And it’s the first half of the last post in this blog thread for Bobbo! I present the Grande Finale: Installment # 41! describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page. Happy Easter, everyone. May the world be reborn.
A colony’s done some serious colonizing in here. Back trails, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks
The host hosted a seed hunt.
The storytelling is storytelling.
The colony colonized the waters with colonies.
She feverishly watched the fever.
The road teemed with teams.
No way to hide from this hive’s hive!
The scoop scoops with scoops.
Answers:
Scoop!
Host of sparrows
Storytelling of crows
Colony of beavers
Fever of sting rays
Team of oxen
Hive of bees [1]
Scoop of pelicans [2]
Fever, Kagoshima Aquarium, Japan
NOTES: [1] A hive is the physical location. Bee status: Endangered [2] Remember the squadron of pelicans from Installment #3?
NOTES on NOTES: I almost never put myself in my posts. For this final hurrah a photo and a final, special definition are called for. Thanks and much love to all my readers for sticking with this thread and sharing your feedback. — Jadi
As promised, here is an excerpt from my story The Trail Back Out. This tale was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. The entire collection The Trail Back Out was named an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in the category Fiction: Anthologies.
Each evening, while twilight shadows lengthened, Ken sat and stared into the fire. What a shame it had taken what felt like the end of the world for him to return to the Adirondacks.
Ken had been working on the oil fracking fields and living in a container. The evenings consisted of lengthy monologues from men alternately bored, or angry, or scared, arguing over every subject with a captive audience.
Why aren’t there any solitary quarters, he’d thought more than once. When a new wave of the mutated virus arrived, the corporation went into lockdown. All workers would quarantine with them or leave.
Ken looked around and couldn’t imagine sharing a room with any of the men for an extended period. He stopped at the head office to quit and collected his back pay. Ken gathered his things (simultaneously relieved and strangely distressed that they made a small bundle) and drove away.
He traveled cross country, always heading east, not yet quite sure where he was going. In some places he took temporary work; no matter where he stayed, in his free hours Ken helped register people to vote. Outside Kansas City he bought camping gear and stocked the trunk of his car with canned goods and nonperishables.
His internal compass pointed its needle at his personal true north. When he pulled into Cranberry Lake township in upstate New York months later, Ken’s eyes burned. He passed signs that stated simply, Forever wild. Ken had arrived in one of the loneliest places that an already solitary human being could go in an increasingly lonely world. He was glad; it beat being in a ghost town.
□
Wet winds gusted, but he was sheltered. He scratched his face and watched the flames. “Scritchy,” Grace used to tease. She’d rub her cheeks hard against his bristles. He was the picture of the backwoods loner: a misanthrope in layers of clothes that all smelled like campfire smoke and dried sweat, his tee shirt faded, the wool jacket stiff with dry mud and the smell of damp lanolin.
The perfect cliché. Shaggy hair, overweight, six feet two inches tall when he bothered to stand erect and wasn’t slouching so as not to intimidate other people.
No one to intimidate here. Ken had seen fewer and fewer people as the summer ended. In the last week he’d passed a total of two single hikers, a family, and a couple. Everyone had raised their hands in greeting and headed down the trail to the next pond or on their way back out.
On the day before, he had shared the wet trail for a few minutes with a female park ranger. He imagined how he’d looked: muddy boots, soaked hiking pants, brushing the rain out of his eyes.
He could picture himself, and suddenly Ken did. Across the fire a man stood in the shadows, with rain streaming off a poncho and dripping around his feet.
“Sorry to break into your privacy like this,” the stranger said. “You were lost in thought. According to my map this was the nearest lean-to. I’ll keep going; it’s not dark yet.”
Two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click here for my author page to learn more and buy my books.
We’re almost done. This is Installment #40 in my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
In The Trail Back Out two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed. The Trail Back Out was named an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in the category Fiction: Anthologies. 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 buy my books.
Are you holding your breaths? Are you all waiting for 2020 to end? Are you even remotely interested in revisiting the Year from Hell? I almost skipped the annual looking back review but couldn’t resist. And then I discovered I had to do a review, because basically I can’t remember a damned thing from the last 10 months except that the days went really fast despite being in a lockdown, my waistline expanded, and it is a miracle I got anything done at all.
I’m working on a new thread, called (rather creepily, I know) My Imaginary Friends. The first installment (even more creepily) is Strangers on a Train.
On those days when it all felt like too much (i.e., pretty much every f*cking day) I scheduled the soothing words and photos from my never-ending blog thread about groups of animals. The Animal Kingdom: 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38.
But – I did the one thing the lockdown demanded when it took away everything else I can do out in the world: I wrote. And, wow! I was named for two book awards, for Tsunami Cowboys2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award longlist, and my new short story collection The Trail Back OutI’m in Good Company!
I met virtually with my writing group and we did our first on-line virtual reading. You can catch me reading a short story from my new book here: Live Reading of The Green Under the Snow. I read at about the one-hour mark.
And somehow life went on, and I kept reminding myself that this is just life and death on steroids. I wrote A Cast of Thousands: Day 1, Day 2, in which I went to a two day wedding in India, and the funeral service for a friend Led Zeppelin and the Funeral.
Of course, no year is complete without a posts about food. I gave you Let Them Eat – Elk? and a post about leftover cold pizza as the breakfast food of the gods Cold Pizza! YUM!
Stay safe, stay healthy, and get ready for the collective global sigh of relief when 2020 is finally done! We made it, you guys!!! HAPPYNEWYEAR !!!
In The Trail Back Out two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and buy my books.
We’re getting close to the Grand Finale. This week I give you Installment #39 of my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
Ooh, Kindle’s kindle kindles cute thoughts!
The field raced across the field.
The crowd crowded the bulrushes.
The flotilla followed the flotilla.
But of course a stripe has stripes.
You might need a toke to imagine a tok.
Red-winged Blackbird Breeding male (Red-winged) https://macaulaylibrary.org/photo
NOTES: [1] Zebras status: Vulnerable. [2] The group of Old World grouse or tok makes a great track! “Their toe rows of small, elongated horn tacks provide a snowshoe effect…These so-called “courting tacks” make a clear track in the snow. The sexes can be distinguished very easily by the size of their footprints.” Wikipedia And even better, the capercaillie population is listed as Least concern.
And we have another fine offering, just in time for the Halloween Blue Moon! I give you Installment #38 of my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
Once the weather turns cold, this rush rushes off.
Flink, Sardinia, ItalyThis herd may contain a rake… northern Thailand
NOTES: [1] Everything you ever wanted to know about horses but were afraid to ask….: “In horse racing, particularly for Thoroughbreds in the United Kingdom, a colt is defined as an uncastrated male from the age of 2 up to and including the age of 4.” Wild 1 to 2-year colts are driven from their herds by the herd stallion. Once driven out, they usually form a bachelor herd. “They stay with this band until they are mature enough to form their own herd of mares.” A foal is a horse of either sex less than 1 year old. A yearling is either sex, aged 1-2. A filly is a young female horse. A mare is an adult female horse. A stallion is an uncastrated adult male horse. A gelding is a castrated male. A rig or ridgling is an incompletely castrated male horse. Wikipedia.org [2] A snipe is a slender-billed bird from the sandpiper family. [3] The name bullfinch comes from its stocky shape and thick neck. [4] Flink refers to 12 cows or more. And, according to the Urban Dictionary, to flink is the act of forwarding a web link or address to someone electronically.
The Trail Back Out is finished and available for purchase! In my new collection of short stories, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.
I give you Installment #37, yet another offering to my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page. Definitions on this installment are tricky!
This potential volery hates voleries!
The wrack wrecked my kittens’ definitions.
Does the grind get its name grinding against things?
Yup, whoops whoop it up….
A badelynge isn’t bathing.
The lodge lodged in their lodge.
Me being careful not to dislodge lodging, back trails of Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks. This remote beaver-dammed pond appears in the title story to my book The Trail Back Out
The Trail Back Out is finished and available for purchase! In my new collection of short stories, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.
Hard to believe, but today I give you Installment #36 of my epic blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
The Trail Back Out is finished and available for purchase! In this collection of short stories, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and order my books.
Here for your reading pleasure is Installment #35 of the ever-growing blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
The creep creeps, but isn’t creepy.
An ugly is cute in a kind of ugly way….
The consort consorted.
The tribe hunted the tribe.
A wobble does seem wobbly on its feet.
Don’t you dare tell a buffoonery that they’re buffoons!
Grande Dame of the Buffoons, Semenoggoh Nature Reserve, Borneo
As of today, my first book Broken In: A Novel in Stories is 8 years old. And as of two weeks ago, my new book is finished and available for purchase! In The Trail Back Out, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
From tales of Eddie, high on LSD and trapped by “What Died in the Fridge” or a compulsive gambler hiding during a Category Five storm in “Better Weather”, to the luminous title story of two strangers meeting by chance in the backwoods during a pandemic, I wanted to describe the pain and humor of being alive. Included in this collection are “Rules to Live By”, a funny and deeply thoughtful story about what we choose to teach our children. I wonder about our responsibility to others as a hunter is shot and left for dead in “The Green Under the Snow”. In “Do Dreams Float?” a wife considers a hit-man’s offer of revenge. And the eternal search for happiness is carried out by a gloomy little girl nicknamed ‘Princess Rain Clouds’.
I finished these tales during the coronavirus lockdown. These are descriptions of everyday life in strange times. Whether during the upheaval of the last century or the present COVID-19 crisis, The Trail Back Out will guide you through a labyrinth of questions about how to live and love.
The Trail Back Out will be published as paperback and eBook for Kindle on August 23, 2020. The version for Kindle is available now for preorder. Click on one of these links to order a copy:
And it’s the first half of the last post in this blog thread for Bobbo! I present the Grande Finale: Installment # 41! describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page. Happy Easter, everyone. May the world be reborn.
