Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 47

Remembering

Today we remember the four terrorist attacks that were launched on America by the terrorist group al-Qaeda thirteen years ago.


Or we don't.


The 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. killed almost 3,000 people and left millions with long term respiratory and immune system problems.  It caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and disrupted business and travel for weeks.  And it changed the American psyche, as we realized that we, too, were vulnerable to the violence and mayhem that has characterized the Middle East for a long time. 


The American people vowed that we would never forget.  We taught about 9/11 in our classrooms.  We observed moments of silence and produced special inserts in the papers, programs on TV, movies and books.  We constructed memorials, including the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, the Pentagon Memorial in Washington, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  


But for many, the events of 9/11 faded into the past.  Our own personal lives, filled with tiny triumphs and defeats took precedence.


It is not surprising that the significance of 9/11 has faded for many people in our nation.  This, after all, is not the first event that we vowed to never forget.
Remember Pearl Harbor?  Remember the Maine?  Few of my students could tell you anything about either of these unforgettable events.


This is one compelling reason for reading historical fiction. Historical fiction reminds us of who we once were and what we went through in our past.  It personalizes bygone eras so that we can enter into them and see them through fresh eyes.  Through these eyes we remember not only the huge events of history, but the tiny triumphs and defeats of other, long ago personal lives.  We realize that we are a part of that long, hopeful line that stretches back through countless generations, each with a story to tell.


And we remember.

Parrott: the Gun Maker who Saved the Union

Robert Parker Parrott was a member of the West Point class of 1824 and joined the artillery after graduating.  One of his assignments, as inspector of ordnance at the newly founded West Point Foundry in Cold Springs, New York, led him to leave the Army and become the Foundry's Superintendant.

Leaving the Army to work for private company allowed Parrott the freedom to experiment with gun design without the red tape that government work, was known for even then.  Parrott began playing around with artillery design, eventually leading to the development of the first rifled cannon.  (For the September 1861 Scientific American article announcing his discoveries, click here.) 

The word rifling means carving a spiral into the inside of a tube.  Rifling a cannon made the projectile shot from it spin as it left the barrel.  As anyone who has ever thrown a football will know, putting a spin on a projectile allows for greater directional accuracy of the projectile.  The greater the accuracy, the more deadly the cannon barrage; in theory, at least, rifling allowed artillerymen to pinpoint their targets instead of just firing in the general direction and hoping for the best.

Rifling the cannon led to a secondary problem, however.  In order for the rifling to be effective, whatever was fired from the cannon had to fit tightly.  At the time of the Civil War, most artillery pieces were still loaded from the front end, the muzzle end.  That meant that whatever was fired had to go in the same way it came out, and that whatever went in had to be slowly and painstakingly corkscrewed down the rifle grooves before it could be fired back out.  Parrott solved this problem by developing a new type of shell for his muzzle-loading rifled cannon. This new shell had a ring of brass, a softer metal, at its base.  When fired, the brass expanded to fit the rifling. This sped up the time it took to load and fire cannon.
Greater accuracy and speed is a deadly combination in artillery, and Parrott offered this combination to the Union land and naval forces at cost.  This source inexpensive and superior weaponry was a serious advantage for the North in the Civil War.

Belying the Bells and Whistles

Everyone wants all the bells and whistles.  We want the latest and greatest and most state-of-the-art thingy available, and we want it as soon as it's available.

This yearning for the new is very apparent in my students.  I teach middle school.  Very few of my students have no cell phone.  Most not only have a cell phone, but they have a state-of-the-art model.  They are proud to show you that theirs is the latest and the greatest.  It has all the bells and whistles.


This isn't always to their advantage.  For many, their phones are more of a distraction than an aide to their education.  I've often been asked if they could use an ap to look up word definitions or spellings, only to find my students distracted by games or texts from their friends.


Last week in my advisory class we talked about good academic habits.  Among those habits was treating one's body well: eating good food, getting enough exercise, and getting enough sleep.  When I mentioned that one way to ensure a good night's sleep is to turn off one's cell phones, a number of my students errupted into protests.  How could they be expected to turn their phones off?  Their phones were their alarm clocks!  I suggested they might turn them to 'alarm only.'


"I can't do that," one girl said, despair dripping from her voice.  "I might miss something."


And so I've come to realize that many of my students are not getting enough sleep at night because they are afraid of missing something, afraid of missing the next big thing.  They have becomes slaves to their bells and whistles.


When I published my first novel, I published it as an ebook.  Even though I'd never read an ebook and didn't own a kindle or a nook, I'd read plenty of experts who said that ebooks were the next big thing, the state-of-the-art, bell and whistle way to read.  Ebooks were going to revolutionize the way books were marketed and the way books were read.  If this was the wave of the future, I wanted to catch it.


One of the big arguments for technology was that it would make information more accessible for more people.  E-readers would make even remote villages in third world countries would have access to huge stores of information.  Specialized software was going to make the written word accessible to people with handicaps that made reading impossible.  The promises were exciting indeed.


But the wave of the future hasn't been the Banzai pipeline to fame and fortune that I was given to believe.  While I've had some success with ebooks, I've had much more luck with my paperback editions.  Many of my readers tell me they like the feel of real paper in their hands.  They like the smell of it.  The heft of it.  They like turning the page.  Somehow, in spite all the expert opinions, the tried and true has won out over the state-of-the-art. 


So maybe the latest and the greatest has some value.  Perhaps from those bells and whistles we will develop new ways of reading that will help those who cannot read right now.  We will develop audio books and books that scan and scale to help those with disabilities. We will be able to distribute more books to people who live hundreds of miles from libraries, and put whole libraries into the hands of those who've never owned even one book.


Let us make sure that we control those bells and whistles instead of letting them control us.

Clafoutis

Earlier this summer I'd sent out a recipe for clafoutis to the friends, family and friends who are on my email list.  But it's time to celebrate some more now that Code: Elephants on the Moon is available in paperback as well as ebook!  So enjoy 

Running with Old Glory

Not everyone loves America.  I was reminded of this fact just yesterday while out for my weekly run with Team RWB.


Team RWB is an organization that uses exercise and social interaction to help veterans reintegrate into civilian life.  I've been a volunteer with this group for the past several years, and during that time I've devoted most Saturday mornings to biking, hiking or running with veterans.  (I'm the chunky old one in the picture.  Don't tell anyone, but being with Team RWB allows this fat old lady to hang out with some incredibly fit and beautiful young people, so it's of immense benefit to me.)

Yesterday, as we do many Saturdays, we were running along the bosque trail. And, as usual, we were wearing our red shirts and carrying Old Glory.  Many people we pass salute, or call out some encouragement.  But yesterday, one woman passed us and offered us a single-finger salute.  Half an hour or so later she passed us going the other direction and her companion cursed us.  It was very upsetting to all of us, especially the corpsman who really wanted to hunt these two women down and have a little talk with them.  Disrespecting us is one thing.  Disrespecting the flag he's fought for is quite another.

I am pretty sure the two women were not US citizens.  Because of its altitude, dry air and temperate climate, Albuquerque is a hub for the international running community.  I encounter the Japanese women's marathon team almost every time I do an early morning run up on Tramway Boulevard.  I frequently get passed by Kenyans up on the foothills trails.  These two women were definitely elite runners: long and lean and very, very fast.  They were dark skinned, but didn't look Kenyan.  I am guessing they were from Northern Africa somewhere.  I am also guessing that, while they are willing to come to America to train, their perception of the U.S. and its military is less than positive, and I am sad about that.

It saddens me to think that Americans are thought of as bullies or greedy imperialists.  Even here in America, some people argue that the United States engages in war for purely selfish reasons.  We've all heard it: ideas like the only reason the U.S. went into Iraq was to keep the price of oil low, or that we are intent on forcing the world into our own mold and we will use as much force as necessary to attain that goal.  And while I won't deny that our government makes policies in our own best interest, (what country doesn't?) I do think such accusations ignore the immense amount of money and effort America expends to alieviate suffering and hardship in the world.  As in Haiti and the Philippines, we are often among the first into areas devastated by natural disaster.  We are by nature a generous people, and we don't like to see people hurting.


SPOILER ALERT!  IF YOU HAVEN'T READ CODE: ELEPHANTS ON THE MOON YET YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP HERE TO AVOID LEARNING SOMETHING CRUCIAL TO THE PLOT.


But not all disasters are natural in nature, and Americans have been known to want to help out in political and human-caused disasters as well.  When the United States was slow to enter into the fight against Hitler in World War II, my favorite High School teacher went to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Army.  He was one of the inspirations for the fictitious Seamus Maloney who, like many real Americans, did the same in World War I, and then again in the Spanish Civil War. (He was also the person who gave me a copy of T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land and encouraged me to keep writing.)  None of the American servicemen or women I've spoken to who were in Iraq say they went there to protect their gasoline tank.  Many tell me they went because Saddam Hussein was mistreating the minorities within his borders or, since Hussein's demise, to protect one Iraqi group from another.  


There are many who would argue with me, but I continue to believe that the American spirit is one of generosity and goodness.  We despise bullies and human suffering and will do everything within our power to suppress the one and alleviate the other.  And if that means we must enter the fight, we will do so, not because of what we will get out of it ourselves, but because we believe it is the right thing to do.


And so, in spite of middle finger salutes, I will continue to run with service members and with Old Glory.  And I will run proud.

Happy New Year!

The beginning of a year is like a doorway, the entrance into the new.
Most people celebrate the New Year in the middle of winter.  January, named after Janus, the Roman doorkeeper god whose two faced looked both into the past and into the future is a bleak month in most of the western world.  It is a time of darkness and cold.  I suppose by starting the new year at its climatically worst point, there is nowhere to go but up, and so starting in January offers the celebrant the promise of good times ahead.  My husband calls December 21st, the winter solstice, the happiest day of the year because he anticipates how the days are going to get progressively longer and warmer.   
But not everyone celebrates New Year in the middle of winter.  My Asian students celebrated the New Year a little later, in mid January or February, when here in the Southwest the days are mild and there is a hint on the coming spring season in the air. Thai New Year is in April.  Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashhanna, is in the fall, this year on September 24th, while the Moslem New Year, Hijri, is October 25th.  
For me, late August is the real beginning of the year, because that is when the school year begins.
I loved the smells associated with back to school when I was a child.  The warm, lush smell of new crayons.  The tang of new aluminum lunch boxes and thick, dusky chalk smells.  I loved the spirals filled with smooth, clean paper, the pencils that were all the same length - and all capped with pristine pink erasers!  The new school year held promises of knowledge revealed, of skills attained, of stories told.  I couldn't wait.
At least, that's how I felt about most of my classes.  I loved language arts and English.  I adored social studies and history.  Most of my science classes were all right and some were downright fascinating.  But math?  I hated math.
I am not quite sure how early I began to realize that I was behind in math.  My first memory of feeling inadequate is from the fourth grade.  I remember the class forming into two rows, with the teacher at the front of the class holding a set of multiplication flash cards.  I remember her holding up a card and the students at the front of the two lines shouting out an answer in rapid succession, then going to the back of the line.  
I remember my palms sweating and the sick feeling of dread in my stomach as I inched toward my doom, and I remember shouting out an answer - a second behind the other student, and the relief of going to the back of the line.  And I remember hoping that the teacher would never discover that I didn't know the answer, but was quick to parrot the other student.  I didn't know my times tables.  I was deeply ashamed of my lack and determined that no one would ever know. I lived in fear of someone discovering that I was a fraud, of pointing a finger and shouting about how stupid I was.
Now that I am a teacher, I still feel the thrill of new classes.  I look at the faces of my new students and I see some who, like me, are in awe of the promise of a new school year.  The prospect of new knowledge excites them.  They yearn to learn, and their bright expressions of hope and joy are a delight to see.  
But I also see some who are trying valiantly to hide a secret terror.  They are afraid that I will find them lacking.  They are afraid that I will call them out as frauds and fakes.  And they are determined to hide their inadequacies so deeply that no one will ever find them out.
I look forward to meeting my new students.  I hope that they will enjoy my class.  I hope that we'll have fun and we'll learn some neat new skills and facts and ideas.  But as Janus does, I also look back, to the frightened child who was terrified of math.  I promise to remember her when I look into the eyes of a student and find fear.  And I promise to never point a finger and never call a student stupid.
So here's to a new school year full of the hope of learning! 

What you Thought

In I posted the images of five different covers from Elizabeth Wein's YA novel Code Name Verity and asked you what you thought.  Your answers were interesting, so here's a report: 

Less than a third of you had read this book.  If you are interested in World War Two books, this one's a goodie.  It features two very different strong female voices, and reading each one's account of events, sometimes the same event from two very different points of view, is really interesting.  One thing I found fascinating is that one of the characters is writing under extreme duress and knows that her words are going to be read by the enemy.  So how much of her writing is true and how much is written to throw the enemy off?  Sometimes the reader gets a clue, but sometimes the reader doesn't.  It makes for layer upon layer of reading analysis, which is a fun game.

When I asked which cover grabbed your attention, people voted all over the board.  However,  the middle cover got the most votes.  The middle cover is the one that I first saw, and I liked it well enough to use it as a good example when I submitted cover that I liked to the man who designed the cover for my World War II novel Code: Elephants on the Moon .  It was a special favorite of those who'd already read the book but, interestingly enough, it was not the cover that those who'd read the book thought did the best job of portraying the book.


Almost all of you thought that the cover on the far right best depicted what Code Name Verity was about.  This was true both for those who'd read the book and for those of you who based your opinion simply on my synopsis.



And one more bit of interesting data:  no one voted for the cover on the far left.  Not as the one that grabbed your attention nor as the one that best depicted the story.  Interestingly, the cover on the far left is the one that you get when you go onto Amazon.  I think that means that some publicist or advertising exec somewhere thinks that's the cover that will reel in the readers, but we disagree.


So, what do you think?  I'd love for you to comment about how you voted and why, and I'd especially like to hear from those of you who've read Code Name Verity as to what you thought.

Code Name: Cover

Everyone knows the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover." Everyone also knows that everyone does exactly that.  Mark Coker, the guy behind Smashwords, one of the premier sites for self-pubed ebooks, says "your cover image is the first impression you make on a prospective reader. A great cover image makes a promise to the reader. It tells the reader, “I’m the book you’re looking for.”

So how do you decide what images will make readers decide that your book is the one they're looking for?  Tricky question.

Just how tricky this question is to answer becomes obvious when you look at the five different covers that have graced Elizabeth Wein's new YA historical fiction Code Name Verity.  Wein's novel is about what happens to two women whose plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, and it's told in first person through the writings of the two women.  The cover on the left pictures a plane trailing blood-red smoke as it goes down, a dark silhouette of a woman, and a rose, and I can say without giving too much away that all three images are appropriate, although I am not enough of an airplane enthusiast to tell you if the plane on the cover is the right kind or not.  The next cover shows two women's arms bound together, and while it does show how the two characters are emotionally bound to one another, I first wondered if this novel was about lesbian lovers or bondage rituals.  The middle cover shows two old bicycles against a stone wall, with bombers in the background and is, like the first cover, appropriate although not as mysterious or dark as the first cover.  The remaining two covers have women's faces and the suggestion of imprisonment: one with high strung barbed wire and the other with the shadow of fencing.  One features a red gash across the woman's face; the other, the bombers again.  Two of the women seem to have dark hair and eyes.  The third looks like a blue-eyed blonde, which is what the woman whose code name was Verity was.


I've added a little more about this book to my web page on Code: Elephants on the Moon, in the for further reading section.   I first came across this novel when I was looking specifically for cover ideas for Code: Elephants on the Moon, and at that point the only cover I saw was the center one.  I liked the bombers and, since bombers also feature in my novel, I decided to include them in my cover design.


So what do you think?  If you had to judge Code Name Verity by its cover, which would you choose?
Judging Code Name Verity's cover Which cover grabbed your attention? * The one on the left The second from the left The middle one The second from the right The one on the right If Other please specify: * Which cover best illustrates the story? (based on the synopsis I gave, or your own reading) * the one on the left the second from the left the middle one the second from the right the one on the right Have you read Code Name Verity? * yes no no, but I plan to Submit