The Doughy Truth - A Christmas Story by Diane Bator

The Doughy Truth

            The gingerbread dough was too dry and crumbly that year, which hadn't happened in all my years of cookie baking, at least not with my gingerbread, and it made me crazy. Every time I'd pick up a chunk to knead velvety smooth, it fell apart in my hands then litter the table with crumbs. 

            I thought I'd followed the directions explicitly just as I did every year before we'd moved two thousand miles from "home". I blended the molasses, sugar, water and shortening together before adding the flour, baking soda and spices. I worked it into a huge cracking ball of over-floured dough, which should have been my first clue there was something not quite right, before covering the dough with plastic and stashing it in the fridge overnight. Just like every other year. Filled with dread, I decided it might turn out once the dough sat for a while.

            In the morning, I worked the could dough and fretted over the crumbles falling out of my hands. I willed the dough to take on the same smooth texture as years past so the boys could make the cookies they had bugged me about for days. I didn't want to let them down now.

            Despite the technical difficulties, three smiling faces perched around the our glass-topped table to happily cut snowmen, teddy bears and Christmas trees. The dry, cracking cookie dough did little to dampened their determination or their enthusiasm.

            I shook my head, amazed at their reaction then realized it wasn't the dough that made this the fun activity and I'd worried all night for nothing. The dough was merely the magnet that drew us all together. My three boys were just as happy with crusty, stubborn dough as they would have been if it was as velvety smooth as usual.

            They were baking cookies with me.

            Of course, the fact we'd all ended up covered in flour and gingerbread crumbs only made things that much more festive. Their laughter and cheer came from knowing most of their creations would be given to friends and teachers. Each cookie, no matter how imperfect, was filled with our love and the gratitude of being blessed for all that we have. Each other.

            While we are thousands of miles from our families each Christmas, we are constantly surrounded by people who love us and who have become as close as family over the years. Those same people who receive our cookies and homemade treats in their packages will know they were made by hands and hearts that care and are grateful for their presence in our lives.

            They are truly the greatest gifts we could ever receive.

Merry Christmas to All....

FRONTIER LIFE - AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA - MARGARET TANNER

FRONTIER LIFE – AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA

 Life on the American and Australian frontiers has a strikingly similar history. For example, take the The American Homestead Act, and the Australian Act of Selection.

 

America: The original Homestead Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20^th, 1862. It gave applicants freehold title to up to 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River. The law required only three steps from the applicant - file an application, improve the land, then file for a deed of title. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, including freed slaves, could file a claim on the provisions that they were over the age of twenty one and had lived on the land for five years.

The Homestead Act's lenient terms proved to be ill-fated for many settlers. Claimants didn’t have to own farming implements or even to have had any farming experience. The allocated tracts of land may have been adequate in humid regions, but were not large enough to support plains settlers where lack of water reduced yields. Speculators often got control of homestead land by hiring phony claimants or buying up abandoned farms.

Most of us visualise the frontier home as a rustic log cabin nestled in a peaceful mountain valley or on a sweeping green plain. But in reality, the "little house on the prairie" was often not much more than a shack or a hastily scratched out hole in the ground. In the treeless lands of the plains and prairies, log cabins were out of the question so  homesteaders turned to the ground beneath their feet for shelter. The sod house, or "soddy," was one of the most common dwellings in the frontier west. The long, tough grasses of the plains had tight, intricate root systems, and the earth in which they were contained could be cut into flexible, yet strong, bricks.

Ground soaked by rains or melting snow was ideal for starting sod house construction. When the earth was soft and moist, homesteaders would break the soil with an ox- or horse-drawn sod cutter, which was an instrument similar to a farming plough. Sod cutters produced long, narrow strips of sod, which could then be chopped into bricks with an axe. These two- to three-foot square, four-inch thick sod bricks were then stacked to form the walls of the sod house. Soddy roofs were constructed by creating a thin layer of interlacing twigs, thin branches, and hay, which were then covered over with another layer of sod. To save time many sod houses were built into the sides of hills or banks. Some settlers gouged a hole in a hill side, so they only had to build a front wall and roof.
As a result of their extremely thick walls, soddies were cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Soddies were also extremely cheap to build. Of course, there were drawbacks to sod-house living. As the house was built of dirt and grass, it was constantly infested with bugs, mice and snakes. The sod roofs often leaked, which turned the dirt floor into a quagmire. Wet roofs took days to dry out and the enormous weight of the wet earth often caused roof cave-ins. Even in the very best weather, sod houses were plagued with problems. When the sod roof became extremely dry, dirt and grass continually rained down on the occupants of the house.

A typical American log cabin measured about ten by twenty feet, regardless of the number of inhabitants. Settlers often built lofts across the cabin roof or lean-tos across the rear of the cabin to give the family more space. Typically, frontier cabins featured only one room, which served as kitchen, dining room, living room, workroom, and bedroom.

Homesteaders could often build a log cabin in a matter of days, using only an axe and auger. No nails were required for the task. The first step in construction was to build a stone or rock foundation, to keep the logs off the ground and prevent rot. Once the foundation was laid, settlers would cut down trees and square off the logs. These logs were then "notched" in the top and bottom of each end then stacked to form walls. The notched logs fitted snugly together at the corners of the cabin, and held the walls in place. After the logs were stacked, gaps remained in the walls. Settlers had to jam sticks and wood chips into the gaps, then they filled in the remaining gaps with cement made out of earth, sand, and water. Fireplaces were built of stone, and often had stick-and-mud chimneys. Most cabins had dirt or gravel floors, which had to be raked daily to preserve their evenness.

Australia: In the colony of Victoria the 1860 Land Act allowed free selection of crown land.  This included land already occupied by the squatters, (wealthy land owners) who had managed to circumvent the law for years and keep land that they did not legally own.

The Act allowed selectors access to the squatters’ land, and they could purchase between 40 and 320 acres of crown land, but after that, the authorities left them to fend for themselves. Not an easy task against the wealthy, often ruthless squatters who were incensed at what they thought was theft of their land.

In 1861 the Act of Selection was intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture. Selectors often came into conflict with squatters, who already occupied land and were prepared to fight to keep it. The bitterness ran deep for many years, often erupting into violence.

The first permanent homesteads on the Australian frontier were constructed using posts and split timber slabs. The posts were set into the ground, about three feet apart, according to the desired layout. Slabs of timber were then dropped into the slots. A sapling or similar, straight piece of timber ran across the top of the posts, which allowed them to be tied together so they could support the roof. Clay was often plugged in between the joins and splits of the cladding to stop draughts. The internal walls were sometimes plastered with clay and straw, lined with hessian/calico, white washed or simply left as split timber. Roofs were pitched using saplings straight from the bush and often clad with bark. Early settlers learnt from the aborigines that large sheets of bark could be cut and peeled off a variety of trees and used as sheets to clad the roof.

So, it can be seen that there is not much difference between the Australian Act of Selection and  the American Homestead Act. In both countries frontier life was tough, and only the strong and resilient survived.

Margaret Tanner writes historical romance set in Australia. 

http://www.bookswelove.net/tanner.php

 

 

 

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT (or, Is Anyone Out there?) by Shirley Martin

     Of all the physical sciences, none seems to defy logic and understanding as does astronomy. Or so it seems to me. The numbers alone challenge understanding. For example, when astronomers state that the universe was created in one billionth of a second, the time element seems incomprehensible. Yet that's the time span given for the Big Bang--a cosmic explosion of an intensely hot fireball that resulted in the creation of the universe, about twenty-billion years ago. 

    To better understand the time span from the creation of the universe to man's appearance on Earth, think of a twenty-four hour clock. Man appears in the last few seconds before midnight.

    The universe is so vast that its size, too, defies understanding. More than one-billion stars comprise our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. And there are millions of galaxies in the universe. Does that give you an idea of its immense size? Furthermore, the universe is expanding at a tremendous rate. That means that stars, planets, and all heavenly bodies are moving away from each other. The more remote the body, the faster it's moving. This expansion of the universe is called "the red shift."

    If you can get away from city lights and look up at the night sky, you'll see a countless number of stars shining in the heavens. With all of these stars in the night sky--millions and millions--the night sky should be a blinding sheet of light. Yet it isn't. The night sky is dark. The darkness of the night sky presented a paradox to astronomers in the past. (Many may not know it, but Edgar Allan Poe was a skilled astronomer. The dark night sky puzzled him, too.)

    The puzzle was eventually resolved in the deliverance of time. Stars don't shine forever. They shine for millions or billions of years, and then they burn out. The first stars began shining about fifteen-billion years ago. So why is the night sky dark? When we look far out in space, we are looking back in time. We see the light of the stars, but they are no longer there. They died out years ago, but their light is just now reaching us. The farther out in the sky we look, the farther we are looking back in time. It has taken millions of years for their light to reach us, even though they died out eons ago. The sky is an image of the past.

    The astronomers' term for this relationship between time and space is referred to as "lookback time." It was Albert Einstein who proved that space and time are interwoven.

    I used to wonder what the edge of the universe looked like. If the universe is finite--if it has an end--then what lies beyond it? Now astronomers state that there are many universes, going on and on.

    Now considering our own universe, with its billions and billions of stars, one might wonder if there is intelligent life beyond our planet. Can there be an Earthlike planet, with just the right ingredients for intelligent life? Scientists refer to this as the Goldilocks criteria, not too hot and not too cold. SETI--The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence--has been seeking intelligent life elsewhere for years. But even if there is intelligent life elsewhere, how could we reach them, or how could they reach us? Distance appears to be an insurmountable problem. According to the laws of physics, nothing travels faster than the speed of light. It could take men on earth thousands, even millions of years to reach a habitable planet, a self-defeating pursuit. Wormholes, if they exist, can be dangerous. So how could we travel to outer space?  All you Trekkies, do you have an answer?

    I can't conclude this discussion without saying something about the Christmas Star, or the Star of Bethlehem. Scientists now know that the Star of Bethlehem wasn't a star but a planet--most likely Venus, or a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter--shining brightly over the town of Bethlehem.  

    For those who want to read more about the universe, "The Red Limit" by Timothy Ferris is a good place to start.

    If fiction is more your cup of tea, may I suggest my own books with Books We Love. You can find them here at http://bookswelove.net/martin.php and at Amazon. I write historical, paranormal, and fantasy romance, so you have a varied selection to choose from.