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November 11: Birthday of a Famous Soldier

11/11/2020

Patton at VMI

I’m sure you all know that Veteran’s Day used to be called Armistice Day, and is set on the anniversary of the end of WWI. What you may not know, since it’s entirely coincidental if still appropriate, is that it’s also George S. Patton’s birthday. It seems fitting that we honor all veterans on the birthday of a man who devoted his life to military service.

George Smith Patton Jr. was born into a life of privilege on November 11, 1885. His father was the district attorney for Los Angeles County and his mother was the daughter of Los Angeles’ first elected mayor. He went to VMI for one year before transferring to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he proved himself to be a mediocre student but a brilliant athlete. It’s ironic, and I’m sure not coincidental that Patton’s statue at West Point is placed with his back towards the library.

Did you that he was also an Olympian? Patton was the first American to compete in the Modern Pentathlon, a new event at the time of the 1912 Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden. Inspired by the pentathlon of ancient Greece, in which a soldier carried a message over a long distance, riding horseback, swimming a river, and running, the event was only open to military personnel in 1912. Patton, a first lieutenant stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia, was chosen based on his track and field, fencing, sharpshooting performances at West Point. He placed twenty-first in the shooting, seventh in the swim, fourth in fencing, sixth in riding and third in running; not a good enough showing to earn a medal or much attention from the press.

Patton did receive a lot of press for something that happened in 1916, when he was in Mexico during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa. Patton was leading a foraging expedition to buy food for the American soldiers when one of his interpreters identified a man at one of the stops as a bandit. Patton began a search of nearby farms. He ended up in a gun battle with three men, one of whom was Julio Gardenas, a senior leader of Pancho Villa’s gang. All three of the Mexicans were killed. Patton had their bodies strapped the bodies to the hoods of Dodge Touring Cars they were driving, then returned to camp. It was probably the first time that an American used motor-vehicles in a military attack.

Patton, of course, went on to fame with larger vehicles than touring cars, and he continued to act audaciously, commanding attention from the press. Few veterans command attention like Patton did, but all deserve our attention and our appreciation.

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Cranberry Orange Muffins

11/2/2020

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By November fall is definitely here. In New Mexico, October sees the glories of the Balloon Fiesta and the aspens and maples in the state change color. Even the cottonwoods in the bosque down near the Rio Grande have one glorious, golden season. But by November all that glory is usually over.

These muffins will bring a little brightness back into your morning. The orange juice enlivens the batter and the cranberries give the muffins a nice burst of tartness.

Cranberry Orange Muffins
Mix together
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup oil

2 3/4 cups manic muffin mix
1 tbs orange peel
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350. Line 18 muffin tins with paper muffin cups.
Mix the wet ingredients, then add the dry ingredients and stir until there are not dry areas left.

Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 25 minutes, until the tops of the muffins are browned a bit.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator who lives in rural New Mexico. She is currently working on an historical novel set in New Mexico during the Civil War, and another one that takes place during World War 1.

Are you on her friends and family email list? Those who are got an ebook that compiles a year's worth of muffin recipes as a Christmas gift in 2019. If you'd like to join, fill out the form here.

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The Ghosts of Valverde

10/26/2020

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A short story by Jennifer Bohnhoff,
based on the characters in
Where Duty Calls, book 1 of the
Rebels Along the Rio Grande Trilogy

Raul waited until heard the servant slip the timber into the braces, blocking the door. One couldn’t be too careful these days. The Confederates who’d been too sick or injured to head north after the Battle of Valverde had been in Socorro nearly two months, long enough to heal and wander the town looking for a little whiskey, a fight to pick, or a girl. Willing or unwilling didn’t matter. Anything to relieve their boredom. Mama was still young enough, and beautiful enough, to attract attention.

He looked up and down the dusty street. Finding it empty, he hitched the basket into the crook of his arm and headed toward San Miguel church, where he turned into the graveyard. Raul set the basket atop a sandy mound that had already begun to cement itself together again, healing like the girl beneath it never would. An image of Lupe stretched on her bed flashed into Raul’s mind. He moved the basket, horrified he might have placed it on her chest. He straightened and scanned the road. He hadn’t been followed.

“Mama told me to give this to you. She misses you. So do I.” Raul stuck his hand into the basket and pulled out a tortilla. He folded it in quarters and set it on the grave. Raul sat back on his heels and stared at the bit of bread. Lupe was beyond eating anything, ever again. Still, there was comfort in sharing with her. She had died at such a difficult time that none of the usual observances had happened; quickly buried, with no velorios, no neighbors bringing food, nothing to attract the attention of the Confederates. It had been a hard and lonely time for Mama, made harder by her husband and brother’s absence. There was not much that the two men agreed on, but they had appeared to be of one accord in hiding of the flock and stock from the Confederates. Raul tilted his head back, scanning high in the hills. Was either Papa or Tio watching him? Which one he should he be watching himself? They were so different from one another; he could not follow both.

A little whirlwind rose up, scoured from the earth by the afternoon heat. At the first sting of sand on his face, Raul closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. When he opened them again, the tortilla was covered with a fine dusting of grit. Raul stood up and dusted his trousers. The mice, or racoons, or whatever it was that ate the ofrendas left for the dead wouldn’t mind a little dirt with their meal.
He crossed to the low adobe wall at the back of the graveyard and looked around once more to be sure that no one watched before he sat atop it and swung his legs over. From the back of the church, he climbed into the hills, checking over his shoulder several times to see if he was being followed. The town seemed asleep, dazed by the heat of the day. Raul pulled the neckerchief from around his neck and mopped his face as another whirlwind rose into a swirling column of dirt, struck a gravestone, and collapsed on itself, dying almost before it had begun. It was only April, but already afternoons had become oppressive enough to create dust devils, diablos de polvo.

Raul dropped over a ridge and the village disappeared from sight. He scrambled up a sandy arroyo as it wound up into the hills. Gasping for breath, he switched the basket to his other arm.

“Mi’jo, you sound like an entire troop of soldiers,” a voice said from somewhere above him. Raul twisted his head back and saw his father, Cresenio, silhouetted against the sky.

“It’s this loose rock. It crunches and rolls under your feet.” Raul gestured down, and his father snorted.

“That, and you’re gasping like the bellows in the blacksmith’s shop. You don’t get out enough. You’re getting soft, like your uncle. Pretty soon, you’ll be good for nothing but balancing account books and arguing in court.”

Cresenio leaped down from the boulder and led the way up the arroyo. Raul slipped and slid as he struggled to keep up. His short legs could not match his father’s long strides, but he didn’t dare ask his father to slow down. Crescenio snapped his head to one side so that his words carried over his shoulder. “It’s a good thing it’s me who heard you coming, not some Apache. You would have looked like a porcupine by now.”

“You seen any Apaches?” Raul shaded his eyes and scanned the hills, which shimmered in the heat, making it almost impossible to pick out movement. He stumbled, nearly dropping the basket.

“I seen nothing.” Crescenio spit contemptuously, his voice tinged with bitterness. “No Indians. No soldiers, Union or Confederate. We’re wasting our time up here. But your uncle, he is too afraid of the Confederates.”

“Not much to be afraid of, at least for us men,” Raul said as he panted for breath. “Most are just limping, hollow-eyed skeletons. The rest are buried outside of town. Father Sanchez wouldn’t let them be buried in the churchyard.”

“They’re not the ones Tio’s afraid of.” Crescenio jerked his chin north, indicating the thin, green line delineating the bosque that flanked the Rio Grande. Somewhere down there, a defeated Confederate Army was limping its way back towards Texas. Raul had heard the rumors. Everyone in town had, and all eyes scanned the northern horizon for a return of the dust cloud that hung over an army on the move.

The arroyo made a sudden turn and entered a deep bowl hidden by steep walls. Zorro and Torro, the two blue-eyed sheepdogs, appeared out of the grass and growled. Crescenio snarled a command, so they circled and dropped back into the grass, content they had fulfilled their guard duties. Cattle and sheep ranged throughout the bowl, mowing the spring grass. Raul noted a couple of Tio’s shepherds perched on rocks high in the walls, rifles across their knees, their broadbrimmed hats tipped forward so that he couldn’t tell whether they were awake or asleep. At the back of the valley, where two cottonwoods kept watch over a small, spring-fed pond, Tio Pedro sat on the stairs of the little, round-topped wagon that the herders now shared with their employer and his brother-in-law-bodyguard. It was surely a tight fit.

“Ah! You’ve captured a spy,” Tio Pedro said playfully. He set down the book that had been cradled in his lap and held out his hand. “I say we confiscate his basket and see what’s in it. How is that sister of mine?”

“She is lonely and bored, and still very sad,” Raul answered.

“But safe? And well? And Arsenio?” Crescenio demanded.

“Mama is safe. And well. And Arsenio is recovering.” Raul saw the slight tic of relief that his father didn’t want him to see. Crescenio wanted everyone to think he was steely and strong, but underneath the sharp exterior lay a man who loved his bubbly, vivacious wife, grieved for the daughter he had lost, and worried still for the son who had nearly accompanied his sister in death.

“We should be with her.” Crescenio gave his brother-in-law a sharp, sidewise glance.

“Not until those Texicans have passed through.” Tio responded, in an equally sharp tone. Clearly, that this was an argument they had often.

“What? You don’t want to sell to them as they pass through town? From what I hear, they are desperate for food.” Crescenio asked mockingly.

“If they had any money, I might consider it. But their paper money is no better than their word, and their coin long gone. And desperate men are dangerous men. Better to stay here.” Tio Pedro pulled back the cloth that covered the basket and chuckled with satisfaction. He pulled out a tortilla and ate it. When it was gone, he handed one each to Crescenio and Raul, then tossed a couple to the sheepherders, who had silently drifted down from their rock perches and were hovering nearby. Raul rolled his tortilla and nibbled on the end, his eyes darting between his uncle and his father as he appraised them both.

Tio Baca was one of the richest men in town, and his thoughts always centered on his money and how he could make more. He worried less about whether the Union or the Confederates could hold the little town of Socorro than he did about which side could pay the most for his goods. Raul’s father, on the other hand, had come from poor stock, and prized his pride more than money. He hated both the Northerners and the Southerners, and wanted both out of New Mexico. Raul sat between the two men, pulled first towards the argument of one and then the other.

The wind picked up at the opening of the box canyon, ruffling Zorro and Torro’s coats. Raul watched it swirl into a column of grass bits and dust. The hair on the back of his head rose. A tingle ran up his spine.

“It’s been a strange year. Extra cold this winter, but little snow. And now, diablos de polvo, this early,” Tio said. “Know what the Navajo call them? Chiindii. Spirits.”

Crescenio shivered and crossed himself. “Don’t go talking about spirits. Not with all the deaths we’ve had.”

Tio Baca laughed. “Surely you don’t believe in ghosts! They went the way of the Inquisition, and witches. We’re living in the age of science, now!”

“There are plenty of things left that your Galilleos can’t explain,” Crescenio said with a snarl.

Raul set his tortilla aside, unnerved by the argument. He didn’t want to think about ghosts, not with the faces of so many dead men haunting his dreams at night. Ever since the battle at Valverde Ford, he had found himself jerking up from his sleeping mat, gasping for breath like a drowning man, his heart pounding, his body soaked with sweat. The faces, blood smeared and broken, hovered over him long after he awakened, and he would find himself outside, staring at the stars as he tried to calm himself. But stars reminded him of the thousand Confederate fires he had seen while standing on the parapet at Fort Craig, and that memory would start his heart pounding once again.

Raul felt his heart pounding now as he got to his feet and left the argument behind him. Maybe his father was right, and the world of the dead existed here, beside his own. Maybe his uncle was right, and there were no such things as ghosts. The dead were just dead. He would have to side with one man or the other on this, as he would have to decide which was right on the question of foreigners in his land, and how he was to live his life. He loved and honored both men. How could he choose between them?

Zorro and Torro raised their heads and watched him pass between them with suspicious and hopeful eyes. When he was beyond the protection of the canyon, Raul sat on a boulder and stared at the immense land spread before him, the parallel lines of mountains and bosque snaking northward towards a distant horizon. The wind picked up again, whistling through the rocks and forming another dust devil. This one seemed to hover in front of him, shimmering and shifting until it almost coalesced into a figure of a young girl.

“Lupe?” His sister’s name slipped from his lips, half gasp and half prayer. Though barely audible, it seemed to have the strength to make the wind collapse on itself, dissolving into nothingness. Raul stared at the place where the shape had been, and saw, far in the distance, flashes of metal like a thousand falling stars amid a faint cloud of drifting dust. The time for indecisiveness was over.

Thank you for reading my short story. If it intrigues you, please join my friends, fans and family newsletter list or visit my website so that you can learn more about my work. You can buy Where Duty Calls here.

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The Battle of Mesilla

10/11/2020

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Isaac Lynde: The Wrong Man for the Job

10/5/2020

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If there was ever a man who suffered by being placed in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was Isaac Lynde.

Lynde was born July 27, 1804, in Williamstown, Vermont. He must have been a promising lad, for in 1822 he secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Academy’s records describe him as "an intelligent, sprightly lad," handsome, and well educated,” and he graduated four years later, thirty-second in a class of thirty-eight.

Lynde’s early career was typical for the time. He served in a number of frontier posts in the Northwest and the far plains, and took part in the Mexican-American War. Unlike many of his time, though Lynde’s record includes no battles or distinction of any kind, and in thirty-four years of service he had risen only three full grades, to Major. All of his promotions were routine, and based on time of service, his appointments to posts that were out of the way and relatively underutilized. Why this was the case cannot be said with any certainty. Perhaps he was not as promising as his youth had indicated, or perhaps his problem was that he was an infantry man in an Army that was giving all its plum assignments to the cavalry. At any case, by the time the Civil War was brewing, Lynde was at the end of his career and looking forward to retiring on a pension and settling into obscurity.

Circumstances, however, were not going to allow Lynde to retire quietly. In June 1861, the Union Army in New Mexico Territory faced a huge dilemma. Many officers and soldiers, including William Loring, the Commander of the Department of New Mexico, had resigned their posts and joined the Confederate Army. This left such a serious shortage of troops that E.R.S. Canby, Loring’s replacement, was forced to close forts created primarily to protect settlers from Indian attack and concentrate men in those forts most likely to lie along the path an invading Confederate army might take. Canby ordered Major Isaac Lynde then in command of the 7th Infantry, to abandon Fort McLane, south of Silver City, and take command of Fort Fillmore, six miles from the town of Mesilla. Canby warned Lynde that his new post was endangered not only by a possible invasion from Texas, but because the civilian population of Mesilla Valley sympathized strongly with the Southern cause. It was a crucial post to hold because it controlled the stage road on which U.S. troops would use to withdraw from Arizona. It was also the last Union holding that officers leaving New Mexico to join the Confederacy passed through, and the first objective for a Confederate advance into New Mexico. Lynde was given full responsibility for the area, including the right to decide whether to attack or ignore El Paso’s Fort Bliss, forty miles to the south and in secessionist hands.

When Major Lynde arrived at his new post in the first week of July, he found it woefully inadequate. Lynde noted that Fort Fillmore was located in a basin surrounded by sand hills, so that artillery could fire down into it. The hills were covered by dense growth that would allow a thousand men to approach undetected to within 500 yards. Next to the fort, a sweep of level land was ideal for attacking cavalry. Furthermore, the fort had no walls or ramparts. Shaped like a U, its open end faced the river and the road from El Paso. Because water had to be carried up from the river, a mile and a half to west, the fort could not stand a siege. He wrote to Canby that he thought the fort was poorly situated for defense, and it was not worth the exertion it would take to hold it.

On July 25, Lynde was forced into action when Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor brought his 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles to Mesilla. Lynde left one company of infantry and the band to hold the fort. He crossed the Rio Grande with a force of three hundred and eighty men and four howitzers. He lined his men up in a cornfield, then sent his aide forward with a white flag to demand that the Confederates surrender. The Confederates replied that if Lynde wanted Mesilla, he was to come and get it. Lynde then fired his howitzers, whose shells burst short in the air. The Mayor of Mesilla came out and reminded Lynde that killing the women and children who sheltered in the town would look very bad and would not win Lynde any allies among the people. After a few exchanges of musket fire, and a small number of casualties on both sides, Lynde withdrew to the fort as evening fell.

That night, Lynde decided that the only hope of saving his troops from capture was in abandoning the fort and reaching another military post. He ordered the evacuation, set the fort on fire to stop it and its supplies from falling into enemy hands, and at one in the morning began the march up and over the Organ Mountains to Fort Stanton. Lynde had never taken this road, but he believed that San Augustine was only twenty miles away, just over a pass in the mountains. The march went well until the sun rose on a hot July day. Then the distance proved to be much longer and the water much scarcer than Lynde had believed. As Baylor’s men followed along, they found the road lined with guns, cartridge boxes, and men who were almost dying from fatigue and thirst. The memoirs of Hank Smith, a private soldier on the Confederate side, suggest that many of the men were drunk, and suggests that, unwilling to abandon their supply of whisky, the soldiers filled their canteens with it before the march. Since no other accounts mention this, it’s unlikely that it’s true.

When Baylor finally caught up with Lynde at San Augustine Springs, Lynde surrendered his entire command without firing a shot. Twenty-six Union soldiers joined the Confederates, and sixteen chose military imprisonment, becoming prisoners of war. The rest, 410 men, were paroled out of the war. Baylor gave them enough rifles and food to travel through Indian country to Canby's headquarters at Santa Fe, where Lynde's command broke up. Many of the men were sent to New York and spent the war as harbor guards or performed other non-belligerent duties.

Lynde himself also journeyed east, to Washington where he was expected to explain his actions. Despite conflicting testimony, he was dismissed from the Army, a scapegoat for Union failure in the southwest during the early days of the war. Lynde spent the next five years fighting this decision, which was finally reversed. He was reinstated to his rank in September 1866.

It remains unclear why Lynde surrendered the fort and his command without putting up much of a fight. Perhaps Lynde really harbored sympathies with the Confederates, as some people suggested. Or it could be that Lynde was truly incompetent and indecisive. But perhaps Lynde just lacked the experience and training to make the decisions that his situation required. Whatever the reasons, the old soldier, who was within sight of honorable, pensioned retirement after a long and uneventful career saw his plans go up in smoke in the smoldering ruins of Fort Fillmore. Like the road to San Augustine Springs, his road to retirement was longer and harder than he had expected.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her novel Valverde takes place at the time of Lynde’s abandonment of Fort Fillmore. If you would like to read more about the Battle of Mesilla, click here and here. For more about Lynde and his court marshal, go here and here. If you would like to know more about Ms. Bohnhoff and her books, go to her website.

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Visiting the WWI Battlefields of Belgium

6/24/2020

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In 2019 my husband and I were lucky to join a guided tour of World War I Battlefields. The war may have ended over a hundred years ago, but the landscape is still scarred by it, and by the war that followed.

These pictures were taken near an area known as Hill 60. If you've ever wondered, the numbers designate meters above sea level. There are four hill 60s, but are in different sectors, so it wasn't confusing to planners during the war.

The hill 60 in the Ypres area was subject to a lot of mining, much of it done by Australians. Hundreds of tons of explosives were planted under German emplacements. Much of it (but not all of it) was detonated. When farmers returned to their land after the war, they rebuilt. Some of them didn't know they were rebuilding 90 feet above 20 thousand pounds of unexploded materials. One cache went off in a 1950s thunderstorm, the theory being that plowing had exposed the wires to a lightning strike.

Our guide for the day was Ian, a retired soldier from Northern Ireland who has written books on WWI. He led us past old German bunkers, showed us bomb craters 85 feet across, and answered (quite patiently) my thousand questions.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. She is currently working on an historical novel set in New Mexico and France during the time of the Pancho Villa Raid and World War I. You can learn more about her books by signing up for her newsletter here, or visiting her website here.

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The Only Lancer Charge in the Civil War

6/1/2020

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When Major General H. H. Sibley invaded New Mexico in 1862, he brought with him two companies of lancers.

Handsome and chivalrous heirs of medieval knights, the lancers were the darlings of the parade through San Antonio on the day the Army of New Mexico headed west. Bright red flags with white stars snapped from their lances. Lances had been common on Napoleonic battlefields, and were used by Mexican cavalry during the conflicts against the Texans in the 1830s and 1840s. The lances that these two companies carried were war trophies captured from the Mexicans during the Mexican American War thirteen years earlier

Colonel Thomas Green

On the day of the Battle for Valverde Ford, Colonel Thomas Green peered across the battlefield and saw uniforms that he couldn't identify. Knowing they weren't Union regulars, he guessed that these men on the Union extreme right were a company of inexperienced New Mexico Volunteers who would break and run from a lancer charge.

He turned to the commanders of his two lancer companies, Captains Willis Lang and Jerome McCown, and asked which would like to have the honor of the first charge.

Captain Willis Lafayette Lang

The first hand up belonged to the leader of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment's Company B. Captain Willis L. Lang was a rich, 31 year old who owned slaves that worked his plantation near Marlin in Falls County, Texas.

Lang quickly organized his men. Minutes later, he gave the signal and his company cantered forward, lowered their lances, and began galloping across the 300 yards that divided his men from the men in the unusual uniforms. The plan called for McCown's company to follow after the Union troops had broken, and the two lancer companies would chase the panicking Union men into the Rio Grande that stood at their back.

Captain Theodore Dodd

But Colonel Green was wrong. The men in the strange uniforms were not New Mexican Volunteers. They were Captain Theodore Dodd’s Independent Company of Colorado Volunteers. Dodd's men were a scrappy collection of miners and cowboys who were reputedly low on discipline but high on fighting spirit. They coolly waited until the lancers were within easy range, then fired a volley that unhorsed many of the riders. Their second volley finished the assault. More than half of Lang's men were either killed or wounded, and most of the horses lay dead on the field. Lang himself dragged himself back to the Confederate lines because he was too injured to walk.

Lang's charge was the only lancer charge of the American Civil War. The destruction of his company showed that modern firearms had rendered the ten-foot long weapons obsolete. McCown's men, and what remained of Lang's men threw their lances into a heap and burned them. They then rearmed themselves with pistols and shotguns and returned to the fight.

The day after the battle, Lang and the rest of the injured Confederate were carried north to the town of Socorro, where they had requisitioned a house and turned it into a hospital. A few days later, depressed and in great pain, he asked his colored servant for his revolver, with which he ended his suffering. Lang and the other Confederate dead were buried in a plot of land near the south end of town that has now become neglected and trash-strewn. The owners do not allow visitors.

This derelict field was once a Confederate Cemetery.

The Charge of Company B of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Valverde Ford is included in Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel, Where Duty Calls, published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in June 2022. The author is a former New Mexico history teacher who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read more about her and her writing here.

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My New Shadow

5/4/2020

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In Super Hec, which is on sale on Amazon right now, nerdy middle schooler Hector Anderson convinces his mother that the family would be in better shape if they had a dog to walk. The family goes to a shelter and gets a new friend who - - well, I"ll let you read for yourself what happens when the Andersons adopt a dog.

Life imitated life recently, and I got a dog. His name is Panzer, and he is a Rottweiler. My husband and I drove 200 miles to pick him up from a woman in Farmington, New Mexico who specializes in rescuing Rottweilers and other pure breeds.

Panzer is between 1 1/2 and 2 years old, and he acts like a goofy teenager most of the time. He has become my shadow and follows me from room to room. For as big as he is, he is surprisingly gentle and loves little things, including our 15 year old cat (who does not return the love) and our 7 year old granddaughter.

One little thing I'm not so sure Panzer loves is Kamikaze the squirrel. We have lots of squirrels up here in the mountains. We have Antelope Squirrels, which look like very small chipmunks. We have Alberts Squirrels, which are dark gray and have lovely, tufted ears. And we have Rock Squirrels, one of which we've named Kamikaze. This particular squirrel acquired his name because he seems to have no fear. He come up to the glass door in the study, stands on his hind legs and looks Panzer directly in the eye. He runs across the road when Panzer and I are out for a walk. Maybe he wants to be another of Panzer's little friends.

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Sports in a Time of Quarantine

5/2/2020

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Spring is here, and my husband is very unhappy. What is spring without baseball?

A lot of people are feeling frustrated over the cancellation of sports due to COVID-19 restrictions. Races cancelled. Little League and kid's soccer put on hold. I am mourning the fact that this spring has seen warm, balmy weather, little wind, and I am NOT out on the track with my runners and throwers. It's been a tough spring.

But if you can't participate in organized sports, at least you can read about them in Super Hec, book 3 of the Anderson Chronicles.

When Mom decides that the Anderson family needs to do a little spring training, she tells everyone that they have to get in shape. Little brother Stevie decides he wants to be a triangle, but signs up for T-ball. Big sister Chloe becomes a yoga enthusiast. Hector has no idea what he should do, but when his friend Eddie loans him an old Superman t-shirt and the guys in the locker room call him Super Geek, Hec decides to become faster than a speeding bully. Can he dig deep and pull up the super powers he needs to run a 5K and win the heart of the girl of his dreams?

If you’ve read Tweet Sarts and Jingle Night, you’ll love seeing what Hec and his wacky family are up to in Super Hec. This is reading the whole family can enjoy - and maybe be inspired to do a little spring training of their own.

Super Hec will be on sale on Amazon from May 2-9. Download a copy and enjoy!

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My Bad-Weather Flower

4/9/2020

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A fair-weather friend is one who stays with you for the good times, but isn't around to support you through the hard times. We all probably have a fair-weather friend, and I am ashamed to say that I've been one before. I can think of numerous friends I let down when they really needed me. It's not something I'm proud of, and I wish I could go back and fix it.

I guess the opposite of a fair-weather friend is a bad-weather friend. That would be someone who is willing to weather the storms of life with you, to be by your side when life is painful. I have a few of these, and they are treasures.

One of my bad-weather friends came and visited me during one of the lowest points in my life. My husband had just lost an election, which meant that he also lost the job that he'd dreamed of for his entire life. It seemed that all our hopes for the future were shattered and we had no idea where to go or how to proceed. Enter said friend, with a boxed amaryllis.

The thing about amaryllises, or any other kind of boxed bulb, is they give you something to look forward to. They are hope in a box. But this one had waited too long, and had started to bud while still in the box. It looked pretty hopeless, but it surprised us an bloomed anyway. You can read about it here.

But that stubborn little flower wasn't done. It gave us another show after that, which you can read about here.

And now it's blooming again! This is the first time I've ever had a forced bulb repeat. The picture at the top of this post was taken this morning.

This is my bad-weather flower. It seemed to know that this was a hard time, and I needed some cheering up. Here's wishing that you have some bad-weather friends and bad-weather flowers to brighten up your darkest days.

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November 11: Birthday of a Famous Soldier

Cranberry Orange Muffins

The Ghosts of Valverde

The Battle of Mesilla

Isaac Lynde: The Wrong Man for the Job

Visiting the WWI Battlefields of Belgium

The Only Lancer Charge in the Civil War

My New Shadow

Sports in a Time of Quarantine

My Bad-Weather Flower

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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