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Bloom as if your life depended on it

12/31/2018

My Christmas miracle.

Some dear friends came to visit just before Christmas. They brought an amaryllis that was part of a kit: a bare bulb, a red planter can, and a disk of dehydrated soil, all sealed up in a box and ready to put together.

What none of us realized until we opened the box was that it had been kept in a place that was too warm. The plant had begun growing in the dark enclosure and the flower stem, when it met the lid of the box, turned downward seeking space. What we found were white nubs of leaves and

a ghostly pale bud bending down. It was clear that this plant would never amount to much; it had been crippled by the box and was doomed from the moment it began its premature growth. Obviously the thing to do was to throw the bulb away.

But I didn't. I planted it anyway and set it in a sunny window. And on Christmas Day, defying everyone's predictions, it bloomed.

If I were the writer of feel-good stories for children, I would say that my little amaryllis saw the sun, and the flower bulb changed directions and stood up, proudly becoming the most beautiful of Christmas flowers. But this isn't the story of the Ugly Duckling. This story is more honest and more true. The stunting that occurred in the box dealt irrevocable damage.This poor bulb didn't become much to look at. On New Year's Day the petals are already browning on the edges and the leaves, although a little greener, still haven't grown much.

This is the message this amaryllis brings us: We can be irrecoverably damaged by this world, but in spite of all that is done to us we must bloom. We will not all become the most beautiful of blooms, but we can be the bravest.

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A Clear Creek Christmas

12/24/2018

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Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12459168

The wind outside our little tent howled pitifully, sounding God-forsaken and destitute. I wasn’t fooled. Along with dry, sharp snow, that gale was throwing around plenty of gold dust. That’s why I’d laid down a claim among these desolate peaks. Rocky Mountains winds don’t howl so much as shout for joy. No land has been more God-blessed rich since God laid down manna in the wilderness. All a man has to do to prosper in this wilderness is listen with an attentive ear and open his eyes.

George Nelson, who held up the other side of our foursome, groaned. George is a big, meaty galoot, with broad hands that can rip apart rock and a back that can carry a hundred-weight without complaint. But he’s not big on brains. Without me, he’d have frozen, or starved, or been cheated out of his claim long ago.
Luther and Key slept between George and me , the four of us nesting like spoons in a drawer. It can be hard to sleep when one of us twitches in the throes of a nightmare or has the trots from some rancid bacon or undercooked potato, but sleeping like this keeps us from freezing. Out here, comfort is secondary to survival.

“Samuel? You awake?” George’s voice was somewhere between a whisper and a groan. I might not have heard it over the wind if I weren’t already listening for it.
“I am,” I answered. “Still an hour or such ‘til dawn. Need to roll over?” That’s what we did, turning as one when one side of us or the other got too cold. Right now I was facing out, my back warm against Key and the blankets tucked under my knees. George, with his back out, would be the first to feel the chill.

“I’m fine,” George said with a sigh that matched the wind and told me that he really wasn’t. “Just ruminating. This here’s Christmas Eve, ain’t it?”

“That it is,” I agreed. I let the conversation lie, waiting for George to tell me why that would matter in a place such as this, where the closest church is miles away, in Golden City.

“Samuel, what did your mother serve on Christmas when you were a child?”

Ah. So this wasn’t about going to church. The big baby was missing his mother and the comforts of holiday traditions. I salivated, thinking of the sumptuous meals of my childhood. “T’warn’t my mother made Christmas dinner. We’d all bundle up and take the sled to grandmother’s. Oh, Lordy, what a feast she prepared! She’d roast a turkey of uncommon size, and there’d mashed potatoes and turnips, and boiled onions, and dressed celery. And always mincemeat pie for dessert. How about you?”

“Roast pig, and applesauce, mashed sweet potatoes and pickles. And large pitchers of sweet cider,” George said. “My granny was there, too, but she was addled in the head by the time I come along. Couldn’t be trusted for anything beyond shelling peas.”

“Boiled goose with oyster sauce,” Luther pitched in. “And plum pudding when my Father hadn’t drunk away all the money.” I didn’t know Luther was awake until he spoke. Luther is thin as a rail, which is why he sleeps in the middle most nights. He’s all elbows and knees, and his words can be as sharp as his elbows. He didn’t often share much from his childhood, but what I’d heard was ugly and had turned him mean. But I understood Luther. If not for me, he would have been killed in a squabble over something of no account. My men need my leadership.

“You’re making my stomach pinch,” Key’s melodious voice chimed in irritably. “Go back to sleep, the lot of you.”

I chuckled. Key’s like a feisty little lap dog among a pack of mastiffs. He’s just a little slip of a lad, too young, even, to shave. When he sings, he sounds like a girl. Or, perhaps, an angel. But the thin arm he throws around me when we sleep is as strong as bailing wire. His manner can be just as steely. Key’s young, but he’s been through a lot that’s hardened him.

Key’s orphaned and alone in this world. He was working at a livery stable in Denver in exchange for one meal a day and the right to sleep in the hay. I happened past the stable and saw the stable owner, a man well known for his irascible nature, beating him him for being a lazy Irishman. Key’s name, I should tell you, is not really K-E-Y. It’s C-I-A-N, and it’s pronounced “key in.” It’s Irish, but I don’t hold that against him. I am of a liberal mind when it comes to foreigners. Especially those who work hard and take hardship without complaint.
The beating clearly hurt, but Key was determined not to give the man the satisfaction of tears. I decided then and there that Key was the sort of fellow I could use in my company. I offered him a position in my growing company, signing him on as cook and general errand boy.

“Since everyone’s awake, let’s roll over. Key, tell us about the Irish. What do they eat on Christmas?”

Key tensed, and I sympathized with him. His lineage sets him apart and marks him as a target for derision. But his accent itself marks him. “I canna speak for all the Irish. I left Ireland when I was but a wee lad. But mi Ma, she was a canny cook, and thrifty. She took whatever the other housewives passed by and made it a feast.”

“No special foods? On Christmas?” Luther’s voice cut sharply, derisively.
“We had special foods. Every Christmas Eve, we had oyster stew.”
“Oyster stew? I love oysters,“ George said. I smiled, glad that we’d just rolled over so that George wouldn’t drool on Luther.

“So do I,” Luther said earnestly.

“You’ve never had them as rich as mi Ma made.” Key’s voice quavered on the edge of tears.

Inspiration dawned on me as clear and bright as a prairie sunrise. “If I got a tin of oysters, could you make stew like your Ma used to make?” I asked.

Key belly-crawled halfway out of the blankets and rummaged through his rucksack until he pulled out a metal handle with a bull’s head and a wicked, curved knife at the end. The fact that I could see it made me realize that my dawning ideas weren’t the only dawn that had occurred. “Here’s me tin can opener!”

“And a fine one it is, too,” Luther said, grabbing it away and examining it closely.

“Stole it off an English tar in Boston Harbor,” Key said proudly.

“Oysters . . .” George gurgled dreamily.

“Oysters it is, then.” I threw back the blankets and pulled my feet into my shoes, pleased that I’d thought of how to make this holiday a good one for me and my men.

“And cream and butter. And a little bit of black pepper to crack over it!” Key shouted at my retreating back.

The tent was still deep in the shadow of a nearby ridge, but the peaks above and the valley below both gleamed golden in sunshine. I breathed in the cold, pine-tinged air and began the long trudge down to Golden City. As I passed into the sunshine the sparkle in the snow changed from silver to golden, but I knew that I’d already found my true goldmine: men who would follow me to the ends of the earth and back because I’d won their loyalty. With oysters.

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A short Inquiry into Canning, Oysters, and Christmas

12/18/2018

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In my research on the second book of my series on the Civil War in New Mexico I've been reading a lot of journals and diaries left behind by men in the Colorado Volunteers. Many of them mention acquiring tins of oysters. It's made me wonder why men so far from the ocean seemed inordinately fond of a food that seems unlikely. Recently a dear friend of mine published a little booklet on oyster stew, which he called a New Mexico Christmas Eve tradition. That got me thinking about oysters, about Christmas, and about how they might have become connected.

Canning and oysters both boomed at the same time in American history. The one helped the other become accessible, cheap, and popular.

Canning was invented at the behest of Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously said that an army travels on its stomach. The first metal cans were made of tin-lined cast iron and were almost impregnable. Most people used a chisel and hammer to open them.

By the 1840s tin smiths were fashioning cans out of thinner, more easily breached tin. The invention of the can opener by Ezra Warner followed in 1858. Warner's can openers were standard issue to cooks during the Civil War.

Another early can opener, called the Bully Beef Opener, was common in England. This opener was decorated with a bull's head. It has been said that what Americans call Corned Beef, British call Bully Beef because the cans it was stored in were opened with a Bully Beef Opener. This may be apocryphal, though; other sources suggest that the British word for this product is an anglicized version of the French boeuf bouilli, or boiled beef.

The Chesapeake Bay teemed with oyster beds. Canning proved a good way to save the prolific harvest. Early on, oysters were stored in twin tin containers such as these, which were then placed in a taller wooden barrel. The remaining space was packed with ice before they were shipped by

rail and steamboat across the entire country and into the territories. Companies such as Platt & Co, founded in 1848, sent ice-packed tins of oysters to men who'd gone west to California and Colorado in search of gold. These men, faced with hardships and shortages of essentials, so nostalgically yearned for the east coast foods of their childhoods that they were willing to pay outrageous amounts for a little taste of home.

I grew up eating oyster stew on Christmas Eve. My maiden name is Swedberg, a Swedish name, but I'd thought my own family's tradition of oyster stew on Christmas eve came from my Norwegian grandfather. My research, however, didn't credit Scandinavians, but

Irish immigrants with making oyster stew a traditional Christmas Eve dish. Thousands of Irish entered the United States in search of better lives during the years of the Potato Famine, 1845-1852. Most of the Irish immigrants were Catholic and fasted from eating red meat on Christmas Eve. Instead, they ate a simple stew made from ling, a type of fish not available in America.

The Ling, which had been dried and heavily salted to preserve it, was cooked in a rich broth of milk, butter, and pepper, yet remained chewy from being dried. Once they were in America, Irish cooks substituted oysters for ling because the cheap and easily obtainable oysters tasted briny and had a similar, chewy texture.

I've got some Irish in me. Are they the ancestors who began my family tradition? I don't know any other New Mexicans who eat oyster stew on Christmas eve, and wonder if my friend Kirk's family eats it because his parents and my parents were friends and the Austins learned to eat it from the Swedbergs. The origins of traditions can be hard to pin down.

If this is the year you are inspired to go back in history and try this traditional dish you might want to try the recipe my friend Kirk Austin has published on Amazon.

Is oyster stew among your family's Christmas traditions? I'd love to know if it is, and where you think your family picked up its traditions.

Coming soon: a short story featuring characters from my work in progress, inspired by oyster stew.

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Kit Carson, New Mexico Celebrity

12/10/2018

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The author in the courtyard of Kit Carson's house, Taos.

Last month I took a weekend trip up to Taos, New Mexico to enjoy a little R&R and to snoop around a bit.

Taos is as historic as a town can get. The area has been inhabited since around 1,000 AD. When the first European in the area, Hernando de Alvarado, saw the adobe walls of Taos Pueblo shining in the evening

sun, he believed that he'd discovered the fabled El Dorado, or city of gold.

Beginning in the early 1700s, Taos was the site of annual summer trade fairs, where Comanches, Kiowas and other Plains Indians came to trade captives for horses, grains, and trade goods brought up from Mexico. It was also the center for the fur trade, attracting the wild mountain men who hunted beaver throughout the Rocky Mountains. One of the most famous of the mountain men, Kit Carson, married a local girl and made Taos his home.

Located just off the town plaza, the Carson home was probably built around 1825. It is a one-story adobe with three rooms: a living/sleeping room, a kitchen, and a parlor/office. The ceilings and doorways were low. Although

The fireplace in the kitchen of the Carson house was set in a corner, with access from two sides.

now large and filled with glass, the original windows would have been very small, made out of thin sheets of mica, and barred with iron rods to protect against Indian raids.

Much of the day to day living in the Carson house occurred in the central courthouse of the house. It was here that Josepha would have done the laundry, cooked most of the meals, and processed wool. The well and outhouse would have been in the courtyard as well. During the time that Carson was the Indian agent for the area, Indians often camped in the court yard while waiting for him to make decisions.

Kit and Josepha moved the family to Colorado in 1867, when he became the commander of Fort Garland, but they loved Taos enough that they were both buried there, in the cemetery that is just a short walk away and is now part of Kit Carson Park.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of several novels, including on in which Kit Carson has a small roll. You can read more about Valverde, a historical novel set in New Mexico during the Civil War, by clicking here.

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The Bohnhoff Family Christmas Tree

12/3/2018

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Some of the Bohnhoff clan went Christmas tree hunting in the National Forest during Thanksgiving weekend. The trip was similar to the one that the Anderson family made in Jennifer's middle grade novel Jingle Night. You can read about the trip here, and you can read more about Jingle Night here.

Here's wishing you and yours a memorable holiday season, with lots of time together with those you love.

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Hunting for trees and stories

11/26/2018

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A little Bohnhoff in a big Bohnhoff jacket.

Let me begin by asserting that, without a doubt, the Bohnhoff family is not the Anderson Family that shows up Jingle Night or Tweet Sarts, the two books currently in my series for middle grade readers called Anderson Family Chronicles. That being said, there are some similarities.

Take, for instance, Christmas tree hunting, which the Andersons do in Jingle Night, and which the Bohnhoffs did this weekend. Both families went to the Jemez mountains

to get their tree, and both families had mishaps.

Some of the Bohnhoffs had come from out of State and needed some time to run a few essential errands before we headed out. Not knowing how long the errands would take, I packed a lunch and cocoa for us. We were finally ready to go at noon. Shouldn't we have lunch I asked? "Not until we get there," my husband, who is definitely not the stubborn, slightly OCD, over organized father of the Anderson family said.

The snowy hillside made a perfect winter wonderland.

The Bohnhoffs and their trophy trees.

So we drove the one hour journey to the mountains. Did we eat then? No, for fear we'd not find the right tree before the sun set.

No sooner than we got out of the car did we realize that three of us had forgotten to pack jackets. We improvised, pulling apart shells and inner linings to share.

Unlike the Andersons, we managed to find our trees without tears or puppet drownings. I'm not in the "trophy" picture because although we brought a camera that had a timer and a tripod, we forgot to the put the memory card in the camera, so I took this with my phone.

My husband managed to wrap the tree in plastic and tie it to the roof of the car without roping himself out - proving he's better than the Anderson dad. By the time the tree was in place we were all too cold to eat, so we finally at on the drive home.

Truth may be stranger than fiction sometimes, but it's rarely as funny. The Bohnhoff's tree hunting trip is less interesting than the Anderson's one. Is our tree any better? Once it's up and decorated I'll post a picture of it and let you decide.

Jingle Night is available in ebook and paperback. Want a signed copy? Get one here.

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Remnants of New Mexico History

11/13/2018

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Looking down from the mesa top where Posi is.

This weekend I visited Ojo Caliente, a small town in Northern New Mexico, 50 miles north of Santa Fe. Ojo Caliente is Spanish for “warm eye,” and refers to the opening of a series of hot springs.
The valley in which Ojo Caliente lies has been inhabited a long time. The first known inhabitants emigrated from the Four Corners area in the late 1200s. They were a Tewa-speaking people, and they built a number of large pueblos, many of which had 2,000 or more rooms. The one closest to modern-day Ojo Calente is Posi-Ouinge, the 'Greenness Pueblo,' named such because of the green algae that clung to the rocks near the hot spring. The Tewas maintain that its pools provide access to the underworld. Posi-Ouinge was occupied from the 13th through the 16th century, when an epidemic caused the inhabitants to abandon the pueblo and move to Oke-onwi, also known by its Spanish name, San Juan.

Is this ridge a buried wall? Perhaps an archaeologist could tell you, but I can't.

Spanish settlement at Ojo Caliente began in the early 1700s, when it and other outposts were established to protect populations centers such as Santa Fe and Santa Cruz from raids by the Utes, Comanches and other tribes. These isolated outposts were settled by Mexican Indians, mixed-blood Spaniards, and genizaros, Indians who were sold as slaves to the Spanish and became household servants. Some of the Spanish had Jewish or Muslim ancestry and continued to practice their traditional rituals in secret. Others adopted traditions from the surrounding Indians, creating a unique culture.

The hike to Posi-Ouige begins directly behind the resort where the hot springs are located. After a short, scrambly climb, the trail follows the top of the ridge to the edge of the mesa. There are no walls left, and only the use of my admittedly fertile imagination gave me any sense that I was standing in a place that had once housed hundreds of people. But the ground was littered with more pottery shards than I had ever seen in one place before. Some had been laid on flat rocks, but many more pieces were underfoot. I’m no archaeologist, but the sheer number of pot shards told me that a lot of people had lived here.

Pottery mixed with rock and scattered all over the ground; it was hard not to step on a piece.

This is a near-by ruin. The one I visited was not anywhere near this evident.

https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/2014/12/03/return-to-the-ojo-caliente-valley/
https://www.blm.gov/visit/posi-ouinge
http://dev.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails.php?fileID=4767

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a New Mexico native who teaches middle school English in a rural part of the state She is the author of several novels, including one set in New Mexico during the Civil War. You can learn more about her books here.

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the fields of flanders

11/8/2018

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This past summer a dear friend of mine had the good fortune to vacation in France. And I, thanks to the amazing technology of our times, got to see pictures, including the one above, while she was still there.

I emailed back a copy of "In Flanders Fields," which is one of the most famous of World War I poems. (or maybe the exchange went the other way, and I sent her the poem first; we exchanged numerous pictures for poems during her trip.) When she returned, she brought me a beautiful, hand-beaded poppy broach that I am wearing this month to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1.

Unlike many of the poets of World War !, the author of In Flanders Fields was not an English schoolboy with romantic ideas about going off to war. John McCrae was a Canadian surgeon who had previously served in the Boer War in South Africa. While serving with the Canadian First Artillery in Ypres, Belgium, he had to officiate at the battlefield funeral of a young Lieutenant killed by artillery fire. The next day, McCrae wrote this poem while sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance overlooking the make-shift cemetery where poppies grew among the wooded crosses. McCrae, whose lungs had always been weak, died of pneumonia the following year.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Today I am going to present this poem to my eighth grade language arts classes. Tomorrow we will learn about Armistice Day and make paper poppies to wear on our lapels. We will not forget those who died, but hopefully we can find another way of dealing with conflict rather than taking up the quarrel and continuing to carry the torch of war.

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The Bitter Lie that war is sweet

11/6/2018

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Today I continue sharing World War 1 poetry with my 8th grade students. In the past we've studied poems that, while sad for the loss of young lives, depict war as glamorous, and soldiers as heros.

We take a turn today as we study Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." It's a turn that Owen himself took as the reality of war seeped into his soul like trench mud into his boots.

Owen was a sensitive young man who considered joining the clergy. He volunteered to help the poor and sick in his parish until the tepid response of the Church of England to the sufferings of the underprivileged and dispossessed disillusioned him. He then taught in France for two years, returning to England and joining the army after the war began. Owen's first few letters home to his mother in the early winter of 1916 indicate that he was enamored with the glamor and excitement of war, but in less than a month reality had taken hold and he had seen enough. The events depicted in "Dulce et Decorum Est" occurred on January 12, 1917. By then, he was ready to deny Horace's Latin admonition to the Romans that it was sweet and good to die for one's country.

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

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African Americans in World War I

11/5/2018

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November 11 marks the 100th anniversary of when the guns fell silent and World War I, the war to end all wars, ended. There are many stories to come out of this war. One that receives less attention than it should is the role of African Americans in the Army, and their contribution to the civil-rights movement.

When war was declared in April 1917, volunteers rushed to fill the United State’s eight all-black National Guard infantry regiments. 89% of these men were assigned to noncombatant units, serving in quartermaster and engineering positions and under the leadership of white officers.

But the Black contribution to the war effort was too crucial to allow these troops to be marginalized. According to True Sons of Freedom, an article in the February 2018 edition of The American Legion, the 367,710 men who answered the call added up to 13% of the wartime Army in a time when African Americans comprised only 10% of the country’s population. The NAACP and other civil-rights organizations pressured the War Department to create two combat units: the 92nd Division, which served as part of the American Expeditionary Force, and 93rd Division, which was comprised of four infantry regiments created from the former National Guard regiments and was “loaned” to the French. The NAACP also pressured the Secretary of War, Newton E. Baker, to create a black officer training camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. The 106 captains, 329 first lieutenants and 204 second lieutenants who came out of this program and who served in the 92nd knew that white officers scrutinized their performance, hoping for proof that Blacks couldn’t lead.

The 92nd saw little engagement during the war. When it was first put in action in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the inexperienced 368th Infantry Regiment, like many of the inexperienced AEF units, stumbled badly causing the division’s white officers to remove them from the line. They didn’t see action again until the final days of the war.

The 93rd, however, saw a lot of action in France. They fought in the battles of Meuse-Argonne, Champagne-Marne and Aisne-Marne. One regiment, the 369th Infantry, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, saw front-line duty for 191 days, the record for U.S. regiments. Their service earned these men the Croix de Guerre.
The amount of battle time was not the only difference these two Divisions experienced. Men from the 93rd frequently expressed pleasure at how the French treated them. Many wrote home about the French civilians’ kindness and respect toward them. Soldiers in the 92nd, however, suffered from daily harassment and humiliation from their white superiors. Jim Crow policy was alive and well in the United States Army.

The shameful treatment of African American soldiers continued after the war. “Red Summer,” the name Civil-rights leader James Weldon gave to the summer of 1919 was race rioting in 25 American cities. Ten black veterans were lynched that summer. American Legion Posts were segregated, and some states, Louisiana among them, refused to sanction black posts. But African American Veterans continued to press for equal rights and equal opportunity, and in 1948 the armed forces were desegregated.

World War I ended a hundred years ago, but the battle for civil rights continues, fought by descendants of the brave men who fought with courage and determination for a country that wasn’t sure it should even allow them to fight.

Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches middle school language arts in a rural school in central New Mexico. She is the author of several works of historical fiction for middle grade readers. You can read more about her books at her website.