Today’s moment of serenity and joy: Doubtful Sound, Fjordland National Park, New Zealand. Uwe and I visited this spot in February.
According to my journal notes we got up before 6:00 to catch the tour bus to reach Lake Manapouri, crossed the lake in a 1-hour boat ride to meet a second bus. That bus brought us to another boat into Doubtful Sound (actually a fjord) and into the Tasman Sea. It was a long haul to get there – and worth the effort.
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.
Eva Herlitz was born on July 28, 1952 in Solingen, Germany. She was a teacher and interior decorator, and a visionary. Eva Herlitz and her husband Klaus created the wonderful United Buddy Bears. The couple invited artists from every country in the world to decorate oversized bear statues. The Buddy Bears are placed in circles side by side, in exhibits that tour around the globe and are always free to the public. Donations are raised for UNICEF and other charities for children. According to the Buddy Bears website: “Since 20th June 2001, when the Buddy Bears appeared in Berlin’s streets and squares for the first time, Buddy Bear activities and help for children in need have formed an inseparable unit.” In Eva Herlitz’s honor here I give you the post I wrote after The Buddy Bears came to downtown Stuttgart. – Jadi
Many people feel Berlin is now the cultural heart of Europe. Creative impulses come from Germany’s capital and spread from there. One of the quirkiest is the Buddy Bears.
Circle of United Buddy Bears, Stuttgart
The Buddy Bears creators were inspired by the cow parades in New York and Zurich. Eva and Klaus Herlitz of Berlin wanted to initiate a similar street art project. The bear is the icon of Berlin, and thus in 2001, the Herlitzes created the first bear with a sculptor named Roman Strobl.
New Zealand
Their projected expanded, and in 2002 it went international. They had a bear created for every country the UN acknowledges, designed by artists native to each country. The bears have their arms raised as if they’re holding hands. (This can also be described as the laughing Buddha pose.) Each bear is painted with images of the culture, history, landscape, economy, art and music of its country.
The first display took place in a circle around Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. The circle symbolizes the Art of Tolerance. One and a half million people saw the exhibit, and since then, they’ve toured 5 continents and stood in an alphabetical circle in the centers of host cities.
Uzbekistan and UruguayPanama
I saw the Buddy Bears in 2008 when they came to the Schlossplatz in downtown Stuttgart. They send a message about peace, understanding, love and tolerance among the world’s nations, cultures and religions.
When new bears are commissioned, the older ones are auctioned off. All monies go to UNICEF and other childrens’ charities. As of September 2018, 2,300,000 Euros have been raised for charities such as Eva Herlitz’s Buddy Bear Help!
Over 240 artists have been involved in the project, and more than 30 million visitors have seen the United Buddy Bears. A smaller circle of United Buddy Bears-The Minis (1 meter high) also tours.
South and North Korea, side by sideBrazil and Bulgaria
The United Buddy Bears exhibitions are always opened by national and foreign dignitaries. After he saw the bears in Berlin, actor Jackie Chan made sure they came to Hong Kong. When UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Sir Peter Ustinov saw them, he insisted that Iraq be represented.
There is one very special grey and white polar bear. He has the image of Albert Einstein and the following quote: ‘Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding’.
Kirgyzstan, Columbia, Congo and Congo-Brazzaville
It’s fascinating to consider that United Buddy Bears change their order as they travel. The circle is always organized in the language of the host country. Buddy Bears may suddenly hold hands with distant or hostile neighbors…
In memory of Eva Herlitz, 28 July 1952 – 26 February 2021
Selected Bibliography:
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — Die Kunst der Toleranz. Bostelmann & Siebenhaar Publishers, 2003. ISBN 3-936962-00-6.
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — World Tour. NeptunArt Publisher, 2006. ISBN 3-85820-189-8.
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — The Art of Tolerance. 384 pages, English/German, December 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-029417-4.
Here is the third installment from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
The charm charmed me again with their singing.
A huge cloud clouded the sky, and ruined any chance of a good photo.
The band banded together, hoping no one would notice.
A blue fluther fluthered in the tide. [1]
A mob mobbed Uluru.
The squadron flew off in a squadron. [2]
Answers:
Charm or chirm of finches
Cloud of gnats
Band of gorillas [3]
Fluther of jellyfish [4]
Mob of kangaroos [5]
Squadron of pelicans
Fluther, Loro Parque, TenerifaSquadron
NOTES: [1] There are 3 wonderful names for jellyfish groups. Fluther is the second [2] A military flight formation [3] Status: Endangered to Critically Endangered WWF [4] Using fluther in a sentence even allowed me to make up a verb! [5] According to the IUCN Red List, tree kangaroos range from near threatened to critically endangered across the various species. Intl Fund for Animal Welfare
Band, Loro Parque, Tenerifa
I’m beyond dismayed – I am furious. The Trump administration is gutting environmental protections. Take action. Speak up! Write letters, make phone calls, donate to organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace.
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.
E.B. White was born on July 11, 1899 in Mount Vernon, New York. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine, and edited the classic handbook The Elements of Style. White wrote essays, letters, meditations on the natural world, and books for children. My sisters and I talk often of our sweet childhood memories: our father read us Charlotte’s Web numerous times before bedtime. In his honor (with apologies to Charlotte), I give you a post I wrote about spiders after we visited Cambodia. – Jadi
One of the exotic foods I have (NOT!) eaten is a Cambodian treat of crispy fried big black hairy spiders. Sold at a roadside stop when the bus from Phnom Penh thoughtfully stopped for a bathroom break.
Crispy Fried Big Black Hairy Spiders .. who doesn’t love ’em?
Actually, this post belongs to my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals. Here I give you: a cluster of spiders. Realize that these are (were) each about the size of my closed fist, and you will understand why I lost my appetite.
The spider in the next photo was as large as the span of my whole hand….
Really, you don’t even wanna imagine a cluster of these guys in Northern LaosHow about a cluster of these spiders – also gigantic – from Japan?
I can’t imagine eating these spiders. Or the scorpions, or larvae, or bugs fried up at various markets we’ve visited…. But they are a source of protein. “Over 1,000 species of insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world’s nations. The total number of ethnic groups recorded to practice entomophagy is around 3,000. …Today insect eating is rare in the developed world, but insects remain a popular food in many regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. …FAO has registered some 1900 edible insect species and estimates there were in 2005 some 2 billion insect consumers worldwide.” [1]
In memory of E.B. White, July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My award-listed 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.
This post is the fourth in my series on southern Africa’s traditional baskets. This one is from Botswana, and the pattern is titled Running Ostrich. If you’ve ever watched these gangley birds do a thirty yard dash, you know this basket couldn’t be called anything else. Perfectly named!
This is the second installment from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
“Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble,” she cackled. Then the witch threw another cauldron into the caldron. [1]
The prickle prickled no one that day.
And the clutch clutched at the edges of the baskets.
Exaltation exalted the evening with the complex songs of the family Alaudidae.
A smack smacks into goo on the rocks.
The romping romp are some of my favorite critters.
Prickle, Laos
Answers:
Cauldron of bats [2]
Prickle of porcupines
Clutch of birds
Exaltation of larks
Smack of jellyfish [3]
Romp of otters [4]
Smack, Loro Parque, TenerifaCauldron, Khao Yai National Park, Thailand
I’m beyond dismayed – I am furious. The Trump administration is gutting environmental protections. Take action. Speak up! Write letters, make phone calls, donate to organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace.
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.
This basket was made in Botswana. I spotted it hanging on a wall among much brighter-colored baskets. I asked to see it, and was told that the colors are from traditional materials. The main material used to make Botswana baskets is raw fibres of the Mokola or ‘vegetable ivory’ palm tree. Brown dye tones are won from the bark and roots of Motlhakola and Motsentisila trees.
After I bought this basket I looked up the pattern, suspecting that it had to have an interesting name. This pattern is called the Knees of the Tortoise.
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.
Author Colleen McCullough was born on June 1, 1937 in Wellington, Australia. She wrote a highly regarded series on Rome; she taught and did research at Yale’s Medical School Dept. of Neurology. And while she was working at Yale – because neurology and a position at an Ivy League university somehow didn’t take up all her time – she wrote The Thorn Birds. In her honor I give you the post I wrote after visiting the Outback. —Jadi
In The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough vividly depicts a turn of the century sheep ranch in the Australian Outback. The hardships of working an unforgiving landscape, conditions that seem too extreme to be real, and the isolation are all accurately portrayed.
You’re already yawning, right?
All right then, how about this? In The Thorn Birds, young heroine Meggie and the priest Father Ralph de Bricassart, many years her senior, fall in love. Their life long passion is both forefront and backdrop to the fates of a family in the Outback.
That caught your attention!
I’m not usually one for the guilty pleasure of romance novels, but this one works on so many levels that it’s irresistible. Whether as romance, family saga, or historical portrayal, The Thorn Birds is a great read. It’s also accurate to a fault. As you read this book, you experience Australia’s hard climate along with McCullough’s characters.
Uwe and I drove through a small portion of the Western Australia Outback. Our goal was the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and we had a long, stop-every-3-hours to stretch our legs drive to do. The Coolgardie-Esperance Highway goes on with no bends or turns (and very few trees).
We halted briefly in Norseman
Norseman, Western Australia
and purchased sandwiches and drinks for a planned picnic stop. But there was a problem: no picnic tables anywhere. We drove and drove. Why, on such an endless highway, were there were no facilities?
We finally gave up and pulled over to the side of the road.
At least there was a tree and some shadeNote the deep red soil
I got out of the car and spread lunch on the hood. I was too hungry to wait for Uwe, so I unwrapped my sandwich and yummy cake, and gazed out into the endless empty brush.
The Indian Ocean is somewhere on the other side of those mountains
Every fly in the endless empty brush left wherever they’d been snoozing. Within seconds my eyes and mouth, my hands and arms, and my lunch were engulfed with fat hungry insects. My sandwich was rendered way beyond salvaging; it had vanished under layers of crawling flies. I wrapped everything back into a bag to throw away later and contented myself with a piece of fruit (eaten in the car, with the windows all closed).
In case you’re eating your own lunch as you read this I won’t tell you what it is in The Thorn Birds that’s covered in flies. But man, that McCullough sure can write!
In memory of Colleen McCullough, June 1, 1937 toJanuary 29, 2015
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My award-listed 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.
I dedicated this blog thread to my father Bobbo, who worked for the Forest Service. On one of our last family visits we sat around and gleefully read out a list describing groups of animals … I now dedicate it to our endangered planet.
See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
The shrewdness shrewdly assessed the jungle floor.
This obstinacy obstinately refused to budge.
The covert covertly hid, migrating only at night.
The big bask basked in the river, seemingly aware nothing would dare attack them.
In spite of myself I was charmed by the pitiful piteousness.
The safe sought safety on the shoreline.
Obstinacy, Perfume River, Vietnam
Answers:
Shrewdness of apes [1]
Obstinacy of buffalo
Covert of coots
Bask of crocodiles
Piteousness of doves
Safe of ducks (on land)
Part of a piteousness, Hampi, IndiaBask member basking, Khao Yai National Park, Thailand
I’m beyond dismayed – I am furious. The Trump administration is gutting environmental protections. Take action. Speak up! Write letters, make phone calls, donate to organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace.
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.
I am delighted to report that Epistemic Literary has published their first print anthology, consisting of the first four issues of the online magazine! Available on Amazon. Proceeds will go towards paying authors for their work.
My short story Food is Love appeared in their very first issue.
After I bought this basket I looked up the pattern, suspecting that it had to have an interesting name. This pattern is called the Knees of the Tortoise.
