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The Changing of the plates

9/19/2015

I love fall, even if I'm not quite sure when to celebrate its arrival.

Does fall begin when school begins? Here in New Mexico, that would move fall to the middle of August.

Is fall when supermarkets begin roasting green chili in their parking lots at the end of August? After Labor Day, even though it's still in the 90s in the afternoon? When the State Fair begins or ends? On the Autumnal Equinox, which was always on September 21 when I was a kid but has mysteriously slipped to a different day? In early October, when the International Balloon Fiesta comes to town and the sky fills with a riot of noise and color? Or the middle of October, when the air finally cools down and the aspens turn golden?

You may commemorate the change of seasons by putting out a wreath made with orange and yellow leaves, or setting up a scarecrow and pumpkin by your front door, but I restack my plates.

This is a fairly new tradition for me. When my kids were little, everyone in the house had dibs on a different colored plate. This was convenient, because I could at a glance figure out who'd left his cereal bowl in front of the TV and who was hoarding crockery in his room. But the boys have grown up and out moved out, and I am left with a stack of multicolored Fiesta ware and the desire to do something with them other than look at the colors and miss the boys who used to eat off them.

So I've taken to restacking my plates with each change of season. Since Memorial Day, my blue, white, yellow, and burgundy plates have been on the top of the stack, and my kitchen table's place mats have looked distinctly patriotic.

Now that fall is here, or is coming, the blue and white plates have rotated to the bottom of the stack and the orange, yellow and green plates have risen to the top. Next month I'll "redecorate" by flipping over the place mats, revealing the side that has pumpkins printed on a black background.
Restacking my plates doesn't put me into the Martha Stewart hall of fame, but it makes me happy. What traditions do you do to celebrate the changing of the season?

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By the numbers

8/31/2015

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Never, ever trust me on a number.

If I tell you that something happened on a certain date, I've probably have inverted a number. Jamestown, for instance: was it settled in 1619 or 1691? Was the Magna Carta signed in 1215 or 1521? Right now the teacher I teach New Mexico history to 6th, no, 7th graders is quaking in her boots because she just realized how much misinformation I put out. If I'm lucky, my students will manage to forget everything I mis-teach.)

If the number isn't a date, but a quantity or a price, I've probably added or subtracted a 0. If I was a realtor I'd probably get in trouble for accepting a check for twenty thousand to pay for a two hundred thousand dollar house.

Once (a number I can count to with some assurance of getting it right) my husband asked me to buy fertilizer for the back lawn. The guy at the store insisted I tell him how big my lawn was. I prevaricated. He suggested I guess. So I did. I guessed that my small suburban yard was a hundred yards by thirty yards. We didn't need to buy fertilizer again for 8 years - and when we did you can bet my husband didn't send me to buy it.

Good thing that was pre 9/11, or I would have had fed agents stalking my garage and wondering if I was building a bomb.I want to talk numbers with you, beginning with the fact that I have a love/hate relationship with them.

But even though I'm awful with numbers, I'm fascinated by them, especially when they are related to statistics or standings or one kind or another. After every race I've ever run I've studied the results, trying to analyze my performance. Even with my limited mathematical powers I know that if I was 2,347th out of 5,328 overall, I was middle of the pack. But I still wonder how I placed among women 50-55 who were named Jennifer and happened to have three sons. Race statistics are never specific enough.

I have won 1st in my age category. I did it once, during a 5K for Alzheimer's. Ironically I don't remember what my time was.

So here are some recent statistics for my books. Code: Elephants on the Moon is currently #877,464 among books in the paid Kindle store. The Bent Reed is 1,368,709th and On Fledgling Wings is 1,006,140th. I have no idea how many books there are in total. For all I know, the Bent Reed might be the worst selling book on Amazon, but I suspect there are many more underneath it.

There are currently 12 reviews on Amazon for Code: Elephants, 5 for The Bent Reed, and 2 for Fledgling. They average in the 4s, a number I am both proud of and grateful for. A more experience writing friend tells me that the "magic" number of reviews is 20; when a book gets that many, the good folks at Amazon pay attention a little differently to the title. I'm not sure what that all means, but if you've read any of my books and and liked it, would you help me attain 20 reviews?

To sweeten the deal, I'm going to be offering a little incentive. Check back here soon to see what.

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Magical Moments, Magical things

8/18/2015

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They say the best things in life are free, and I'm inclined to believe it, especially after a day like last Sunday, or a gift like the last one that came in the mail.

Sunday at the Bohnhoff house means family dinner. Usually my 93 year old mother in law, my oldest son, his wife, and their two and a half year old daughter join my husband and me. During the summer we eat out on our shady, east-facing back porch. The granddaughter goes back and forth between the dinner table and the swing set. My husband gets out the T ball stand and we watch a little batting practice. But as we ate last Sunday, we watched the sky darken with rumbling, boiling clouds.

The skies opened up just after dessert, drenching the thirsty lawn and cooling the air. After a while the rain lessened and a glorious double rainbow filled the eastern sky. Wanting to get a better view, I scooped up my granddaughter and headed out to the street. Once we were there, I realized that the gutters were running - something that doesn't happen often here in the desert. I put my grand daughter down and showed her how a leaf placed in the water would zip away, and we ended up spending the next ten or fifteen minutes hunkered down in the gutter, me sending leaf boats downstream to a little girl who squealed with delight as she pulled them back out. The experience was free, and perhaps one of the richest and most precious of the summer. I hope she will remember the day long after I have passed from this life.

The gift I got a few weeks ago wasn't entirely free for my husband's cousin Ross. I'm not sure how much he paid for it, but I'm sure it wasn't much. And yet, it is among my most priceless treasures.

I'd sent Ross an announcement when my youngest son graduated from West Point this spring. Enclosed with the announcement was a paper asking no gifts except the gift of prayer for my son and those he would soon be leading. Instead of honoring my request entirely, Ross sent a package with this magic wand and a letter explaining why he sent it. You can bet I'll be holding on to this magic wand. It will be in a prominent place if and when my son is deployed.

Here's the letter Ross sent. Here's wishing you some magical moments.

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Adventures in research

8/15/2015

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By Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA (A Young Woman Reading by Gustave Courbet) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I love being a writer.I love thinking about characters - who they are, how their backgrounds affect their decisions, how they will react to different circumstances, and how their reactions will affect their futures. I love thinking about plot - how the actions of one character creates a cascading domino affect, and where that affect leads, and what the whole ripple of actions means in the grand scheme of human experience. I love beginning a story and watching how it grows and changes and sometimes becomes something very different than the concept I had begun with. I love editing and deciding what to leave in and what to take out. But perhaps my favorite part of writing is researching.

I would probably be "researching" even if I wasn't writing: I just couldn't call it that. If I wasn't a writer, what I'd be doing would be called reading widely and deeply, and I'd have no excuse for why I do it except that I'm interested.

My research, like my writing, usually begins with a question or a topic. Swan Song, the book I intend to publish this fall, began with the question 'What if the Beowulf manuscript we know is just the first time a much older story was written down?' That led to 'What does it mean that Grendel the monster is called a son of Cain?" Those questions led to hundreds of hours of research on Beowulf, on Neanderthals, and a variety of related topics. I was lucky that I was working on a masters at the time, and that the NMSU library sent interlibrary loan books and scanned academic journal articles for its distance students.

Even though I've completed the manuscript, the topic still interests me, so I'm still "researching." Lately I found an excellent, informative B.A. Major Thesis entitled Female Characters in Beowulf posted on the internet. It was written by Petra Pochazkova, a student at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. How I love living in the internet age!

Not all my research is online. Last fall my colleague Patrice Locke Lewis and I went to the ruins of Fort Craig, a 150 year old fort that saw action in the Civil War. Questions began circulating in my mind. What would it have been like to live at the fort in its heyday? Who was here? Ms. Lewis and I then proceeded south, to Las Cruces, where we visited a number of places including COAS, perhaps the greatest used book store in the southwest. I bought a stack of books related to the era and I began researching. Right now, I'm reading I Married a Soldier, a 1960s reprint of an 1890s memoir of a woman who accompanied her husband to his duty stations in New Mexico and Texas during the 1850s - 1870s. The reading is interesting, and I hope adds authenticity to the book I plan to begin writing this fall.

So here I sit, dividing my time between the Paleolithic period, the Anglo-Saxon era and the Civil War. Reading musty old books, academic papers, and flickering screens. Sometimes I have to put the research aside and reenter the present world, where meals need to be cooked, clothes washed, paychecks earned. But even as I take the car in to be serviced or sweep the front porch, a part of my mind is off on an adventure a thousand years or a thousand miles away.

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American Pie

7/28/2015

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We may say "American as apple pie," but we Americans can't really claim pie as our own. The tradition of pie making came to the New World with our English ancestors, who encased not only fruits and custards, but meat, fowl, fish, eggs and vegetables in sturdy crusts and tender pastries.

During the Civil War era, only the rich and fashionable had a separate dessert course at dinner. The modest homes of farmers, artisans and shopkeepers served only one course. Apple and mince pies frequently appeared side by side with the meat, vegetables and bread.
They were also a common breakfast food, so if you've ever eaten leftover pie for breakfast (a favorite in the Bohnhoff household!) you are following a long standing tradition.

Housewives had practical reasons to make pies more frequently than cakes. Cakes required eggs, which were less plentiful in the winter than in the summer. The ingredients for pies: sugar, wheat flour, lard, plus fillings, were more readily available year round. During the winter months, dried or canned fruits were used to fill fruit pies.

The second edition of The Bent Reed, which I plan to put out during the summer of 2016, will have an appendix at the back that will begin with the information from this blog post. I'll publish a number of Civil War era recipes there, including peach (to recognize The Peach Orchard, a site of a major engagement during the Battle of Gettysburg), cherry and raspberry (because these were in season during the battle. Eating too many of them might have contributed to Robert E. Lee's problems.) and some savories as well. Most of these recipes will already have been sent to people on my friends, family and fans email list, which you can join on my website.

For now, you'll have to content yourself with just a pie crust recipe. This recipe is very versatile. It can be used for sweet or savory fillings, and can fill a number of different sized dishes. I rarely measure carefully, and that combined with the fact that flour acts differently in humid or dry conditions means that my crusts are never quite the same, but they are always good.

Good, Basic Pie Crust

Single Crust: (this size will fill two 6" pie plate is you're cooking for one or two)
1 1/3 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. shortening (I use Crisco, but lard or butter is authentic to the period)
2 1/2 to 3 TBS ice water
1/2 TBS cider vinegar

Double 8" Crust:
2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
3/4 c. shortening
4 to 5 TBS ice water
1 TBS cider vinegar

Double 9" Crust:
2 2/3 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 c. shortening (I use Crisco, but you can use lard if you want to be authentic)
6 to 7 TBS ice water
1 1/2 TBS cider vinegar

Mix by hand method: Mix flour and salt. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles small peas. Sprinkle with water and vinegar, 1 tsp. at a time, mixing until it all sticks together. Refrigerate for about 10 minutes before rolling.

Food Processor Method: Dump flour and salt into processor bowl. Drop spoonfuls of shortening over the top. Pulse 2 or 3 times, until shortening is distributed. Pour vinegar into liquid dispenser and pulse one or two times. Continue adding water a TBS at a time until dough forms into a ball. Roll out on a flour covered piece of waxed paper.

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Getting The Navajo Long Walk Right for MG Readers

7/21/2015

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Painting, Bosque Redondo Visitor's Center

In the 1860s, while most of the United States was focused on a bloody Civil War between the northern and southern states, a very different war was being fought in the western territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

Here, Native Americans felt the pressure as more and more white settlers moved into their lands. They retaliated by raiding the settlements. Finally, General James Carleton decided that the only way to protect white settlers was to restrict the nomadic lifestyle of the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches by relocating them to a reservation.

Led by the famous Indian scout Kit Carson, New Mexico's Volunteer Militia began rounding up the Mescalero Apache and Navajo Indians. Knowing that the Navajo would never surrender unless forced to, Carson followed a scorched earth policy. During the winter of 1863-1864 he burned Navajo crops and orchards, killed their livestock, destroyed their homes, and contaminated their water sources. Once they gave up, the Navajo were forced to walk, some as far as 300 miles, to Bosque Redondo.

Treaty Rock, Bosque Redondo

The Navajo remained at Ft. Sumner until June of 1868. During there time there they suffered from sickness, exposure and starvation. It is believed that during their incarceration between 500 and 1,500 Navajo died.

Stones and other mementos left by Navajo.

I visited Bosque Redondo, in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, in July 2015. The fort is completely gone now. The Memorial that is there honors the Native Americans who were interred there and documents their story.

When I decided to find out what historical novels deal with this period in history, I found that there is very little written for this period. I found nothing representing the Mescalero experience, and only one book telling the Navajo story of the Long Walk. That one book is Sing Down the Moon, a Newbery Honor Book by respected author Scott O'Dell. Published in 1970, this novel has been a classroom staple for years.

But not everyone likes this novel. A fellow teacher at my school who taught in Navajo country has told me that her students laughed at the many misrepresentations of Navajo customs and ideas.

One reviewer on Amazon who is from the four corners area wondered how much research O''Dell did. "I have never heard of mesquite growing around here or aspen in Canyon de Chelly or of the pueblo people eating dog meat and...... the owl a GOOD OMEN? I don't think so!!!! Any one from this area that has any knowledge of the Navajo culture knows that OWLS ARE NOT GOOD OMENS!!!"

I think a telling of this story from the perspective of a Native American is long overdue.

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Sherfy's Peaches

7/14/2015

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One of the reasons that fruit trees figure fairly prominently in The Bent Reed is that they figure prominently in many diaries of the period. By late June 1863, the Civil War had been raging long enough that many of the farmlands of the South were in disarray. The Confederate soldiers who invaded Pennsylvania on their way to the Battle of Gettysburg delighted in the produce and animals on the North’s untouched farms, and wrote about Pennsylvania’s green bounty.

Before the Civil War, almost every farm had a small apple orchard that was used to produce cider, fruit for the home, and food for pigs. With new roads, canals and railroads providing better transportation, many farmers in the Gettysburg area began expanding their orchards in the 1840s and 1850s to produce fruit for the growing urban markets.

Joseph Sherfy, 1840s.

One example of this new, enterprising farmer was the Reverend Joseph Sherfy, who purchased 50 acres along the Emmitsburg Road, south of the town of Gettysburg, in 1842. Sherfy planted much of his land in peach trees, and by the time of the Civil War, his fresh, dried, and canned peaches were locally famous.

Joseph and Mary Sherfy and their six children were ready to help when the Union army reached Gettysburg on the first of July 1863. Joseph dragged a large water tub out to the road and kept it filled for the thirsty soldiers. Mary and her mother baked loaf after loaf of bread and handed them over to the army. The next day they were forced to evacuate their home. Their home ended up being the center of the whirlwind of war on July 2nd and 3rd, which is the reason I chose to put the fictional McCoombs farm right next to Sherfy’s farm.

The Sherfy farm was in the thick of things because Union General Dan Sickles disobeyed his commanding officer, General George Meade. He moved his men onto a piece of high ground in the middle of the orchard instead of keeping them in a line that extended south of the town of Gettysburg to a hill called Little Round Top. This created a sharp bend in the line, a vulnerable salient that the Confederate army attacked from two sides. The fight in the peach orchard was one of the most hotly contested of the Gettysburg battle.

When Sherfy returned to his land on the 6th, he discovered that his house had been ransacked. At least seven artillery shells had hit it. The yard was covered with the family’s possessions, churned into the mud with body parts left over from the Confederate field hospital that had been in their barn. Bodies of dead men and horses lay strewn about everywhere. The ruins of the barn were filled with the charred remains of the men who had been unable to escape the fire that occurred when shells of the Union batteries scored a direct hit.

Undaunted, the Sherfys cleaned, replanted, and rebuilt, and for years sold peaches from the famous orchard.It was a popular destination for veterans who had fought in its fields and wanted to relive their experiences. One wall of the house supposedly was covered with photographs of veterans who had fought there. The farm today, which still has some holes from artillery shells, is owned by the National Park Service. At some point in the late 19th or early 20th century the peach trees were all removed, but the National Park Service restored them about 15 years ago, and Sherfy's Peaches are again being sold at Gettysburg.

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Quirky Ideas from the WWI History Museum

7/6/2015

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The reflecting pool at the museum's entrance.

When I went to the National World War I Museum in Kansas City last May, I was delighted by quirky artifacts that really got me thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them make it into a future novel, because they would add great depth and detail to a narrative.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This projectile from a from a French 58 mm trench mortar was nicknamed the "Flying Pig" because of what it looked like in the air.

The Flying Pig was used by French, Belgian, and U.S. troops and had a range of 490 yards.

The video below isn't of a Flying Pig, but of an Australian trench mortar.

If I ever write a novel set in the trenches of World War I, I have GOT to have a Flying Pig in it!

This Austrian helmet was sent home as a souvenir by an American. Back then, I guess the postal service had less restrictions than now, because no box or packaging was required to get this helmet from Europe to the U.S. The soldier (I'm assuming it was a soldier. It could have been a sailor or a relief worker for all I know.) Simply attached a tag with his mother's (girlfriend's? sisters?) Kansas City address and stuck stamps directly to the helmet. I hope I find a character with enough spunk and creativity to think about sending home souvenirs like this!

This is an Imperial German Border sign. Made of painted cast iron, a series of these marked the border between Germany and France.

In August of 1914, an elite French strike force penetrated the border on the southern flank of the engagement, capturing many of these border signs.

Can you imagine a young Frenchman bringing this home to his maman?

Am I planning to write a book set in World War I? Not at present. Right now, I'm finishing a final edit on a young adult novel that has two concurrent settings: Swan Song switches back and forth between a modern high school girl and a girl living in Europe during the Ice Age. I'm also researching a book which will be set in New Mexico during the Civil War. But I'm always musing what comes next, especially when I see something quirky that brings the period to life!

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The best place in America to Look back at World War I

6/29/2015

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Last month I had the joy of visiting the National WWI Museum and Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. If you are at all interested in the war that changed the world a hundred years ago, this is the place to visit in America.

The Liberty Memorial was created in the 1920's through the subscription of Kansas City's citizens. Perched high on a grassy hill, this Beaux Arts and Egyptian Revival memorial consists of a 266 ft tower topped by four 40 foot tall figures who are the Guardian Spirits. Each figure holds a sword. They represent Honor, Courage, Patriotism and Sacrifice.

Two sphinxes flank the tower. "Memory" faces east, towards the battlefields of France. "Future" faces west. Both shield their eyes with their wings: one hiding from the horrors of war, the other symbolizing that the future is unknown and unseen.

Two halls face toward the tower. One is Memory Hall, which has some of the most beautiful friezes I have ever seen. Exhibit hall houses some of the collection of the museum, which rests underground, beneath the Memorial.

Liberty Memorial is noble and somber. It is epic in scale. But what rests beneath it in the museum is even more awe-inspiring.

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Eating in a Different Era

6/23/2015

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When I toured the National World War I Museum in Kansas City last month, I ate at their museum cafe. It was a different kind of experience.

Most museums have cafes for their patrons. Most serve the same, ubiquitous dinning room food: cold wraps or sandwiches from a glass case, salads, bags of chips. Some of the fancier ones might have a grill that serves up burgers. But this cafe was different.

The Menu for the Over There Cafe had a little symbol in its upper right corner: an orange circle with a helmet. It said that the helmet next to a menu item meant that the food was similar to that served to soldiers during World War I. Minus, of course, the bugs and dirt.

I had to choose between chipped beef on gravy over toast (which my WWI grandfather called "shit on a shingle," a mix of corned beer, turnips and carrots called trench stew, cabbage soup, or army goulash: a mix of hamburger, pork and beans, oregano and tomato sauce.

I ordered a cup of coffee and trench stew, which came with a side of WWI slaw and a biscuit served on a tin plate. The stew came in a glass-covered sauce pot. Perhaps serving the stew and coffee in battered tin cups would have been more authentic.

Recently I sent a recipe for triple ginger cookies to people on my friends, family and fans email list. One friend wrote back, suggesting that I incorporate period recipes in my historical novels. I think she may be on to something.