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Room to Write

1/25/2024

When I celebrated my birthday this month, one of my kids gave me a copy of Rooms of Their Own: Where Great Writers Write, by Alex Johnson. Illustrated with colorful, loose pen and watercolors by James Oses, this book shares the writing rooms that fifty famous authors used to create their works, and offers glimpses into their writing methods, routines and habits. It’s made me think a bit about my own space.

When I’m at home, my writing is a bit of a mobile project. I move between a round table or drop-down desk in a study in the northwest corner of my home, and a lowered section of countertop in my pantry. Each has its own appeal. The round table has a lovely view north, over mountains and valleys. The drop-down is a convenient place to hide away my laptop and all my reference materials when I just can’t look at them anymore. Both are close to the router and printer, so they’re the best place if I’m making copies to read aloud or for future reference. The desk in the pantry is close to the kitchen and has the best room if I need to spread out materials. Sometimes I work from all three spaces in a single day. There are other times when I inhabit just one space for weeks on end.

I’ve been housesitting in Maine for the past month. There is a study in this house, but it is cold enough that I find my fingers going blue at the tips. I’ve done most of my work while sitting at a dining room table that looks out at a lake. I’ve seen that lake in full color, with green grass and a brilliant blue sky. It’s been so muted that I swore I was looking through a black and white filter. The water has been fully liquid, fully frozen, and many permutations in between: rippling with waves, smooth as glass, riddled with cracks, coated with snow.

Looking out on the lake has been especially inspiring to me because one of the pieces I’m working on is set on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior that is now a national park. My story takes place during the Depression, and the characters are families that live on the island full time and make their living by fishing. I worked on chapters set in the dead of winter, when the island is cut off from the mainland by huge, destructive ice floes. Frozen lakes aren’t something this New Mexican has experienced much. Neither is walking through mixed deciduous and evergreen forests. Even though I live with my back up against a national forest, it is primarily ponderosa and fir, evergreens that keep their needles and their shape throughout the winter. Here in Maine, a good 50% of the trees have lost their leaves. Combined with the frozen streams that run through the woods, the forest here seems a lot more bleak and desolate than the one I’m used to. It’s helped me add a lot of depth to my book’s setting.

I am not the only writer who becomes inspired by bleak surroundings. Rooms of Their Own tells me that George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four while in self-exile on Jura, and island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. The environment was harsh, and Orwell had few creature comforts. He lived spartanly, moving about the house, from sitting room to attic, to bedroom, to work where inspiration hit him. Although the austerity of his lifestyle was doubtless inspirational for his work, it was hard on his body; Orwell was suffering from tuberculosis, and the cold, damp air and his chain-smoking made his condition worse.

Victor Hugo also wrote while in exile, although his was political. Hugo got himself crossways with Napoleon III, so he moved to Guernsey in 1855. Over the next fifteen years, he wrote from a room he built at the top of his house. The room had windows on three walls and a glass ceiling that made it frigid in winter and broiling hot in summer, but it also gave him a view of the sky and the sea, and on clear days, his beloved France. Hugo wrote Les Mierables and Toilers of the Sea from this room.

Tomorrow I’m leaving my own self-imposed exile and heading back to New Mexico. I’m looking forward to being home again, to trading mountain views for lakes and ponderosas for poplars. But I’ll be bringing the experiences I had back with me and they’ll find their way into my writing.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers from her home high in New Mexico's central mountains.

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George S. Patton Jr., Inventor

1/19/2024

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General George Patton by Robert F. Cranston, 1945 color carbro print, from the National Portrait Gallery

George S. Patton is best known as the pugnacious general who guided the Third Army’s tanks through Europe in World War II. But he was also an inventor.

Patton’s first invention, a saber, grew out of his participation in the 1912 Olympic Games. The Army's entry in the first modern pentathlon, Patton was the only American among the 42 pentathletes in Stockholm, Sweden that year. Patton finished fifth overall in the competition that involved pistol firing, swimming, fencing, an equestrian competition, and a footrace. Following the Olympics, Patton traveled through Europe, seeking to learn more about swordsmanship.

Patton, right, at the 1912 Olympics

Patton learned that different countries utilized their swords in different ways. In the Peninsular War, part of the Napoleonic Wars fought in the Iberian Peninsula from 1807–1814, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom fought against the First French Empire. The English, he learned, nearly always used the sword for cutting, while the French dragoons used only the point of their long straight swords, inflicting more fatal wounds. The English protested that the French did not fight fair. Once, when the cavalry of the guard passed in review before Napoleon, he called to them, "Don't cut! The point! The point!"

When Patton returned to America, he wrote a report that was published in the March 1913 issue of the Army and Navy Journal. The next summer, while he was Master of the Sword at the Mounted Service School, Patton advised the Ordnance Department on sword redesign, contributing to the first significant changes in cavalry swords since the Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber had been introduced. In 1914, Patton's system of swordsmanship was published by the War Department in a 1914 Saber Exercise manual. This manual emphasized the use of the point over the edge.

Patton’s saber ended up being ceremonial in use, since it was obsolete by the time it was created. Modern warfare made cavalry charges a thing of the past.

Patton did not rest on his obsolete laurels. During World War I, he became a leading voice in the use of tanks. Immediately after the war, he became involved in improvements in his beloved iron horses. The first, which he worked on between 1919 and 1921, was a new coaxial gun mount that allowed greater range of motion for a tank’s big gun.

(Photo: 44thcollectorsavenue.com)

In 1937 the Dehner footwear company introduced a new type of boot for tank crews. Partially designed by then-Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton, the all-leather boot had straps to secure it instead of bootlaces and metal eyelets. Laces could become entangled in a tank’s moving parts, dragging the wearer’s foot into the machinery. Leather would not melt like the nylon used in previous Army boots. This saved tankers from serious burns when their boots touched hot, ejected shell casings or when escaping from a burning vehicle. Finally, since tank crews often spent a lot of time sitting inside their vehicles, they needed boots that allowed better blood circulation and less ankle support than infantry. Tanker boots provided just that, and are still in use today.

Soldiers wearing Dehner tank boots, WWII

Some people think George Patton was a genius. Others consider him a madman. It is clear from his inventions that he had a keen eye for detail and wanted to ensure that his soldiers were given every advantage possible.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can read more about her and her books on her website.

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A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

1/11/2024

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One of my sisters really gets me. I mean, really, really understands what interests and excites me. Luckily for me, she also loves to search ebay for unique things.

This past Christmas, I got two treasures from her that will undoubtably work their way into one of my novels. I’m sharing them with you and hope that they interest and excite you as much as they did me.

The first gift was a little brass box with an emblem that read “Gott Mit Uns” over a picture of a crown. After a little research, I discovered that Gott Mit Uns is German for God with us, and was a slogan used by the German army in World War I. The crown is the imperial crown of the Second Reich, and is described both as German and as Prussian online.

The emblem on the box originally graced a belt buckle on a uniform. Here is a picture of one still attached.

So how did this emblem get placed on a brass box? The answer is an interesting bit of World War I history. Most people know that World War I is notable as the war in which both sides hunkered down in trenches along a front that became unmovable. Soldiers spent many weary months hunkered down in the mud, waiting to go “over the top” and attack the other side. The waiting grew monotonous.

To counter the boredom, soldiers found things to do to occupy their time. They had to use what they had at hand, and once one creative soldier had invented a form of art, it seems all his buddies copied it. The thousands of examples of vases made from shell casings, each unique in its decorations, attests to the hundreds of thousands of shells that flew over the trenches.

Sometimes what was lying around was pieces of uniforms. The belt buckle on a German uniform is exactly the right size to be made into a match box. The one I have has a lid that separates from the box. Others I found online were hinged or were squared off tubes with open ends. On some, the smooth brass had been deckled or worked into ridges. I do not know if the top of the box is part of the original belt buckle or if it was fashioned from a fragment of a shell casing. Either way, I can imagine a soldier hunkered down in the cold and damp, intently working on a bit he picked up in no man’s land to turn it into a little trinket for his loved ones back home.

The second treasure my sister gave me is a little, paperback book entitled History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion, by “Buck Private” McCollum. Lee Charles McCollum self-published a 32-page volume of poetry by that name in 1919. That edition included sketches by Franklin Sly, another veteran of the American Expeditionary Force that went to Europe in 1918. Pt. McCollum saw action in France in many of the same areas as the famous Lost Battalion, but he is not listed on the unit's roster. Whether that means he wrote under a nom de plume was something I was not able to ascertain. The books was again published in 1919, 1921, 1922, and 1929, by which time Franklin Sly had passed away and another veteran, and Tolman R. Reamer, had completed artwork. The little volume grew over time. By 1939 it was up to 140 pages and included stories, remembrances by some of the key figures in the fight, pictures and tributes both to the Battalion and to its commander, Lt. Col. Charles Whittlesey, who had passed away in 1921. Over 700,000 copies of the various editions were sold.

The volume tells the story of Battalion 1 of the 77th Division, which pushed hard into the Argonne Forest and found itself cut off from the rest of the American forces.

On the morning of October 3, 1918, Companies A, B, C, E, and H of the 808th Infantry, the 308th Infantry’s Company H, Company K of the 307th Infantry and Companies C and of 306th Machine Gun Battalion, all members of the Seventy-Seventh Division, were cut off from the other American forces near Charlevoix, in the Argonne Forest, and surrounded by a superior number of Germans. For four days, the approximately 550 men, under command of Major Charles W. Whittlesey managed to survive without food and with a dwindling supply of ammunition, fending off enemy machine gun, rifle, trench mortar, and grenade fire and some friendly fire from their own artillery. When they were finally reconnected with the main American force, only 194 of the officers and men were able to walk out of the position. 107 had been killed.

McCollum’s poems are about that experience, plus other observations in war, including poems about his gas mask and about kissing a French girl. Some are cute and sweet, while others are sad elegies to friends now dead. It’s a great volume for anyone interested in the experience of American doughboys.
I’m thinking I need to write a sequel to my WWI novel, a Blaze of Poppies, with a character who was in the Lost Battalion and now carries around a matchbox as a memento.

What do you think? Is that a story you'd like to read? If I ever write it, you can thank my sister.

A Blaze of Poppies is an historical novel that tells the story of a New Mexico rancher in the southern part of the state and a member of the New Mexico National Guard's Battery A, who participated in many of the final battles of World War I. It is available in paperback and ebook through many online booksellers and directly from the author.

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A Month in Maine

1/4/2024

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I am beginning the new year of 2024 far from home, in Maine. I arrived here the day before New Year’s Eve, and plan to stay a month, more or less. So far, a week into my time here, I find there’s a lot of differences between my home in the mountains of New Mexico and here, but there’s a lot of similarities, too.

Here in Maine, I am housesitting for a colleague of my son, who’s gone to Australia for an extended vacation. His house is nestled on a lake, in a neighborhood that, like my own in New Mexico, has few year-round residents. Most of the homes here are summer retreats. Many of the homes surrounding mine back in New Mexico are second homes, visited only a few weeks out of the year. The lake sits in a woods and, like my home, is remote enough that google maps has trouble finding it. Both houses are surrounded by trees. Mine are ponderosas and pinons. I really don’t know what all the trees here in Maine are, but many seem to be oaks and other deciduous species, and many of the conifers are some kind of fir.

I packed my snowshoes for the trip to Maine, expecting tall drifts of the white stuff everywhere. Turns out, there’s been more snow in the New Mexico mountains, where we’ve gotten perhaps 18” so far this year, than in Maine, which got a dusting one day in November and has seen nothing but rain since. Folks assure me that it’s coming, though.

Despite the lack of snow, what really sets the two properties apart is water. Besides being next to a lake here, I find water every time I leave the house. The woods are full of small streams and rivulets. The potholes on the roads are full of it. Even where the water isn’t standing or running, the ground is boggy. In New Mexico, small streams are a seasonal pleasure, appearing with the spring run off and again for a short period after a monsoon storm.

And the cold really gets to me. Although the temperatures thus far haven’t been too different from the ones I experienced out west, numbers can be deceiving. In Albuquerque, where the air is dry and thin, the temperature drops precipitously once the sun goes down, then rises during the day. It’s not uncommon to see morning temps of 16° followed by afternoons in the 40s. Here in Maine, the humid air makes the cold feel much sharper. Today I waited until after lunch, when the temperature had risen from a low of 25° to a high of 35°. It still felt really cold. My phone verified it, telling me that the air had a “real feel” of 21°. I’m not sure the tips of my fingers will ever thaw out.

But the cold is worth it. Being here gives me time to visit with the grandkids, and time to write. While I am sure I’ll never become a full-time resident here, it’s nice to join the ranks of Robert McCloskey, Stephen King, Edna St Vincent Millay, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other literary illuminati, if only for just a month.

While not of the same caliber as the writers mentioned above, Jennifer Bohnhoff does her best to create interesting historical and contemporary novels for middle grade through adult readers. Many are set in New Mexico. For more information about her and her books, see her website.

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New Road, Old History

1/2/2024

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Sometimes I come across a street name that makes me wonder. This happened recently when I was walking through an Albuquerque neighborhood names Heritage Hills with a couple of my friends. We came across a street named Messervy Avenue. Because of the neighborhood, I assumed it was a person’s name, and that the person had done something important, but I knew of no one in American history by that name, so I had to do a little research.

Turns out, the street was named after William Sluman Messervy, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts on August 26, 1812. Messervy was the eldest son in a family of ten children born to a sea captain in the East Indies trade and his wife. His middle name comes from his maternal grandfather, Captain William Sluman, who had been killed during the American Revolutionary War while in command of a private armed vessel.

Messervy began his career in business as a clerk and book-keeper in a large firm in Boston. In 1834, he got a job in St. Louis, Missouri, and by 1839, he was in business for himself, traveling on the Santa Fe Trail and trading with Mexico, including the Mexican territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, which later became the American state of New Mexico.

Messervy was in Chihuahua when the Mexican–American War began in April 1846. Like other United States citizens, he was interned there, but freed by troops led by Colonel A. W. Doniphan after the Battle of the Sacramento River in February 1847. When the war ended early in 1848, Messervy moved to Santa Fe, which had been annexed by the U.S. and was under an American provisional government. By 1851, his trading firm called Messervy and Webb had the leading merchant house in New Mexico, sending between sixty and seventy wagons along the Santa Fe trail each year. It delivered general merchandise to the region’s natives in addition to American settlers and federal and territorial government officials throughout New Mexico.

In June 1850, New Mexico adopted a state constitution and Messervy was elected to serve as its first member of Congress. However, Messervy was never officially seated because Congress did not accept New Mexico as a state. The Territory of New Mexico, organized when the Compromise of 1850 passed that September, recognized another man, Richard Hanson Weightman, as New Mexico Territory’s Congressional delegate.

New Mexico Territory, 1852, including most of the later Arizona Territory, but not the Gadsden Purchase of 1854

This setback did not end Messervy’s political career. On April 8, 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed him to be the Secretary of the New Mexico Territory. A year later, he became its acting Governor when its appointed governor, David Meriwether, went out of state. Messervy was then appointed superintendent of Indian affairs in New Mexico, a difficult position since the Jicarilla branch of the Apaches were then at war with America.

By July, the stress of his three jobs had become too great. He resigned his positions and sold both his house on the Santa Fe Plaza and the Exchange Hotel, Santa Fe’s liveliest venue. He returned to Salem, where he served as mayor from 1856 to 1858, was a director of some local corporations, and was active in scientific and literary societies. He was also a justice of the peace at Salem. Although he had been a Democrat throughout his life, he joined the Republican party during the Civil War. Messervy died after a long illness on February 19, 1886.

William Sluman Messervy may not be a household name, even in New Mexico, but he had an important role in the Americanization of New Mexico, and he was important enough that someone thought to name a street in Albuquerque after him.

Jennifer Bohnhoff taught New Mexico history at the middle school level for a number of years. She is now an author of historical and contemporary fiction for middle school through adult readers, including Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War.

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Quite the Plum

12/14/2023

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about wasailling and figgy pudding and I mentioned that the word plum didn’t necessarily mean a purple tree fruit. It's time to elaborate on that!

You probably know the old nursery rhyme about Jack Horner, a boy eating his Christmas pie. If you don't, here it is:

William Wallace Denslow’s illustration of the rhyme, 1902

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said,
"What a good boy am I!"

Recognize the style of the illustration? Denslow illustrated the Wizard of Oz books!

The nursery rhyme is a fun little ditty, but it may have more behind it than you'd think.

Webster's Dictionary says that, in addition to being the fruit of the prunus tree, a plum can be defined as something superior or very desirable, especially : something desirable given in return for a favor, and that may be what the nursery rhyme is really about.

No one knows just how old this nursery rhyme is. It was first published in Mother Goose's melody, or, Sonnets for the cradle, which may have first been published in 1765, but is mentioned in a 1725 satire and may be much older than that.

In the 19th century, it was suggested that the poem is related to the period from 1536-1541, when the monastic system in England was being destroyed by Henry VIII after Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made him the supreme head of the church in England, separating England from papal authority. Henry then expropriated the incomes of the monasteries and convents, increasing the regular income of the Crown. Much of the former monastic properties were sold off to fund Henry's military campaigns in the 1540s.

By January 1539, Glastonbury Monastery was the last remaining religious property in Somerset that had not been dissolved. Glastonbury abbey was one of the richest and most influential in all England, with one hundred monks living in it. Many of the sons of the nobility and gentry were educated there before going on to university.

The story is that Richard Whiting, the abbot, sent his steward, Thomas Horner, to London with a huge Christmas pie, into which he had placed the deeds to a dozen manors which the Monastery owned. The Abbot's hope was that by giving away such valuable lands, the King would allow the monastery to remain intact.

During the journey Horner opened the pie and extracted the deeds of Mells Manor, which he kept for himself. While a manor would indeed be the something superior or very desirable, meant to be given to the Kind in return for the favor of the monastery's continued existence, there may be another wrinkle to the use of the word plum. Mells Manor, which is in the Mendip Hills, had several lead mines on it, and the word plum might be a pun on the Latin plumbum, or lead.

Is this story true? While records exist that prove Thomas Horner became the owner of the manor, later owners assert that he didn't steal the deed, but purchased it from the abbey.

Regardless of whether Horner bought or stole the deed, the Christmas pie did not produce the intended result. On November 15, 1539, (aged 77 - 78, the king had the 78 year old abbot convicted of treason for remaining loyal to Rome. He was dragged to the top of Glastonbury Tor, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered. Whiting's head was hung over the west gate[ of his deserted abbey, and his limbs were displayed on the townwalls of Wells, Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgwater.

Whiting was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1895.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of several works of historical fiction, none of which have a Christmas pie or plum pudding in them. You can read more about her and her books here.

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Some of the Heroes of Pearl Harbor

12/6/2023

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Eighty-two years ago, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Empire launched a surprise attack on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor that was intended to knock the United States out of a war in the Pacific. Instead, it raised the anger and heroic, fighting spirit of the American people and caused our entry into World War II. Countless acts of heroism and sacrifice occurred on that day, and sixteen men were awarded the medal of honor. Some people are surprised to know that the attack went far beyond the borders of Pearl Harbor, and that the casualties stretched beyond Navy personnel.

The first target of the striking Japanese bomber and fighter planes was the Marine Corps Air Station at Ewa, on Oahu’s northern shore. Although the runway was not bombed and remained serviceable, all forty-eight aircraft based there were destroyed

Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John William Finn with his Medal of Honor (Photo: Naval History & Heritage Command)

The Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay, on Oahu’s eastern side was hit next. Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John William Finn was in charge of a 20-man unit whose main job was to maintain the weapons on PBY Catalina flying boats stationed there. On the morning of the 7th, he was at home when he heard gunfire and a neighbor started banging on his door to tell him he was needed at his squadron. He drove the mile to the airfield and found most of the Catalinas already burning. He joined his men, who were firing back at the Japanese flyers, either by climbing into the burning Catalina’s to use their guns, or by taking the guns off and putting them on other mounts. Finn pulled a .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun from the unit’s painter, placed it on a mount, and opened fire. Although he suffered a total of 21 wounds, including a bullet through his foot and another one through his shoulder, he continued firing for two hours. When Finn died in 2010 at the age of 100, he was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Battle of Pearl Harbor. He remains the only aviation ordnanceman to ever receive the decoration.

Most people know that the greatest loss of life during the attack at Pear Harbor happened on the USS Arizona. Of the 2,341 service members that died on Dec. 7, 1941, almost half, a total of 1,177, died on that one ship. The high mortality rate was due to the detonation of the forward magazines when a bomb hit them, killing more than two-thirds of her crew. The crew of the USS Arizona included 38 sets of brothers, including three sets of three brothers. Of those 79 people, 63 died as a result of the attack. Of the ship’s 82 Marines, only 3 officers and 12 enlisted men survived.

Real Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, the commander of Battleship Division One, which included the USS Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, rushed to the Arizona, the flagship for the division, as soon as the battle began. He joined the ship’s captain, Franklin Van Valkenburgh. Both men were killed by the explosion and their bodies were never found. However, both men’s Annapolis Naval Academy rings were recovered. Kidd’s ring was fused to the bulkhead of the bridge.

The second largest loss of life was on the USS Oklahoma, which lost 429 men. By June 1944, Navy personnel had managed to identify the remains of only 35 of the recovered bodies. The rest were buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, through a partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs, exhumed the unknown remains and began the lengthy identification process. Over 300 sailors and Marines from Oklahoma have since been identified and returned home.

The USS West Virginia lost 106 men. The USS California lost 105 lost. Other casualties occurred on the ground. Hickam Field, that lost 191 people, including five of the 49 civilians killed on December 7. Some of the civilians were killed by the enemy and some died as a result of friendly fire.

One Medal of Honor recipient was not anywhere near Pearl Harbor that day. Sand Island in Midway Atoll was also attacked on December 7th. When a shell from a Japanese ship struck the command post of Battery H, First Lieutenant George Ham Cannon was wounded. He refused rescue until the other men wounded by the same shell were taken care of, and continued to direct his command post until forcibly removed. He later died of his injuries. Lieutenant Cannon is the only Marine recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions taken on December 7, 1941.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired history and English teacher who is now writing historical fiction for children and adults. Her mother was raised on Oahu and watched the bombing of Pearl Harbor when she was a young girl. The author also lived in Hawaii as a child and visited the USS Arizona numerous time on class field trips. She brought her sons to visit while they were on vacation because she thinks it is important that future generations continue to remember the sacrifices of their forefathers.

To any who are veterans or presently serving, Jennifer Bohnhoff thanks you for your service.

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Wassailing for Figgy Pudding

11/30/2023

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As I write this, snow is falling outside my window, covering the ground with a soft and beautiful layer and definitely making it feel like the Christmas season is upon us. And though I try to ignore them, carols keep playing in my head.

Have you ever heard the song "Here We Come a-Wassailing" and wondered what that meant? Evidently a lot of people have, prompting someone to change the words to “Here We Come a-Caroling.” Wassailing is an old English tradition of going door-to-door, singing and being offered a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange. During the Middle Ages, the wassail was traditionally held on Twelfth Night, or January 6, and the wassailers were peasants who came wassailing at their feudal lords’ doors. The lord of the manor would give food and drink to his peasants in exchange for their blessing and goodwill.

Peasants also wassailed the trees in their orchards, assuring that there would be plenty of fruit in the coming year.

The word "wassail" came to English from Old Norse. Originally, in Old English it was used as the phrase hál wes þú. Hál is related to the word hale, and in hale and hearty, wes is a verb of being, like is or was, and þú is related to you, or thou, the first letter being pronounced as a soft th, so it loosely translates as healthy be you. Eventually this was shortened to wes hál. By 1300, it had become kind of a toast, and then the drink itself, often a warm wine or cider beverage, took on the toast as its name. By 1400, wassail became a verb: wassailing, which meant celebrating.

Over time, this changed, and by the 1600s many people were complaining about rowdy gangs of young men who went door to door demanding drink and food and vandalizing houses when they didn’t get what they wanted. This helps explain the line in “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” when the singers demand “Now, bring us some figgy pudding . . . We won’t go until we get some.”

So, what is figgy pudding? Although sometimes it is called plum pudding or Christmas pudding, it has been a staple in England since the 1300s. Then, word plum didn’t necessarily mean a purple tree fruit; it meant any treat. Thus, when little Jack Horner stuck his thumb into a pie and pulled out a plum, it didn’t mean what we think it means (but that is the subject for another blog!) Plum pudding meant a pudding with good things in it, and often had a mixture of beef or mutton with raisins, prunes, figs, wine, and spices rather like what we now call mincemeat.

When Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of England from December 1653 until his death in September 1658, he decreed that all this demanding of food and drink had gotten out of hand and was detracting from the true spirit of Christmas. He banned figgy puddings, wassailing, the singing of carols, and many other Christmas traditions. King George I reinstated Christmas celebrations, thereby earning the nickname “pudding king.”

There are many variations on both wassail and figgy pudding. Here are two that you might want to try.

Wassail

2 quarts apple cider
1 pint cranberry juice
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp aromatic bitters
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tsp whole allspice
1 small orange, studded with 20 cloves
1 cup rum (optional)
Put all ingredients into a crockpot and cook on high for 1 hour or low 4-8 hours, Or put in a saucepan and warm on the stove: do not boil!

Plum Duff

This is an old family recipe that my mother used to serve. I have no idea why it is called a duff. If you do, I'd love to hear it.

Put in saucepan and melt over medium heat:
½ cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar

Beat well, then beat into shortening mixture:
2 eggs
2 cups cooked, mashed prunes

Add and stir:
1 cup flour

Dissolve 1 tsp soda in 1 TBS milk and mix into prune mixture.

Fill greased 8” pudding molds 2/3 full and steam for 1 hour.
Or fill two greased 1 pound coffee cans (do they even make these anymore?) and steam for 1 hour
Or bake in a greased 8” square pan for 20-30 minutes at 350°

Serve with sweetened whipped cream or hard sauce. If you've read this far and don't know what hard sauce is, let me know and I'll provide that recipe to you!

Jennifer Bohnhoff lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the author of books for middle grade through adult readers, and she wishes each and every one of you wes hál this holiday season.

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Remembering WWI, and Forgetting New Mexico

11/23/2023

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Most years I pick up a book or movie to read to commemorate Veteran's Day. This year, my choice was To Conquer Hell, by Edward G. Lengel.

It seems most Americans don't understand what Veterans Day is and what other commemoration it grew out of. In the United States, Veteran's Day is observed every year on November 11. Its purpose is to honor military veterans of the United States Armed Forces. Prior to 1954, the day was called Armistice Day, and recognized the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect., ending major hostilities during World War I. In South Africa, the day is called Poppy Day. In Britain, France, Belgium and Poland.it is called Remembrance Day.

Ernest Wrentmore

Lengel's book deals with the American Expeditionary Force's role in the Meuse-Argonne offensive which came at the end of the war. The book sometimes focuses on specific soldiers, including famous ones like Alvin York and Charles Whittlesey, and lesser known ones like Ernest Wrentmore, who joined up when only 12 years old and went on to serve in WWII and Korea. .

Pattonn in front of one of his tanks.

I found some of Lengel's writing quite informative and amusing. For instance, he calls George Patton "wealthy, athletic, and brilliantly insane." When explaining Patton's work establishing the First Army Tank School at Langres, France, he includes the interesting fact that there were no lights in Renault tanks, so crews had to operate in the dark when the hatches were closed. "A tank commander signaled the driver with a series of kicks: one in the back told him to go forward, a kick on the right or left shoulder meant he should turn, and a kick in the head signaled him to stop. Repeated kicks in the head meant he should turn back."

For me, a New Mexican, Lengel's book was a bit of a disappointment. New Mexico hadn't been a state very long when World War I broke out, and it was a very sparsely populated place, with only 345,000 inhabitants. Despite that, more than 17,000 men stepped up to serve. All 33 counties were represented. Tiny as we were, New Mexico was ranked fifth in the nation for military service by the end of the first World War.

Men leaving for military training camp in 1917 parade on Palace Avenue near Sena Plaza. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archive, Negative No. 149995

Of especial note was Roswell's Battery A, 1st New Mexico Field Artillery. Renamed Battery A, 146th Field Artillery Brigade of the 41st Infantry Division when the National Guard was "federalized" and mixed into the regular army, this devision had served Pershing well in Mexico during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa. In France, they fought at Chateau-Theirry, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne Forest. The unit's four guns fired more than 14,000 rounds in combat, surpassing all other U.S. heavy artillery units. So why wouldn't Lengel mention them?

I cringed when Lengel said that Douglas MacArthur grew up at Fort Selden, Texas; Fort Selden is in New Mexico, just north of Las Cruces.

A picture of the MacArthur family that hangs in the Ft. Selden visitor center. The future general is the child on the left.

While To Conquer Hell certainly encompasses the full span of operations by the American Expeditionary Force, I found it difficult to read in parts. I wish the narrative had referenced the maps that are strewn throughout the book, so that I could have found the right map to go with each engagement.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexican, and proud of it. A former history teacher, she now writes full time from her home in the remote mountains of central New Mexico. Her novel, A Blaze of Poppies, is set in the southern part of the state and in France in the years just before and during America's involvement in World War I. .

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Entering a New World

11/16/2023

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See the strange, circular cluster of leaves at the bend in the road? This ring of green at the top of the trees is something I pass every time I leave home. I've been looking at it for at least six years, maybe longer because I don't remember when I first saw it.

I do remember wondering what it was and why it was there. In my imagination, it became the sky ring, a portal between realms, and that became the seed of a story.

I'm now writing the first draft of that story as my NaNoWriMo 2023 project.

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, and that month is November! Every November, hundreds of thousands of people gather online, in libraries and coffee shops throughout the world, and attempt to write a novel in one month. A novel, by NaNo's definition, is 50,000 words. They don't have to be great words, or even in the best order. NaNo is a matter of quantity, not quality. It is a mad dash to write a first draft. After that, the NaNo people have other months set aside devoted to editing and polishing those 50,000 frenetic words into a finished manuscript.

My story is tentatively named The Raven Queen, and it is a fantasy based very loosely on the history of my neighborhood, a small, isolated community at the base of the Sandia Mountains. The community, called La Madera, thrived from the 1840s to the 1880s as a timber town. Madera is Spanish for lumber, and I've been told that many of the vigas, or roofbeams, in Albuquerque's Old Town came from La Madera. Once Anglos began coming into the area in large numbers, brick and mortar structures began to replace traditional adobe ones, and La Madera became a source of limestone, which is used in making grout. The town is no longer: a few buildings and ruins are all that are left of it. Although many factors came together to doom La Madera, one crucial one was a diminished water supply.

In my story, Savio is a young man who must find out why the stream that is the lifeblood of Lumbra, the town that I based on my old village of La Madera. And since this is fantasy, not historical fiction, the reason is fantastic indeed.

With the help of his trusty companion, a big black dog named Panther, a squirrel guide named Abert, and a raven named Corbeau, Savio must find three stones that unite earth, water, and sky and gift them to Iyara, the Weeping Woman whose tears fill Lumbra's stream.

But will Savio's gifts be enough to make the stream run again? And will I be able to create a story that holds together and makes sense? Both of those are questions that are yet to be answered.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author who lives in the forest on the eastern side of the Sandia Mountains. She typically writes historical fiction. This is her second foray into fantasy. Her first, a silly middle grade fantasy named The Petulant Princess, remains unpublished, and should probably remain so. For more information on Jennifer and her published works, see her website here.

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Room to Write

George S. Patton Jr., Inventor

A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

A Month in Maine

New Road, Old History

Quite the Plum

Some of the Heroes of Pearl Harbor

Wassailing for Figgy Pudding

Wassail

Plum Duff

Remembering WWI, and Forgetting New Mexico

Entering a New World

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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