Funny how sometimes you need to zoom in close to get the big picture. Victoria Falls may not be the world’s highest or wildest waterfall, but it’s the largest. The waterfalls are a UNESCO World Heritage site, too, and we always go out of our way to try and see anything on the world heritage list.
We booked a day trip from Botswana over to Victoria Falls so someone else would do the driving and deliver us to the right border offices to get our day visas. (We had a border permit for our rental car for Namibia over into Botswana, but not for Zimbabwe.) The Botswanan driver parked the van at the border, walked us to where his Zimbabwe colleague was waiting, and handed us off to him.
Victoria Falls wasn’t at full force when we visited but we still got soaking wet from the mists blowing over from the other side. We were happy to be wet as it was over 100 degrees that day.
Our visit coincided with the dry time of year, and I admit : I was a little disappointed the falls weren’t bigger. But I wandered around anyway, admiring the site.
Uwe’s responsible for the photos when we’re traveling. He creates the best images possible, while I just take snapshots with my cell phone. Uwe was enthralled, and busy finding the right angles for his camera. I enjoyed watching him at work (at play) and snapped a couple pics of my hubby doing his thing….
And then, when I looked in the viewfinder hoping I’d managed to get a few shots that didn’t include my thumb in the upper left hand corner, there was the breathtaking sweep and scope of Victoria Falls, dry season or wet season or any season. Even the fuzziness in my photo is supposed to be there – that’s the mists blowing up from Victoria Falls. Maybe the best photo I’ve ever taken with my phone!
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. 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.
Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the 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).
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Uwe and I just got home from 5 weeks in the sunshine. We drove around Namibia and Botswana, booked a shuttle to Zimbabwe with a day visa for Victoria Falls, and returned to South Africa for food and wine. We experienced something new every single day in this incredible part of the world.
You’ll be seeing and hearing lots about our trip in the weeks (and probably months) to come. The photos to come will all be from Uwe, but first he needs to sort through the thousands of pictures he took. For now, here’s an image of a pair of oryx grazing in Sesriem, Namibia. I simply stepped out the back door of our room and snapped a picture of them.
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.
Artist Niki de Saint Phalle was born on October 29, 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Her huge sculptures decorate museums and public spaces around the globe. I first met her work in the Fontaine des automates, the Stravinsky Fountain outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and recognize her pieces immediately when I encounter them. Saint Phalle collaborated on the creation of the fountain with her husband Jean Tinguely. Her figures aren’t the usual idealized depictions of the female body, and she often addressed current issues. She worked with artists in other mediums as well. Her health was damaged by the materials she used to create her artwork.
She had no formal training but became one of the world’s most important feminist artists. I read that her style is called idiosyncratic ‘outsider art’.
I would simply say, genius. In her honor here’s a post I wrote about a family of artists creating wildly creative work. The Ferros were my dad’s neighbors. – Jadi
My father lived on a very cool street. He had a little place on a small lake. When I visited, I’d spend hours watching critters on and in the water. And then I took a stroll down the road, because Dad had artist neighbors. The Ferros’ artwork decorates the street.
Their home is chock full of art, almost all of it made by Tino and Carole. When Carole kindly gave me a tour of the house, I couldn’t stop taking photographs. Every single inch of space contained something interesting and wildly creative.
Carole and Tino. Check out the cicada! The glass lamp! That railing!
The 1920’s home originally belonged to Tino’s parents.
They added on, sourcing materials from old buildings in the area that were being torn down. These ceiling beams came from a church.
They run a gallery, just a few miles away.
Frog Pond Farm Folk Art Gallery North
Sculptures adorn the outside lawns; here is only a sample.
Two of the couple’s offspring joined them to create the gallery. Ninety percent of the materials they use are recycled or pre-used. The Ferro family also produces smaller pieces, glass work, and paintings. Click on the thumbnail photos for a closer look.
I loved the female figures made of recycled metal strips from factory punches and stamps.
She crouches over an outdoor fire pit
Tino and Carole worked and raised their family in Portugal from 1988-2008. Tino tells me Europeans still collect their art work.
The Ferros run a second gallery in North Carolina. I can only imagine what’s in that one. But I’m sure those neighbors love having Tino and Carole down the street!
Contact info: Frog Pond Studio (South), Metal Scuptures, Furniture: 58 Prairie Lane, St. Pauls, NC 28384. tel: 910 865 4998. cell 910 740 3749. email: cferro2598@aol.com
Frog Pond Farm Folk Art Gallery (North), 5969 Rt. 281, Little York, NY 13087. tel: 607 749 6056
In memory of Niki de Saint Phalle, 29 October 1930 – 21 May 2002
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.
I met my sister Pam in London for ten great days. One of the best parts about traveling with family members is that you’re guaranteed to do things you’d never have thought of on your own. Like, going to meet the mudlarks….
Pam follows several mudlarks on Instagram and she was beyond excited to learn that the Museum of London Docklands was hosting the city’s mudlarks for two days when we were there.
Pictured here is mudlark Sean Clark, who takes part in a long-standing (and previously grim) activity. The term ‘mudlark’ is from the Victorian age. Early mudlarks were poor and hungry Londoners, almost always little kids, who combed the riverbanks for items they could resell. They darted up and down the shore like mudlark birds. Now they’re history buffs finding objects that reveal how people here lived, some items going back to the Romans!
Sean offered us a wax imprint from a 17th Century Matrix Seal. I was holding the imprint of a stamp that had rested in the water for four hundred years until Sean found it.
It could have been made in Shakespeare’s time.
York Museums Trust has this to say: “Seals were a common part of everyday life of Medieval England. They were used by a variety of social classes to authenticate documents such as land agreements, business exchanges, official court documents or charters, which needed a proof of identity or a royal seal of approval. They could also simply be used to keep a document or letter sealed or closed. Therefore owners of businesses, merchants, farmers, members of the clergy, government officials and kings all used seals, which they would imprint using their own unique seal matrix.” [1]
Sean discovered this wonderful seal on the foreshore of the Thames River. As a registered mudlark he gets to keep whatever he finds after reporting it to an official, historical registry at the Museum of London.
In the foreground are pipe stems that can date back to the 1600s
Pipes prefilled with tobacco were sold and then tossed away after being smoked. Now mudlarks find them on the foreshore of the Thames. For more on the clay pipes, go here: Mudlarking-the-art-of-smoking.
Mudlarks are an exuberant bunch. They aren’t allowed to dig into the banks of the Thames, so finding an exposed object is really a fun event. Every lark we talked to was more than happy to tell us about their finds and let us examine the objects more closely.
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.
Beatle John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in Liverpool, England. I considered writing a looong intro about his music and life, but the Beatles and Lennon need no introduction, and his legacy remains. “Instant karma’s gonna get you,” he sang. [1] In his honor here’s the post I wrote after reaping some serious karma. – Jadi
Travel karma is the bad luck, bad weather, bad room, bad case of Montezuma’s revenge… all the moments that you hope you’ll look back on and laugh about someday. That Jamaica honeymoon your brother booked, and the hotel had a fire? Blame it on travel karma. Our week on Malta in the autumn month that the travel agent swore got only 2-3 days of rain, and we were there for all 5 of them? Oh, yeah. It was travel karma.
There’s nothing you can do except shrug your shoulders, find a comfy café to hang out, and pull out the book you brought along.
Travel karma is other moments, too. It’s serendipity, the magic of being in the right place at the exactly right time. It’s the town festival you stumble into while out exploring. Travel karma is the restaurant with the fixed price menu that turns out to include champagne throughout the meal. It’s when you jump on a train 10 seconds before the doors close to leave.
Every so often travel karma gives you a heady dose of both moments…
We booked a charter flight to India.
Where we were headed
I don’t always sleep well on the eve of a trip, and slept especially poorly this night. The next morning we were on a very early ICE train to Frankfurt to get our flight to India. The ICE is a sleek, fast train that makes few stops and great time.
I hauled my train pass out of my travel purse out of my day back for the train attendant to check. Tired, I reminded myself that I would need to put the pass back in the purse and the purse back in the day pack.
I didn’t.
We got off the train and headed up into the airport. A few horrified minutes later I realized my purse was right where I’d left it, on the seat of a train now heading to Amsterdam… containing my passport. And my credit cards. And my train pass. And $$s. And €€s, all the ready money I was carrying as we weren’t sure how easy it would be to find cash machines.
We could get more cash in the airport and use Uwe’s credit cards, but I wasn’t going anyplace unless I got my passport back. The helpful folks at DB (Deutsches Bahn) contacted the train and they checked: my purse still lay on the seat where I’d left it! The problem was that the next scheduled stop for the ICE wouldn’t be until Köln, several hours up the tracks. DB would hold my purse for me there. There was no way I’d have my passport back in time for us to make our plane.
It was too late to do anything but rebook the flight to India. If I said “Uwe, I’m soooo sorry!” once, I said it 100 times. Man, did I feel awful. But – it was travel karma.
Uwe climbed on the next train heading back to Stuttgart (looking a whole lot less happy than he had early that morning) and I caught a train to Köln. The DB personnel hadn’t been able to report if my purse still contained my valuables. My passport was stamped with the resident alien visa that allowed me to remain in Germany. And without my passport I couldn’t head back to America to see my country, or my family, or go anywhere, for that matter. I felt oddly vulnerable. This situation was bad, and the more I worried about it, the worse it became.
As I sat on the train I bargained with the travel gods: “Just leave me the passport.”
When we reached Köln I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since supper the night before. I wasn’t ready yet for good/bad news about my purse. I bought myself a sandwich and a coffee and stalled for five minutes. Then it was time… I headed to Lost & Found and told someone my story. Of course, I no longer had any ID to prove who I was. He asked me to describe the purse and what was in it. I flinched inside as I told him.
The nice man vanished into the back and returned with my purse. “Go ahead and check that everything’s there,” he suggested. I know my hands shook as I unzipped it and looked.
Not a pfennig had gone missing. I shrieked Ya-hoo! and he laughed. Then I said thank you and left the little office.
I went directly to the flower vendor kitty-corner to Lost & Found and bought the largest bouquet of white blooms they offered. I marched with the bouquet back into the Lost & Found office. The employees all looked up astonished when they saw me again.
My voice quavered. “These are for all of you. It’s not enough just to say, ‘Thank you for doing your jobs’. It’s so great to know that there are still honest, helpful people in the world!” Nonplussed, they accepted the flowers, but everyone was smiling.
The train trip back to Stuttgart from Köln took 3 hours. The next charter flight to India left 3 days later. When we got finally got there I had one of the most amazing trips of my life. I probably used up a lot of good travel karma on that day I had to journey to Köln, but I hope I’ve added to my karma account since then. And I will never, ever forget my belongings on a train going anywhere. That’s one lesson I’ve learned!
En route6-8th century Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist cave temples, Badami.Nandi Purmina festival
HampiGoa
In memory of John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940 to 8 December 1980
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. 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.
National Day for China is an official holiday every October 1. It celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. It’s since morphed into National Day Golden Week, when everyone in China has a week of vacation. Here’s the post I wrote when we visited China as National Day Golden Week began. – Jadi
I’ll travel pretty much anywhere at the drop of a hat. Go around the world for 7 weeks? Cool! When do we leave? Overnight trip to Munich? Sounds grand, which beer hall do we want to have dinner at?
But. There are times when travel is not – quite – optimal. The rainy season offers big bargains and great deals for a reason. (Like, you’re going to be wet most of the time.) Another time period to debate traveling in is when other countries have their special holidays. Sure, Christmas Market season anywhere in Germany or areas that have a tradition of a Weihnachtsmarkt is a good time to go. However, a National Day will probably mean shops and sights are closed up tight.
And, trust me on this one, you really don’t want to go to China when it’s National Day Golden Week, and 1.3 BILLION people are on holiday.
They will all be taking their vacations. Spots that are usually crowded anyway are going to be jam-packed. This is not an experience for visitors with weak hearts or fear of crowds.
We learned this the hard way: first-hand. We did this at one of China’s most popular tourist sites: The Terracotta Army in Xi’an.
We got tickets and seats on a tour bus to get to the site. Our charming tour guide pointed to the buildings that house the terracotta army, pointed to the number of our bus, and finally pointed to her watch. No way she was going to push through the crowds in the massive hangars – she’d meet us at the designated time, back on our bus.
And in we went…. To this day I’m not sure what astounded me more. Was it the sheer size and scale of the clay army from 210-209 BC that was discovered in 1974?
This is 1 of 3 hangars and the Chinese are still excavating
Or was it the mass of tourists both foreign and native who completely filled the viewing areas?
Those are streams of visitors lining the windows
One thing I do know for sure. That October trip to China during Golden Week cured whatever claustrophobia I may have once had. If I could survive the crowds we experienced in Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai, I’ll survive them anywhere.
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.
This is my last post of South African meals, because I’ve run out of photos…. If this subject thread hasn’t made you want to climb on a plane and head to restaurants in South Africa, you either eat at McDonald’s on a regular basis or had your taste buds excised.
carpaccio 3 ways: kudu, crocodile and beefeven the bread is freshly made and lovingly presentedmaster architects put these meals togetherIt was a wonder we didn’t lick our plates after every mealI remember the speckled item as an indescribably delicious puree of vegetable infused with seeds
For everyone else, the cooking in South Africa is beyond delicious! Uwe and I are still raving about the meals we ate every single night we were there!
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.
Peter Benenson was born Peter James Henry Solomon on July 31, 1921 in London, England. Poet WH Auden was his private tutor as a boy. Benenson was a cryptographer during WWII and later worked as a lawyer.
He founded Amnesty International in 1961. Here, in his article The Forgotten Prisoners are the grounds for creating the NGO: “Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a story from somewhere of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government… The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done.”
To that end, AI supporters write letters and focus public opinion on governments to stop repression, torture, and the denial of human rights.
Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and the UN’s Prize in the Field of Human Rights the following year. Beneson refused all personal honours; his family convinced him to accept the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2001.
More than 10,000,000 members around the globe work for “a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.” In his honor and that of prisoners of politics, religion, or conscience all around the world I am reprinting a post I wrote visiting the surreal North Korean pavilion at the 2010 World Expo held in Shanghai, China. – Jadi
We were heading to China, and the World Expo was taking place in Shanghai that year. Oh man, did I ever want to go. When I was a kid, my family made the trip to the World’s Fair in New York City. I still remember the excitement of the Space Park, the talking, moving Lincoln robot statue in the Illinois Pavilion, and the Bel-Gem Brussels waffles smothered in strawberries and whipped cream that we all ate for the first time. [1]
Expo in Shanghai! Surely we had to see it. But there was just one teeny problem: all the on-line sources for tickets had been sold out for months. I wrote my friend Weiyu in Beijing and asked her, could she get us tickets? She checked in the capitol… all the ticket options there were sold out, too! But, ever resourceful, she called in a favor from a friend who lived in Shanghai, and he managed to secure two tickets for the time period we’d be visiting.
With passports in hand (your passport allowed you to skip the unbelievably long lines in front of most of the pavilions and enter your country’s VIP door), we headed out early in the morning.
That Expo was terrific. Some countries had put incredible thought and creativity into their presentations. And visiting Expo was a way to glimpse certain countries in places that I feel pretty sure I’ll never visit in real life.
Like North Korea. North Korea is shrouded in permanent mystery. I don’t know if their pavilion at the Shanghai Expo cleared up many of the mists, but it was an eye-opener in other ways.
I had no idea that Jeff Koons designed their central fountain, for instance. [2] Frolicking naked cherubs (minus the wings) showed off their muscular buttocks. They held hands in a circle as they released a bird. Cherubs and bird all gazed up into the heavens…. I have a funny bone that gets amused by kitsch, and from the second I saw that fountain my funny bone began to tickle. I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
The colored lights were an especially thoughtful finishing touch
The selection of literature for sale was slim on choice but heavy on message. Who can forget that classic of North Korean literature, “The Immortal Woman Revolutionary”?
Who doesn’t know and love The Immortal Woman Revolutionary
The dour saleswoman didn’t crack a smile. Maybe humor doesn’t translate as easily as I’d hoped. Or maybe she knew there’s nothing in North Korea to laugh about.
In memory of Peter Benenson, 31 July 1921 – 25 February 2005
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.
Ah yes, more photos of our meals in South Africa last November.
all details edible and perfectly alignedeven the tiniest feathery bits are precisely placedanother dish almost too pretty to eat….if only these chefs made house callscould these BE any prettier??
“I intend that my last work shall be a cookbook composed of memories and desires.” ~ Alexander Dumas *
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.
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and keen social critic, born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, India during the British Raj. His life and writings were strongly influenced by his years working as an imperial police officer in occupied Burma, at the time also still a province of British India. Orwell’s works include Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and 1984. In his honor I give you one of the posts I wrote after our visit to Burma, currently ruled by a military regime, currently known as Myanmar. – Jadi
We love travel. I refer to traveling to new cultures and places as connecting the dots. With each trip I feel a little more connected to the world at large and to the various dots that make up my picture of this planet and we who inhabit it.
While in Burma, we took a boat up the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Mingun for the day. Yet another fallen kingdom, Mingun is reknowned for the largest functioning bell in the world. It weighs in at 55,555 viss (90,718 kilograms or 199,999 pounds). The sound is a deep claaangg, rung by thumping the bell hard on the lip with a mallet. Mingun is also famous for the king who bankrupted his people with an attempt to outdo every shrine-builder who’d ever lived: King Bodawpaya wanted to build the huge stupa known as Mingun Pahtodawgyi.
It would be the highest in the world, a magnificent 150 meters tall, dwarfing everything built prior to it.
How the stupa would have appeared finished
Work began in 1790.
King Bodawpaya never finished his religious edifice. He ran out of funds; or, halted construction due to a prophesy that his realm would end when the building was completed; or, that completing the stupa would signal his death. An earthquake on March 23, 1839 dislodged the huge bell and damaged the structure beyond saving. The Mingun Pahtodawgyi became the world’s largest pile of bricks…
Mingun Pahtodawgyi. Can you spot the teeny tiny humans in the photograph?
The structure stands, all semi-finished 50 meters (150 feet) of it, roughly a third of the original planned height.
It’s a holy place and the faithful still come to worship. And the curious come to climb it [enter Jadi and Uwe, stage right]. Now, at any sacred Buddhist site, you remove your shoes at the base of the structure.
Going up, sir?
And you climb the stairs, barefoot, and then clambor on the ruins, barefoot, for one truly awe-inspiring view of the Irrawaddy River and the surrounding countryside.
View of the Irrawaddy River and several of Mingun’s gorgeous temples
Shan pilgrims in traditional outfits had also climbed the stupa and gave us the gift of their smiles and waves.
Shan pilgrims
It was a magnificent afternoon and yet another highlight of our four weeks in Burma.
Picnicking on the Edge
It wasn’t until we were safely home again that I got a good look at Uwe’s photographs.
Go on, I dare youJust a few small jumps and you’re there
There was a photo I had taken, too.
Hope those bricks are stable!
In memory of George Orwell, 25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was 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.
Victoria Falls wasn’t at full force when we visited but we still got soaking wet from the mists blowing over from the other side. We were happy to be wet as it was over 100 degrees that day. 
And then, when I looked in the viewfinder hoping I’d managed to get a few shots that didn’t include my thumb in the upper left hand corner, there was the breathtaking sweep and scope of Victoria Falls, dry season or wet season or any season. Even the fuzziness in my photo is supposed to be there – that’s the mists blowing up from Victoria Falls. Maybe the best photo I’ve ever taken with my phone!
Pam follows several mudlarks on Instagram and she was beyond excited to learn that the Museum of London Docklands was hosting the city’s mudlarks for two days when we were there.
Pictured here is mudlark Sean Clark, who takes part in a long-standing (and previously grim) activity. 
They will all be taking their vacations. Spots that are usually crowded anyway are going to be jam-packed. This is not an experience for visitors with weak hearts or fear of crowds.
For everyone else, the cooking in South Africa is beyond delicious! Uwe and I are still raving about the meals we ate every single night we were there!
