Category: Travel

Dylanphilia

It all began with my friend Charles Urban. He suggested that I read not just one but two brand-new biographies of Bob Dylan.

You want details? Is this ever the book for you

The first book, The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 is by Clinton Heylin. Known as the world’s foremost expert on His Bobness, Heylin was asked to examine the papers Dylan sold to Tulsa. When he did so, Heylin decided he needed to revise his Dylan biography. This new book is meticulous and exhaustive.

Weaves a spell like Dylan’s lyrics

The second book, You Lose Yourself, You Reappear. The Many Voices of Bob Dylan was written by Paul Morley. This book is more stream-of-consciousness, weaving back and forth through the influences on Dylan’s life and personas.

I read the books in tandem and had a blast. Not only did they revise my opinion of Bob Dylan (I loved his music but could take or leave his voice). I vanished into Dylan’s myriad rivers’ flows….

Now I listen with fresh appreciation. And the experience of reading about Dylan somehow inspired me to mix and match my own personal, + cultural, + worldly reference points. I became suddenly – and wildly – prolific. In a week I came up with more than fifty (50!!!) posts. A new blog thread was born, which (and what else did I expect after 2 books on Dylan) is actually two new threads spun together: Today’s Birthday and A Person + Place/Time/Things.

My last major blog thread was The Animal Kingdom, written in honor of another Bob – my dad.

Watch this space. Today’s Birthday and A Person + Place/Time/Things will be debuting soon.

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2021. To see Uwe’s photos from our trips go to viewpics.de. PS: And it keeps growing…. The new blog thread currently has 70 posts in the queue. Thanks Charles!

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

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. My newest book  The Trail Back Out was a 2020 Best Book Award Finalist for Fiction Anthologies. The title story was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. My first book, Broken In: A Novel in Stories, was named a semifinalist for the 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award.

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

Hurdy-Gurdy

We just took our first trip in 17 months. This was the longest we’ve ever gone without traveling. COVID-19 restrictions have made it tricky to leave the country. You never know where the next outbreak is going to come from, and we weren’t excited at the prospect of quarantining for two weeks on a border somewhere. So, we did a road trip inside Germany….

Our first stop was the UNESCO World Heritage city of Würzburg. [1]

Würzburg’s Residential Palace was built from 1720-1744 by Balthasar Neumann and is the most important building from the Southern German Baroque era. Definitely worth a visit! But I want to talk about a little statue I found in the Court Gardens in the back.

‘Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Came singing songs of love – Donovan

“Look! It’s a hurdy-gurdy player!” I exclaimed.

“What’s that?” Uwe asked.

“A strange instrument that the musician cranks to play: It buzzes and drones. Donovan sang about it.”

See the crank he’s turning?

The hurdy-gurdy is about 900 years old and maybe came from a fiddle. An even earlier version was the organistrum and required two people to play it, one to crank the handle and the second musician to pull up on the keys. It was used for choral music. The hurdy-gurdy or something like it, the lira in the Byzantine Empire, was described by Ibn Khurradadhbih. The next version of the hurdy-gurdy was called the symphonia. It was smaller, with three strings and keys that could be pressed from underneath. Present-day hurdy-gurdies have either a guitar body or a lute back.

Musicians in high courts played the hurdy-gurdy until it fell out of favor, and the hurdy-gurdy is mostly familiar now as an instrument used by roving minstrels. According to Wikipedia, in the Ukraine hurdy-gurdies are still played by itinerant, often blind, hurdy-gurdists called lirnyky. [2]

The instrument was saved from obscurity, helped no doubt by Donovan’s song in 1968. He wrote Hurdy Gurdy Man while studying Transcendental Meditation in India with the Beatles. Apparently, he wanted Jimi Hendrix to perform the song. Now, that would have been one hell of a recording! As it is, George Harrison helped with the lyrics. Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones all performed on the recording before they went on to form a little group named Led Zeppelin.

All my life, Hurdy Gurdy Man is one of those songs that floats in my consciousness. It’s as mystic and magical as a tale told by a wandering troubadour.

Thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I opened my eyes to take a peek
To find that I was by the sea
Gazing with tranquility

‘Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Came singing songs of love
Then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Came singing songs of love

“Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy gurdy” he sang

“Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy gurdy” he sang
“Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy gurdy” he sang

Histories of ages past

Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

‘Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love
Then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Comes singing songs of love [3]

NOTES: [1] My readers know that Uwe and I make a beeline for World Heritage sites. They’ve always, always been worth the effort! [2] wiki/Hurdy-gurdy [3] Source: LyricFind. Hurdy Gurdy Man lyrics © Peermusic Publishing. PS: I learned a lot writing this post!

© Jadi Campbell 2021. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was a 2020 Best Book Award Finalist for Fiction Anthologies. The title story was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was named a semifinalist for the 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Prize.

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

 

 

The Junkie at the Train Station

I was on one of my first solo trips. I had a youth Eurail pass, surely one of the greatest deals on the planet. I carried a backpack that weighed almost as much as I did, and I’m sure my face had that open, I’m off to see Europe, whoopie!, look on it.

I took a train from Germany to Denmark to visit a friend of a friend. My destination had hard to pronounce letters like æ and ø in the name. Go to the area of the tracks for local trains, Anita’s letter instructed. Look for a little red train, about three cars. Like something out of a Hans Christian Andersen tale.

It was early morning as I waited on the station platform. A woman about my age approached me. She had on jeans and her arms and legs were incredibly skinny. Her hair was lanky. She wore a dirty beige coat with fake fur trim. She asked me something, and I shook my head. For once I was glad I lacked the language. I don’t speak Danish, I told her.

I was dismayed when she immediately switched to English. Can you give me some money? Anything? She swayed on her feet. I’m very, very tired, she told me.

I realized I was being hit up by a junkie. Please, I’m just so tired, she repeated. Her voice was flat, no affect, just the monotone of the addicted. I was afraid she was going to fall over. A little red train arrived, it really did look like something out of an exotic fairy tale, and I climbed on grateful for the escape.

***

On another trip, several decades later, I was on a train that stopped for the customary inspection on the tracks between Holland and Germany. The border control officials emptied out the backpack of a young guy. He stood impassive in the hall of the train car, his belongings spread out on the floor. He looked, rough. Like he’d spent all of his trip in hash bars. Please, I’m just so tired, I suddenly heard an earlier voice whispering.

The dead giveaway might have been the huge marijuana leaf patch he had sewn on his jeans jacket. They removed several plastic baggies – not marijuana – from an inside pouch in his backpack. He was invited to get off the train with the police officers, and we traveled on….

***

There are the angels that look over young folks traveling by themselves. On that first trip on my way to Denmark, I had to wait several hours very late at night in northern Germany for my connecting train. I remember a lot of really, really drunk people in a nearby bar. A man from Africa came and sat with me and kept me company. We shook hands when our respective trains finally arrived. Thank you for sitting with me, I said. I’ll never forget what he told me: People need to take care of each other.

There are demons that prey on young people. I think of the heavy drug users I’ve seen around the world (I’ve only given two examples, there are so many more), and can only repeat the refrains from Steppenwolf’s songs out of the soundtrack of my high school years. How quickly a magic carpet ride becomes God damn the pusher man.

NOTES: Text © Jadi Campbell 2021. In my first book Broken In, Lisa goes traveling in Bangkok and sees way more than she ever imagined.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase Broken In: A Novel in Stories or my other books.

My Imaginary Friends: #4 Jeremy and His Tattoos

I’ve been a massage therapist for well over 30 years. The pandemic put a temporary end to that part of my activities. I may be a massage therapist again in the future; we’ll see.

I massaged some really interestingly tattooed bodies through the years.

Around 1988, one of the first tattoos I ever massaged has remained maybe the most intense and in some ways most frightening tattoo I’ve ever seen up close. A young woman had a skull, snakes crawling in and out of the empty eye sockets, inked on the breast above her heart. When I think about her now, I know that tattoo was a claiming of some dark and needed power. I have never forgotten the intensity of the energy she radiated.

I massaged a soldier of fortune with a Thai demon on his shoulder. “He has my back,” the guy told me.

One of my closest friends worked for decades as a trial lawyer. She always dressed up to go into court. She has an eternity knot tattooed on the top of her foot, and the image is elegant and discrete.

My nephew owns two bars/bistros in Hong Kong. Niko recently got himself inked with Native Americans on each arm to honor Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. His left shoulder depicts Mount Hood and a Haida eagle. On his right forearm is a pineapple: it’s the traditional symbol of hospitality, he told me. I didn’t know this, and appreciated the fine work even more.

 

When it came time to write  my first book Broken In: A Novel in Stories, I gave my character Jeremy tattoos. His tattoo images were inspired by the massage clients I have been honored to touch over the years. His chapter is titled, Punctured.

The ink on his body is his fate. – Jadi

The first time they slept together and she saw the tattoos she said, “It’s like being at the movies. Or inside the pages of a very Technicolor comic book. Oh! There’s the snake in the grass!” Jeremy was amused, knowing she was being flippant to mask her nervousness and the erotic appeal of his colors on her skin.

Abigail traced the outline of the demon turned towards her on Jeremy’s shoulder. She marveled again at the detail in the scales. It was such a small tattoo compared to the crouching tiger. She moved her small hand and placed it on his thigh where the tiger waited. “A tiger in my tank,” she murmured in wonder, just loudly enough for him to hear. It drove him wild.

-from my chapter Punctured in Broken In: A Novel in Stories

NOTES: Text and photos © Jadi Campbell 2021.  Thanks Niko for allowing me to use the photographs of your tattoos!

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase Broken In: A Novel in Stories and my other books. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts. 

The Animal Kingdom: Grande Finale 1

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
  1. The host hosted a seed hunt.
  2. The storytelling is storytelling.
  3. The colony colonized the waters with colonies.
  4. She feverishly watched the fever.
  5. The road teemed with teams.
  6. No way to hide from this hive’s hive!
  7. The scoop scoops with scoops.

Answers:

Scoop!
  1. Host of sparrows
  2. Storytelling of crows
  3. Colony of beavers
  4. Fever of sting rays
  5. Team of oxen
  6. Hive of bees [1]
  7. 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

Worshipper of words….

© Jadi Campbell 2021. 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.

Hive, Thai temple

My Imaginary Friends: #2 Gabe’s Necklace

My husband used to work in northern Sweden every winter. (Go to It Was a Bitterly Cold -22 Degrees) I flew up for a long weekend. On Friday he had to drive on a frozen lake, writing code for the braking system  that would become ESP, a safety feature now installed in cars everywhere.

I went exploring in downtown Arjeplog. The only tourists were people like me, family members visiting the car engineers.

It was March, a grand -6 degrees at the warmest part of the day, so I went to the Silvermuseet. I like museums anyway, and Arjeplog’s museum is a fun mix of artifacts from early settlers, a history of the now-closed silver mines, and the earliest presence of humans. I was the only visitor in the museum.

A tall glass case contained a runebomme, an old Saami drum. [1] When I moved closer for a look, lights clicked on and a recording of drumming began to play. I was surprisingly moved, and totally intrigued by the images etched on the drum hide. Animals, people, and boats were depicted.

The Saami Shaman Drum Kobdas (drum) is a sacred map. It contains drawings of people and the spirit gods and goddesses of Nature often centered around a symbol of the sun. They are used by the shaman (male and female alike) to awaken other levels of reality to guide families in their daily life, find the right path during migrations, locate things which are missing, heal diseases and help the community in times of crisis. They can also foresee the future and give guidance. [2]

The museum gift shop sold gifts made by local artists. I bought myself a necklace. It’s made with reindeer horn scrimshaw, embedded in arctic curly birch. I don’t wear it often, but when I do it always feels special.

Many years later I wrote a character named Gabe Burgess, who is given a similar necklace by his Norwegian lover as a remembrance before they part ways in Greece. I liked the idea of a burly man tucking the amulet into his shirt when he went traveling.

Eight-pointed snowflake

I thought my necklace was the image of a snowflake. Today, as I did some research to make sure this post’s information on the museum and the drums is accurate, I discovered this:

The image is really an early compass.

My world explorer Gabe has always worn a depiction of the points of the compass, guiding him safely home.

Perfect. – Jadi

Saami compass

He liked the romance of travel, in every sense of the word. His destinations veered wildly from year to year. In the beginning, Gabe’s journeys were random. As a youth Gabe traveled with a heavy, framed backpack and headed often for the beaches. He spent a blissful month camping on the southern coast of Crete with a busty blonde from Norway named Berit. At the end of the four weeks he returned to New York City with Berit’s address and telephone number tucked inside his passport, and a talisman around his neck. On their last night together she had turned her head away from him and reached for the necklace tucked under her long hair.

She made him close his eyes as she placed a chain over his neck. “Go look in the mirror,” she requested, and obediently Gabe walked to the little oval mirror in their beach hostel. In it he found his own image (now much darker and even properly black after a month spent in the island sunshine), his neck encircled with an image on wood. He pulled the chain back over his head to examine it more closely.

Signed by the artist

Berit put her arms around his waist and stared over his shoulder at him in the mirror. “It’s Saami.” She explained, “It’s a snowflake with eight points to it, carved on reindeer horn. The wooden back is birch. It is to bring you luck, dear friend,” she added solemnly, and kissed the side of his temple.

-from my chapter Waiting in Broken In: A Novel in Stories

NOTES: Text and photos © Jadi Campbell 2020. [1] Arjeplog Silvermuseet. The Catholic Church destroyed the drums, outlawed their use, and persecuted the shaman (noajdde). Many drums were buried or hidden. “Of the thousands once existing, only 71 drums have survived with their skins intact[.]” Saami Drum [2] From Arctic Saami Style Kellamknives.com

Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts.  Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Interview with Alex Pearl

Follow this link for my interview with the witty EastEnder Alex Pearl! Among other things, we talk about stunt men, building teepees, and poisonous mushrooms….

Books by Alex Pearl

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2021. Interview © Alex Pearl.

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. 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.

The Animal Kingdom: 40

Leege member, Thoulakhom Zoo, Lao

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.

Yoke 1, Inle Lake, Burma
  1. Does a pretence pretend they’re bitter?
  2. Don’t string this string along.
  3. A study studied the landscape.
  4. Do you know any jokes about yokes?
  5. I’d love this leege as my liege.
  6. Families are familiar.
Study member, Bagan, Burma
  1. Pretence of bitterns [1]
  2. String of ponies
  3. Study of owls
  4. Yoke of oxen
  5. Leege of leopards [2]
  6. Family of chimps
Yoke 2, Inle Lake, Burma

NOTES: [1] Bitterns all over the world are critically endangered. Their populations in England began to decline as early as the Middle Ages because “the bird was considered a delicacy and was eaten at banquets up to Tudor times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the bird became a popular target for taxidermists. The drainage of England’s wetlands devastated the surviving population….” – theguardian.com; www.britishbirdlovers.co.uk [2] This incredibly beautiful big cat is a clouded leopard. “Clouded leopards are the most talented climbers among the cats.” wikipedia.org Status: Severely Endangered. ©  Jadi Campbell 2020. 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 en.wiktionary.org,  www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

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.

 

2020 Is Almost Over!

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.

The brown throated sloth 2020 ANIMAL OF THE YEAR

I started off my 2020 blog talking about travel, from my impressions of the unrest in Hong Kong at this time last year: Ho, Ho, Ho, Hong Kong, Hong Kong 1, Hong Kong 2 , and the coolness that is Costa Rica: What the Heck is a Quetzal? and Hummingbirds.

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.

Things got weird fast as COVID-19 trampled all our illusions of being in control. Me and La Corona, or Things Are Different Now, an especially intense period I call My Schizoid Loop, Notes from the Lockdown,  More Things are Different Now (aka: The Sloth), How I Spent my Summer Lockdown. Then, because a year of a global pandemic isn’t enough, the world added the insanity of the US election. I had to call a halt in Brideshead Revisited Revisited.

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 Cowboys 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award longlist, and my new short story collection The Trail Back Out I’m in Good Company!

Book bloggers are something very special in the blogging galaxy. They give a voice to those of us who might otherwise go unheard. I did a batch of interviews with these wonderful book bloggers: Shaz’s Book Blog, Curled Up With a Good Book, Five Things Friday from Willow Croft, JQM Literary Spotlight Presents Tsunami Cowboys, JQM Literary Chat Part 2.

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!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2020. 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 en.wiktionary.org,  www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

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.

The Animal Kingdom: 39

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.

  1. Ooh, Kindle’s kindle kindles cute thoughts!
  2. The field raced across the field.
  3. The crowd crowded the bulrushes.
  4. The flotilla followed the flotilla.
  5. But of course a stripe has stripes.
  6. You might need a toke to imagine a tok.
Red-winged Blackbird Breeding male (Red-winged)
Red-winged Blackbird Breeding male (Red-winged) https://macaulaylibrary.org/photo
  1. Kindle of kittens
  2. Field of racehorses
  3. Crowd of redwings
  4. Flotilla of swordfish
  5. Stripe of zebras [1]
  6. Tok of capercaillies [2]

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.

Text © Jadi Campbell 2020. Photo redwinged blackbird courtesy All About Birds  © Phil Kahler. To see Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Fun animal names from en.wiktionary.org,  www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

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