Family – Jadi Campbell

Eva Herlitz + Her Oversized Bears

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.

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.

United Buddy Bear New Zealand — 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.

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.

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.

NOTES: Photos and Text© 2013 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as The United Buddy Bears. To learn more: Buddy Bears website. 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. Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

Elwyn Brooks White + Cooking with Charlotte

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? — 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 Laos

How 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

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2017. Previously published as The Animal Kingdom: A Cluster. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Go to this Wikipedia page: /List of endangered spiders. [1] The practice of eating insects is known as entomophagy.

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.

Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

Save the Animal Kingdom! #1

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.

Answers:

Shrewdness of apes [1]
Obstinacy of buffalo
Covert of coots
Bask of crocodiles
Piteousness of doves
Safe of ducks (on land)

Bask 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.

NOTES: [1] All 22 species of apes, which include great apes and gibbons, are threatened with extinction. Endangered Species © Jadi Campbell 2025. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Fun animal names from www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

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.

Follow this link for Amazon.com.

My Imaginary Friends: #13 Brian Klevenger

Maybe it’s weird, but I know more about people in my imagined universe than I do about the real people in my life. I figure real folks are entitled to their privacy. But if I thought you up and wrote you down, I DO know and WILL share salacious and embarassing details.

I create back stories for all my characters. People in my books reappear in later works. I take characters who showed up in an earlier novel or short story and fill in their profiles – sometimes against their wills.

Which brings us to Brian Klevenger. He made a brief appearance in Tsunami Cowboys, remember? Brian is Scott McCreedy’s best friend. He’s an only child, the son of alcoholics, and spends as much time as possible at Scott’s house.

Brian takes center stage in my most recent novel The Taste of Your Name. He’s fled to Germany where he does reminiscence therapy with dementia patients. He’s sleeping with two sisters. And (because I wrote his story) I tell the readers his most secret inner thoughts and emotions (because getting to do so is one of the great rewards of being a writer).

Brian is one of the most complex, complete human beings I know. You can meet him here: Amazon.com. Available around the world as eBook, hardcover, and paperback.

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2025. To see Uwe’s pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

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 with Brian, The Taste of Your Name, was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.

Save The Animal Kingdom!

I’m beyond dismayed – I am furious. The Trump administration is gutting environmental protections. As The Los Angeles Times reported, “Repealing key protections could erase $254 billion in annual benefits for public health and the environment, compared with $39 billion in savings for regulated industries.” [1]

To quote blogger Curtis Mahon: “To my many friends who thought it wouldn’t happen, guess what, it has happened! Donald Trump has dropped the environmental destruction nuke of an EO, planning to sunset ALL environmental regulations made in the last 100 years. And I mean ALL. https://www.whitehouse.gov/…/zero-based-regulatory…/

The Endangered Species Act. Gone. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Gone. The Marine Mammal Protection Act. Gone. The Anadromous Fish Conservation Act. Gone. The Bald Eagle Protection Act. Gone! You name it, it’s gone.

To remind those friends why we have these laws, I’m going to try to put them into terms which anyone can understand, money. The Endangered Species Act is literally the founding, central pillar of modern conservation globally. It’s hard to list the accomplishments of this act as it is so vast. It directly protects and calls for plans to raise the populations of rare species. It’s directly responsible for the comeback of many iconic species, such as the Bald Eagle, the Peregrine Falcon, the California Condor, and a host of others. Talk about return on investment, the amount of money spent vs the amount gained from people wishing to just see iconic rare species is in the billions of dollars. For what would a visit to the grand canyon be without seeing a condor soar over or a visit to Yellowstone without seeing wolves and bison. People do whole drives across the country just for these experiences and that’s what the ESA is about. Lots of revenue there. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was one of the first environmental laws every made, and bans the harm or collection of all non-game birds in America. It was implemented in a time when hunters we shooting everything to turn them into hats, from songbirds to puffins to herons to albatross. The banning of this and subsequent restoration efforts lead to dramatic increases in bird populations and continue to protect them from harm. In just one example, consider a puffin. In Maine, every tourist I talk to wants to see two things, lobster and puffins. They were once hunted to near extinction in the US and are now a central pillar to the economy of an ENTIRE STATE. Thousands of people a DAY take expensive boat trips for puffins and that’s at risk without these regulations, not to mention cuts to NOAA. The Marine Mammal Protection Act protects whales from being killed or harmed and lead to the global war on whaling. Now because of it, America watches whales! You can go on a whale watch in nearly every coastal city in America and it generates HUNDREDS of millions of dollars in tourism and employs thousands of people. We hurt whales, we hurt our pockets and jobs.

The Anadromous Fish Conservation Act allows the government to enter agreements with states and plan and fund ways to increase the populations of migratory fish. It has direct benefits to anglers across the country, funding 50% of initiatives for things like stocking and habitat restoration in major fisheries such as both Atlantic and Pacific Salmon, Trout, Striped Bass, American Shad, and Sturgeon. And removing the Bald Eagle Protection Act! I thought we loved eagle guys? What’s more American than a Bald Eagle, and they want to remove protections for them? Many older Americans can probably remember a time when they never saw Bald Eagles. Now you can see them commonly in nearly every state! That’s a direct result of the Endangered Species Act and Bald Eagle Protection Act. These are just a few of the laws the Republican party wishes to remove. All have proven track records of benefiting Americans, both monetarily through supporting major American industries worth billions of dollars and employing hundreds of thousands of Americans and spiritually as corner stones of the country’s wilderness. The removal of these protections is peak short term gains over long term profits.”

I’m going to repost a blog thread I wrote ten years ago. I wrote it to honor my entomologist father Bobbo and inform readers in a humorous way about animals that are on the Endangered Species List.

Now it’s going to be all of them. We won’t take long to end up on that list too. For these posts I updated my information on endangered species. Most of the news is grim. Take action. Volunteer. Speak up! Write letters, make phone calls, donate to organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace.

NOTES: [1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-04-05/trump-is-gutting-the-nations-environmental-programs-heres-how-much-it-will-cost-americans © Jadi Campbell 2025. To see Uwe’s pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Follow this link for Amazon.com.

A Love Letter to Elvis Aaron Presley

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 17^th 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

NOTES: [1] I clearly evolved from those boozy San Francisco lunches. But man, I miss them! [2] Jim braised the goat meat and made stew. It was yummy. [3] Every single year, shortly before December, you will hear me mutter this: “God damn it, Uwe! I ask you on every vacation to ‘Take a photo that will be perfect for my Christmas letter!’ Just once I’d like to have a photograph from one of our trips picked out and ready to go for Christmas! Just once!” [4] Now I know what to tell people in next year’s cards. All photos and images © 2021 property of Jadi Campbell. Previously published as Return to Sender. To see Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

The Taste of Your Name

I’m excited to announce that my fifth book is now available!

The Taste of Your Name is the story of an erotic triangle, reclaimed memories, the fates of refugees, and the importance of bread. The story also delves into the history of qurt, koliva, witch cakes, and sin foods. Once you finish reading, nothing will ever taste the same again.

Mustafa is a Syrian refugee who runs a bakery in Stuttgart with an American woman named Neela. Her German stepsister Jo provides trauma massage for a war refugee who refuses to talk about what happened. Neela and Jo both have a relationship with Brian, who is trying to retrieve their grandmother’s memories.

How do we resolve memories, the ones we can’t remember or desperately want to forget? How do food traditions unite us? What happens when reality, bad or good, overtakes your life? Read this book and get ready to forget the outside world for a while!

The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award. Available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, as eBook and Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

I wish you happy reading,

Jadi

I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. 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.

Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

The World in Miniature

The snow is made of tiny grains of glass

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.

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!

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.

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.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Family Myths

I wrote Family Myths after my father died. It’s the true story of one of the worst conversations in my life. Almost fifty years passed and neither of us ever mentioned that conversation again.

The University of Colorado Boulder’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric did me the incredible honor of accepting Family Myths for publication in Hindsight Journal, their annual publication.

Hindsight Journal has just come out. Click on this link to read the magazine on line for free. Hindsight Journal 4

For any readers out there who have words etched in your brains, this story is for you.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Mom’s Favorite Critter

Giraffe. 1,000 to 10,000 years old rock art Twyfelfontein, Namibia. UNESCO World Heritage site

The one negative during our trip to southern Africa was that we couldn’t go for hikes. Heck, we couldn’t even go on a stroll because there were too many wild animals running around. We went everywhere in our rental 4WD or a game drive jeep. Most of the lodges we stayed in were in the bush and each place we checked in, they warned us not to stray outside the grounds.

I had to give up the hope of swimming in anything but a pool. If hippos didn’t kill me, the crocodiles would.

My mom’s favorite animal was the giraffe. Sandy loved them, their patterns, their grace, their impossible heights. I thought of her each time we spotted another giraffe.

Giraffe with hitchhikers, Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

The only word I can use to describe this animal is, glorious. They fit all the definitions of the word: The giraffe is marked by great beauty and splendor. They are delightful. They are wonderful.

The pattern on each giraffe’s coat is as unique as a fingerprint. A giraffe moves at a regal pace. And their improbable tallness is suddenly funny when they have to splay their forelegs like a tripod in order to take a drink.

Not being able to go for walks was a small price to pay to be able to see wildlife in their natural habitats. Some of the lodges were built on water holes, and we ate our meals along with the critters. We had the great pleasure of watching giraffes approach for a long drink of water.

Our last lodge on the trip was back in Namibia, and for the one and only time we could actually go for long walks out on the property!

Uwe and I were alone and out of sight of the lodge buildings and felt like we had the pampas to ourselves.

We spotted wildebeests, pavians (yuck, I do not like wild monkeys), antelopes, zebras,

and giraffes!

once they spotted us, they kept a wary watch

Later we surprised a lone giraffe crossing the path. When he ran off, there was nothing but the sounds of birds calling and his hooves thumping on the grassland.

My mom would have loved it. Sandy, this post about giraffes is for you.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Category: Family

Eva Herlitz + Her Oversized Bears

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Elwyn Brooks White + Cooking with Charlotte

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Save the Animal Kingdom! #1

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My Imaginary Friends: #13 Brian Klevenger

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Save The Animal Kingdom!

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A Love Letter to Elvis Aaron Presley

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The Taste of Your Name

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The World in Miniature

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Family Myths

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Mom’s Favorite Critter

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