I’m always delighted to find traditionally painted eggs while traveling. These eggs are from the former Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Sometimes they even come with a certificate of authenticity, like the 3 eggs I got in the old castle in Ljubljana!
Eggs are symbols of fertility and rebirth in ancient pagan cultures. As well, the egg shell represents the sealed tomb and the cracking of the egg represents Jesus’ resurrection from the dead at Easter.
May we all feel reborn. Happy Easter, everyone.
The brown and white eggs are from Ljubljana Castle. The bear in bunny ears is from Pam and Niko
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.
Objects appear in my books. This is never random. Items can have numens, just like places do.
Take, for example, the cowbell.
When my mother died, Barb and Dad and Pam and I spent some sad days together in Asturias where Pam was teaching. It was a miserable time. All four of us were in deep shock. But there were moments of intense magic amidst all that grief. One of them came on a late spring afternoon, punctuated by the continuous music of unseen cowbells just over the foggy hills. We were alone, just my family minus Mom, and the air reverberated with grazing cows we couldn’t see, wearing metal necklaces that called to us.
My father surprised me with an old and well-used cowbell for Christmas the following year. When I rang it, the sound of that bell transported us right back to a remote Spanish hillside. He told me he got it in memory of that day.
It is one of the few gifts for me he ever picked out himself.
Later – many year later, when I wrote my first book, that afternoon of sound made a special guest appearance. When I began to write the scene I rediscovered all the details, with perfect clarity.
“When he first met Naomi, they hiked to a pilgrimage point in northwestern Spain up in the startlingly verdant Asturian hills. They ate a picnic lunch in a field filled with small wild irises and tea roses. At the end of the day it grew colder and fogs blew in. They gathered up their blankets and basket to the clanging of cowbells someplace off in a valley in the mists, heard but not seen.
The next day they returned to visit the shrine. The altar overlooking the valleys was busy with worshippers and a statue of Our Lady of Covadonga. But the narrow neck to the cave at the back of the sanctuary literally glowed with thousands of votive candles. They crouched in the cave in wonder. Whatever incarnation of the mother of God they honored up in front, her older chthonic image ruled undisputed within the earth.” – from the chapter Waiting in Broken In: A Novel in Stories.
A few years ago my friend Nancy gifted me with a Tibetan singing bowl. It keeps company with the distinctive clank of a cowbell from northwestern Spain. I’m not sure which item possesses the more powerful numen.
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.
Al Stewart was born September 5, 1945 in Glasgow, Scotland. He writes and sings what might best be called historic folk-rock. One of my favorite songs by Al Stewart is 1976’s Year of the Cat. Some years ago I met my sister Pam in London and took her to Catsfor her birthday.
“Jadi!” Pam whispered towards the end of the show. “Why is that prostitute cat climbing a ladder to heaven??”
“Uh, Pam,” I whispered back. “Think! What has nine lives?”
But back to Year of the Cat…. The lyrics begin like this:
On a morning from a Bogart movie In a country where they turn back time You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running Like a watercolor in the rain Don’t bother asking for explanations She’ll just tell you that she came In the year of the cat
– Source: LyricFind; Songwriters: Alistair Ian Stewart / Peter John Wood
Songwriting doesn’t get any better than this. In his honor here is the post I wrote about his feline friends. – Jadi
I used to lead a writers’ group. I once compared the job to herding cats and the group loved the description. It became one of my official titles: Jadi Campbell, Herder of Cats.
You want us to do what? Seriously?
Try to herd cats sometime; it simply can’t be done. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine a basket in the middle of a long room. The basket opens up and out pop fifteen cats of all ages and breeds. Can you picture them? Long hair, short hair, Manx, kittens, tomcats, calico, tiger striped, Egyptian, Persian, running, sitting abruptly to wash a paw, tumbling, chasing one another, purring, wandering away in all directions. Now, keeping your eyes closed, try to get those cats to all head in the same direction – the one that YOU want them to go in.
Go away, I’m busy
You will open your eyes and comprehend it is impossible to get a single cat to do what you want them to, much less a clowder of them. [1] Not only that: you start sneezing, because you’ve discovered you’re allergic.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, The Trail Back Out and Grounded.
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.
This post features photos of the African hippo from our trip in November 2022 to South Africa and the Schotia Game Reserve. Hippos are one of the most aggressive animals on the planet, and one of the largest and heaviest. Only elephants and white rhinos are bigger. They kill 500 people each year. Hippos may look slow, but a hippo can outrun any human. And they’re territorial. Don’t get between a hippo and the water!
This hippo was submerged in a watering hole, minding his own business….
He eyed the safari jeep rather crossly when he spotted us. When we didn’t leave, the hippo began to open his jaws.
And open. And OPEN. AND OPEN. This is his (extremely effective!) way of warning potential threats what they’ll deal with if they’re stupid enough to want to come any closer. He gave a shockingly loud roar and held his jaws open for quite a while.
Is there a dentist on call in the game reserve?
Eventually he grew disgusted, or bored, and left his watering hole. Not without giving us one last, long meaningful look…. A gaze that said, “Just wait til next time, suckers. I’ll get you yet.”
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.
Actress Elizabeth Taylor was born on February 27, 1932 in London, England. She was talented, beautiful and wildly glamorous. My favorite role of hers is Martha in the electrifying Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but Elizabeth Taylor is perhaps most identified with her role as Cleopatra. In her honor, here is a post I wrote after visiting Egypt and the Nile River. —Jadi
***
This is Part 2 to my post about our brief trip to Luxor, Egypt. As I look through Uwe’s photographs from that week I’m struck by his images of the Nile.
Cleopatra: He’s speaking now, Or murmuring ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ — Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 4
Eternal and timeless somehow
There is something sensuous about this river… One of my very favorite Shakespeare plays is Antony and Cleopatra. Here is the description of Cleopatra floating down the Nile:
Enobarbus: The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.
…From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthroned i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
Agrippa: Rare Egyptian! (Act II, Scene 2)
The Nile is iconic. It’s the longest river in the world, around 4,160 miles or 6,670 kilometers The Nile originates at Lake Victoria and Lake Tana, and ends at the Mediterranean. It flows northward through Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, and Egypt.
It is the largest oasis on the planet. When we visited in May 2013 tourism had declined so far that there were no longer any direct flights to Luxor. Instead, we flew to Hurghada on the Red Sea and a van met us. We drove for four hours across the barest desert landscape imaginable. No nomads, no towns, no vegetation or animal life to be seen. When we reached the Nile, visible signs of life appeared again.
All of the great ancient cities we visited are on the river’s banks. Karnak, Luxor/Thebes. Dendera, Edfu. From our hotel balcony we gazed directly across the river to the Valley of the Kings. The Valleys of the Kings, the Queens and the Nobles are on the west bank of the Nile River as you must be buried on that side in order to enter the afterlife.
We sailed downriver to Dendera, enjoying the scenery that flowed slowly past.
The fertile Nile was the original source of Egypt’s wealth and today 40 million Egyptians (50% of the population) live near its banks. There was life on the shores and in the water everywhere we looked.
Cleopatra: …we’ll to th’ river: there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finned fishes. (Act II, Scene 5)
Antony: The higher Nilus swells, The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest. (Act II, Scene 7)
The Egyptian calendar was based on the Nile’s three flood cycles. According to Wikipedia, “[t]hese seasons, each consisting of four months of thirty days each, were called Akhet, Peret, and Shemu. Akhet, which means inundation, was the time of the year when the Nile flooded, leaving several layers of fertile soil behind, aiding in agricultural growth. Peret was the growing season, and Shemu, the last season, was the harvest season when there were no rains.” [1]
As I looked out at the river and thought about my mother, I sensed the rhythms of life and death more clearly than ever before.
To the ancients, the Nile was the River Ar meaning “black” because of the rich, fertile sediment left on the banks from the Nile’s flooding. When the Aswan Dam was built in 1970, the annual flooding ended. But by the time we left I knew why Shakespeare’s hero confessed,
Antony: Egypt, thou knew’st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings, And thou shouldst tow me after. (Act III, Scene 9)
In memory of Elizabeth Taylor, February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, The Trail Back Out and Grounded.
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.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7, 1867 in Pepin County, Wisconsin. I read her Little House in the Big Woods series over and over and over as a little girl. The books told the real-life story of Laura’s childhood. I loved the story of this little girl. Like me, she only had sisters; like me, the family kept moving every few years. Unlike me, Laura and her family were pioneers and settlers in the 1800s. In her honor I am reprinting a post I wrote about visiting the working open air museum of Old Sturbridge Village. – Jadi
Town Common
We visited Massachusett’s Old Sturbridge Village in the fall, the perfect time to enjoy this open air museum.
Freeman Farm
Originally from Sturbridge, Massachusetts, c. 1808
The costumed employees and volunteers at Old Sturbridge harvest the land as the earlier settlers would have.
Apples, pumpkins and squash had been carefully collected, sometimes in unexpected free spaces. The settlers needed a dry area away from weather and animals, and floor space was a great (and, one hopes, temporary) storage spot.
Crops needed to be gathered while other jobs still had to be performed.
Printing Office
Originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, c. 1780
Men and boys set type and did the printing, while women stiched and bound books. Country printers also brought out pamphlets, broadsides, sermons, legal forms, advertisements, and public notices.
Vermont Covered Bridge
Originally from Dummerston, Vermont, c. 1870
This bridge, one of the 12 remaining in Massachusetts, was saved from demolition to make way for a new highway in 1951. Fewer than 200 covered bridges still stand in New England.
Blacksmith Shop
Originally from Bolton, Massachusetts, c. 1810
Along with shoeing horses and making nails, the village blacksmith (often a town had more than one) produced items of metal needed for everyday life.
The Fenno House is Sturbridge’s oldest building.
Fenno House
Originally from Canton, Massachusettts, c. 1725
Artisans on the Old Sturbridge Village grounds make traditional products in the old way. Many are available for sale in the gift shop. [1]
Old Sturbridge Village was born from the collective vision of a family. The three Wells brothers, Albert B., Joel Cheney, and Channing M. purchased David Wight’s farm with the vision of showing their collection in the context of a working village. The living museum received its first visitors on June 8, 1946. To date more than 21 million adults and children have visited the Village, and 250,000 people visit every year.
And his beard’s real, too!Johnnycake, anyone?
In memory of Laura Ingalls Wilder, February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957
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.
Author Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882 in South Kensington, London, England. Her novels were some of the first to use stream of consciousness, and Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, her circle of family, friends and fellow artists, founded one of the most important movements in modern art and culture.
I’ve read my way through most of her work. Virginia Woolf has a delicious sense of humor (and irony!) and a keen sense of what it is to be a woman and an artist. I’ve reread her slim treatise A Room of One’s Own over and over, throughout my life.
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Woolf tells us.
Indeed. In her honor, here is the post I wrote about hard lives after visiting an open-air museum in Latvia. – Jadi
Open-air museums are inappropriately named. For many people, Museum + History = Death by Excessive Yawning. Not me! A good open-air museum can transport me into other cultures and the past. I think a better name for such a site is ‘living museum’.
Latvia Ethnographic Open-Air Museum
A favorite open-air museum is Neuhausen ob Eck (amusingly named ‘New Home on the Eck’), located not far from Tuttlingen and Konstanz in southern Germany. In the bee keeper’s house, I learned all about the world of bees. The German language holds bees in special regard. In German, the term for animals is die Bestie or Tiere, beasts. But Germans speak of the Bienenvolk, a hive or literally ‘the bee people’. In the Middle Ages, if the bee keeper died in the night someone was sent to the hives to whisper the news to the bees.
The bee keeper enjoyed a special status. Thanks to his bee family he produced wax candles for light, honey for food, and pollen products for medicine. [1]
Fishing nets, Latvia Ethnographic Open-Air Museum
Outdoor museums can teach with their simplicity. On our trip to Estonia and Latvia, we spent a day at Latvia’s Ethnographic Open-Air Museum on the shore of Lake Jugla. The spot is incredibly atmospheric.
It’s an easy bus ride from the capitol Riga to the museum. Go to my post The Art of Food and salivate over the delicious meals you can order in Baltic restaurants.
What I learned is that as recently as 100 years ago life here was a different story.
Existence was harsh and hard, like the overcast skies much of the day we visited. [2] Along with simple huts, the site includes windmills.
A store building is filled with dowry chests and traces of Latvia’s long history serving in the Hanseatic League.
My takeaway: How truly thin the veneer of prosperity is. Our sense of progress and the advance of civilization is so recent, and so young. I left grateful for the things I take for granted in my everyday life. In too many places in the world people still live without electricity, running water, or centralized heat.
In memory of Virginia Woolf, 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941
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.
JRR Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa. He is of course reknowned for The Silmarillion, TheHobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for which he invented complex alphabets and histories for elvish, dwarvish, and other tongues. Tolkien taught at Oxford, England where he became close friends with fellow scholar and author C.S. Lewis. I once heard a story (I’d love to believe that it’s true), that the two professors were observed in a deep debate that went on for hours. Finally the observer gathered his courage and approached: what, might he ask, were the two men so fiercely arguing about?
“The characteristics of dragons,” they answered, and promptly went back to their discussion.
In Tolkien’s honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after seeing a dragon parade for the goddess Tin Hau in the New Territories of China.
Tin Hau is the Goddess of the Seas, patron saint of sailors and fishermen throughout China and Southeast Asia. [1, 2]
Her festival is always held on the twenty-third day of the third lunar month of the lunar calendar. My friend Weiyu flew over from Beijing, and we had the good luck to see a dragon parade. [3]
Lin Moniang (don’t forget that Chinese put the family name first) was born March 23, 960 in the Song Dynasty, on Meizhou Island in Fujian, China. She was the seventh daughter, an excellent swimmer, and wore a red dress. No matter how bad the weather was, Lin Moniang stood on the shore in that red dress in order to guide the fishing boats back home. She went into a trance during a terrible storm and saved her father’s life.
She was deified not long after she died.
There are many reports of miraculous sightings of Tin Hau by sailors in distress. Chinese who immigrated often built temples once they arrived overseas to thank her for the safe journey.
Each year a major festival is held on her birthday. One of the most spectacular is in Yuen Long in the New Territories. Weiyu and I headed out early to reach the town. We left the metro station and immediately spotted bright colors and a crowd of people. As we got closer, firecrackers began to go off! We’d arrived right on time!
The firecrackers exploded and confetti fell out and rained down!
The village had just begun to parade their dragon. They circled the lot a few times accompanied by a loud drum and cymbals. There was another loud bang, more firecrackers popped, and everyone followed the dragon into town.
We arrived at another square where more dragons waited.
The dragons took turns weaving up and down the main street, curling and snaking, rising and falling in an intricate dance. Sometimes two dragons danced at the same time.
People’s shirts indicated which village and dragon they were with. Groups of old women waved fans, children were in costume, and I saw lions.
Can you see the dragon on the side in green?
Flags and banners waved around the Fa Paus: ornate towers with paper flowers. Huge elaborate placards wished for luck and prosperity.
One village group’s Fa Pau
Offerings included entire roasted pigs.
I recognized those roast pigs instantly from the worship of goddess Bà Chúa Xứ in southern Viet Nam. It can’t be a coincidence that her festival starts at the beginning of the rainy season on the twenty-third day of a lunar month too…
In memory of JRR Tolkien, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
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 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.
Some twenty years ago I was having a bad visit with my dad. Bad. My thoughts were dark, and my mood was gloomy. I was filled with the kind of despair that only a fight with a family member can give you. Like, stabbing-knives kind of misery. To escape for a few hours Barb and I took our nephew and the canoe out to an island on the lake. We camped on it every summer as children.
We discovered that someone, now decamped and nowhere in sight, had built a magical sandcastle and town. Suddenly the black clouds lifted and I felt as filled with wonder as my nephew Niko.
one of my favorite photos of a young Niko
The paths of the sandcastle town were lined with wild mushroom caps, still fresh and unblemished. Someone made the sandcastle just hours before we got to the island.
Not a soul in sight
My photographs are decades old and pretty grainy. But you can see the sandcastle is truly in the middle of the Adirondacks wilderness (i.e. the middle of nowhere)… Only the shores of Cranberry Lake are all around.
Who built it? What whimsy inspired the person or persons to erect a fairy town on the waterfront of an island that few people ever visit?
The memory of that discovery and its gift of magic in the middle of a very hard place have remained as detailed as every bit of love and care that someone spent building it for us to find.
For those who want to know what happened next: Dad and I resolved our differences and grew closer again. I never found out who built that fairy town. But I still wonder why it appeared in my life at just that point and I remain grateful and filled with wonder that it did.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, WITH MY DEEPEST THANKS TO MY READERS AND FOLLOWERS. MAY THE COMING YEAR BRING ALL OF YOU DISCOVERIES OF SANDCASTLES WHERE YOU EXPECT THEM LEAST AND WHEN YOU NEED THEM MOST.
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 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 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.
Samuel L. Jackson was born December 21, 1948 in Washington, D.C. Mr. Jackson is one of the most versatile and talented actors in Hollywood. My personal favorite of his films is 1997’s Jackie Brown; one of his funniest turns on the screen is in the overwrought Snakes on a Plane. In his honor I am reprinting an earlier post I wrote in praise of snakes. – Jadi
I’ve written elsewhere about how nice my sister Barb’s garden is. [1]
She and her husband have created a space that invites you to stay and relax. Along with fruit trees and blueberries, garden beds and flowering bushes, there are ceramics made by both Barb and Javier.
Each time I return, they’ve made it even more beautiful. My recent visit included a new delight: garter snakes have taken up residence!
The garter snake is Massachusetts’ official state snake, and is endemic to most of North America. It’s the most common snake species, and closely related to water snakes, the genus Nerodia.
Garters communicate with and seek one another via pheromones. All garter snakes, regardless of color, have a side and a back stripe. The similarity to the garters men used to wear to hold up their socks gives the snake its name.
Barb has thoughtfully created ceramic dens for the snakes in her yard. They curl in the sun to get warm, and head for spots under rocks when it’s too hot or they feel threatened. Garters are mostly harmless, and seldom attack or strike unless cornered or threatened.
I find snakes fascinating. [2] Sacred snakes were used by the Oracle at Delphi and in ancient Minos. Recall the cobra, who spread its hood to shelter the Buddha. St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. [3] On a practical level, the garter snakes in Barb and Javier’s yard will eliminate any pest threat from rodents. (They also eat snails and slugs, common garden problems in the wet Northwest.)
As I admire the yard and go look from time to time for the two snakes I’ve seen in different parts of the garden, I think mostly about the fact that the presence of snakes means the small biosphere of my sister’s home is a healthy one. It’s not a coincidence that garter snakes are often referred to as ‘garden snakes’.
NOTES: [1] See my earlier post Meet the One-Tracks. [2] Fun science facts: some garter snake species have two-colored tongues. They are ovoviviparous, meaning they give birth to live young. Garter snakes go into something called brumation before mating. [3] Ireland didn’t have snakes….
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 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 for the Independent Author Network, 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’m always delighted to find traditionally painted eggs while traveling. These eggs are from the former Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Sometimes they even come with a certificate of authenticity, like the 3 eggs I got in the old castle in Ljubljana!
It’s an easy bus ride from the capitol Riga to the museum. Go to my post 
Existence was harsh and hard, like the overcast skies much of the day we visited. [2] Along with simple huts, the site includes windmills.
A store building is filled with dowry chests and traces of Latvia’s long history serving in the Hanseatic League.
The garter snake is Massachusetts’ official state snake, and is endemic to most of North America. It’s the most common snake species, and closely related to water snakes, the genus Nerodia.
I find snakes fascinating. [2] Sacred snakes were used by the Oracle at Delphi and in ancient Minos. Recall the cobra, who spread its hood to shelter the Buddha. St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. [3] On a practical level, the garter snakes in Barb and Javier’s yard will eliminate any pest threat from rodents. (They also eat snails and slugs, common garden problems in the wet Northwest.)
As I admire the yard and go look from time to time for the two snakes I’ve seen in different parts of the garden, I think mostly about the fact that the presence of snakes means the small biosphere of my sister’s home is a healthy one. It’s not a coincidence that garter snakes are often referred to as ‘garden snakes’.