7 at 20:00 hrs in MERLIN
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
In Namibia we drove a long way to reach Twyfelfontein. We had a great tent as our lodging that night.
the road in and out
one great tent!
We spent the next afternoon on a guided tour of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
San guide at the site
Twyfelfontein, also known as /Ui-//aes, is the home of one of Africa’s biggest concentrations of petroglyphs. It’s an open-air gallery in the Namib Desert, with 1,000- to 10,000-year-old images carved on slabs of basalt. A petroglyph was sent to the National Museum in Windhoek in the early part of the 20th century, but otherwise the site is mostly intact.
giraffe, antelope, oryx, birds, human footprints
antelope hoof prints, rhinos, giraffe
San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers had long lived in this area. They carved and occasionally painted animals they were familiar with or hunted. Lions and more than 200 giraffes and 100 rhino are depicted, along with hippos, ostrich, impala, elephant and zebra. And we were astonished to see shore birds and a seal!
giraffes, a hippo, and is that a seal on the far right?
The San had traveled across the desert to the ocean and back, recording what they’d seen and hunted there!
Along with figures with bows and arrows, foot and paw prints, some petroglyphs depict magical creatures. One engraving is of a lion with human toes, portraying a shaman who had crossed over into the animal world.
Lion, giraffe, water buffalo, antelope, rhino. Check out the human toes on the lion’s paws as well as the end of his tail
According to the explanatory signs in the Visitors’ Center and the excellent article https://www.africanworldheritagesites.org/cultural-places/rock-art-pre-history, “Rock art was the preserve of medicine people, or shamans, and had two functions: as a means to enter the natural world and to record the shamans’ experiences in that world. … The shaman’s vision became disturbed at the start of trance, and he would ‘see’ patterned flashes of light. Produced in the brain, these flashes are also known as entoptic images or images ‘in the eye’. They are depicted in the seemingly abstract geometric images in the rock art. Meanders, dots, lines, grids, spirals and whorls resemble entoptic or inner-eye images recorded in neurophysiological experiments. Although entoptic images are similar for all people in the world, the associations formed in a state of trance are contextual. The shaman fuses his hallucinatory visions with images of animals and other potent spiritual symbols.
…. Engravings of human footprints and animal tracks are frequently placed next to or inside tunnels, deep fissures and inaccessible surfaces, as if these indicate paths and entrances into the spirit world. It was believed that a shaman could move through solid rock, using entrances not visible to the normal eye. To the artist the rock face was not merely a canvas but rather a veil serving as the threshold to a parallel spiritual world.” [1]
The petroglyphs also provided practical information, like where to find watering holes.
the circles show the location of watering holes
The region is sere and beautiful in a severe way.
I’ve said this before, and will go on saying it: UNESCO World Heritage sites are for everyone who cares about our shared history and planet. Go visit!
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
This summer I took a train to Hamburg for the first time. Hamburg has more bridges than Venice, Amsterdam and London combined. The St. Pauli Reeperbahn is where the Beatles got their start playing in small clubs. (It’s pretty seedy in the daytime, but I did spot the life-sized silhouettes of the Fab Four.)
The one thing my friend Diana was insistent on seeing was the Miniatur Wunderland. This is the world’s largest model train museum.
Layout size: 1,490 square meters or 16,038 square feet.
It cost 45 Million Euros and (thus far) has taken 760,000 hours to build. The museum contains 42 planes in the air, 9,250 cars, and 1,040 trains. The sets include 1,380 signals, 385,000 LEDs on 15,4000 meters of tracks that light up 4,110 buildings, 260,000 figures, and 130,000 miniature trees.
The model of the Elbesimfonie building opens up to reveal the inside rooms
The rooms go dark for part of each hour and the exhibits light up!
All the vehicles are moving
Now take a look at the SCALE….
The people who built these models must have great senses of humor. You have to squint anyway to take in all the details (260,000 figures! 130,000 tiny trees!). But when you begin to look you see the funniest things.
Mama mia! Check out that giant pizza
I’ll end this with my personal favorite: A boat on Venice’s Gran Canale filled with wild animals.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
The International Human Rights Art Movement has published my short autobiographical essay “Red, Red Roses” in their most recent quarterly.
Here is The International Human Rights Art Movement mission statement:
“The IHRAM uses our platforms to give voice to artists and issues around the world. We protect freedom of expression by highlighting those who might be suppressed or oppressed in their home countries.
We bring together all members of society through our programming, from artists-in-exile and at risk; to activists on the front lines of the struggle for rights and justice in their own country; to creators working in all media; to national and international politicians, government agencies, social leaders and celebrities.
We believe that creative engagement with all members of the society is the surest path toward social justice and positive change.
The IHRAM magazine was created with a simple goal: to celebrate and uplift up-and-coming authors from all over the world; each of the authors in this anthology contend with their identities in the context of their environments, providing readers with their unique perspectives on issues of human rights.”
“The pieces featured in this quarter’s magazine explore themes of economic parity, workplace equity, and the ongoing pursuit of gender equality. IHRAM Magazine proudly advocates for peaceful feminism through creativity that sparks dialogue and promotes unity. Through poetry, prose, and visual art, we delve into not only the challenges but also the triumphs of women worldwide, amplifying voices often marginalized and celebrating the resilience found in shared stories.
I wrote this essay several years ago to read at a fundraiser during VDays, hosted by New English American Theater. All profits were donated to two Stuttgart organizations that assist women and children in need.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I picked up and held at least half those baskets one by one, trying to decide. There was no one else there so I could take my time.
They carry yellow stickers. Return to Sender. Not Deliverable as Addressed. Unable to Forward.
My own, less clever Christmas cards are a way to remain connected to my mom’s tradition. And the cards are my way to remain connected, if I can, even if just one day out of the year, with the people who were in my life in various places at various times. Each of them helped me with their friendships more than they’ll ever know. Each year a few cards come back, and another friend has dropped from my life.
I’ve said this before, and will go on saying it: UNESCO World Heritage sites are for everyone who cares about our shared history and planet. Go visit!
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