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Pareidolia

1/31/2024

Have you ever heard a word for the first time, and then it seems to come up over and over in the next few days? This seems to happen to me with some regularity. A few weeks ago, that word was pareidolia.

Pareidolia sounds like a cross between paranoia and indolence: laying around and worrying that someone is watching you. But that’s not what it is. Pareidolia is defined as seeing significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines: seeing significant images in insignificant things.

Pareidolia seems to be central to the human psyche. We’ve been doing it a long, long time. Take, for instance, the constellations: humans look at stars, randomly spaced throughout the sky, often millions of light years apart, and see pictures. Connect the dots and a group of stars becomes a mighty hunter facing off against a raging bull, twin brothers with their arms about each other’s shoulders, a queen sitting on her throne, a long-tailed bear.

Another common form of pareidolia is cloud watching. I have one friend who frequently posts pictures of clouds on Facebook. A whole lot of her friends see things in those clouds.

Photo Credit: NPS Photo, Sarah Sherwood

Her friends are not the only people on Facebook who practice Pareidolia. Recently, White Sands National Park, in the southern part of New Mexico recently admitted that in the park they frequently play "what do you see in that pedestal?" Pedestals are raised places that form when the moisture in a plant’s root system cements together a clump of the gypsum sand, creating a column that the wind then sculps into interesting shapes. Ranger Sarah thought this pedestal looked like a great white shark emerging from the sands.

A meme on Facebook showed a line of happy tires. One reader commented that they’d had a good year. Another meme showed a terrified couch.

My hiking group hikes up to Old Man Rock nearly every February.

When I built my house, I told the person selling me tile that I wanted something that would hide dog hair and coffee spills. I ended up with a mottled tan tile that is very conducive to my own pareidolic musings. Some images seem to come and go, like mirages. Others, like this one, stayed so vivid that I felt compelled to sketch it. What do you think? Do you see the vulture leaning over the hippo's shoulder, or something else?

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer who lives his in the mountains of central New Mexico. When she isn't staring out the window at clouds or finding pictures in the tile, she's writing historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can read more about her and her books on her website.

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Room to Write

1/25/2024

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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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Pareidolia

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

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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