Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 37

Garbage Soup

When Matt, my oldest son, was in 5th grade, his class held a "Pioneer Day." Students were to bring in homemade soups and breads, and supplies for simple crafts such as corn husk dolls. While December storms raged without (usually a bit of literary license in Albuquerque) they were going to hunker down in a classroom lit by kerosene lamp and candlelight, learn their lessons on chalk boards with chalk, play simple, non-electronic games, and live like Laura Ingalls Wilder had in Little House on the Prairie.

I decided that if my son was going to eat like a pioneer, he needed to learn how pioneers cooked. We would practice pioneer thriftiness in our own kitchen.

Very few people practice the kind of thriftiness that our foremothers practiced. We don't have to. We have supermarkets stuffed with everything we need. Most people I know start a soup pot with a can of broth. Mrs. Ingalls didn't have a supermarket at her disposal. She made her broth from scratch, usually using the tag ends of vegetables and leftover bones.  I told Matt that we were going to make broth the pioneer way.

We started by placing the carcass of the Thanksgiving turkey into a large pot. Then we peeled carrots and threw the peelings and the tops onto the bones. We threw in the leafy tops and thick bottoms of a head of celery and the ends of an onion. We sliced the tops and bottoms off a tomato and threw them into the pot, too. We threw in some herbs and seasonings, covered it all with water, and left it to simmer for the better part of a day. By the time we were ready to strain the broth and pick the last bits of meat off the bones, the whole house smelled wonderful.

Matt proudly carried in his crockpot of soup of Pioneer Day, and he was so enthusiastic about what he'd learned that the teacher asked him to share the experience with the class. Not everyone was impressed. As he explained all the tag-ends that went into the pot, one mother's face expressed more and more horror. Finally, she walked over to me and whispered in my ear.

"Don't tell me your son made this soup out of garbage," she said. When I told her that peelings and ends were not garbage, and that yes, Matt had done exactly what he'd said, her expression moved from horror to revulsion. She quickly told her daughter to put down her spoon and pour the soup out. She then announced that her soup had been made the right way: it had come from a can. I had to chuckle. Didn't she know that the company who canned that soup had gone through the same process as Matt had to make their soup?

We continue to make what's become known as garbage soup every year after Thanksgiving, and it has never failed to satisfy our bellies and our. If you've never made it, perhaps this is the year to try a little bit of pioneer thriftiness.
General Directions for Garbage Soup
These are just general directions. Because garbage soup is made thriftily from whatever you have lying about, it will be different every time.

In the weeks leading up to soup making, save any vegetable odds and ends in a zip lock bag or plastic storage container in the freezer. Have three green beans left over from dinner? Into the bag they go! A spoonful of corn or peas, or a slice of onion? They are freezer bound!

On the day of soup making, peel some carrots and turn them into sticks or rounds. Package them and put them in the fridge for later eating, but add the carrot tops and peelings to the soup pot. Cut the bottom and the leafy ends off the celery and throw them into the soup pot, too. Cut the celery into nice sticks and put them in the fridge for later snacking. Slice the top and bottom off an onion and throw them into the pot. Dice or slice the onion and put in the fridge. Throw in whatever other odds and ends you might have lying around in the fridge - tomatoes on the verge of going mushy, for instance.

Add the leftover bones from a turkey (or chicken, or beef roast) into the pot. Add 5 black peppercorns, a bay leaf, and a teaspoon of salt, then cover everything with water. Bring slowly to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for several hours. (You can also throw all this into a crockpot and let it cook all day that way, too.)

When the stock tastes like stock, strain it through a colander into a large bowl. Press down on the celery and carrots to get all their juices out. Pick off any remaining meat and store it in the fridge. If your bowl has a lid, cover it and put it in the fridge. If it doesn't, transfer the stock to other containers.

When your stock is cool (I do this the next day) you can skim off any fat with a spoon and throw it away. At this point you can divide it up and store in the freezer for later use, or proceed to make garbage soup.

To make soup, put diced onion, carrots, and celery in a saucepan with a little fat (oil, butter, or some of the fat you just skimmed off the stock.) and cook until soft and a little brown. Pour some or all of your stock back into a saucepan. Add anything else you want. A diced up potato or two, or a handful of barley are good. When the vegetables are cooked, add any precooked things, like that bag of extra beans and corn you have in the freezer, or some leftover cooked rice, plus the meat you picked off the bones. Adjust seasonings by adding a little salt or a splash of worcestershire sauce. Enjoy!

Mistaken Identities in Middle Grade Fiction

Most middle school readers wonder if they were adopted. Some actually revel in it: who are these people, and why can’t they understand me? Clearly my own people are elsewhere. Middle grade readers are going through so many emotional, physical and psychological changes that it’s not surprising that they are drawn to books about other children who don’t know who they are. Here are a few suggested books with this theme.
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist is the classic novel of mistaken identity. Originally published in monthly installments between 1837 and 1839, it tells the story of an orphan born in a workhouse in 1830s England. Oliver leaves the workhouse when he is nine years old and apprenticed to an undertaker, but runs away and finds himself in the company of a troop of pickpockets. Through a series of interwoven circumstances, the kind that only Dickens could have created, Oliver’s identity is eventually revealed, and the orphan boy goes from rags to riches and takes his rightful place in the kind of generous and loving family that every middle school child wishes he had.  
Jip, His Story written in 1996 by the Newbery winning American novelist Katherine Paterson, focuses on another orphan, this time a 12-year-old. Set on a poor farm in Vermont during the 1850s, it tells the story of a baby who supposedly fell of a cart and was never retrieved. He is called Jip because his dark skin color made people believe he was a gypsy. Despite the hard work and difficult conditions, Jip gets along well with the other workers on the farm, many of whom are mentally ill, and he enjoys working with the farm animals. But when a man shows up and begins asking questions about Jip’s background, it becomes clear that Jip is no gypsy, and his real identity puts him in grave danger.
The main character of my historical novel Code: Elephants on the Moon may not be an orphan, but she still doesn’t know who she is. Eponine Lambaol thinks she is the only red head in a town filled with brown-haired people because she is Breton living in a tiny village in Normandy, France. It is spring of 1944 and there are many things that Eponine doesn’t understand. Where is her father? Who is the mysterious cousin who has come to live with her and her mother? When Eponine finds her mother and cousin listening to strange announcements on a forbidden radio, she realizes that nothing she’s believed about herself is true.

Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches 7th grade social studies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the author of several works of middle grade historical fiction. Her most recent book, Valverde, is set in New Mexico during the Civil War

Old English, Beowulf, and the Prehistoric World

When many people think of Old English, they think of the writings of Shakespeare. While the Bard's language may seem old and difficult to understand, it is modern in comparison with real Old English. Click here to hear someone reading in Old English. I am willing to bet that few- if any-  who do will be able to understand a single word.

Old English is the language of the Angles, who originated in the western area of what is now  Germany. After they migrated across the channel, speakers called the area they settled Angeland, or Engeland, and their language Englisc. The language dominated the island from the 5th century until the 11th, when the Normans invaded, bringing their Norman French with them. The Normans became the lords and the Angles their servants, explaining why food often has Norman names while the animals, cared for by the servants, have Angle names. Beef is Norman in origin: Cow is Anglo. Mutton is Norman: Sheep is Anglo. The fact that Modern English is a mix of Old English, Norman, Viking (since they moved in, too!) and numerous other languages explains why English is such a difficult language in which to spell and pronounce words. Each language brought its own spelling and pronunciation rules into the mix.

Old English writings began to appear the early 8th century.  Few original copies remain. One long epic poem, which may be the oldest surviving long poem in Old English, was bound into a collection called the Norwell Codex. This poem, which had no title, has come to be called by the name of its hero, Beowulf.  It is considered one of the most important works of Old English literature.
The poem tells how Beowulf  leaves Geatland, in what is now Sweden, to help Hrothgar, the king of the Danes. The story was considered just a story for many years. However, many of the characters appear in registers and legal documents of the 6th century. Archaeological excavations in Lejre, Denmark, the traditional location of Heorot, uncovered three halls, each about 160 ft long, that had been built in the middle of the 6th century, the time period of the Beowulf story.
It appears that the people and places depicted in Beowulf are real, and the background information about politics, family feuds, and migrations patterns are based on fact. But some elements of Beowulf come from a much earlier time. For instance, while the Scandinavian peoples had been converted to Christianity by the 6th century, many of the themes in Beowulf remain prechristian.
https://www.slideshare.net/smolinskie... Other elements suggest the story might hearken back to an earlier time, and the political elements are a later overlay to a story that might have been passed down through countless generations.

The name of Hrothgar's mead hall, for
instance, is Heorot, which translates as Hart's Hall. Could the original hall have been constructed of the bones of the giant elk that roamed Europe at the end of the last Ice Age? Similar shelters, made of mammoth bones, have been found in the Ukraine.

And what about Grendle, the monster that Beowulf destroys? The poem calls him a fallen son of man. Might Grendle have been something distinctly man-like, yet different enough to cause discomfort? might Grendle have been a Neanderthal?

This is the scenario I present in my Young Adult novel, Swan Song.
I am not the first to associate Neanderthals with the Beowulf story. Michael Crichton did so in his 1976 novel, Eaters of the Dead.  The difference between his novel and mine is that Crichton's novel is set in the tenth century and is structured as the journal of an Arab who visits the Rus, and early Russian people who are battling with a remnant group of Neanderthals who have managed to avoid extinction. My novel is set at the end of the last Ice Age, when Neanderthals and Humans coexisted in Europe. A second story line in Swan Song mirrors the action of the Paleolithic narrative, but is set in modern times. If the scribe who originally took the ancient story of Beowulf and modified it to reflect life in 6th century Europe, why can it be updated again to today?
Jennifer Bohnhoff writes novels that are set in, or inspired by history. Her novels are available on Amazon and on other online booksellers.

Fort Union: Guardian of the Santa Fe Trail

The ruins of the third Fort Union. Fort Union rests out in the middle of nowhere, but a century and a half ago it was the center of a lot of activity. It has been rebuilt three times, each time responding to what was happening around it. 

Located near the convergence of the Mountain and Cimmaron branches, Fort Union's original task was to monitor the Santa Fe trail. The soldiers were charged with controlling Native Americans and, if wagon trains came under attack, to respond with campaigns against the Indians. 

The original fort, constructed in the 1850s, was built close by the eastern edge of a high mesa in order to protect it from the incessant winds. Diaries from the period indicate that the protection was minimal, and that sand constantly seeped through cracks around windows and found its way into beds and food supplies.
It was thrown up quickly, and made of adobe and logs that were already in serious disrepair a decade later, when the Civil War began to disrupt life in the territory.

By August 1861, the Confederates under John Baylor had already claimed the southern half of New Mexico Territory and renamed it Arizona. The U.S. Army was convinced that invasion of Northern New Mexico was imminent, and that Fort Union was the key to holding the territory. However, the bluffs that protected it from wind also made it vulnerable to cannon fire should the Confederates be able to take them. A new fort was needed.
The Second Fort Union was built a mile and a half away from the first, in the open valley. Its earthwork walls, parapets, and moats covered 23 acres and were shaped like a star to accommodate 28 cannon. It was built by Hispanic  Volunteers since most of the Union Troops had been called east. The work went on 24 hours a day, with gangs of 200 men taking four hour shifts. The fort was ready by February 1862, when Confederates advanced up the Rio Grande and defeated the Union forces at the battle of Valverde. By March they had taken Albuquerque and then Santa Fe. It seemed that Fort Union was the only thing standing between the Confederates and the rich gold fields of Colorado.

Colonel Edward Canby, the Commander of Union forces in New Mexico Territory, said "The question is not of saving this post, but of saving New Mexico and defeating the Confederates in such a way that an invasion of this Territory will never again be attempted. It is essential to the general plan that this post should be retains if possible. Fort Union must be held."

The standoff at Fort Union never happened. No one on either side anticipated the gritty determination of the Colorado Volunteers when they refused to stay at the fort, and instead confronted the enemy in the mountains east of Santa Fe. ​ When visitors go to Fort Union National Monument, most of what they see is the remains of the third fort. Begun in 1863, this fort became the largest military outpost west of the Mississippi River. It served as an arsenal and depot, and was a safe resting place for travelers along the Santa Fe Trail. Again, its primary function was controlling the Indians and protecting Americans who used the trail. 

The military abandoned the fort in 1891. By then the Apaches and Comanche had been subdued and the railroad had entered the state, effectively ending the
era of the Santa Fe trail.  When I toured it in June 2017, there were few people there. I was able to walk among the ruins and read the interpretive signs without jostling crowds. The occasional sound of a bugle call broke the constant rush of the winds through the ruins. It was peaceful and pleasant, and I learned a lot from the small museum situated near the parking lot.

The fort is located 28 miles north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. To get there, take exit 366 off I-25 and go 8 miles north and west. The park, which is run by the National Park Service, is open from 8-5 from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and 8-4 the rest of the year. Check their website for special programs and tours.

A Second Independence Day

This year I celebrated Independence Day twice. Like most Americans, I ate hamburgers, watched fireworks, and enjoyed the company of family on the 4th of July. I was visiting my middle son and his family in Pittsburgh, where I got to spend hours playing with my two year old granddaughter and my husband and son ran a 5K.

But two days later, I got to enjoy a second Independence Day, when I visited the town of Independence, Missouri.
My first stop was the National Frontier Trails Museum, which teaches about the trails that opened the American West. Beginning with Lewis and Clark, visitors learn about the Mormon Trail, Oregon and California Trails, Old Spanish Trail, and the one I was interested in, the Santa Fe Trail. Quotes from diaries and first hand accounts of the trails give the museum a very personal appeal.  The museum has a partnership with Pioneer Trails Adventures, an independent contractor that offers narrated covered wagon tours of historical sites in Independence as well as sleigh rides during the Christmas season, chuck wagon dinners, and rides in a white bridal surrey for special events.

I took a short tour and learned a lot from Ralph, the personable and knowledgeable owner. He taught me not only about Bess Truman's birthplace, early Independence history, and that wagon ruts are called "swales," but I learned a lot about Ed and Harry, the mules that pulled the wagon. 

I highly recommend these rides!
Artifacts, included wagons, carts, supplies, weapons, clothing, original journals, foodstuffs and furniture enriched the experience. 

Maps and murals, such as this one, depicting the Santa Fe plaza, covered the walls. Next, I toured the house where Harry and Bess Truman lived. Although well appointed, this charming old Victorian house was surprisingly modest, especially the quaint kitchen, where the linoleum floor had been nailed down where a seam had separated, and the wallpaper near light switched looked worn. I would have liked to stay longer in Independence. If I had, I would have taken a second, longer tour with Pioneer Trails, visited the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, and gone into more of the historic houses, the 1859 jail, and the 1827 log courthouse. But the open road was calling and it was time to move on. Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction and teaches New Mexico history to 7th graders in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Her latest book, Valverde, about a Civil War Battle in New Mexico, came out this spring and is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and large print edition.

She is always thrilled to meet someone more stubborn than she is, even if that someone has four legs.

For more information about her books, go to her website by clicking here.

Investigating a New Mexican Mystery - or Hoax

It's called Inscription Rock, the Phoenician Rock, the Decalogue Stone, or the Commandment Stone.  Whatever you call it, this rock inscribed with strange markings, west of Los Lunas, New Mexico, is a curiosity, and probably a hoax. 

The Phoenician Rock lies at the base of Mystery Mesa, sometimes called Hidden Mesa, in a remote area controlled by the BLM. It is west of Los Lunas and about 35 miles southwest of Albuquerque. A BLM permit is required to enter the area.

The stone is covered with what experts have called Paleo-Hebrew script, which is practically identical to the Phoenician script. Also included, according to some experts, are Samaritan and Greek letters. Some have argued that the stone uses modern Hebrew punctuation, indicating that it is a modern creation. Other researchers point out stylistic and grammatical errors to question its authenticity.

What it says depends on who translates it. Some ethnographers have suggested that the text is an early version of the Ten Commandments. Others say that it tells the story of a Phoenician sailor, lost at sea, who yearns to return home.

​The writing is set at an angle, suggesting that it shifted or fell from its original position.

The first time the stone is mentioned in historical records is in 1933, when University of New Mexico archaeology professor Frank Hibben clains to have been led to it by an unnamed and uncredited Indian guide. Hibben writes that his guide claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. After Hibben announced his discovery, a Los Lunas man named Florencio Chavez announced that his grandfather claimed to have seen the rock in 1800.

I've been to the rock several times, and while I am no expert on ancient texts, I find the rock interesting. Of more interest to me, though, are the Indian pictographs and ruins on the top of the mesa. This site was an outlier community that linked Acoma Pueblo to the west with the Rio Grande and the trading communities that strung along that ribbon of water, tying the arid southwest to the Mayan Civilizations to the south and the nomadic plains tribes to the northeast.

What those Indians thought of the strangely marked rock - if it was indeed there when they were - if a real mystery.

Bridges, Part 2

Roebling Bridge, Cincinnati. Photo by Nathan Holth. http://ow.ly/f1UY30djvIB Recently my husband and I drove through Cincinnati. We walked across this bridge to get from our hotel in Covington, Kentucky, to The Great American Ballpark, where the Cincinnati Reds were playing the Chicago Cubs. 

I was struck by the beauty of this bridge as I walked across it.
It wasn't until I saw the plaque on the north side of the bridge, on the return journey, that I realized the significance of the bridge, which helps to explain its beauty.

This bridge is named the Roebling Bridge after its designer, John Roebling. When it was opened in December 1867, its 1,057 foot span was the longest in the world. Roebling, an engineer who had emigrated from Prussian Germany, developed the iron-wire cables that made suspension bridges of this type possible. This bridge was the first that used the new technology. Roebling and his son would go on to design and build the much larger and more famous Brooklyn Bridge.

The platform the cars drive on is not a solid roadbed, but a grid of metal mesh that makes the car tires "sing" as they cross. The sound is both eerie and harmonious. I found it disconcerting to look down through the mesh and see the ripples on the water below. Strange, that something so ethereal can hold the weight of so many racing cars.

By happy coincidence, when I opened the Wall Street Journal later that evening, I found a review for Chief Engineer, a new biography of the Roeblings by Erica Wagner. That review provided a lot of background information on the bridge and its designers. It is a book I will certainly have to pick up soon.

Bridges, part 1

The Roebling Bridge, Cincinnati. Nathan Holth, photographer. http://historicbridges.org/bridges/br... Coincidences can be the bridges between unrelated experiences, enriching understanding in surprising ways. I'm always thrilled and surprised when coincidences align without my planning them to.

Last week my husband and I drove from our home in Albuquerque to Pittsburgh to visit one of our sons and his family.​ I stopped by my local library before the trip so I could pick up some books on CD to listen to while on the road. I ended up getting Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, mostly because it was long, of historical interest, and I had never read it before. Written in 1852, this novel depicted the many horrors of slavery, and his long been regarded the spark that began the Civil War. It is not an easy book to read: Stowe's characters spend a lot of time pontificating, and there is a racist tone to the book that modern readers will find offensive. However, the plot is filled with exciting twists and turns, and the characters feel very read. Readers who enjoy Dickens will enjoy this book.

One of the most dramatic scenes in the book is of Eliza escaping over an ice-clogged river, her young son cradled in her arms.
Her master, Mr. Shelby, has sold her son to slave traders to settle his debts, and Eliza chooses to escape to Canada rather than allow him to be sent to the slave market in New Orleans. It is winter, and the ferry is not running because the river is clogged with ice. Rather than be caught by the pursing slavers and their dogs, Eliza jumps from ice floe to ice flow, escaping Kentucky for the free state of Ohio. It wasn't until my husband and I reached Covington, Kentucky, that I really realized what a daring feat Eliza had achieved. Covington is just over the river - the Ohio River -  from Cincinnati, Ohio. I stood on the banks and realized that this was the river that Eliza crossed. 

The Ohio is a mighty river. It is broad and it is deep. Looking at it, I realized that Eliza must have been far more desperate and far braver than I had imagined.

I hadn't picked Uncle Tom's Cabin for any specific reason when I went on this trip, but this view of the river ended up being the bridge between the real world and the novel that really brought the story to life for me. 

Magical History Tour

Sometimes you just gotta get out of Dodge - 

or Albuquerque, as the case may be.

This weekend I joined my husband and a couple of friends on a quick road trip to historical sites in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.
We spent Friday night in the Plaza Hotel, a grand old hotel built in 1881, at the peak of Las Vegas, New Mexico's rail road building boom. The next morning we drove past the 
Casteneda Hotel. This former Harvey House opened in 1898 and was the site for Rough Rider Reunions that were attended by Teddy Roosevelt himself. It's badly in need of restoration, and I hope those involved can get the funding to bring her back to her former glory. That night we slept in the Tarabino Inn, in Trinidad, Colorado. Built in 1907 by six brothers who immigrated here from Italy, it stands as a testament to the money that poured into the area during the mining boom years, and to one of the many ethnicities that immigrated here for a chance at a better life.

We then toured the ruins of Fort Union, which was active during the Civil War and protected settlers traveling along the Santa Fe Trail, which has grown so faint over time that we had trouble seeing it. We then drove north to Bent's Fort, a trading post and safe respite on the Santa Fe trail that was active in the 1830s and 40s. Using plans drawn by an Army officer who sketched plans of the fort while he recuperated from an illness, the National Parks Service rebuilt the fort, and it is now a living history museum. The four of us jammed a lot of history into a weekend, and the trip was, indeed, magical - at least to this history buff.

The Charge of the Mule Brigade

Mules were the backbone of both Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War. They pulled the supply wagons, the limbers and caisons for cannons, and the ambulances. One of the reasons that the Confederate Invasion of New Mexico failed was that they couldn't keep enough mules to hauls supplies. Many of the Confederate Army's mules were lost to theft by Indians and locals, and death due to starvation and disease.

The night before the battle of Valverde, a Union spy named Paddy Graydon managed to spook the Confederate's mules, who stampeded down to the Rio Grande. There Union soldiers managed to round them up.

In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din or battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.

Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

Mules are important in Jennifer Bohnhoff's newest historical novel, Valverde.