Author Archives: Carolyn

My Poems from Ethiopia

Carolyn Mulford Posted on by

In case you haven’t heard, April is National Poetry Month. I’m no poet (see proof below), but at times over the last 75 years I’ve scribbled verses, usually on special occasions, to entertain myself and friends.

I’ve also found attempting to commit poetry to be therapeutic, particularly in coping with grief. The discipline of writing in even loose forms provides this prose writer with a distraction, and maybe a clarification.

Reading verse written years ago can be satisfying because of the memories it brings back. I’m sharing some from my years (1962-1964) as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Dessie, Ethiopia, the capital of Wollo and home of the province’s only high school. Dessie looked like a giant village, but the setting amid the mountains is gorgeous, as is most of Ethiopia.

This poem I wrote when I realized what had been exotic had become routine.

 

After One Year Abroad

When first you come you clearly see

The peaks and depths: the beauty, poverty,

Potential wealth amidst the casual filth.

Your eyes are wide, revealing thoughts you wish

To leave unknown. Reflections shine of hills

So steep and green they seem unreal, a dream.

The dots of goats and sheep and shepherd boys

Ascend just as they’ve done since time began.

You see the past as real; the present comes

And goes; the future fades from sight at times.

The city’s pride was built with skills unknown

Among the people gazing now in awe

Outside, and fearing what it is, and they

Are not. The time is ever. Centuries may pass

Between the vales and highland city’s streets.

The time is in the minds, the minds that try

To close the door—the door to now or to

The past. And so the sons regard the old

With scorn, and in return are viewed with shame.

The stranger looks and sees and yet is blind

Because she thinks of other lands and lives.

She moves about until she notes no more

The violent shades; her open eyes are closed

To much; she, too, is lost in time and place.

We lived at 8,000 feet under beautiful skies. Nights were cold, dark, and quiet. If we drove anywhere, we’d see packs of hyenas, their teeth gleaming in the headlights as they collected garbage, including dead donkeys.

One night I woke to the sound of insane laughter. I rarely heard that. Hyenas usually whooped rather than laughed.

 

The Hyena’s Howl

The hyena’s howl

Comes to a point;

Starting at an uncertain bass,

It travels up

The tenor scale,

Ending abruptly.

My town had electricity around the clock, for those who could afford it. Occasionally the power went off, which meant grading papers by candlelight. Frustrating, but I had fun writing this.

Lines by Candlelight

Candlelight is charming;

Candlelight is fine;

Candlelight’s disarming;

But I can’t see to rhyme.

Lamplight is a blessing

When other light is gone;

But writing is just messing

If I can’t see what’s done.

Edison is my hero,

A man of brain and might.

Why, I’ll bet that Nero

Burned Rome to get a light.

My summer assignment was building a school for lepers being treated at the Sudan Interior Mission in a valley outside Dessie. After teaching for nine months, we enjoyed a few weeks of hammering and sawing.

Summer is the rainy season, and rain interrupted our work for an hour or two every afternoon. I wrote about one memorable storm.

 

Mountain Mist

A finger points. A voice is raised in awe.

Along the mountain ridge a massive form

Is swiftly moving. No sounds precede its march;

But darkness moves before it, blotting out

The midday sun. Then down the ridge and toward

The valley where we pause to gaze and thrill

At natures’ rarest sight. Impish wisps

Escape the bulk and twist between the trees

And huts that cluster on the mountain’s side

Before the mystic vapor swallows them.

“It’s like a bomb”—“It’s just a fog.” But all

Alike have turned to watch it come. The day

Becomes as dusk, and mist is all around

The staring, dazzled crew who grasp at beauty,

Banish fear. Encouraged by the rising wind,

Mist moves across the valley with a surge

And lids the walls. A crash, a roar, a boom—

And down the rain descends in gentle drops.

Then, gathering force, it plummets down in pails.

The watchers bolt for home. The spell is gone.

Happy National Poetry Month!

—Carolyn Mulford

Memories of Iran

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The recent distressing events in Iran remind me of working there in 1969, 10 years before revolutionaries took over the American embassy and held the staff hostage.

I’m still mystified about why my employer, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, sent me, a lowly editor, to discuss an agreement with the Ministry of the Economy to participate in a month-long international trade fair in Tehran. My only related experience had been serving as a press officer and general assistant at a similar fair in Budapest.

My primary Iranian contacts were two former UNIDO employees, one a friend named Ali. They guided me through hours of meetings (all in English) on well-made plans. My clearest memory is of lunch at a restaurant that served kabobs—Iran’s are the best—with rice, saffron, a yogurt drink, and Pepsi (a mark of American influence in a Coke-dominated world).

A free afternoon included a visit to Ali’s home in a neat suburban neighborhood. It was a charming traditional-style home—reminding me of contemporary adobe homes in New Mexico—with a lovely little garden within the compound walls. It blended tradition with modern furniture and conveniences and was cool despite the heat outside. As I recall, Ali’s Iowa-born wife served cookies with hot tea and cold Pepsi.

The city of three (now 10) million sprawled out over the flatlands and extended into the foothills. I remember large new monuments, old mosques with beautiful tiled domes, and street stands loaded with melons and pistachios. Traffic on the wide downtown streets was dense and undisciplined. Most cars were Iranian-made sedans, an indication of sophisticated manufacturing. The urban neighborhood around my hotel looked much like a Midwestern city, and a majority of the people wore “European” clothes. I also noticed stylish dresses partially hidden under loosely draped black chadors (long cloaks), a style that brought arrest and death in custody to a young woman a few years ago.

My limited shopping gave me hints of the rich Persian heritage. I admired a plethora of carpets but limited my buying to jewelry and other small items with hand-painted reproductions of historic art. I also chose several tile squares in classic geometric patterns (typical in mosques). The tiles adorned my dining room table, and held hot dishes, for decades. I returned to Vienna determined to research Iran’s history and culture before I returned for the fair. And, of course, I found an English-to-Farsi phrase book so I could learn key words and expressions.

Everyone I encountered that brief trip spoke English. Everyone was friendly. I saw no signs of hostility toward the United States or toward me though, in my ignorance, I broke custom by wearing a sleeveless dress.

During the trade fair months later, I shared workspace and duties with congenial and competent Iranian men and women, including a young Baha’i couple who confided that their faith put them at a disadvantage in jobhunting. Since the revolution, thousands of followers of that peaceful, egalitarian religion have faced limited educational and employment opportunities, imprisonment, and death. I’ve often wondered if the couple survived.

In work and social situations, I heard complaints about Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi not moving fast enough to change the old ways. Some credited Empress Farah, his young, well-educated third wife, with pushing for more rights for women. Certainly Iran appeared to be ahead of most other Middle East countries I had visited. Many Iranians, including members of the military, had attended American universities or received advanced training here. Most spoke of the United States with affection but without desire to leave Iran.

I don’t remember anyone grousing about the United States undermining Iran’s elected leader to put the more malleable shah on the Peacock Throne in 1953, an act experts say contributed to the 1979 revolution.

One weekend, the Ministry arranged for the UNIDO staff to go to Isfahan, for centuries a great trade and cultural center called “Half the World.” You see Isfahan in the news now because Iran has stored uranium deep underground nearby. A driver took us across mostly desert terrain and into the city’s greenery. (Any time we had a driver, he would ignore the women and ask the man for instructions.) We stayed in a centuries-old caravanseri—a motel for caravans. Built in a high-walled, gated square, it had dark but comfortable guestrooms around the courtyard where camels and their precious loads used to spend the night.

We spent Saturday afternoon in Maidan-i-Shah (Maidan Imam), one of the world’s largest and most beautiful squares (actually a rectangle). From the open walkway in front of the second-floor shops, we had a wonderful view of the maidan and its two magnificent mosques. their domes gleaming in the sun. (For visuals, look up the maidan and its mosques on YouTube.)

My friend/colleague, a Jewish Austrian, and I cautiously approached the busier one. We had worn skirts, jackets, and scarves to comply with dress code, and we joined others in leaving our shoes outside. Keeping quiet and inobtrusive as we would in cathedrals, we were ignored or welcomed with nods.

The maidan’s assorted shops, several featuring artisans, were interesting, but the grand bazaar at one end was the major attraction for foreign and Iranian tourists. For me, the little shops and open booths resembled a living museum more than a mall. English was less common here than in Tehran.

I returned to Iran as a tourist a year later. From the time I landed at the Tehran airport, I saw stares verging on glares rather than the expected smiles on numerous faces. The serious change of attitude toward Americans came home to me in Isfahan when I approached the mosque. I sensed such hostility that I put my shoes back on and went to the more welcoming bazaar.

I don’t know whether a specific incident or American policy prompted the new antipathy. Perhaps Islamic conservatives began to focus on, and fear, the influential United States and blame it for the shah’s “western” policies. I wasn’t surprised when Iranians drove out the shah, but I was shocked by the attack on our embassy in 1979 and the continued casting of Iran’s former friend as the Great Satan.

For years I hoped for substantial reforms in Iran and a reconciliation with the United States. With memories of Iranians I met and the beauties I saw in 1969 flooding back, each day I dread the news of more death and destruction. On both sides. In this war, I fear, everyone loses. I hope—against reason?—that those controlling the negotiations acquire the good sense to work out a mutually beneficial peace.

—Carolyn Mulford

The New Madrid Tremors Continue

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Early December 16, 1811, the destructive New Madrid Earthquakes began. For more than two months people in southeast Missouri, northeast Arkansas, and western Kentucky and Tennessee endured fear and privations from three major earthquakes (above 7.5 on the Richter Scale) and another 20 almost as bad. Many of the roughly 2,000 smaller ones disturbed their days and nights.

Eighteen of the quakes were so strong that they caused church bells to ring on the East Coast and made dishes fall from shelves in such places as the Executive Mansion.

Seismologists still monitor the New Madrid Seismic Zone. They have detected 145 tremors scattered around the Zone so far this year. The majority do little more than knock loose items off a shelf, but the late November the frequency increased. The biggest one in the last week was a 2.3 near Tiptonville, TN, and Reelfoot Lake, formed during the 1811-1812 quakes.

For updates on what’s happening in the Zone, go to https://earthquaketrack.com/us-mo-new-madrid/recent. The site’s map shows where the tremors occur. Other online maps show where the most serious damages will be when powerful quakes come. Bridges, railway lines, and roads will be hard hit, as will brick and stone buildings, both residences and other buildings, including those on the college campuses in my central Missouri city.

No one knows when another catastrophic series—or even a big quake with a few aftershocks—will hit again. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources accepts an estimate of a 10 percent chance of big ones (at least 7.7) in the next 50 years.

Insurance companies see much higher odds, perhaps because some calculate a 25 to 45 percent chance of quakes 6.0 and above in the next 50 years. According to reporting in the Columbia Missourian May 22, 2025 edition, home insurance in the New Madrid area went from $57 in 2000 to $569 in 2023. Many of the 3,000 residents and the businesses can afford neither the insurance nor the retrofitting to protect their buildings.

Major quakes today would be bring huge human and property losses. A 2008 report from the Mid-America Earthquake Center estimated that, in Missouri alone, 15,000 would be killed and 120,000 displaced. The Center placed damages at nearly $40 billion. That would surely be much more now.

Today we remember the terror and pain during the New Madrid Earthquakes and hope we don’t see that bit of history repeated.

—Carolyn Mulford

Celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday

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This year Janeites around the world are celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday (December 16, 1775). Although she wrote only six polished novels before her death in 1817, she has become one of the most popular novelists in history. (If Pride and Prejudice is the only title you can remember, refresh your memory at https://carolynmulford.com/writing/vacationing-with-jane-austen.)

She may be more popular now than ever. That’s partly because the movie and TV adaptations of her books over the last 30 years have drawn and delighted readers not doing assignments. Another factor has been the proliferation of novels imagining the life of Austen’s characters and of contemporary people from around the world in plots roughly paralleling one of hers.

Writers surely must rank among Austen’s most enthusiastic readers. The woman wrote brilliantly about her time with characters like people we know today. Some poor souls have dismissed her as “only” a romance writer or novelist of social manners. She actually offers up biting social commentary with devastating humor. She also took novels in a new direction and had developed superb craftmanship by P&P.

 Each novel features a distinctive protagonist, with the wealthy and wildly over-confident Emma (modernized in the movie Clueless) following the impoverished and insecure Fanny of Mansfield Park, Austen’s longest, most complex, and least-loved novel.

She doesn’t repeat secondary characters either. Even her “bad” women and men, as essential to her plots as a murderer in a mystery, behave quite differently from each other.

For more than a century Janeites, a term popularized by Rudyard Kipling, have written full-length novels as homage to their idol. Academics have produced countless papers and numerous books on major and tiny elements of her work, her life, and the Regency period.

Her 250th birthday has brought an even bigger crop than usual, far too many to name. Check your library’s catalog, your bookseller’s shelves, or such online sources as janeaustenbooks.net for whatever you crave after digesting her novels. I’m listing a few recent and new sample titles, ones I’ve read or heard about, to give an idea of the variety available.

Fiction

Longbourn by Jo Baker: Below the stairs in the P&P household.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: Being the First Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron: Opening a long-running series in which Jane applies her wit to solving crimes.

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James: Trouble on the estate a few years after Elizabeth and Darcy marry.

The Austen Society by Natalie Jenner: A well-researched novel on post-World War II efforts to save Jane Austen’s last home.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev: A modern Pakistani family’s story parallels that of the Bennets.

The Austen Affair by Madeleine Bell: A rom-com with young actors in a movie based on Northanger Abbey accidentally time traveling.

Nonfiction

What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Problems Solved by John Mullan: Answers to many questions for Janeites and those interested in the Regency period.

Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane by Devoney Looser: A scholar with a nonacademic style portrays Austen’s not-so-quiet life.

Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction: Six Novels in “a Style Entirely New” by Collins Hemingway: For readers and writers. And professors.

Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness by Ingrid Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey: All about the (sometimes unsatisfactory or controversial) endings of the six novels from an original thinker.

Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase “Pride and Prejudice” by Margie Burns: The use of the phrase before and after Austen and what it meant to her.

What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why) by Susan Allen Ford: What reading choices reveal about the characters in the novels and about their creator.

Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist (Pocket Portraits) by Janet Lewis Saidi: Moments in the life of a brilliant, complicated woman that shaped her writing and led to lasting popularity.

The Jane Austen Insult Guide by Emily Reed: Clever takedowns from Jane for your use in uncomfortable situations.

We’re never going to find new Jane Austen novels, but they’re all worth rereading and rereading. Doing so is likely to lead to reading lots of books about her.

—Carolyn Mulford

Creating a Canine Character

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To help a friend worrying about “interviewing” pets for a community newsletter, I dug up my old guest blog for Wicked Cozy Writers on portraying a dog as a supporting character. Here’s an adaptation.

Planning Show Me the Murder, I spent weeks envisioning three old friends reunited in their hometown: Phoenix, a wounded former CIA operative; Annalynn, a do-gooder whose husband died in a sleazy motel; and Connie, a struggling singer/music teacher.

Mid book, a Belgian Malinois named Achilles popped up as a plot point—the only witness to a crime. Phoenix finds him shot, starved, and tied to a tree. She identifies with him, saying, “Some of us don’t die so easily.” They adopt each other.

Achilles posed some special challenges. One was revealing his personality and ability when he couldn’t talk and arrived with no backstory. What he couldn’t tell, he had to show. For example, when Phoenix left him alone initially, he howled until she came back. When she took him into the backyard, he protected the hummingbirds from cats skulking at the feeders. When he met Connie, he offered a paw for her to shake.

In each book, he—like the women—revealed more of himself. For example, in Show Me the Deadly Deer, he refused to get out of the car when rambunctious four-year-old twins wanted to play with him. After the children faced a tragedy, he allowed them to maul him with affection. In Show Me the Gold, he even criticized his adored Phoenix, barking a reproof when she raised her voice to Annalynn.

A persistent problem was depicting the omnipresent dog’s actions. I constantly asked myself where he was. Is he glued to Phoenix’s leg (danger close by), sniffing to read the scene (curious and careful), standing by the car to say he wants to go home (bored)? What’s more, his actions had to contribute to plot and/or character.

His nose, intelligence, and personal qualities contributed to every investigation. In Deadly Deer, he indicated that the murder didn’t take place where they found the body. In Gold, he warned Phoenix of a booby trap. She also learned to use him to disarm innocents, terrify bad guys, and back her up. He offered another unanticipated advantage: He exposed the softer side of the tough, cynical Phoenix.

Achilles became crucial to my fictional world. At every book signing, someone said, “I love your dog.” So did I, but I never got over readers praising my canine character more than my human ones.

—Carolyn Mulford

Celebrating July 4th by Making Ice Cream

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In the 19040s, we celebrated July 4th by making ice cream. My mother saved extra milk, cream, and eggs to mix and heat with the junket, sugar, and vanilla.  She started soon after breakfast because the mix needed to set.

Meanwhile my father cleaned up the green-painted wood freezer keg, and my younger sister and I brought a panful of cattle salt from the barn. Then the three of us took the pickup to the ice house in town to buy a 50-pound block of ice.

My father used ice tongs to carry the ice to the pickup and, once home, to the cement slab at the bottom of the back porch steps. He split the block with an axe, placed half in a gunny sack, and broke it and then a smaller chunk into small pieces with the flat of the axe. The leftover went into the seldom used icebox.

By then the magic mix was ready in the tall can holding the paddle that churned the mix. My parents attached the end of the paddle protruding from the top of the can to the crank-driven turning mechanism resting across the keg’s top. He lifted the keg into a tin dishpan to catch the salty water that would ooze through the keg’s small, round holes.

I turned the crank, easy at that stage, while he poured alternating layers of ice and salt around the can. Then my father cranked, and my sister and I took turns standing on the keg to hold it down. The crank’s movement challenged our balance and sometimes made us jump off. We also occasionally stuck a finger into the drainage holes to clear them. When he had to add ice and salt, I cranked, using both hands as the mix hardened—and salivating in anticipation of the delicious treat. We knew the ice cream was ready when even he had trouble turning the crank.

He removed the cranking mechanism, took off the lid, and held down the can while my mother pulled out the paddle, placing its bottom in a bowl held by my mother. He replaced the lid and packed ice over the top while we went inside to clean off the paddle—our only tastes until after dinner with a few guests. Then my mother dipped generous portions of the ice cream from the can, and each person added chocolate syrup, fresh fruit, or chocolate cake to taste. We ate most of the ice cream then, and finished it before time to milk.

When darkness first fell, my sisters and I challenged the lightning bugs with our sparklers. Then we headed for the fairgrounds with sweaters to watch the fireworks.

—Carolyn Mulford

4-H and Sewing in the 1940s

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4-H came to my rural community about two years after World War II ended. We had no other youth organizations available, so 4-H, led by two wonderful (female and male) county Extension agents, made a huge impact on us children—and our parents.

As I recall, the whole community met at New Hope School (grades one through eight) to hear the agents describe the program and recruit adult volunteers to lead projects teaching practical skills ranging from sewing to raising calves. Then all the dozen or so kids nine or older signed up, elected officers (an unfamiliar task), and took the pamphlets home to choose their projects. Being only eight, I envied my older sister and listened closely to discussions there and at home.

My mother studied the materials thoroughly, for volunteer leaders had to master and teach the standards 4-H set for each project. A former teacher, she had been making our clothing for years, but she felt that she needed the guidance the pamphlets and the agent provided. I later realized that 4-H educated parents as well as children.

By my ninth birthday, I had memorized the 4-H pledge, learned basic parliamentary procedure (a boon forever), and reconciled myself to tackling cooking and sewing projects rather raising a calf. I didn’t mind making biscuits and cakes, but I preferred to leave the sewing to my big sister, who loved it. The first year was basic: threading and operating our treadle sewing machine, using paper patterns to cut cloth, sewing straight seams in such items as tea towels and pillow slips. To my dismay, my mother made me redo everything until it was perfect.

The second year the project got harder. I came to hate sewing. I liked going to the feedstore and choosing the sacks for my practice rounds of shorts, blouses, and skirts, but the summer heat turned cutting and fitting and putting in and taking out imperfect seams into torture. I suffered through five summers of sewing projects. I earned blue ribbons at the fair for blouses with button holes and dresses with zippers and for judging others’ work. The successes didn’t compensate for the time robbed from reading and playing outdoors.

4-H taught me many other useful skills, including how to give a demonstration, how to speak in public, how to work with a group, and how to do well a job I didn’t like.

And I’ve never forgotten the pledge: I pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, and my Health to better living for my club, my community, and my country.

—Carolyn Mulford

I Am a River

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Each week I lunch with a group of friends and discuss a topic. Last time the coordinator posed this question: What is the shape of your life? The answers included a rectangle, a vase, a cloud, and an octagon. Usually I wing it, but this time I wrote my response.

The Shape of My Life

I am a river,

Birthed in a puddle,

Nourished by rain,

Pushed to overflow

And grow broader

And deeper.

 

Springs and creeks fed my flow.

Widening waters gathered force,

Thrusting me against unyielding barriers

And cascading me over rocky falls.

 

Other streams joined my journey,

Enriching my waters,

Sharing my dreams,

Bringing me love and joy,

Allowing me to give.

 

Now levees restrict my passage,

Compelling my waters to slow

And grow shallow,

Directing me into the desert.

—Carolyn Mulford

Where to Find My Books

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While only one of my books, Show Me the Sinister Snowman, continues to be published in print and electronic editions, several of my novels are available from online sellers. Most of the copies are used, but columbiabooksonline.com, my supportive local bookstore, has a small stock of new Show Me hardbacks and paperbacks.

I also have a few copies of all my novels except The Feedsack Dress, my historical children’s book, and Show Me the Murder, the first in my mystery series featuring a former spy returning   home and solving crimes with old friends. Fortunately e-editions still exist. Barnes and Noble carries The Feedsack Dress ($2.99), and Amazon offers Show Me theMurder ($3.99).

A search of used-book sites, such as abebooks.com, may turn up copies of all my books—even the nonfiction ones that are so old they must have come from estate sales.

You may still find my novels at your local library or ask it to borrow these for you through the interlibrary loan program.

I’ve no new books to announce, so I hope readers will continue to enjoy the old ones.

—Carolyn Mulford

Looking Forward 60 Years Ago

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Reminders of my attempts to start my writing career arrived last Christmas. A friend, Joyce Campbell, sent me letters I had written to her while we were serving as Peace Corps Volunteers (teaching English) in Ethiopia from September 1962 to July 1964 and in the months after we returned home (Chattanooga, Tennessee, for her and Kirksville, Missouri, for me) after traveling through Europe.

On December 21, 1964, I wrote, “Has anything turned up for you yet? People don’t seem terribly impressed with Peace Corps experience for job qualifications it seems to me. I’m going down to the University Placement Bureau [University of Missouri School of Journalism] after New Year’s, I guess, and see what pedestrian ‘good experience’ job they can turn up. I may go to N.Y. and go down magazine row if nothing shows up fairly soon, but I think jobhunting will be pretty futile until I’ve had some journalistic experience—big frog in little pond first. Are you considering teaching again?”

On January 5, 1965, I replied to her letter expressing distress about the open racism all around her, and common in my town. I suggested she go elsewhere for grad school. I also reported on friends seeking jobs in D.C.: “A friend said agencies are getting a little tired of all the ex P.C. applicants.”

On January 24, I wrote about giving talks on my Peace Corps experience, attempting to write a short story, and reading books on writing fiction. I’d applied, without success, for a job in Hallmark’s public relations department in Kansas City and turned down a job teaching journalism and freshman comp at Northeast Missouri State Teachers College, where I’d earned my B.A. and B.S. in Education.

I was determined to stay in journalism. “It occurred me that a possibility for both of us is McGraw-Hill. They are working on a lot of textbooks for overseas markets. I’m not particularly hep on that, but they also publish a number of trade magazines.”

We agreed that that we shouldn’t rush decisions. “I keep thinking that never again will I have free time and free board & should let jobhunting take its course and try to do some real writing.”

A month later I expressed my frustration with my attempts at writing articles on the P.C. experience and a short story. (I wouldn’t have a short story published until the 21st century.) I have absolutely no memory of this story, but below is my description. It reflects the language and attitudes of the time and my accurate appraisal of my skills.

“The short story is about a teacher told to make sure her Negro pupils have prominent parts in the Christmas program so that everyone can see how liberal the school is. She gets in trouble when she has a Negro Joseph and a white Mary. The theme of the story as it stands now is really the necessity of compromise and gradual progress. The solution is weak because it is a happy coincidence instead of an actual solving of a dilemma, but this is also a theme in that sometimes there is no solution.”

Later in the letter, I responded to one of her comments. “You said idealism is out of style. I think a lot of people are theoretically idealistic. They are the ones who think we have done a wonderful thing [serving in the Peace Corps] and may even imagine themselves doing it for a couple of minutes.”

My last letter in the series was dated March 18, 1965. I congratulated her on finding a job. (Soon she joined a special grad program on teaching in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Cleveland.) I had sent 10 letters to selected magazines and was planning a trip to D.C., where I could stay with a good friend from college, while seeking a job in person.

In May 1965, the combination of letters and appearing in person netted me an editorial job at the NEA Journal, then a top monthly published by the National Education Association. My Peace Corps teaching experience proved a plus, and it didn’t hurt that the renowned editor, Mildred Sandison Fenner, came from northwest Missouri.

This wonderful first job taught me an immense amount about writing, editing, and organizing a magazine. I was on my way.

Carolyn Mulford

Mid-Continent Earthquakes, Past and Future

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About 2:30 a.m. December 16, 1811, an earthquake threw people in New Madrid, Missouri Territory, out of bed and crumbled brick houses and cabin chimneys, forced the Mississippi River to run backward and change course, disturbed sleep along most of the East Coast, and toppled dishes from shelves in the White House.

That marked the beginning of some of the most powerful, prolonged quakes the United States has experienced. These weren’t the first in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which is centered near where Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky come together. Geologists and other scientists have found indications that powerful quakes—rating 7 or higher on the Richter scale—have occurred there periodically for roughly 4,500 years.

Scores of small quakes—many in the 1.5 to 2.5 range—still pester area residents each year.

Geologists expect more big ones to come, estimating a 10% chance that will be within the next 50 years. The area between St. Louis and Memphis is likely to be the hardest hit, but right now the spread and range of the next disastrous earthquakes can’t be predicted any more precisely than the time.

Scientific research on the past and the possible future of the seismic zone continues. The quakes are not just an academic interest. In 2011, an expert panel concluded the zone “is at significant risk for damaging earthquakes that must be accounted for in urban planning and development.”

 My characters in Thunder Beneath My Feet had little information on what was happening elsewhere or what to expect as dozens of big quakes and aftershocks and hundreds of tremors hit New Madrid on an unpredictable schedule for weeks on end. Many people there, and elsewhere, thought the world was ending. For hundreds, it did.

I relished researching the unique historical events and creating characters representing the thriving, diverse (Spanish, French, American, Indigenous) community in the frontier riverport. For months, they faced daily terrors, and so will a much larger population when the next big ones hit.

Each fall preparedness groups in the area hold Great Shakeout Earthquake Drills. They recommend these three steps if you feel a quake begin.

  1. Drop onto your hands and knees so you won’t fall down and can crawl to any nearby shelter.
  2. Cover your head and neck with one arm and hand to protect you as you crawl under a table, desk, or anything else that will protect you from falling objects. If you have no shelter nearby, crawl to an interior wall, preferably a corner.
  3. Hold on to your shelter but be ready to move if it gives way.

Happy anniversary.

—Carolyn Mulford

The Turkey That Bullied Me

Carolyn Mulford Posted on by

I grew up with animals as friends, the first being our dog Roamer. He and I wandered around the yard, the barnyard, and the garden. Roamer barked at squirrels and chased rabbits from our vegetables. He made me ponder one of life’s great puzzles: Is it okay to sympathize with Peter Rabbit in the story but condemn him when your own carrots are at risk?

Roamer knew not to chase our chickens or cows or pigs, and he joined me in playing with an orphaned lamb and the kittens whose parents kept the barn free of mice.

What he didn’t do was defend me when my parents set a new turkey loose by the corncrib at the back of the barnyard. I first encountered the turkey when I went to the two-hole outhouse next door to the corncrib. It peeked out from the back of the corncrib and, head bobbing, ignored my friendly greeting.

Roamer stared at the big bird and casually walked a little closer to the house.

When I came out, the bird didn’t show himself. I took several steps and heard the whishing of flapping wings and saw a turkey as tall as I was rushing after me. I ran, but the turkey had momentum and managed to slap me with its wings before I could pick up speed.

Roamer barked but didn’t advance. Still it was enough to discourage the turkey and allow me to escape. That time. People say turkeys are dumb, but that one quickly learned to rush at me from hiding. It realized it had nothing to fear from me, Roamer, or even my big sister, who was only slightly taller than the turkey.

My father urged us to face the bully, and we armed ourselves with sticks to swing and corncobs to throw. Mostly we just barreled out of the outhouse door and ran like crazy. My sister and I both suffered wing beatings and beak peckings.

Then my mother took action. I don’t remember, but I think my father helped catch the free-range turkey and button an old sweater over its body to hold down its wings. It attempted to attack me any time I invaded its territory, but now I could outrun it.

Then came Thanksgiving, the first one I remember. We ate that mean turkey. It was tough. For years after that we ate an old hen with dumplings and noodles at Thanksgiving.

—Carolyn Mulford