Jennifer Bohnhoff
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Disaster Leads to Stunning Archaeological Discovery

11/28/2024

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On August 28, 1908, disaster struck Folsom, a ranching and farming town on the plains in north- eastern New Mexico. It was late summer, which is often monsoon season. The hay had been cut and harvested. Leftover stalks littered the fields.

Monsoons can bring stunning amounts of water to the parched plains in short amounts of time. A cloudburst on August 28 dumped 14”, an unusually large amount of rain, even for monsoon season. The waters collected the hay stalks and other debris and swept it down the arroyos and rivers that are often dry. When the water reached the small railroad bridges that crossed those arroyos and dry rivers, the debris got caught and created impromptu dams. Under pressure from the swelling river, the dams gave way, resulting in a huge surge of water. 


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Residents up river from Folsom realized that the town was in danger. They called Sarah J. "Sally" Rooke, the Folsom telephone operator to warn of the coming danger. In 1908, telephones were not yet automated and connections could only be made by hand, sticking wires into holes for each telephone. Rooke stayed at her station and continued to call as many residents as she could to alert them to the impending wall of water. When the flood hit the town, Ms. Rooke was washed away. She was one of 18 people who died in the disaster.

On the day after the flood, a cowboy named George McJunkin was riding the range above the ravaged town of Folsom. He was looking for cattle that had gotten bogged down in the mud and fences that had been broken down. Instead, he found something that eventually changed the story of humans in North America.
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 McJunkin had been born a slave on a ranch in Midway, Texas. He was born in about 1856 and was probably around 9 years old when the Civil War began. Although he never received a formal education, he had a quick and inquisitive mind. Other cowboys taught him to read and write, speak Spanish, and play the fiddle and guitar. An enterprising man, when he was freed at the end of the war, he worked many jobs, including hunting buffalo and working on ranches in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. He also spent some time loading bison bones onto boxcars. 

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Hundreds of thousands of bison had been shot during the time that the railroads were coming west. Their carcasses were left to rot where they had fallen. When it was discovered that bone meal strengthens concrete, many of those piles of bison bones were loaded into boxcars and shipped east, to New York City, where the first skyscrapers were beginning to rise.

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At the time of the Folsom flood, McJunkin was the foreman of the Crowfoot ranch, which lay upstream from Folsom. McJunkin was riding through Wild Horse Arroyo when he saw some bones sticking out of the soil some 11 feet below the surface of the mesa. McJunkin knew that the deeper an object was found, the older they usually were. These bones must be older than the ones typically found on the high-country grasslands. Furthermore, they were much larger than any bison bones he’d seen during his time loading bones onto railroad cars. Recognizing the significance of the find, McJunkin left the site undisturbed. He spent the rest of his life trying to get scientists to visit Wild Horse Arroyo. In 1918 he sent sample bones and a lance point to the Denver Museum of Natural History, who sent paleontologist Harold Cook to look at them the following spring. Cook and McJunkin did some exploratory digging but found nothing that Cook deemed important. When McJunkin died in 1922, the site was still considered just a place where bison antiquus had died. 

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Scientists already knew that giant bison, far larger than modern ones, once roamed North America. Their bones were first discovered at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky in the 1850s.  One of the many megafaunas, or giant animals that existed during the Pleistocene period, or the last Ice Age, Bison Antiquus could reach 7.4 ft tall, be 15 ft long, and weigh up to 3,501 lbs. Their horns were considerably larger than those of living American bison and differed in shape, some looking more like longhorn cattle than the small, curved horns of modern bison. These giant beasts had a large range. Specimens of Bison antiquus have been discovered in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. They went extinct sometime around 9,000 years B.C.E. 
Four years after McJunkin’s death, the Colorado Museum of Natural History sent a crew of paleontologists to Wild Horse Arroyo with the intention of excavating a prehistoric Bison skeleton for their museum. Instead, they discovered something that changed archaeologist's understanding of man in the North American hemisphere. The Museum workers found stone projectile points that are now known as “Folsom points.” One, actually embedded in a rib, proved that the points were left by men who were hunting bison these bison. By studying the site and the angles of the cut marks in the bones, scientists have been able to determine that ancient men herded the bison into the arroyo, then attacked them from above. Scientists have found the skeletons of 32 bison. Cut marks in the bones show that some of the choicest meats where butchered off the animals, but much was left in place.
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An illustration by Ian Bristow, from Jennifer Bohnhoff's In the Shadow of Sunrise, a middle grade novel about the Folsom people.
Until this discovery, scientists had believed that men had crossed the Bering Strait into North America about 2,000 b.c.e. George McJunkin’s find showed that man was here 7,000 years earlier than previously thought. Since then, Folsom points have been found in many places in North America, and other finds have pushed back man’s arrival on the continent even further.
Sally Rooke and George McJunkin are both buried in the Folsom Cemetery, which occupies a windy and isolated hill outside of town. The town itself has a museum that is housed in an old mercantile. The Historical Society sponsors trips to the Folsom Site twice a year. 

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A former New Mexico History teacher, Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of books for middle grade through adult readers, many of which are set in her home state of New Mexico. Her latest book, In the Shadow of Sunrise, tells the story of Folsom people in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico and includes the Folsom site. It will be published in April 2025 and is available for preorder. 

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A Lighter Pumpkin Bread

11/21/2024

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Last week I got the hankering for pumpkin bread. I love its creamy texture, its pumkiny taste, especially when slathered with cream cheese.

So I got out my mother's old recipe for pumpkin bread, and I pulled all the ingredients out of my cupboards, and I discovered that I was in trouble. My mothers old recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups of vegetable oil, and I had just a little bit in the bottom of the bottle: definitely not 1 1/4 cups!

I live high up in the mountains. The closest grocery store is 20 minutes away. Did I want to drive 40 minutes just to get my craving filled? Not me. Instead, I did some tinkering with the recipe. What I ended up with was better tasting and healthier for you, too! I hope you give this recipe a try, and you agree with me. 
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Ingredients

2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
2 TBS. oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
7 oz. canned pumpkin (if your measuring cup doesn't have ounces,
         this is halfway between 3/4 and 1 cup)
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°

Beat eggs, sugar, oil, applesauce, and pumpkin together until fluffy.
Mix in dry ingredients, blending well so that everything is evenly distributed. 
Pour into a greased and floured bread pan. Smooth the top. 

Bake for 1 hour, or until the top bounces back when lightly pressed down with your finger. 


When not tinkering around in the kitchen or running to the store for supplies, Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can learn more about her and her books here, on her website. 
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Hidden Gem: Pueblo Montaño Chainsaw Sculpture Garden

11/14/2024

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Sometimes the most interesting but unknown places are hidden within plain sight. That is certainly true of Albuquerque's Chainsaw Sculpture Garden. Located off Montano, just east of Coors Blvd, the sculpture garden is one of the  trailheads for the Paseo del Bosque hiking system. It includes picnic tables and a public restroom. The address is 4100 Montaño Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87120.
The story of how this sculpture garden came to be is an interesting one. In 2003, some teenagers were playing with fireworks when they inadvertently sparked a wildfire in the bosque. The fire spread to over 250 acres and damaged a lot of  land and trails along the riverfront. One of the firefighter who helped to put out the blazes was named Mark Chavez. Chaves is a chainsaw artist in his free time, and thought that turning the charred cottonwood trunks into sculpture  honors both  the natural beauty of the Southwest and the fire itself.
One of the sculptures depicts an eagle rising like a phoenix from the flames.k Another shows a  firefighter, perhaps a self-portrait (?) standing upon a slain dragon. This is more significant if you know that the word “dragon” is what being firemen call especially bad fires. There are also sculptures of coyotes, beavers, fish, turtles, roadrunners and cranes, all animals who live in the area. And to remind children to stay out of arroyos, there's a sculpture of La Llorona, the legendary ghost/witch who drowns children who go where they shouldn't, unless a firefighter or other hero rescues them.
If visiting the sculpture garden is not enough, you can continue your adventure with a walk along the Paseo del Bosque trail, a 16-mile multi-use trail that runs through the cottonwood forest that follows the banks of the Rio Grande.

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When she's not hiking, Jennifer Bohnhoff is writing. The author of over a dozen books, many of which are historical fiction for middle grade readers through adults, Bohnhoff lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. You can read more about her and her books on her website. 

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The Little War: Children's Propaganda in WWI

11/7/2024

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War impacts everyone; world wars, even more so. Now through February, the National WWI Museum and War Memorial in Kansas City is hosting an exhibit which explores the lives of children swept up by the storms of World War I while adults were fighting on the front line and supporting the war effort.
PictureBlack and white photograph of American soldiers and a small girl. The soldiers and the girl all hold rifles over their right shoulder. Photo: object 2023.122.1 in the Museum collection. https://collections.theworldwar.org/argus/final/Portal/Default.aspx?component=AAAS&record=16235ede-63d9-4183-b069-bc8362c450f1

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Although everyone wants to shield children from the horrors of war, it seems that no one wants children to be completely unaware of war. The objects on display for this exhibit clearly show that society wanted children to believe that their fathers and their country were fighting for a just and important cause. People wanted their children to feel like they, too, were fighting for something important. 

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Joseph D. Marcelli wearing the play uniform made by his father, a tailor in New Jersey. Object ID: 2011.50.1 in the museum collection. 

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One way that adults tried to indoctrinate children was with uniforms such as the one pictured above. The museum also shows miniature nurses uniforms emblazoned with red crosses, so that girls could also play their part in imaginary war games. 

Another way that children learned to hate the enemy, and therefore war against him, was by ridiculing the other side. Nursery Rhymes for Fighting Times took common Mother Goose rhymes such as Humpty Dumpty, and adapted them to make the Germans, especially Kaiser Wilhelm, look ridiculous.

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Such propaganda seems horrible and jingoistic by today's standards. At the time, they were commonplace. The impressionable young minds of American and British children were being fed a clear lesson: that loyalty and commitment would win the war against an enemy that had to be defeated. Molded by the first truly global conflict, the children who grew up during World War I became the adults who had to endure the horrors of World War II. I wonder if they wouldn't have become The Greatest Generation had they not been trained into it in childhood.

Located in Kansas City, the National WWI Museum and Memorial is America's leading institution dedicated to remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. Click here for more information about its collection or visiting the museum. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff in an author who lives and writes in the mountains of central New Mexico. She wrote about World War I in her historical novel, A Blaze of Poppies. 

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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

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    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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