Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog

 

Modern societies rely on precise andstandardized timing. Our schedules are synchronized to prevent chaos, ensuresafety, and keep complex modern systems running efficiently. Without a sharedtimeline, daily operations, global markets, and digital networks would quicklyfail. Power grids and telecommunications would crash and transportation hubswould become ensnarled. If stock markets didn’t have exact timing down to themicrosecond, fraud could easily take place. Our ordered lives demand accuratesynchronized devices that rely on electronic oscillation, digital counters, andatomic frequency.

While timekeeping in ancient Rome wasstill important, it was very different. Before digital and atomic clocks, therewere physical gears and springs. But even these were beyond Roman technology. Romansmeasured time in ways that were much more closely connected to the rhythms of nature.The rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons shaped howRomans perceived time much more than they do today.

Both the modern world and the Romanone divide the day into twenty-four hours. However, we divide those hoursdifferently. Now, our hours are all equal in length and do not vary from day today or season to season. The Roman day was divided into twelve hours ofdaylight and twelve of night, and each hour was a flexible unit rather than aconsistent measure. During the summer, when the sun follows a higher arc in thesky and days are longer, the Romans had longer hours during the day and shorterhours at night. During the winter, when the sun rose later in the day and setearlier, the hours of day were compressed and nighttime hours lengthened. At Mediterranean latitude,one hour could be as short as 45 minutes in the middle of winter solstice, and75 minutes during the height of summer.

A modern American’s day begins whenthe alarm clock goes off. This can be well before sunrise or close to noon. ForRomans, sunrise marked the beginning of the day. The first hour of theday, or prima diei hora in Latin, started then.  The ante meridiem, or time beforenoon continued with hora secunda, hora tertia, and so on. Westill use am to differentiate between hours before noon and those in theafternoon.

Roman mornings were busy. Most Romans and began work early to take full advantageof daylight. Most business transactions, legal proceedings, and politicalobligations occurred before noon. It was also the time when clients of elitepatrons made their way to their patron’s house to pay their respects in whatwas called a salutatio. The clients offered a formal greeting and, in exchange,the patron would dispense advice, give instructions, or request assistance incivic or business matters. In many cases, he also distributed the sportula,a modest allowance that could take the form of cash or food.

 When the sun reached its highest pointin the sky, it was Midday, or meridies, and six hours (sexta hora)after sunrise. This wording survives today in the Spanish word siesta,which literally means the sixth hour of the day. For some odd reason, theEnglish term noon didn’t always signify the middle of the day. Until 1300, monksused the word noon to describe a period of prayer beginning at three in theafternoon, or the ninth hour.

The second half of the day wascalled the post meridiem, or after noon, which in English has become oneword: afternoon. We still use the abbreviation pm to identify this period,although for us, pm continues until midnight, while the Romans ended their pmhours at sunset.

By meridies, especially duringthe long, hot days of summer, most business and civic duties were done. Afternoonswere focused on leisure, social interaction, and personal affairs. Bathing was an important part of the afternoon, and a visit to the publicbaths was not just a time to get clean, but a time relaxing, exercising, andsocializing.

Cena, the main meal of the day, wasusually eaten in the late afternoon or early evening, after the day's work hadcome to an end.

The natural day (dies naturalis)ran from sunrise to sunset, which was called vespera in Latin.  Then night began, with the hour after sunset calledthe prima noctis hora, the first hour of the night. But although nightwas divided into twelve hours much as day was, most Romans did not keep track ofhours. Instead, night was divided into four watches, or vigils. These wereespecially important for military and security purposes, as soldiers, guards, andnight watchmen structured their duties according to these intervals. Vigiliaprima was the first watch, or evening watch, and ran from sunset (vespera)to the third hour of the night (hora tertia noctis) at about 9:00 PM.  Vigilia secunda (Second Watch, or MidnightWatch) ran from 9:00 PM to midnight , and Vigilia tertia (Third Watch orCock-crowing, gallicinium in Latin) ran from midnight to about 3:00 AM.The final watch of the night, Vigilia quarta, ended when the sun rose.All the watches were signaled by horns, bells, or trumpets.

Although they now follow a modern clockwith fixed hours, the Catholic Church preserved many of the Latin names intheir canonical hours.   Prime takes place at 6 am, terce at 9 am, sext atnoon, and none at 3 pm, and vespers at 6 pm.

The Roman system followed a naturallyflexible daily rhythm regulated by sunlight rather than mechanical clocks.Activities did not occur at a fixed, standardized times in the modern sense,but were organized around dawn, midday, and sunset. Even with 24 hours in aday, Romans did not manage time down to the minute. Rather than planningto meet at "9:30am sharp" as we might, Romans would plan to meet inthe third hour.  Arriving a bit early orlate was not considered bad form. It was just a normal part of the system. Whatfeels like imprecision to a modern observer was, for a Roman, simply how lifeworked.

 

          Mostpeople probably know what a mortar and pestle are. Although not as common inhousehold kitchens as they once were, these cups and heavy, club-shaped rodswere used for grinding, pounding, mixing, and blending ingredients for foodsand medicines. These two tools are still common in the logos of pharmacies anddrug companies.

What most people don’t knowis that mortars and pestles are Roman inventions. The earliest examples of themcome from the Italian Peninsula and date from the 3rd century BC. BothApicius, the man credited with writing the first cookbook, and Lucius JuniusModeratus Columella, who wrote about agriculture, both refer to a mortariumin the context of cooking.

Most Roman mortaria have similar design features. They all have a gritty interior made by either mixing coarse sand, flint, quartz, or tiny stone grit into the clay or embedding it into the wet clay interior before firing. Either method created a rough grinding surface. The shallow bowls had thick rims that were often flanged. These were designed to provide a firm grip during vigorous pounding. Most also had a built-in groove or spout to allow the user to pour out blended sauces, liquids, or ground pastes easily. Some of these spouts were decorated to look like the mouth of a human or beast.

The word pestle comes fromthe Middle English pestel. It entered English courtesy of the Norman OldFrench word pestel, which came from the Latin pistillum, meaning"pounder" or "pound-instrument". The Latin root traces backto pinsere, meaning "to pound or crush."

In the same way, the Latinword mortarium came to English through Old French and slowly morphed to theword mortar. Although both words originally meant a vessel for pounding,grinding, or mixing, the English word gradually expanded over time until itbecame used to describe the substance mixed inside it, including the mortarused to join brickwork, and the short, squat military cannon shaped like agrinding bowl. 

Romans loved their sauces,and developed mortaria (singlular: mortarium) to grind the  herbs, spices, cheeses, meat, oil, fishsauce, wine, and nuts that went into them. We know what they were pounding because scientists have been able toanalyze the organic residues on surviving vessels or fragments that seeped intothe porous clay of the kiln-fired pottery vessels. We also know because ofthese studies that different regions within the Roman Empire kept some of theirculinary traditions. A 2011 study has uncovered plant material such asvegetables, herbs, and spices as well as the residue of animal fats and dairyproducts, including butter, on British mortaria.  This shows that, while Britons did adapt thehandy instrument, they did not totally give up their old ways. Romans did notuse butter in their cooking, preferring olive oil.

 

The earliest mortariain Britain predate the Roman conquest. We do not know whether the peopleusing these early examples were immigrants from elsewhere or native Britons whoenjoyed the novelty of Roman-style cuisine. These early finds are located atsites in the south-east corner of the island, and were continental imports.

 After the Roman invasionof Britain in AD 43, mortaria became increasingly common in Britain.Initially, these bowls were also predominantly imported. They came from GalliaBelgica, an area we would think of as the area covered today by Belgium,Luxemburg and northern France, or from Lugdunum, which is now known as Lyon.

Makersoften stamped their names or symbols directly onto the rim of their mortaria asa way of advertising their wares. This allows archaeologists to trace traderoutes and workshop movements across the Roman Empire. One potter whosemortaria are found across Western Europe is Gaius Atisius Sabinus, who operateda famous workshop in modern-day Aoste, Italy between 50 and 85 CE. RipanusTiberinus, a mortaria producer in Lugdunum, or present-day Lyon, produced potsbetween AD 55 and 90. Fragments of these post have been found throughoutBritain and up to the Scottish border. https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/kitchenalia-the-mortarium

But as Britain adoptedRoman culture, its artisans began making the pieces locally. Verulamium,now known as St Albans, developed a thriving moratoria business.  As the Roman Army slowly but steadily spreadnorth, so did the mortaria. From being found in urban and military settings,they gradually appeared in more rural settlements and in the north. And as usespread north, so did production, with many other potters in the Midlands andfurther north producing and distributing mortaria.

Enica, the main character in The Potter's Hand, the historical novel I am working on right now, is a potter who lives in Eboracum, the Roman town that is now known as York. She is less of a craftsman than an artist, who loves to make meticulously decorated bowls, urns and pots that sell for high prices. But she has two slave women who also make pots for her, and she's recently begun having them turn out mortaria. She wants her fame as a potter to spread throughout northern Britain until her reputation rivals that of Ripanus Tiberinus. She is convinced that fame as a potter will open doors for her into Roman society. But God has other plans for her.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes contemporary and historical fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She loves to share the history and geography behind her stories in schools, libraries, and book clubs.

She is currently working on a novel set in Northern Britain during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Titled The Potter's Hand, she hopes to publish it during the fall of 2026. 

Go to Jennifer's Website for more information about her and her books. 

 

Here in the east Sandia Mountains, sunflowers start popping up along the roads in the middle of August. Some years, like this one, are dry. We didn't have much of a monsoon season this summer, and it shows. This little field is usually green and covered with nearly a lawn of grass. This year, it is filled with dry and yellowed clusters of grasses. 

Some years, the sunflowers line the road. This year, there's a sparse sprinkling of flowers.

To me, sunflowers mark the end of summer, because they begin to bloom at about the same time school starts. Back when I was teaching, I drove to school through a sea of sunny yellow blooms that I thought were encouraging me to have a sunny, upbeat attitude. I hoped that my students would bloom under my guidance, growing strong and upright in their understanding and practice. This year, publics schools held their first classes during the week that began with August 9th. That was also the week that sunflowers began popping up along the road. I drove past them feeling a bit of nostalgia and wishing that I could be back in the classroom and facing the fresh, shining new faces of another year of students. (I will admit the feeling passed pretty quickly. Teaching is fun, but it's also difficult and wears a person down.)

As soon as I see my first sunflower of the year, I celebrate by changing up the decorations on the little table where my husband and I eat our meals. I bring the happiness and hope of sunflowers to my table using a green tablecloth, a centerpiece that's ringed with silk sunflowers and holds a yellow candle, and a little quilted piece created by my very talented friend, Jessica Bonzen. (Joyce Sagon, the mother of my brother in law Ed, gave me a lovely breadbasket liner that has sunflowers on it, and that goes on the table, too!)  

This is my late summer table, reminding me that, while the days are still warm, (blazing hot, actually. What a hot and dry summer it's been) school is already in session and fall is right around the corner. 

I may not have many wild sunflowers this year, but I've got three big Maximillian sunflower bushes.  Right now, there are only a few blooms on each plant, but I know what's coming.These bushes will get to be 6 feet high, and will eventually be covered with flowers, so they'll look like golden columns.

September is a month of transitions here in New Mexico. It starts out hot, but soon after the State Fair, trees begin to show a little color and the days begin to cool. I am looking forward to that change. After a long, hot summer, it'll be nice to have to pull out a sweater for an early morning walk. And though I'll have to say goodbye to sunflowers, the gold will stay because the aspens and cottonwoods will begin their autumnal show, and New Mexico's skies will fill with hot air balloons. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and speaker who lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you'd like to learn more about her and her books, check out her website here. 

 

These days, if someone ticks you off, you might betempted to go on social media and say something nasty about them. This is notsomething I recommend. Often, the repercussions can be far worse than anyoneexpects.

Crosa, CC BY 2.0<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

In the days when the Roman Empire controlled half theknown world, dissing someone on the internet was not an option. This didn’tstop people from saying nasty things about each other, though. They just had touse different methods. One of the ways people vented their complaints aboutothers was in a tabella defixionis. Sometimes just shortened to defixio, thisis usually translated into English as a curse tablet.

A tabella defixionis wasa note requesting a curse or other course of action from a god or
goddess. Whilethese might have been written on parchment or velum, the ones that havesurvived to the modern period were created on very thin sheets of lead. Theaggrieved person would write on that sheet, using a stylus to scratch tinyletters onto the surface. 

There are hints that someof the tabellae were written not by the aggrieved, but by a clerk or scribe. Archaeologistshave excavated 80 lead curse tablets from the Roman temple of Mercury at WestHill, Uley in Gloucestershire, England. About 45 of these tablets were either completelyblank or contained pre-formulated template text without a specific victim'sname so that a client could add in the name of their specific enemy.

Almost all the cursetablets discovered at Bath, in Southern England, relate to petty thefts of clothing,especially cloaks and gloves. Money, jewelry, and household items are alsolisted. This suggests that victims frequently had their belongings swiped whilethey were relaxing in the public waters.  The language on these tablets was formulatedto function as divine legal contracts. The victim "gifted" the stolenitem to the goddess Sulis Minerva, so that the theft became a crime against thedeity herself. The goddess was then expected to torment the thief until theproperty was safely returned to the temple.

An example of this waswritten by a man named Docilianus, who wrote: “to the most
holy goddess Sulis.I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slaveor free, that … the goddess Sulis inflict death upon … and not allow him sleepor children now and in the future, until he has brought my hooded cloak to thetemple of her divinity.”

Another, found in Gaul,says “Just as this lead disappears and falls, thus falls their lifetime, limbs,life, ox, grain and goods, those who did me wrong, namely Asuetemeos whoSecundina bore, and Verres Tearus // and Amarantis and all that is yours, ohgods, I forbid (them) by all spells to celebrate the Masitlatida and to singthe Necrocantus.” https://mckies.wordpress.com/2014/06/

Not all curse tablets asked the gods to curse someone.Some were love spells, asking the gods to make a specific person fall in lovewith the writer of the tabella. Many of these had a bit of hair or pieces ofclothing wrapped up in them. This was seen as a way to give them strengththrough inclusion of the central essence of the person. Others have rings foldedinto them. Archaeologists wonder if these are gifts to the gods to help alongtheir requests.

Other tablets were intended to help the dead. These havebeen found at the grave sites of people who had died at a very young age or ina violent manner. The tablet seeks to help the dead lay their souls to rest inspite of their untimely deaths.

Whether the sheets were curses, pleas for aid in love orin death, or requests for some other assistance from the gods, after the sheet inscribed,it was rolled or folded, and placed where the gods might have access to it. In Britain,72 of the 256 tabella were folded, while 6 have been rolled. Most of the onesfound at Uley had been rolled, then flattened. 

The word defixionis comes from the Greek and Latinwords for "pierce" and "bind". Many of the tablets foundhave been pierced by nails. Sometimes these were the nails that affixed them tocoffins and temple walls. Other times, the piercing seems to have been done atspecific words, especially names. Small dolls or figurines were found near sometablets, and these, too, had been pierced by nails and often had bound feet andhands. The texts of many cursessay they bind or nail down a specific person.

Once written and folded, the tablets had to be placedwhere the gods would find them. Many have been found buried in undergroundsanctuaries. Others, presumably to water gods and goddesses, had been throwninto wells or pools. Some have been found nailed to temple walls or tuckedbetween their stones. The tabella defixionis that ask favors of or for the deadhave been found in graves and tombs, and some of the ones requesting help withlove seemed to have been hidden away in the homes of their intended.

In The Potter’s Hands, the novel I am presentlyworking on, the main character is a Britanii with a temper as fiery as herhair. When Enica is spurned by a handsome young centurion, she responds bywriting a tabella defixionis She writes:

Enica Flavia Servula to the goddess Minerva. I callupon you to give justice to the worthless man who has betrayed me. Do not allowsleep or health to him who has done me wrong.May his member cause him pain whenhe urinates. May it refuse to be a good soldier and stay at attention when heis with another woman. I give to your divinity and majesty my finest water jug,made of my own hand.

She flings this tablet into the river as he is passingby on parade and immediately feels vindicated, but as time goes on, it appearsto Enica that Minerva has responded with horrifying finality. Just as many whopost curses on social media later regret their actions, Enica finds her entireworld damaged by a few words written on a little sheet of lead.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and speaker. She writeshistorical and contemporary
novels for middle grade through adult readers andloves to give presentations about the places and times in which her books areset. She was inspired to write The Potter’s Hand after hiking the length ofHadrian’s Wall in Northern Britain during the summer of 2025.

Three weeks ago, my husband and I returned from vacation on a Wednesday, then drove to the pound on a Thursday. 

We went to see one specific dog: a Rottweiler mix named Timmy. Online, the pound had called Timmy a big softie in a Rottie suit. They guessed he was about 4 years old and likely had been house-trained because he kept his kennel clean. He knew sit, and came when called, but was shy with new people.

Someone had found him roaming free and brought him into the pound back in April. He had no chip or collar or tag to help anyone figure out who his owner was.

I first saw him online in early June, but we were out of the state. I checked on him every few days until we returned to New Mexico. Timmy was still there. 

If you've known me for a while, you'll know that I had a big, doofy Rottweiler named Panzer, who'd developed epilepsy when he was 5 years old. My husband and I managed to keep him another year, but his condition could not be controlled, and finally his life had gotten so difficult and miserable that we put him down. We've been in mourning for a year. 

So we renamed Timmy and brought him home. He's Rommel now—a nod both to his German heritage and to his tank-like proportions, and to Panzer, who came before him.

Timmy is no Panzer. He is 30 pounds lighter, for starters. And the online description was right: whoever had him when he was a pup taught him well. In the three weeks we've had him, he's never taken anything off a tabletop or counter, he's not gotten on the furniture or chewed on anything except his toys. He's only peed once in the house, and that was during a very loud thunderstorm. He sleeps all night on the floor next to my bed, and he walks well on leash (most of the time!) And while he's become devoted to both my husband and to me, he's still more than shy with other people. Not aggressive: he might growl, but he also backs up and wants to be as far away from others as he can possibly get. 

We've been told that there's a rule of three when adopting a dog. For the first three days, they might feel overwhelmed, unsure of their place, and not comfortable enough to be themselves. After three weeks, they start settling in and may begin to show their personality. It's also when behavior issues might start to appear. This is true with Rommel. Although he was shy around others from the beginning, he's now a little more cocky when I'm training him. He always came on command until this week, when he's sometimes ran the other way, then looked back to see if I'll correct him. It often takes three months for dogs to gain a complete sense of security with a new family and built trust with the outside world.

So welcome, Rommel. We're glad you're here, and we hope you stay with us a long, long time. And during that time, we hope you learn that the world is full of wonderful people who would love to have you trust them enough to let them pat you on the head. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes contemporary and historical fiction for middle grade through adult readers, and she loves to give presentations on the history and settings of her stories to classrooms, libraries, and book groups. You can read more about her and her books here, on her website. 

These days, if you want to quickly communicate with someone who is at a distance from you, you’ll send a text. But that was not a possibility back in the time when Britain was under Roman rule. Heck, it wasn’t even a possibility when I was a child!

Technology has changed, but the need to communicate over distance has not. When most people think of Roman writing, they think of the monumental: the geometric, all-caps Latin letters called Square Capitals, or Scriptura Monumentalis. These are the letters that were carved into stone monuments, tombstones, and buildings, and familiar to us because they are the direct ancestor of our modern uppercase letters.

But not all Roman writing was monumental in nature. Somecommunication does not warrant being carved in stone any more than it needs tobe posted on social media today, for all to read. People today—and peopleduring the Roman period—asked favors, checked schedules, and invited people toparties.

So how did the Romans send their little, privatecorrespondences? For a long time, historians and archaeologists believed thatthese kinds of missives were all written on papyrus.

But then, the Vindolanda tablets were discovered.  

The tablets are named after the place they were found: Vindolanda,a Roman auxiliary fort that was occupied from approximately85 AD to 370 AD. The fort was abandoned sometime before the Romans left Britainin the early fifth century and was not mentioned in history until WilliamCamden included it in his 1586 book, Britannia. Camden surveyed the landscape, geography, antiquities, andhistory of Great Britain and Ireland, and included many Roman sites, includingVindolanda.  Some archaeologicaldigs were done there between 1814 and 1835, but the real work began when archaeologistEric Birley purchased the site in the 1930s. It has been a family passion eversince. Grandson, Andrew Birley, and granddaughter-in-law BarbaraBirley continue the tradition, with a magnificent museum and continuing excavationsconducted every summer.

The story of the Vindolanda tablets begins in March 1973, whena student excavator named Keith Liddell discovered a pile of unusual woodshavings. Another of the excavators peeled two of these apart and discoveredwriting on the inside. The two pieces of wood were taken to anepigraphist named Richard Wright, but by the time they had arrived, thewood surfaces had become black and unreadable due to oxygenation.  They were then sent to Alison Rutherfordat Newcastle University Medical School, where she used multi-spectrumphotography to produce infrared photographs of the writing. The results weredisappointing because no one could read the letters. Finally, two universityresearchers: Alan Bowman at Manchester University and David Thomas atDurham University were able to decipher this previously unknown form of cursive,and the writings were able to be transcribed. Fifty years later, more than1,700 of these tablets have been recovered from the ruins.

The tablets are made from birch, alder and oak, all of whichgrow in the vicinity of the fort. They vary between 0.01 to 0.12 inches thick,and are about 8 inches wide by 3 inches tall—close in size to a modernpostcard. They were scored down the middle and folded in half, with the writingin the inside.

Scientists have been able to determine that the ink used to writeon the inner faces was made from carbon, gum Arabic, and water. However,the ink is often badly faded or survives as little more than a blur, makingtranscription impossible. Infrared photographs are often far more legible thanthe actual tablets, but even these have lines, dots and other dark marks whichmay or may not be writing. This makes transcription difficult. Another thingthat makes them difficult to read are the use of abbreviations. Researchershave noted one place where an h stood for for homines (men),and another where cos is written in a place where translators presume the wordis consularis (consular). Also, words are divided rather arbitrarilyat the end of lines. The word "epistulas" (letters), for instance,appears with the letter e on one line and the rest of the word on the next.

It turns out using wooden tablets for communicationwasn’t unusual in the Roman world. After the Vindolanda find, a collection of405 preserved wooden tablets called the Bloomberg tablets werefound in London. They were discovered between 2010 and 2013, but are older thanthe ones found at Vindolanda.  Othertablets, called stylus tablets, have also been discovered in 20 different sitesin Roman Britain, including Carlisle, Catterick, York, and London.
 These were imported and made from non-native wood. Inthe 3rd century, a Roman historian named Herodian, who was unlikely to everhave been in Britain, described a writing-tablet made from lime-wood, cut intothin sheets, and folded face-to-face by being bent, which sounds very much likethe tablets found in Vindolanda.

The Vindolanda tablets have shed light on life on the frontiers ofthe Roman world. They document both official military matters and personal ones.For instance, the very first tablet that was transcribed lists the contents ofa care package sent to a soldier, presumably by his family. It includes two pairseach of woolen socks (udones), sandals, and underpants (subligaria, literally ‘the things tied under!’).  Another tablet written by acavalry decurion (squadron commander) named Masculus asks the prefectFlavius Cerialis about instructions for his men for the following day. He alsoincludes a polite request for more beer, since the supply at the garrison islow.

Butthe most famous of all the Vindolanda tablets is the invitation to a party held in about 100 AD. Writtenby Claudia Severa, the wife of the commander of a nearby fort, it usescharming and intimate words to invite Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of FlaviusCerialis, prefect of the ninth cohort of Batavians, who werestationed at Vindolanda, to her birthday party. The invitation appears to havebeen written by two different people. Most of the text is written in aprofessional hand, which scholars assume was the household scribe. The closinggreetings, however, on the lower right-hand side of the tablet, are written in adifferent hand. It says “Ishall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope toprosper, and hail,” and it is believed that Claudia Severa herselfwrote them.  If that is true, the invitation is perhaps theoldest surviving document written in Latin by a woman.
 

Almost all the excavated tablets are held at the BritishMuseum in London, where some are displayed in its Roman Britain gallery.Others are displayed at Vindolanda.

In2025, I saw the Vindolanda tablets when I visited the site as part of my hikealong Hadrian’s Wall. They were impressive, and led me to include this form ofwriting in my novel about Roman Britain. Currently entitled The Woman on theWall at the End of the World (which is rather long and probably going to bechanged before the story comes out), the novel opens with a Roman soldier fromthe 9th Legion delivering a tablet to the main character, a potternamed Enica. The tablet informs her that her lover plans to have dinner withher, and she expects him to “pop the question” when he is there. Enicawrites—and receives—several more letters in the course of the story.  She doesn't look like this girl, who is Greek. Enica is a tall redhead, from the Briganti tribe who lived in Northern England. She was slave until her master died and left his pottery shop to her, a bit of generosity that makes her wonder why he did it.

I am working on my third, and I hope final edit of this story and, whatever it's name becomes, I hope to have it finished and published by late this fall or early winter. Keep checking in with me and I'll be able to give a better date as things progress. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an award winning author of historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade readers through adults. She is available to speak to classrooms, books groups, and clubs about the history behind her stories, or about writing.

After being inspired last year by hiking the width of Hadrian's Wall in Northern England, she is currently working on a novel set in England and France during the Roman era.

You can read more about her and her writing here, on her website. 

Formost people, the dog days refer to the muggiest, hottest days of the year, whenthe weather makes people—and animals—feel sluggish and worn out. Memes showingdogs melting in the heat tie canines to the sultry weather. But the term isn’treally actually about the hottest days, whenever they may occur. Nor does itrefer to what the heat does to our canine companions. It is about specific daysand, according to the calendar, the dog days of summer are drawing to a close.

The dog days of summer refers to the 40 days that begin onJuly 3rd and end on August 11th. According to The OldFarmer's Almanac, this timeframe marks the 20 days before the Sun and the starSirius align with each other, and the 20 days after. During these 40 days, Siriusis too close to the Sun to be visible.

With a magnitude of −1.46,Sirius is easily the brightest star in the night sky. Its name comes fromthe Greek word Σείριος which means ‘glowing' or 'scorching'.It is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the second brightest star. For us, onlyour Sun shines brighter. Much of our perceived brightness, however, comes morefrom proximity than from actual luminosity. Our sun, of course, is very closeto us, and Sirius is a close neighbor, only 8.6 light years away. Sirius A isabout twice as massive as the Sun and about 25 times asluminous, but Canopus, Betelgeuse, and Rigel are all moreluminous than it is.

Sirius isn’t actually a single star,but a binary star. The larger of its two, called Sirius A, is orbitedby a faint white dwarf called Sirius B. It takes these two starsabout 50 years to orbit each other. They are also moving through spacetogether. Sirius is expected to increase in brightness as it moves closer toour Solar System. About the same time it reaches its peak magnitude, 60,000 yearsfrom now, it will also have slid south in our sky, becoming our southern PoleStar. After that, it will pass us by, becoming fainter with distance.210,000 years from now, Vega should be our brightest star.

Sirius is known as the "Dog Star" because it isthe brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, Latin for ‘big dog,’and one of two dogs that follow on the heels of Orion the hunter. The best timeto see Orion is in winter, when he chases Taurus across the night sky. Duringthe summer, he is too close to the sun and is a daylight constellation, hiddenbehind the blue sky caused by the refraction of the sun’s rays through ouratmosphere.

Ancient Greeks and Romans noticed that Sirius closed in onthe Sun in mid-summer. They believed that its heat combined with the Sun’s heatto produce sultry summer weather. They thought this conjunction brought illfortune in the guise of drought, fever, and general discomfort. Roman poetVirgil wrote that Sirius “brings drought and plague to frail mortals” when itrises.

Actually, Sirius brings little light to our Earth and no heat whatsoever. The intense heat ofthe dog days of summer is actually caused by the Earth’s tilt and by "thermallag." This is the delay it takes for the land and oceans to fully heat upafter the longest day of the year, on June 21.

Yesterday morning I had to get up at 4 am so I could get myhusband to the airport by 5:30. I was walking the dog in the dark when Inoticed the Perseids, a fabulous cluster of stars, in the eastern sky. I lookeda little below them and saw the V of Taurus and below it, lying on his sideright on the horizon, was Orion. If Orion was rising, his faithful hunting dogscouldn’t be far behind, but low enough that they would still be lost in thelight of the Sun. The dog days were not yet over, but they soon would be.

Now if only we could say the same for the hot weather.

Jennifer Bohnhoff has always had her head in the stars. She learnedthe constellations from her father when she was a very young child. She tookher first astronomy class when she was still in Junior High and was on thestaff of the UNM observatory when she took astronomy classes there duringcollege. She writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle gradereaders through adults. You can learn more about her here, on her website.

Incidentally, she and her husband just adopted their own major canine two weeks ago. His name is Rommel, and he is  a 4 1/2 year old (suposedly, but who knows?!) Rottweiler (again, supposedly) who'd been in the pound since April. So far, he hasn't left any messes, chewed on any furniture, stolen any food off the counter, and he's slept through the night without getting on either the bed or sofa. Jennifer's only concern is that he's terrified of outsiders and not friendly toward others at all. She's hoping that he will gain confidence and be more accepting of others. After all, he's a big guy, so what does he have to be afraid of?

 

 

I recently got back from a wonderful month in Maine. Myhusband and I rented a house right on a lake, and we spent a good portion ofour time in the water. We kayaked, and my husband learned to paddle board,which turned into great fun when the grandkids discovered they could use theirPopa’s board as a diving platform.

But we did other things, as well, including touring a charming, small railroadmuseum, running in two local races (a 4th of July 10K sponsored by L.L.Bean in Freeport, and a 5 miler that was part of the Yarmouth Clam Festival),visiting some beautiful beaches, touring the site where Poland Springs water comes from, eating a lot of good seafood, and hiking onseveral trails. 

It was on one of those hikes that I learned some interesting bitsof historical trivia that just might show up in one of my books someday.

The Suckfish Brook Conservation Area was an easy walk fromour rental, and so we decided to give it a try despite its unappealing name.This 94-acre public natural space featured wetlands, a peat bog, and woodlandwalking trails. There was a small parking lot that might hold three or four cars, and had a nice map delineating all the trails within the area. We picked a combination of trails that would lead us through several different ecosystems. We were surprised to find blueberries growing along the trail. I thought blueberries didn't ripen until much later in the season. 

My first history lesson came from a sign that was very close to the beginning of the trail. 

The sign explained that in New England, old-growth whitepines grew very tall and straight. Some were over 200 feet tall. This made themideal single-piece masts for massive sailing ships. During Colonial times, Britishofficials marked the largest and best of these trees with three hatchet marks, creatinga symbol known as “The King’s Broad Arrow.”

Under the King’s Broad Arrow policy, those trees, which were24 inches or wider in diameter, were reserved for use by the crown.

The sign quickly caught my attention because I had seen a similar mark while hiking Hadrian's Wall, in Northern England, during the summer of 2025.  Although carved into stone, the mark we had seen in England also had three lines that radiated outward. We saw this mark in Housesteads, an old Roman fort along the wall, where our very informative tour guide, Allen Woods, pointed it out to us.  He explained that the symbol marked royal property and government equipment. After Allen had pointed it out, we saw this symbol several other times. It's funny how things show up once you know to look for them. 

One of the earliest known uses of the symbol in an official capacity seems to come from 1383, when it is recorded that a butler of King Richard II used a seal with that mark on it to designate that a barrel of wine was reserved for the king's use. The record states that the butler "signo regio capiti sagitte consimili signavit," or marked it with the royal sign like an arrowhead.
Over time, the symbol became particularly associated with the Board of Ordnance, and later the War Department and the Ministry of Defence. When Allen showed us the symbol, he said that it marked an old military road, and that the same symbol appeared on many other pieces of military equipment.


In America, the King’s Broad Arrow policy led to one of the first acts of forceful, coordinated resistance against British rule in New England. The Pine Tree Riot was an armed insurrection in Weare, New Hampshire in 1772, a full year before the Boston Tea Party. Governor John Wentworth sent had sent British colonial officers to mill towns to look for trees that had been cut down even though they bore the king’s mark. Most mill owners paid the fines levied against them, but one, Ebenezer Mudgett, refused . He rallied a group of local townspeople, who beat the officers with switches, cut off their horses' manes and tails, and forced the humiliated men to ride out of town through a gauntlet of jeering residents. The rioters were eventually arrested but a sympathetic local judge fined them only one shilling each. The riot showed the colonists’ willingness to use violence against British authorities in order to protect their economic freedom.
I was intrigued by the connection between the Maine woods and England's northern borders. It gave me a lot to think about. And I had never heard of the Pine Tree Riot before. 

I got a second jolt of history when we came across anothersign about 3/4 of the way through our hike. This sign stood next to one of themany stone walls that ran through the woods. It explained that this wallonce marked the edge of a field, and that a person could tell what kind offield by looking at the size of the stones within the walls. Pastures were delineatedby large stones. The walls around crop land had smaller stones, picked from theearth so that plows wouldn’t buck on them. Every year, frost heaves would bringnew stones to the surface, and these stones were added to the walls.

As Maine became more populated, the forests were leveled tobuild houses, cook food, and warm hearths. By the end of the 1700s, most of themassive old-growth mast trees along the southern Maine coast were gone, alongwith most other trees. In 1880, when Maine’s agricultural economy reached itspeak, 64,309 farms covered over 6.5 million acres. Trees were relegated to woodlots and the area around farm houses. But as the nation grew, its agriculturalcenters moved west. By 1940, there were only 39,000 farms left in Maine, and treeswere growing in the abandoned fields. Today, nearly 90% of Maine’s land hasreverted to forest.

Of course, none of the trees in Maine bear the King's Arrow any more. But its forests are veined with the crumbling remnants of stone walls. I know I will never be able to pass one of these walls again without assessing the size of its stones and determining whether the field it once enclosed held crops or pasture, and I will always wonder about the people who built those walls. Someday, I might be able to tell their story. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the award winning author of historical and contemporary fiction for middle school
through adult readers. She lives high in the mountains of central New Mexico, but often visits one of her children, who lives in Maine.

You can read more about her and her books on her website. 

I'm in Maine right now, enjoying a summer vacation in a lake-side cottage, with lots of time for bobbing about with the grandkids.

My husband mentioned lately that he craved a pecan pie, and I would have made one for him, except I didn't want to go out and buy a load of ingredients that I wouldn't use up in the next two weeks.

So I improvised with what I had around. My first substitution: using butter instead of vegetable shortening in the pie shell. The resulting crust was rich and flaky. I may do this more often!

My second substitution was using maple sugar instead of karo syrup. This seemed like a no brainer. After all, I'm in New England, where much of the US's maple syrup is made! And I knew I couldn't use a whole bottle of karo syrup up any time soon. However, maple syrup has a thinner consistency than karo syrup, so I had to account for this in my recipe. I added a tablespoon of flour, and that was all the adjusting I needed to do!

Also, I wasn't in my kitchen, so I didn't have my equipment. Again, I improvised. First, instead of whirring the flour and shortening together in my food processor, I cut the butter into the flour using a fork. This was not as time consuming as I had feared, but I still prefer to use the food processor. 

Usually I use a piece of plastic wrap to chill my dough, and then a piece of wax paper to roll it out. This time, I used one piece of plastic wrap for both purposes.

The recipe I found on the internet that I used as a guide for this pie called for prebaking the crust, so that it wouldn't get soggy on the bottom. I don't normally do this, but I found that the effort was well worth it. Prebaking usually involves putting a piece of parchment paper into the crust, then filling the pie shell with dried beans. Because I had neither parchment paper nor beans, I improvised this step as well, using coffee filters, another pie pan, and a small casserole dish. The coffee filters stop the second pie plate from sticking to the pastry, the pie plate stops the crust from puffing up, and the small casserole dish added the weight that held the pie plate in place. 

Working in a strange kitchen can be a bit unsettling. I think we all have our favorite spatula and feel a bit lost without it. But in this case, things worked out just fine. The results came out pretty good; good enough to share.

Maple Pecan PieCrust: 1 1/4 cup flour1 tsp sugar1/2 cup cold, salted butter1/4 cup ice water 
Place flour and sugar in a bowl. Mix with a fork. Cut the stick of butter in half longways, then turn and cut longways again so that you have 4 long sticks. Cut the sticks  into little cubes. Sprinkle the cubes over the flour and sugar mixture, then cut them in with a fork. (Cutting in means smash the butter, blending it into the flour until there are no big pieces left. Add the ice water, and stir and mix with the fork until the dough becomes one large clump. If this doesn't happen, add a little more water, half a teaspoon at a time, until it does. Press that clump into a round ball.
Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap (or use plastic wrap to cover the bowl in which you mixed the dough) and put it in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. 
While dough is chilling, preheat oven to 425°
When the dough has chilled, take it out of the refrigerator. Spread the plastic wrap on the counter and sprinkle it with flour. Put the ball of dough in the middle of the plastic, then turn it over so that the top is floured. Moving your rolling pin from the middle of the ball to the edges, roll your dough out on the plastic wrap. When your dough is spread out enough that you can place your pie plate upside down on the dough and see an inch of dough all the way around, pick up the plastic wrap and flip it, the dough, and the pie plate over. Your dough is now in the pie plate! Peel off the plastic and crimp the edge of the dough, cutting off excess and using it in places that need it. 
To prebake pie shell: place a coffee filter in the bottom of the pie shell. You may need to use two or three, overlapping them to fit. Place another pie plate on top of the coffee filter. If you don't have a second pie plate, you could try using a round casserole or a plate. What you need is something that generally fills the bottom and keeps it from puffing up in the oven. My second pie plate was smaller than the first (which is why you can see a ridge around the edge of my pie, just outside the filling). It was also light, so I placed a little round ceramic casserole dish (probably intended for souffles) inside my second dish to hold it down. 
Place pie plate in oven. Bake for 10 minutes. Take out of oven, remove pie plate (and casserole if using) and coffee filters. Return to oven for an additional 5 minutes.
Take pieshell out of oven and place on a rack to cool. Reset oven temperature to 350°
Pie Filling: 3 cups pecan halves5 TBS melted butter1/2 cup brown sugar1 TBS flour2 tsp vanilla3 eggs1 cup maple syrup
Measure 3 cups of pecan halves. Pick out 3/4 cup of the best looking nuts and set aside.Pour the remaining 2 1/4 cup pecans into the cooled pie shell. 
I melted my butter by putting it in my mixing bowl and microwaving it, but you can do it any way you want. 
Add the brown sugar and flour to the melted butter and stir to mix.Add the vanilla and eggs and stir until they egg is well distributed.Add the maple syrup and stir well again. 
Carefully pour the butter/sugar/egg mixture over the nuts in the pie shell.Place the reserved 3/4 cup of nuts and place them on top the pie. I like to do this in concentric circles. 
Bake the pie at 350° for 40-50 minutes. If your crust begins to get too brown, you can tent it with aluminum foil (assuming you have some, which I didn't!)