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The Artist’s
Almanac
September 2006
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Crown'd with the sickle, and the
sheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on.
- James Thomson, Autumn, 1730
Fog shrouds the valley
this morning and the ponies in the field are wading in it. Later it
will condense to dew my shoes as I come from filling their water
bowl. Crickets, crows and cobwebs are out and the roses are reviving
as days grow cooler.
At noon, shotguns
report the opening of dove season. Shouts of o-verr and low bird!
signal the action. Afterwards, there will be beer and barbecue as
scores are tallied and tall tales are told of other hunts and
hunters. The game warden, who found no baiting sheaves of wheat
scattered in the stubble, is invited to join.
We call our sheaves
shocks, and our grain, except for dove fields, is corn. We’ve seen
it grow this year from green shoots to tasselling. As the ears swell
we watch for the silk to brown, telling us it’s time to pull and
strip them, bursting with sweet juice, and pop them into boiling
water. Corn on the cob is summer’s first prize, with watermelon
close second.
It is the artist’s
challenge to see things seen by all, but undiscovered. Commonness
camouflages the glory surrounding us. The Indians who gave us corn
took nothing for granted. They marked each of its stages with
festivals – from the moons of planting and tasselling to those of
green corn and grinding. Corn was an annual miracle.
Our ancestors who
first settled this green valley celebrated it as well. Next to
children, their most precious crop was corn. They were wayfarers and
adventurers, in search of land and freedom. In their saddlebags they
brought parched corn, to sustain them on the way, as well as their
precious seed corn. The family that planted corn before 1780 was
thereby entitled to a preemption of land. Their crops would furnish
them food, fodder for stock, whiskey for medicine, meal to fuel
their horses, with perhaps some left over for shipping and trade.
Corn is unique among
grains: its very survival depends upon man. Other grains will be
scattered and re-sown by wind or birds. Not corn. While an ear of
corn which drops into the ground may sprout, its seedlings will come
so thickly they will smother each other out and be unable to reach
maturity and fruition. Corn must be planted by man, either in hills,
as did the Indians, or in machine drills, as today.
Today as hay, cattle,
tobacco and other agriculture retreat before the bulldozers and
industrial development, corn remains. Mankind has both adopted and
adapted it. Just as the early settlers found it more profitable to
convert corn to meat for sale or consumption or to whiskey for
medicine and export, we now convert it to every conceivable
industrial and commercial product - food, drink, fiber, fuel,
fixative, powder, lubricants, packaging, medicine, construction,
environmental cleanup and renewable energy. All are either made of
or use corn in their manufacturing process. Corn is as much a
product of industry as of agriculture.
The earliest guide and
leader of the settlers who came to grow their corn and children
along the Cumberland was Isaac Bledsoe. The Indians, while they
respected him as a courageous leader of the settlers, knew that he
represented a threat to their hunting and to their old way of life.
He came bringing boundaries, houses, children, crops, government,
and the Rule of Law. Respected by the Indians as he was, he, as a
chief of the settlers, was ambushed and killed outside his own fort
by tribesmen in their futile war against encroachment. Always on the
go, Bledsoe was called Tullatoska by the Indians, meaning
blade of corn or perpetual motion.
September is a month
in motion. Cooler days beckon us from within doors and we travel to
games, golf and tailgate parties, The sun’s warmth is once more
welcome. Trees change their dresses, before discarding them for next
year’s fashions. This is a time, not just for harvesting, but for
planting new grass seed, for exploring, visiting, moving about, for
meeting new people and old friends. As our horizons open we are
reminded anew that the best time to be on the move, whether among
new scenes or ideas, projects or people, is Indian Summer.
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