October 2024 – Ink-Stained Wretches

The Woods Are Lovely: A Passion for Trees

Helen Currie Foster

October 29, 2024

The mystery is solved! In my search for what I recalled as “the “Blitzkuchen” once served at Schwamkrug’s outside New Braunfels, in the Texas Hill Country, I had the name wrong. It’s a blitz torte, not a blitz kuchen! Several readers sent recipes from German cookbooks indicating that “Blitzkuchen” is a quick cake, usually one layer only. My memory, though? A tall two-layer confection, baked with meringue and almond flakes on top and between the layers! And in my memory, more meringue on the outside, plus some moistness in the filling.

Online I found Oma Gerhild’s “Oma’s Blitz Torte Recipe ––Lightning Cake.” https://www.quick-german-recipes.com/german-blitz-torte-recipe.html Each almond-flavored layer is baked with meringue and sliced almonds on top of the batter. The recipe offers either custard filling or whipped cream filling. I opted to finish off with whipped cream with powdered sugar and vanilla, not just inside, but around the cake (and in blobs all around the kitchen).

FINALLY! First, that lovely almond taste. Plus, everyone at the table now wore an attractive little white mustache of whipped cream. You don’t get that with a madeleine and a cup of tea, do you, M. Proust?

As October runs into November, Texas Hill Country towns are celebrating Oktoberfest, or, in New Braunfels, Wurstfest. Normally by now our trees would show some fall color––nothing like New England, of course. The cypresses by Lake Austin are turning bronze. Out here north of Dripping Springs, the possum haws are showing their red berries. The cedar elms turned bright yellow, then slowly lost their leaves. The live oaks, thankfully, stay green.

But this year? Drought brings bad news for trees. Cypress-lined creeks are dry…the cypresses’ arched roots groping into the earth for water. Downhill at our place Barton Creek is dry, and I mean dry, with only occasional small pools. Up on the limestone plateau the leaves on some smaller saplings just turned brown and fluttered to the ground, with the tree already looking dead. We’re watering, but in Stage 2 drought restrictions. Will our wells run dry? Have we drained the Trinity aquifers that lie hundreds of feet below?

So, to general geopolitical angst, I’ve added…tree worry.

Trees in books play such a role in our imaginations. After reading Johann David Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson (1812)—where the shipwrecked family builds a tree-house on their desert island––I always wanted to live in a tree-house! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swiss_Family_Robinson We’re drawn to forests, home of the trees—scary, but sometimes the safest place. In The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (1939), first of the four volumes that make up The Once and Future King, the Wart (the young Arthur, under Merlin’s tutelage) and Kay meet Little John who tells them about Robin Wood (explaining why it’s not “Robin Hood” and why he lives in the woods (or “‘oods”):

“They’m free pleaces, the ‘oods, and fine pleaces. Let thee sleep in ‘em, come summer, come winter, withouten brick nor thatch, and huntin’ ‘em for thy commons lest thee starve; and smell to ‘em with the good earth in the springtime; and number of ‘em as they brings forward their comely bright leaves, according to order…”

There the boys, the future King and Sir Kay, approach “the monarch of the forest. It was a lime tree as great as that which used to grow at Moor Park in Herefordshire, no less than one hundred feet in height and seventeen feet in girth, a yard above the ground….” Headquarters for Robin Wood and Maid Marian! And there begins a great and perilous adventure for Kay and Wart, who break into the castle of Morgan le Fay, Queen of Air and Darkness—to rescue prisoners paralyzed by magic. (Speaking of paralyzed victims of witches—note how C.S. Lewis later describes turned-to-stone courtyard figures in his first foray into fantasy, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).)

One writer, Elisabeth Brewer, notes that “The Sword in the Stone shows a passion for trees that White shared with Tolkien. https://bit.ly/3Ceqk. How about the Ents we meet in Fangorn Forest, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth? Trees that walk…and tend other trees. Not all trees are benign––including the wicked old willow which captures Frodo and friends (rescued by Tom Bombadil).

I’m reading a fascinating graphic (yes, graphic!) book about Tolkien and his close friend C.S. Lewis: The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, by John Hendrix. https://bit.ly/4hqiyFr

Tolkien and Lewis met in 1929 in Oxford, where they were, famously, members of a writers’ group, the Inklings, and shared many hours at The Eagle and Child. That’s not all they shared. In 1916, both men experienced horrific warfare on the Western Front in France. Young and just married, Tolkien fought in the trenches, then contracted life-threatening trench fever. At nineteen, Lewis was wounded by shrapnel (from friendly fire) on the Somme, and carried shrapnel in his body the rest of his life. Hendrix’s wonderful book uncovers the sort of salvation two disillusioned veterans found in the healing power of imagination, including Norse mythology and the European fairy tale. Tolkien knew of Yggdrasil, the sacred ash tree central to Norse mythology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil; https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2130&context=mythlore

And how the worlds created by Lewis and Tolkien fired our imaginations! The fantasy world of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia emerged when The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published (1950). Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, was first published in 1937 but became a pop-culture phenomenon only in 1960’s, when the paperback edition became available. https://time.com/4941811/hobbit-anniversary-1937-reviews/

Both Lewis and Tolkien had copies of The Sword in the Stone early on. Indeed, in 1939 it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. T. H. White 1964 obituary, https://nyti.ms/4hlasht. Curiously, Hendrix’s book on Tolkien and Lewis doesn’t mention T. H. White, perhaps because Hendrix focuses on the impact of war; T.H. White 1906-1964) was born too late to serve in World War I. Nor was he an Oxonian. While C.S. Lewis reportedly disparaged The Sword in the Stone in 1940, he later invited T. H. White to the Inklings if he ever visited Oxford. https://bit.ly/4f4wcww (“Dickieson post”). Perhaps Hendrix doesn’t mention T. H. White because unlike Tolkien and Lewis, though he creates a fantasy world, White grounds The Once and Future King firmly in England.

But Elisabeth Brewer commented in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King that The Sword in the Stone shows a passion for trees that White shared with Tolkien. (Dickieson post.)

What about powerful trees in more recent books? Consider the Whomping Willow, in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Wizard of Azkaban? https://bit.ly/4f1koex Magic—but terrorizing—it reveals the secret passage which ultimately allows Harry and friends to discover––well, remember? Indeed, Harry reminds us of T. H. White’s Wart, both with an earnest determination to do right, and a magical tutor.

Maybe children are especially open to tree power because they still climb trees. My dad swooped us off to grad school in Atlanta, and then to Charlotte, before we moved back to Texas. In the southeast I discovered the power of pine trees. We children built an admirable and secret treehouse in the woods, where we surveyed the world from on high. No parents came near to scold or warn: deep in the trees we ruled our own domain. Later in Carolina at eleven, I could climb the neighbors’ big back yard pine all the way to the top. The tree swayed slowly back and forth, but I could see the entire neighborhood and beyond. Tree power.

Out here on the Edwards Plateau, in the rugged karst landscape above a hill country creek, live oaks rule. The big evergreens, up to sixty feet tall, with a wide crown and massive limbs close to the ground, are Quercus Virginiana. They often grow in a circle—and you know they are communicating through their root systems. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too

The way live oaks vary their leaves makes identification tough. On the Edwards Plateau, the species passes into the “shrubby Texas Live Oak”—shorter with smaller trunks: “…[I]ntermediate forms occur between the variety and the species and the distinctions are often difficult,” per Robert Vines, Trees, Shrubs and Woody Vines of the Southwest (1960). Well, thanks.

Now, in drought, with grass turned grayish tan, with dirt powder-dry beneath our feet, we treasure the blessed green of live oaks, often home to swings and hammocks, and providing wide shade to houses, pastures, and somnolent cattle.

Trees inspire us. We know Shakespeare’s song: “Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me…” (As You Like It). The first poem in Wendell Berry’s A Timbered Choir begins, “I go among trees and sit still.”

Mary Oliver’s “Honey Locust” begins,

“Who can tell how lovely in June is the

honey locust tree, or why

A tree should be so sweet and live

in this world?”

Robert Frost knows his trees: The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Tree at My Window, Spring Pools, so many. Of course, his Birches:

“When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them…”

Frost makes it easy to imagine “some boy” swinging the birches—or Frost imagining that, as he marched through a yellow wood.

And then e.e. cummings, My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love—I like this verse:

“My father moved through theys of we,

Singing each new leaf out of each tree

(and every child was sure that spring

Danced when she heard my father sing)”

And Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall:

“Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?”

Yes, trees: later in the poem we find when “worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.”

The forecast calls for rain. Please cross your fingers.

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Currently she’s working on Book 10. Her protagonist, Alice, gets into legal drama, and matters of the heart. Alice does have a treehouse.

WIND TURBINES – THEY DANCE!

Francine Paino a.k.a. F. Della Notte

Texas has over 15,300 wind turbines, representing 28.6% of Texas energy generation. These turbines have surpassed the state’s nuclear production in 2014 and coal-fired production in 2020. Windfarms dot the landscape from north to south, with the majority of the windfarms operating in South Texas, along the Gulf Coast, south of Galveston, and in the mountain passes and ridge tops of the Trans-Pecos in western Texas.

Driving north and south from Corpus Christi to Austin on route 181 gave me a birds-eye view of them in action—in some places up close and almost personal. All the turbines I saw were of a three-blade variety, although there are some designs with two blades or circular blades.

The three-blade type has the most blades turning like Don Quixote’s imaginary opponent where they all turn in tandem, locked into the same rhythm, going round and round, in the same positions. Other turbines, however, mimic dance. Each blade moves independently of the other two, almost like the arm movements called port de bras in ballet, where one arm may move at a time. Over and over, the first blade arrives at a designated proximity to the next before the second blade moves. Then, that blade moves to a preordained location to the next before the third blade moves. And the process repeats, over and over. Mesmerized, I watched this dance of the windmill blades, but couldn’t select a piece of music in my head to accompany the movement. Instead, I turned to research. Why do some turbines move this way, unlike others in the same field where all the blades on each unit move at the same time? Here is the answer I found.

According to information on the National grid, it is normal for a wind turbine to have its blades not moving simultaneously. They are affected by wind speeds and direction variations, which cause “slight differences in the force acting on each blade, resulting in a non-perfectly synchronized movement.” However, the site warns, “If the blades are significantly out of sync or not rotating, it could indicate a potential issue requiring maintenance.”

And so, the blades do not create the wind. It is the wind that turns the blades. Even a slight breeze of seven mph will move them. If the wind exceeds 56 mph, they are programmed to stop to avoid damage. Maximum efficiency is roughly 18 mph. The energy created by the blades is then sent through a gearbox to a generator. That’s where it’s converted to electrical power and sent to an onsite transformer, which “matches the voltage to the national grid system.” The electricity then moves along the transmission network to a substation, which links the transmission to a distribution system that sends it on and powers homes, businesses, and other users. A wonderfully efficient method of creating and harvesting wind power, but one cannot discuss wind turbines without including the danger they represent to birds.

It’s interesting that the national grid information and Climate Change enthusiasts dismiss the question of damage to birdlife, stating that more birds are killed by feral cats. Happily, the American Bird Conservatory takes a more balanced approach.

While it is true that feral cats kill more birds than wind turbines, the percentages of cats vs turbines are unequal, and so are the numbers that can be killed at once. Also, cats are not deadly to all species, as are the wind turbines, which are a direct danger to species approaching extinction, like the Marbled Murrelets, the Gold Eagles, and the Condors. Still, there is no malice either in the cats or the turbines. The Conservatory is also working on Bird-Smart Wind Energy. For more information, see the ABC link below.

So, while humans thrash about, mourn the loss of wildlife, and celebrate the growing potential for wind energy, these strange, soulless creatures possess an odd beauty and a consistency that can be haunting. I find them beautiful but unsettling, like strange beasts without thought or feeling. Although my fascination with wind turbines hasn’t yet resulted in a story, plenty are out there already.

On Amazon, novels involving wind turbines are led by C.J. Box’s Cold Wind, a Joe Picket murder mystery. The one that captured my attention is War of the Wind, by Victoria Williamson, a story for young readers involving a boy named Max, who wears hearing aids that pick up odd sounds from a new wind farm off the coast. He suspects a sinister scientist is using wind turbines to experiment on the islanders, whose behaviors are becoming bizarre. Max enlists the help of his classmates to shut down the government’s secret test before it spins out of control. The story sounds intriguing, and I’ve ordered it for my grandchildren, but I’ll read it first.

Wind turbines are here to stay and an important part of our efforts to provide more and cleaner energy. It’s a subject that enters everyone’s life and conversation, and perhaps wind turbines will appear in another Housekeeper Mystery Series. . but not yet.

At this time, Mrs. B. and Father Melvyn are sorting out crimes and murders with local and international repercussions while they prepare for their tour of ancient Christianity in Rome, Italy.

Coming soon: The Catastrophist and the Killing God War.

Https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/wind-snap.php#:~:text=There%20are%20239%20wind%2Drelated,coal%2Dfired%20generation%20in%202020.In 2023, wind represented 28.6 percent of Texas energy generation, second to natural gas (41.8 percent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas#:~:text=The%20broad%20scope%20and%20geographical,the%20western%20tip%20of%20Texas.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/how-do-wind-turbines-work

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-does-wind-turbine-work#:~:text=What%20happens%20to%20the%20wind,by%20the%20national%20electricity%20system.

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbines-are-threat-to-birds/

https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Bird-Smart-Wind-Energy-Fact-Sheet.pdf

A Halloween Story: Hansel and Gretel and Cuthbert and Me

By M. K. Waller

Shakespeare said, A sad tale’s best for winter, but this is only October, and in Texas, that sure ain’t winter. And I don’t feel like telling a sad tale.

Halloween is near, so I shall tell a scary tale, one about a wicked witch and innocent little children.

But with a reminder: Sometimes it’s the innocent little children you have to watch out for.

For you to fully appreciate the trauma inflicted here, a preface—

My university degrees are in English and biology. I trained to teach secondary students. High school. Teenagers. People as tall as I am. Usually taller.

Mid-career, I was invited to take the position of school district librarian. I had neither education nor experience in the field, but both my employers and the State of Texas said that was okay–I was an English teacher, I could do anything. I would start working in August, two weeks away, and then jump back into graduate school for a second master’s degree when January rolled around. I’d do fine.

I thought both the State and my employer were a little crazy, and I hadn’t planned a return to grad school, but I was a little crazy, too, so I accepted the offer.

And both the library and I were fine. I was more than fine. I absolutely adored library work. It was like putting together a big puzzle—so many different pieces. And a couple of years later, here came computers and networking and T1 lines and the Internet and the world wide web and . . . A wild learning curve, perpetual continuing education. On-the-job boredom? Not a chance.

Library school was—not adorable. It was challenging. Some courses were nerve-wracking. When they said library science, they meant science. In the words of the Library of Congress cataloger teaching the Organization of Materials course, as she looked out over a sea of bewildered students— “Come on, people. Cataloging isn’t rocket science. Rocket scientists couldn’t handle it.”*

But nothing was so challenging—or so nerve-wracking—as the two days a week I spent in my own elementary school library with the little people. Very little people. The ones some teachers called, privately, the ankle-biters.

I loved little children, nieces and nephews and such. I would play with them for hours on end. But they came in twos and threes. At the library, little children came in hordes.

Nothing in my formal education had prepared me to be in the same room with them. In all my fifteen years as a librarian, I was never prepared. They always managed to surprise me.

And now, my story for Halloween.

Oh—you must also know the story of Hansel and Gretel. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s Wikipedia’s summary:

Hansel and Gretel are siblings who are abandoned in a forest and fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a bread, cake, and sugar house. The witch, who has cannibalistic intentions, intends to fatten Hansel before eventually eating him. However, Gretel saves her brother by pushing the witch into her own oven, killing her, and escaping with the witch’s treasure.

Okay, to the story.

*

This is the story of Cuthbert, a five-year-old boy
who visited
my school library
for twenty minutes every week.
My job was to teach him about the library.
I’m not sure what his job was.
But he was very good at it.

*

Once upon a time, I read “Hansel and Gretel” to a class of kindergarteners. The audience, sitting rapt at my feet, comprised sixteen exceptionally good listeners, a fact I later regretted.

While I read, Cuthbert sat on the floor beside my chair and stroked my panty-hose-clad shin. Small children find panty-hose fascinating.

When I reached, “And they lived happily ever after,” Cuthbert stopped stroking and tugged on my skirt. I ceded him the floor.

“But it’s a good thing, what the witch did.”

Because he spoke kindergartener-ese and I sometimes didn’t, I thought I had misunderstood. Come again?

“It’s really a good thing, what the witch did.”

I should have slammed the book shut right then, or pulled out the emergency duct tape, or something, anything to change the subject. But I’m not very smart, so I asked Cuthbert to elaborate.

His elaboration went like this:

When the witch prepared the hot oven to cook and then eat Hansel, she was doing a good thing. Because then Hansel would die and go to Heaven to be with God and Jesus.

I smiled a no doubt horrified smile and said something like But But But. While Cuthbert explained even more fully, I analyzed my options.

a) If I said, No, the witch did a bad thing, because it is not nice to cook and eat little boys and girls, then sixteen children would go home and report, Miss Kathy said it’s bad to go to Heaven and be with God and Jesus.

b) If I said, Yes, the witch did a good thing, because cooking and eating little boys and girls ensures their immediate transport Heavenward, then sixteen children would go home and report, Miss Kathy approves of cold-blooded murder and cannibalism. Plus witchcraft. Plus reading a book about a witch, which in our Great State is sometimes considered more damaging than the murder/cannibalism package.

c) Anything I said might be in complete opposition to what Cuthbert’s mother had told him on this topic, and he would report that to her, and then I would get to attend a conference that wouldn’t be nearly so much fun as it sounds.

Note: The last sentence under b) is not to be taken literally. It is sarcasm, and richly deserved. The earlier reference to emergency duct tape is hyperbole. I’ve never duct taped a child.

Well, anyway, I wish I could say the sky opened and a big light bulb appeared above my head and gave me words to clean up this mess. But I don’t remember finding any words at all, at least sensible ones. I think I babbled and stammered until the teacher came to repossess her charges.

I do remember Cuthbert was talking when he left the room. There’s no telling what his classmates took away from that lesson.

If I’d been in my right mind, I might have said something to the effect that God and Jesus don’t like it when witches send people to Heaven before their due date.

But the prospect of talking theology with this independent thinker froze my neural pathways.

And anyway, I was using all my energy to keep from laughing.

*

*I know that most people think librarians are educated to do two thing: stamp books and say, “Shhhhhh.” Those people are dead wrong. Someday I shall publish a post—maybe an entire book—upending all the common misconceptions about librarians. It will be a page-turner.

*

This post appeared on Telling the Truth, Mainly, in 2011 and again in 2012. I like to repost around Halloween, because the season cries out for scary stories, and that day with Cuthbert was pretty darned scary. (I’ve never thought of myself as a witch, but some people probably did. And still do.)

The discussion about fairy tales and religion took place over twenty years ago. I think about it often and feel lucky I’ve never had a nightmare about it. But I remember Cuthbert fondly for giving me both the worst and the best day of my career. He was adorable.

***

M. K. Waller’s short stories appear is several anthologies, the latest of which is Kaye George’s Dark of the Day: Eclipse Stories (Down and Out Press, 2024). Her novella, Stabbed, was co-written with Manning Wolfe. She also writes as Kathy Waller. Read more about her at kathywaller1.com and follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kathy.waller68/

She lives in Austin, Texas.