And it’s the last post in this blog thread for Bobbo! I present the Grande Finale: Installment # 42! describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
Well-hidden knot member. Back trails, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks
This herd wasn’t on a leash.
The obstinate gang ganged up on the humans.
It’s not easy to find this knot.
The cluster clustered on blossoms.
I’m troubled by the trouble brought on by a troubling.
A mute is anything but!
A gargle really has necks to gargle.
After reading this wonderful blog thread I hope you all now worship the worship!
Answers:
Herd member, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, India
Herd of deer [1]
Herd, gang AND obstinacy of water buffalo [2]
Knot of toads
Cluster of dragonflies [3]
Troubling of goldfish
Mute of hound dogs
Gargle of swans
Worship of writers [4]
Herd, aka Leash, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, IndiaCluster member, Cranberry Lake, AdirondacksGang, Inle Lake, MyanmarHerd, Inle Lake, Myanmar
NOTES: [1] Also known as a leash of deer [2] Herd, gang and obstinacy of water buffalo National Geographic [3] Cluster, swarm or flight of dragonflies [4] Australian Geographic and An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton.
Worshipper of words….
NOTES on NOTES: I almost never put myself in my posts. For this final hurrah a photo and the final, special definition are called for. Thanks and much love to all my readers for sticking with this thread and sharing your feedback. — Jadi
And it’s the first half of the last post in this blog thread for Bobbo! I present the Grande Finale: Installment # 41! describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page. Happy Easter, everyone. May the world be reborn.
A colony’s done some serious colonizing in here. Back trails, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks
The host hosted a seed hunt.
The storytelling is storytelling.
The colony colonized the waters with colonies.
She feverishly watched the fever.
The road teemed with teams.
No way to hide from this hive’s hive!
The scoop scoops with scoops.
Answers:
Scoop!
Host of sparrows
Storytelling of crows
Colony of beavers
Fever of sting rays
Team of oxen
Hive of bees [1]
Scoop of pelicans [2]
Fever, Kagoshima Aquarium, Japan
NOTES: [1] A hive is the physical location. Bee status: Endangered [2] Remember the squadron of pelicans from Installment #3?
NOTES on NOTES: I almost never put myself in my posts. For this final hurrah a photo and a final, special definition are called for. Thanks and much love to all my readers for sticking with this thread and sharing your feedback. — Jadi
Last week I wrote about the Bun Bang Fai. This is another installment of a new feature for this blog: I’m transcribing my entries from an old travel journal. I hauled out the journal I kept then to make sure that my memories match up with the facts. I use a travel diary to record first impressions and get down the details to go over later (like now, yearslater). As I said with the last one, enjoy, and let me know if this post is something you want to read more of in the future. — Jadi
“13 March. We stumbled into a rocket festival. The guide asked us if we’d like to stop and look around – a large wooden platform had been erected in a clearing so teams from some 30 surrounding villages could shoot off home-made rockets! The three categories were for small, medium and large and a village head scored them for height and at the end of the third day would give out awards, ranging from a house to a water buffalo.
It’s all pre-Buddhist, pre-recorded time: a wish to impregnate the skies so that it begins to rain. Food stands set up all alongside the one road, a band stand with live music and people dancing before it, a big pavillion for sitting and partying with lots of tables and chairs. The village teams cross-dressed and parading around with their rockets, lots of silly play-acting and laughter.
Pretty in Pink, or is that Pretty as Pink? A team carrying in their rocket for the competition
Check out the stylish red outfit
Depending on the region the 3-day festival takes place just before the start of the rainy season. For example, our guide’s home village has their rocket ceremony later, in May. The fest goes on somewhere in Laos from March through May.
We were the only foreigners. People noticed us certainly but other than a very drunken pair of pals who semi-interviewed us in English, no one ogled or jostled or tried to sell us anything.”
In a post titled Punctured, we met Jeremy: he works in a food co-op and is bitten by a gigantic Thai centipede. Earlier Jeremy worked in a coolants factory that moved operations; repaired stereo turntables until CDs took over; and serviced video stores where the only genre patrons regularly rented was pornography. Then, with the advent of on-line downloads, those shops closed as well.
He’s tried to involve his wife in some aspect of each new venture. Now Jeremy’s at the co-op, and Abigail’s nervous…
Pomolo, Mekong Delta, Vietnam
Jeremy got a job at the market and the offerings for her continued education went from disks to baskets full of items Abigail couldn’t begin to identify. “Whole foods?” Abigail asked bewildered. “What, have I been cooking halves all this time?” Her culinary repertoire consisted of items like tuna surprise, or flank steak with teriyaki sauce.
As Jeremy introduced new ingredients for her to cook, Abigail despaired. The experiment with pornography had wearied her in more than just her body. The effort to familiarize herself with her husband’s latest employment arena was too much. Abigail couldn’t even begin to cook with broccoli rape, celeriac, rose apples, or salsify…
just looking up the latter food and realizing that it was a vegetable also known as oyster plant rendered it too foreign. If she didn’t know where to start with a real oyster, how in the world would she find her way around a dastardly, cleverly named root vegetable you had to wear rubber gloves to prepare?
Abby stood in her kitchen, lost. She resented feeling inadequate, but she felt guilty, too. Nothing says loving like something in the oven. Which part was true, she wondered. Love, for whom? Something in the oven, but what?
Her husband had assaulted her senses one by one. First it was her sense of touch with the air conditioners. Sound had proved inadequate with the stereo shops. Her senses of sight, sound and touch were simultaneously overwhelmed by pornography. Currently the food store derided her sense of taste. Abigail wondered depressed what would be next for her sense of smell.
Abby leafed through the cookbook he bought her and sighed, looking without success for familiar ingredients. Miracle whip. Devils food cake. Cowboy beans and chili. A slice of American cheese on a burger. Jell-O with fruit cocktail. When she confessed this to Jeremy, he said, “I married a Betty Crocker cliché.”
He had been dismayed when she first cooked for him. After all those great meals in exotic countries of curries, tom yum gum soups, and completely fresh ingredients, Abby’s cooking was like going from Technicolor to a 50’s black and white film clip. She served fish sticks bearing little resemblance to the fish dishes of his recent memory.
All dishes prepared on boats in Halong Bay, Vietnam
“I made homemade tartar sauce!” she announced proudly.
Jeremy spooned out mayonnaise with pickles cut into it and smiled weakly.
The first time she tried to cook him Indian food Abigail choked almost to death because she had no idea that the whole spices all get taken out or pushed to one side, and are not eaten. Ditto with the hot chilies used for flavor.
Chilies and mini limes, Hue, Vietnam
New ingredients were dangerous. For her, bourbon vanilla meant cheap cooking sherry. Cans of condensed soup were her friends.
Abby loved tuna surprise, and the most exotic dish she could cook was a quiche. “If life is a banquet,” she thought, “I must be cheese Doritos chips. I am flat cherry soda.”
– from my short story “Punctured” in Broken In: A Novel in Stories. Available online at amazon.com,amazon.de, and amazon in countries everywhere.
Go to the post titled Punctured to read more about Jeremy.
(All photogaphs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.)
More pictures from our trips and of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
Salsify: also called scorzifora and ‘the poor man’s oyster’ (photo from Wikipedia)
Pomolo: gigantic relative of grapefruit, can grow to the size of a basketball
Dragon fruit: thick red rind is peeled away to reveal citrus fruit with pale flesh flecked with black seeds
Mekong seaweed: river weed harvested from Mekong River. Often fried in thin sheets with garlic or sesame seeds. In Luang Prabang, Laos, a specialty eaten with dipping sauce that includes pounded water buffalo skin as an ingredient
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.
