Category: Humor

Snake Plants

Sansevieria. It’s almost impossible to kill, produces oxygen like a champ, and has over 70 varieties. Sansevieria is also named the snake plant, or mother-in-law’s-tongue due to it’s sharp, pointy leaves.

I started off with a single snake plant about a decade ago. Over the years, I’ve divided and sub-divided the clumps of stalks every so often. In all this time they flowered exactly once. Heck, I didn’t even know a snake plant got flowers…

One of my oldest and best friends just came to visit. Before Shaun arrived I scurried around with all the cleaning and prettying up tasks I’d put off – one of them being to repot those stressed snake plants. And lo and behold, during Shaun’s visit they suddenly began to send up flower stalks!

These babies grow at an astonishing rate, practically as you watch. The flower stems grow as much as four inches a day! (No joke. Ask Shaun: I made her look each morning.) Even she oohed and aahed in wonder at how fast they rose.

Here are a few photos of the flowering stalks. And they are not slightly out of focus just because I’m a lousy photographer. They are blurry because they grow right before your eyes.

Here’s to flowering plants, Round Two. I hope I don’t have to wait another decade for Round Three!

© Jadi Campbell 2019. To see Uwe’s much more professional photos and pics from our trips, go to viewpics.de.  Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

 

 

Borneo is Frog Paradise, Part Two

Ah, Kubah National Park on Borneo…. froggie paradise. The park is also home to other species. We met these guys.

Borneo angle-headed lizard (Gonocephalus borneensis)
Giant bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus consobrinus)

And these. They were the size of my out-stretched hand!

When we planned what to do and see on Borneo, I made only one request. Okay, I admit it was a demand. I wanted, no, I needed to go on the night tour to see endemic frogs.

Our tour guide picked us up in front of the hotel and drove us out to Kubah National Park, where the park ranger met us. The four of us headed up into the park in the deepening darkness. And I do mean up: we climbed to 1,ooo feet to reach the part of the park where the most frogs hang out. The road was lit only by the beams of our torches and the flashes of fire flies.

Fire flies! I haven’t seen them since my childhood in New England, back when their on-and-off glow was an atmospheric element of every summer evening….

It was glorious.

You hear the one about the cinnamon frog and the fly?

It was also very, very funny, at times like being in a Monty Python sketch. Overcast, humid as hell and still hot as hell, even in the middle of the night. I dripped sweat and my glasses kept fogging up. Pitch black darkness, except for our flashlights…. which the two guides and I were shining on the frogs so that Uwe could capture them in photos. He didn’t want to use the camera flash, not wanting to startle the wild life and because light from a camera flash is too artificial. So I took his flashlight and held a torch in each hand, aiming them as directed. It was as though he were a mad director with a camera crew. It didn’t bother the critters one bit – they went on singing, and croaking, and hanging out on bole branch and vine…

Pitcher plant colony. Home of the narrow-mouth frog, first described in 2010. Microhyla borneensis was once the smallest known frog from the Old World (the current record holder is Paedophryne amauensis from New Guinea). The narrow-mouth frog is the size of your pinkie’s finger nail

A highlight in a night of a parade of wonders was the long-nosed horned frog. O.M.G. If folks on safari speak of the ‘Big Five’, froggers go into raptures about this guy:

Bornean horned frog! (Megophrys nasuta)

He lives in the leaf litter on the jungle floor, and remained motionless even as the park ranger cleared away the leaf detritus around him so that we could see him better. The horned frog, mahogany frog, and narrow-mouthed frog found in the pitcher plant are the rarest of the rare, the ‘Big Three’ of Kubah Park’s frog world. I clearly saw the first two, and saw the third jump from a distance.

Natural world geek heaven.

NOTES: Many of these species can be found only on Borneo. If you missed it in Part One, go to this link to hear what serenaded us in the jungle: https://blog.soundcloud.com/Most beautiful sound in the world competition winner Marc Anderson  This night tour really was magic. Wikipedia: Microhyla borneensis  © Jadi Campbell 2019. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s pics from Borneo and our trips go to viewpics.de.

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

The Animal Kingdom: 30

You’ve now reached Installment #30 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals. We’re not even close to the end! See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.

  1. The fixture fixed itself firmly to the fixture.
  2. The boil boiled in the sky, falling fast towards the earth.
  3. A bevy of bevies is one fleet fleet.
  4. The trip tripped along the shore line. (1)
  5. The consortium consorted, while the moggies kept to themselves. (2)
  6. This devil has imps!
Fixture, Lamru National Park, Khao Lak, Thailand
Consulting for the consortium, Lamru National Park, Khao Lak, Thailand
Consortium, Lamru National Park, Khao Lak, Thailand

Answers:

  1. Fixture of barnacles [1]
  2. Boil of hawks [2]
  3. Bevy of deer [3]
  4. Trip of dotterel [4]
  5. Consortium of crabs
  6. Tasmanian devil babies [5]
Dotterel dottering by a consortium, Lamru National Park, Khao Lak, Thailand

NOTES: [1] I completely forgot about barnacles. Marilyn Albright over at alaskamexicoandbeyond.wordpress.com/ alerted me to this one. Thanks, Marilyn! [2] A boil specifically designates two or more hawks spiraling in flight (3). [3] Bevy refers to roe deer only. sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/  [4] I had to look it up. A dotterel is a plover, related to sandpipers (1). [5] Tasmanian devils are solitary and fierce: there is no term for a group of Tasmanian devils. But devil babies are called imps, which more than qualified them for my lists. The devil is endangered. greentumble.com

Moggie, but you may call me Your Highness

NOTES on NOTES: (1) Someone stop me! I can’t resist. A dotterel is also a slang term in Britain for someone easily duped. www.yourdictionary.com (2) I couldn’t resist this fact either. Yet another definition for cats! I have to sneak in moggy: “Moggy (also moggie) is used in Scottish and English dialects in senses that are colloquial or rare or obsolete, e.g., “a young girl or young woman”; “a scarecrow”; “a calf or cow.” Perhaps its only common use is as a term for an ordinary house cat. Moggy may possibly be a derivative of Mog, a nickname for Margaret. Moggy in its sense “girl, young woman” entered English in the 17th century; in its sense “calf or cow,” in the 19th century; in its sense “scarecrow,” in the late 19th century; and in its sense “house cat,” in the early 20th century.” wordoftheday Go to my earlier posts for more on cats: The Animal Kingdom: A Clowder and Installments 19 and 22. (3) Let’s repeat NOTE #3 again: A boil specifically designates two or more hawks spiraling in flight. Two or MORE? Seriously? © Jadi Campbell 2017. 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.

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

The One Page Play Festival

I’m over the moon that New English American Theater festival is presenting two of my plays. This is a brand-new form for me as a writer and I had a blast trying my hand at comic drama. If you find yourself in the Stuttgart area for any reason, come on out to the show!  David Burmedi, Director of the One Page Play Festival, explains how the festival came to life.

Click to see more. If you make it the show, don’t forget to cast your votes! Signing off from somewhere over Cloud 9,

Jadi

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2019. My one page plays are Baby You Were Great and Bank on It  ©2019 Jadi Campbell. All rights reserved.

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

The Animal Kingdom #29

This is installment #29 in my blog thread for Bobbo, describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.

  1. The lounge looked longingly.
  2. The repetition repeated, over and over and over and….
  3. This is no school for scholars.
  4. The business busied itself sniffing out food.
  5. Why hurt a herd?
  6. The mustering masters moving through Munster.
I just had to repeat a lounge…. Wilhelma Zoo, Stuttgart, Germany

Answers:

Repetition member, Reid Park Zoo, Tucson, Arizona
  1. Lounge of lizards
  2. Repetition of ground hogs [1]
  3. School of carp [2]
  4. Business of ferrets
  5. Herd of bulls
  6. Mustering of storks [3]
Schools looking at schools, Xi’an, China
School kids crossing school, Nagasaki, Japan
One pissed-off herd member, Barcelona, Spain
Mustering home, Alsace rooftop, France

NOTES: [1] Also called woodchucks, whistle-pigs, or land-beavers Scientific American.com [2] Uwe took this photo during Golden Week, when everyone in China is on holiday. If I ever had any claustrophobia, I cured it forever during that trip! [3] Stork status: Endangered © Jadi Campbell 2017. 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.

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

 

Xi’an’s Boulevard

This is a real road in Xi’an

This week’s post is about one of the more remarkable roads I’ve ever strolled. The street is in Xi’an, home of one of the world’s best preserved, still-intact, walled cities. We’re big fans of places listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Xi’an is on Chinese and international lists as a cultural treasure.

This however is not a city street. This ‘boulevard’ is actually on top of Xi’an’s city walls
From atop the wall with a bird’s eye view

It’s an old capital city located at the end of the Silk Road. The rampart walls were built in the 14th century by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang as part of his military defenses and enclose 8.7 square miles, or roughly 14 square kilometers. [1]

The walls were made first with tamped earth (and, according to Travel China Guide, ‘with the base layer including also lime and glutinous rice extract’). [2] A century later they were reinforced with blue bricks. The original walls used to include a moat and drawbridges. These walls are so thick that in WWII, Xi’an’s residents built a thousand bunkers inside the base to protect them from the bombs of Japanese air raids!

They are a breathtaking 12 meters or 39 feet high. It takes four hours to walk them. Actually, it takes longer than that if you’re Uwe and Jadi, because you never know what’s down the road. On our visit (foolishly booked during China’s Golden Week when all 1.3 billion Chinese citizens were also on vacation) we discovered a festival performance taking place inside one of the courtyards.

We heard it before we saw it. Drums, lots of drums…

And men in costume. Enter, Stage Left.

Or was that Enter, Stage Right?

What tickles me most about the walls is that once you’re on them, you could be on a wide boulevard anywhere in the world. Except that this is China, and this isn’t a boulevard…. It’s a wide street located on top of Xi’an’s city walls. Travel doesn’t get any better than this.

NOTES: [1] The current fortified city walls were constructed on an earlier, Tang dynasty palace wall. [2] www.travelchinaguide.com ©Jadi Campbell 2018. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

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

UNESCO World Heritage Tentative Lists

 

The Animal Kingdom: 28

I’m amazed at how long this blog thread has grown! Each post describes what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.

  1. This tell could tell tales!
  2. The glimmer glimmered in the dying light.
  3. The last thing you want is this intrusion intruding!
  4. The raft’s feet make it difficult to sit on a raft.
  5. I want a kaleidoscope of this kaleidoscope.
  6. Is there wisdom in thinking a wisdom wise?
Glimmer member
Tell visit in Yangon, Myanmar home

Answers:

  1. Tell of crows
  2. Glimmer of dragonflies [1]
  3. Intrusion of cockroaches
  4. Raft of loons [2]
  5. Kaleidoscope of butterflies
  6. Wisdom of wombats
Perching on the top left
Wisdom member
Kaleidoscope, back trails, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks

NOTES: [1] I found this entry at English.stackexchange.com [2] And found this one at www.hintsandthings.co.uk.  Loons are solitary birds and live mostly in family groups. On rare occasions when they come together, the group is called a raft. Loons are the subject of Endangered Species Report #36 at www.wildlifewatchers.org© Jadi Campbell 2017. All photos © Jadi Campbell or 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.

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

Raft member, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks

 

What? I Can’t Hear You

You gotta know when to fold ‘em…*

Every time Uwe and I went on a long trip, my mother-in-law’s last words were always, “The main thing is, you come back healthy!” She also said those words any time Uwe and I went on a short trip. Actually, she said this anytime either of us went anywhere.

“Cripes Uwe,” I would complain, “why the hell can’t she just tell us to have a good time?”

And then I got older and we did an extended trip and I did not come back healthy. I developed a herniated disk when we returned home.

Take it from me… Mothers are always, always right.

I should be on the other side of the world right now, meeting up with my sisters and their husbands to help celebrate a birthday. But I had a sinus infection since New Year’s Eve, and the space between my ears felt like it was stuffed with wet cotton. For weeks, I weighed the three plane flights needed for a trip of twenty hours against the likely reality of popped eardrums.

And suddenly, through the dampers in my eustachian tubes, I heard Mama Hartmann’s voice speaking that cautionary phrase with a new twist: “The main thing is, you leave healthy.”

I listened to my mother-in-law. I cancelled the flights at the last minute, and made a third appointment with a second ENT doc, an ear nose throat specialist. (Otolaryngologist. My new word for the day. Yippee for me.)

Like Kenny sang, ya gotta know when to fold ‘em.

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2019. *Apologies to Kenny Rogers. Photos courtesy of Dreamstime.com. Go to my earlier posts The Great Wall of Pain: Part One  & The Great Wall of Pain: Part Two for details on how that little mistake ended. To see Uwe’s pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

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

 

 

The Animal Kingdom: 27

I present installment #27 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.

  1. If you agitate the pandemonium you’ll create pandemonium!
  2. He cast the cast free.
  3. The murder murdered the afternoon quiet.
  4. A memory has very long memories.
  5. What a shock to find this nest nestled in the rocks.
  6. A mischievous mischief causes so much mischief.
Memory, Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Answers:

  1. Pandemonium of parrots
  2. Cast of falcons [1]
  3. Murder of crows
  4. Memory of elephants
  5. Nest of snakes [2]
  6. Mischief of mice
Nest member, Wilhelma Zoo, Stuttgart, Germany
A critter this smart could definitely cause pandemonium…. Loro Parque, Tenerifa

NOTES: [1] Cast is used for both bird and crustacean families [2] see The Animal Kingdom: 6 © Jadi Campbell 2017. 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.

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

Speyer’s Walk of Shame

In You’ll Be Sorry! I gave you Schifferstadt’s Walk of Shame for medieval and Renaissance miscreants. And shame on you for enjoying my Tale of Schadenfreude.

Today I give you the city of Speyer…. Speyer is a mere 5 miles /8 kilometers from Schifferstadt. Coincidentally (?) both cities are known for their Walks of Shame.

Speyer Cathedral is glorious

Speyer was the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Five German kings and eight Holy Roman Emperors are buried here, and the Speyer Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The city is beautiful. Speyer is on the River Rhine, and cool beer gardens and restaurants decorate the shore. The streets are filled with bicycles of students from the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. From 1084 to 1349 an important Jewish community flourished in the region. You can still visit the medieval mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath house, first mentioned in 1126. [1]

Speyer’s main street is lined with gorgeous old buildings like the Unicorn Apothecary from 1703.

As you leave the Speyer Cathedral, you walk past a huge basin known as the Cathedral Bowl. In a custom that began in the Middle Ages, the bowl is filled with wine on special religious occasions! Everyone gets to partake, citizens and visitors alike. [2, 3]

this is one big wine goblet

One last fact matters most to this post. According to the website Speyer.de, “[s]ince its construction in the 14th century, it played a significant role in the execution of a prison sentence: whoever had broken a state law and fled to the cathedral bowl was protected from prosecution.” Reread this sentence, because it takes on ominous importance with the next factoid….

At the other end of the main street stands the Altpoertal, the Old City Gate. Building began in 1230 and the Old City Gate marked the terminus of a road pompously called Via Triumphalis, extending from the Cathedral to the city walls. The Holy Roman Emperor and his retinue paraded from the Gate to the Cathedral on major religious days. However, the Altpoertal tower also served as the town prison, and the road in the opposite direction, leading from Cathedral to prison, was the scene of Walks of Shame.

start your Walk of Shame from here
keep going and don’t look back
almost there

Some guilty women were forced to parade down the street naked, with a stone tied around the neck. Males were allowed to keep their clothes on. If he had enough money, a man could pay a hefty sum and avoid the Walk of Shame. [4] Reaching the gate to begin a prison sentence might have been a relief. It would have been a looong walk from the Cathedral to the Altpoertal.

The top of the Altpoertal tower provides a great view of the route taken by the humiliated. But I want to know more about that Cathedral Bowl and how it provided sanctuary!

NOTES: [1] While Crusaders busily slaughtered Jews in the Rhineland, a Speyer law stated that anyone who harmed a Jew would have his hands cut off. Wikipedia/Speyer But then the Black Death struck Speyer in 1349 and Jews were blamed for the plague, proving that stupidity has a long history. [2] The bowl was filled in 2011 for the Cathedral’s 950th dedication anniversary. It holds more than 1500 liters of wine!  [3] The Church knows how to throw a party [4] Sexism and the ogling of female bodies, along with wealthy men buying their way out of trouble have long histories too. Go to these sites for more on Speyer: Speyer Tourism; Speyer.de

Text and Photos © Jadi Campbell 2018. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

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

Did all roads lead to Speyer? Rome?