autumn leaves

Rabbit! Rabbit!

art, Attitudes, autumn leaves, autumnal equinox, brain plasticity, cognitive decline, Faith, Imagination, ministry, nature, Painting, perfection, poverty, pumpkins, rabbits, renewal, Rosh Hoshanah

Welcome to September

On September 5, we celebrate Labor Day, and our kids are already back in school. We’re once again slowing down in school zones in the morning and afternoon, and setting an extra plate at the kitchen table for our absent college freshman. We might even see the first fall colors when the Fall Equinox comes around at the end of the month.

Edwardian Summer Gown, 1905

September is when we set aside our summer white clothes and shoes to change our closet over for darker colors and longer lengths. My dear mother had a rule of never wearing white past Labor Day. This quaint fashion principle dates from before Memorial Day, which was instituted in 1868 after the Civil War. This rule helped to separate the old money families, who summered in the country and at the seashore, from those who stayed to struggle on in the grimy cities, which were polluted by coal fired engines. These urban families usually wore dark clothes year round, as the rich did when they returned to their city residence.

Air conditioning has changed this now, but wearing starched, white cotton still reminds people you either have money to send your clothes to the cleaners or hire laborers to do it for you. Or, you might just work extra hard to look like one of the first two. This bunny has reached the age of dripping dry all those cotton clothes. I actually do more ironing when I do a craft project, such as quilting, since those seams need to be pressed open to make a good square. As this bunny has aged, I’ve changed my mind about what I think is important enough to worry about.

Rabbit Ironing

September is also a time to reassess the three core myths which animate much of American life. These myths are we can give 100% to our work, 100% to our family, and 100% to our personal health. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to do this type of higher math without going bananas or feeling significant amounts of guilt that I’m not doing enough in one of those areas. Eventually I learned I was only Wonder Woman in my fantasies, but not in real life. I also realized other people who managed better than I hired help for the housework to free themselves up for family time.

My Wonder Woman Fantasy

Somewhere along the line we’ve bought into the myth of the “ideal worker,” who “has no competing obligations that might get in the way of total devotion to the workplace.” The second myth is the “perfect parent,” who “always puts family first.” The last myth is the “ultimate body,” which is cultivated through diligent dieting and exercise, and doesn’t deteriorate with age.

The authors of Dreams of the Overworked, note in the digital age, when people can post curated images of their best lives, “Achieving even one of these myths would be impossible, but achieving all three is ludicrous.” If your daily stress has increased and you feel like everything you do isn’t enough, I suggest deep breathing with your eyes closed (unless you’re driving a vehicle!). Once you get some extra oxygen to your brain, you’re in a position to calmly reconsider your situation. Not all situations are hair on fire, unless you’re a two year old with separation anxiety. Most of us beyond this age have experience and memories which can guide our future behaviors. An ancient proverb is “Experience is the mother of wisdom,” or as my folks used to say, “The school of hard knocks is the most expensive degree you’ll ever pay for.” Live and learn. With age comes wisdom.

Now that you’re calmer, you can decide, “Do I have options? Do I have a support system with people who can help me discern my way? Can I lay down my false self image of competence so I can ask for help? Can I triage my priorities to say NO to the less important ones, even if it means not pleasing everyone in my social circle?”

Google it, Ask friends for recommendations, and Breathe!

Speaking of options, women are primarily responsible for housework and childcare, not only in America, but also across the pond. About 91% of women with children spend at least an hour per day on housework, compared with 30 % of men with children. The latest available data shows that employed women spend about 2.3 hours daily on housework; for employed men, this figure is 1.6 hours. Gender gaps in housework participation are the largest among couples with children, at 62 p.p., demonstrating an enduring imbalance in unpaid care responsibilities within families. This leads to women taking lower and slower career paths.

Animated Map of 2022 Fall Color Change

September 22 is the Fall Equinox. We’re already seeing signs of seasonal leaf color changes, due to heat stress and drought. Some call this “False Fall,” but I call it a sign of hope. Trees will drop their leaves in order to survive in extreme conditions. Although some claim plants are sentient, they don’t have a brain or consciousness that we can recognize. They do interact and react to their environments. Their first priority is survival.  Photosynthesis and the subsequent leaf abscission after changing color is part of this process. I always look for the change of light which precedes this event. One morning last week, I noted the color of the morning light had turned cooler, and wasn’t the warm yellow of summer. I also had a spark of energy I hadn’t had before. I look forward to more daylight.

This bunny is very fond of September, since I’ve always been eager to start fresh and new. I always got new pencils and a new manilla paper writing pad when I started elementary school. Later on, as I progressed up in grades, ink pens with cartridges were a special treat. Even to this day, I keep my journals with hand written ink in good paper books. I love the feel of these materials in my hands. I probably would have stayed in school my whole life if possible. The day our brains quit learning something new is the day our minds begin to die.

School Bunnies and Friends

That leads me to remind my bunny friends that Alzheimer’s disease is the 7th leading cause of death in the USA and it’s the most common cause of dementia in persons over 65. While most of you may not be baby boomers, you young bunnies have grandparents or parents of that age. Today, about 6.5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, but that number is expected to almost double to 12.7 million by 2050. Perhaps beginning September with World Alzheimer’s Day is a good reminder for all of us to be proactive about our health choices, so we can live independently as long as possible into our senior years.

Talk Like a Pirate

I also like Positive Thinking Day, since reframing negative thoughts into positive ones changes our attitude, our behaviors, and then we get better outcomes as a result. If you don’t feel like being Batman on the 17th, you can ARRRGUH yourself about, MATEY, as you Talk Like a Pirate on the 19th. Bonus points if you wear an eye patch, earring, and tricorne hat or bandana on your head.

The Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on the 25th. It’s one of the four “new year” celebrations in their religious calendar. This one recalls God’s creation of humanity, as well as the legal new year. On this one night in September, when the faithful eat apples dipped in honey or other sweet sauces, they remember how God originally created humans in a sinless state and wish each other a good year to come.

Magic Bacon Carpet Ride

Did I forget International Bacon Day? How can any rabbit forget bacon? Someone will cut my carrot rations for the future, I fear. But if I remember to keep the coffee pot full, I’ll probably get out of the rabbit hoosegow before National Coffee Day on the 29th.

Some interesting holidays we can celebrate this month are: Better Breakfast Month (I suggest bacon, eggs, and pancakes on the weekend and old fashioned oatmeal during the week). There’s also Hispanic Heritage Month and National Sewing Month. Finally, every year on September 30th is National Love People Day. The purpose of the day is to show love to everyone—no exceptions. National Love People Day offers us the opportunity to show unconditional love, which many have never experienced. When we genuinely love our neighbors and express it with kind words and thoughtful deeds, we make our world a better place. This the true meaning of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Maybe one meaning of loving your neighbor is offering a meal to them. Food insecurity is increasing once again, this time due to increased rents and costs of transportation. Consider a weekly meal service from your church building or organization’s meeting place. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but calories and nutrition would help hungry people have the strength to move on from their current situations. Joining with other groups to cover all the days of the week would be a bonus to your community, not only for the hungry, but also for the smaller groups who could team up to share in the blessing of loving their neighbors.

Until the spice is on the pumpkin, I wish all my bunny friends

Joy, peace, and Bacon,

Cornelia

America’s Ideal of Working Parents Has Become Unattainable – The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/06/working-parents-impossible/613429/

Beckman and Mazmanian: Dreams of the Overworked: Living, Working, and Parenting in the Digital Age

Gender differences on household chores entrenched from childhood | European Institute for Gender Equality https://eige.europa.eu/publications/gender-equality-index-2021-report/gender-differences-household-chores

Debunking a myth: plant consciousness | SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-020-01579-w

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/september-monthly-observances/
September Monthly Observances – National Day Calendar
International Chocolate Day
INTERNATIONAL CHOCOLATE DAY – September 13, 2022 – National Today

Home – National Love People Day – National Love People Day

Alzheimer’s Facts and Figures Report | Alzheimer’s Association
https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/facts-figures

 

 

 

Autumn Leaf Prints

adult learning, art, autumn leaves, Carl Jung, Christmas, coronavirus, Creativity, Faith, grief, holidays, inspiration, nature, Painting, renewal, shadows, Spirituality, trees, vaccinations, vision

As the days grow shorter, the pile of leaves grows larger. This is Einstein’s equation for autumn. I know “Energy equals Mass times the speed of Light squared” isn’t really congruent with all those bags of leaves accumulating on the edge of the streets of the front yards in your neighborhood. It just seems that way. When I bought my first little stucco, flat roofed house back in my hometown, the former owners reminded me at closing, “Be sure and rake the roof every autumn.”

Of course I forgot about this, until the twenty something major trees around my little flat roofed house dumped all their leaves on my roof. How did I know? When it rained, those leaves blocked the drainage holes, so water came inside the ceiling light fixtures of my kitchen in the back of the house. As soon as the rain quit, I had the ladder out and was filling the big, black garbage bags with soggy leaves. If you only fill them half way, they’ll stay intact when tossing them over the parapet. I was younger then, and trainable. I didn’t forget when autumn came the next year.

Gail’s Leaves floating on Water

I’ve always thought leaves “fell” off the trees or the wind blew them off, but I asked Mr. Google, “Why do leaves fall?” Turns out, the trees cut them off with scissor cells. The leaves are only useful for making food for the tree. They are the seasonal kitchen staff, so the tree lets them go for the winter and brings in a new crew in the spring. The changing light and cooler temperatures triggers a hormone that makes this happen.

The scissor cells are stained red and mark the boundary between the branch (left) and the leaf stalk.
University of Wisconsin Plant Image Teaching Collection

If the leaves stayed on the tree, they’d wake up during a winter warm spell, start their food production work, and then get frozen when the cold inevitably returns. The tree knows the lifespan of the leaf, and this is the natural course of the life cycle. New growth will come in the spring, after a period of rest and recovery.

Lauralei’s Memories of The Leaves that Were

Our holiday season coincides with darkening days and marketing excess. Most of the commercials show happy families with lots of presents in heavily decorated holiday environments. Statistics show 25% of people are estranged from their families, and one out of every 463 Americans alive at the beginning of 2020 has since died of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. About 1 in 8 Americans say that a member of their family died of the virus; another fifth say that they lost a close friend, according to YouGov polling. These are staggering numbers, for in the US alone, 779,293 people have lost their lives as of November 30, 2021. One too many Thanksgiving tables had an empty place setting for a loved one no longer among us, and this will be a blue Christmas for many families.

If this were a war, maybe folks would get all excited and consider good health practices such as mask wearing , hand washing, and vaccinations their patriotic duty. Instead, they throw themselves into the breach of a thousand tiny viruses as if they were seeking the congressional gold medal for valor, and end up leaving their families with nothing but medical bills, grief, and the loss of their presence. Into this weary season comes Omicron, yet another variant, but an expected event due to the lack of worldwide access to vaccines and the virus’s ability to mutate in immunocompromised individuals. The enemy keeps evolving and the battles continue, whether we’re weary of the struggle or not.

“The Falling Leaves,” by Margaret Postgate Cole of England, is one of the first anti-war poems from a woman’s perspective. It was written in November 1915, during the First World War, when from 1914 to 1918, Flanders Fields was a major battle theatre on the Western Front. A million soldiers from more than 50 different countries were wounded, missing or killed in action there. Entire cities and villages were destroyed, their population scattered across Europe and beyond. The tradition of poppies on Veterans Day came from the red flowers given life from the blood spilled on this battlefield. COVID today is exacting it’s own cruel battle toll, with children left orphaned and spouses left without their mates. The adverse affects on this generation may be equal to those who went through the great flu pandemic of 1918 or the Great Depression.

War may be necessary in some instances, but it’s never to be glorified. There’s always a sadness related to the loss of life, regret over the great expense poured out that might have been used to build rather than destroy, and the cruelties that attend actions when we make others into evil enemies and refuse to see them as human as we are. Her poem speaks poignantly to this human loss:

Today, as I rode by,
I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree
In a still afternoon,
When no wind whirled them whistling to the sky,
But thickly, silently,
They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon;
And wandered slowly thence
For thinking of a gallant multitude
Which now all withering lay,
Slain by no wind of age or pestilence,
But in their beauty strewed
Like snowflakes falling on the Flemish clay.

Source: Margaret Postgate’s Poems (1918)

If we want to treat these end of year days as “days of denial” of all that’s grim in the world to focus only on the good and the light, we’s be like people who claim we have no shadow. Carl Jung believed the shadow included everything in the unconscious mind, good or bad. Also, the shadow might include only the part of the personality that you don’t want to identify as self, but still is a part of your unconscious mind. This dark side of your personality contains everything your conscious mind can’t admit about itself.

When we read the birth story of Jesus, we often focus on the angels and the gifts of the magi. We forget these heavenly hosts are God’s armies and the magi came to meet the new king. These were revolutionary acts that caused King Herod to feel insecure and threatened, so he slaughtered the innocent babies born at this time. The Bible never forgets this shadow side of life, for this is why Christ came into our world:

“to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” ~ Luke 1:79

Joy and Peace,

Cornelia

Why Leaves Really Fall Off Trees : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114288700

The Depths Of Estrangement: Why Family Rifts Happen And How To Heal
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/12/24/family-estrangement-holidays

[The Washington Post] Analysis | A third of Americans say close friends or family have died of covid-19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/13/third-americans-say-close-friends-or-family-have-died-covid-19/

Visit Flanders Fields | VISITFLANDERS
https://www.visitflanders.com/en/themes/flanders_fields/

The Autumn Colors

adult learning, apples, arkansas, art, autumn leaves, change, Creativity, Faith, inspiration, nature, Painting, perfection, photography, shadows, trees, vision

Robert Frost, in his poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” speaks to the transitory nature of fall colors:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

When I was in North Carolina recently, I was a tad early for the best colors of autumn, but I didn’t miss the Apple Festival in Waynesville, where I bought a half peck of apples fresh from a local orchard. Every time I encounter the word peck, it it brings back memories of my dad and his older brother schooling us children on the tongue twisters they learned in school. Back in the Stone Age, proper elocution was emphasized, along with cursive writing. To this day, l still hear their dulcet duet:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Don’t get me started on sister Suzy’s seaside seashells or the amount of wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. I’d much rather talk about autumn leaves!

Here in Arkansas, our colors up north are about spent, but near and south of the I-40 corridor, peak leaf change generally takes place in early November. The colors usually don’t last long because as soon as the leaves change, strong cold fronts tend to knock off the leaves quickly as we head toward Thanksgiving.

Of course, with climate change, our first frosts are occurring later in the season. In fact, some climate scientists think we could be on the path to two main seasons—winter and summer—with transitional short shoulders of temperate weather we once knew as fall and spring. This will affect not only agriculture’s growing seasons, but also insect populations, flower blooms, and the wildlife dependent upon them, not to mention our utility bills.

Waynesville, NC Trees

After a three week hiatus from art class, I was excited to return. While I was gone, Gail has had many sleepless nights helping with the new grand babies and Mike has been extra busy, as is his normal usual. I was glad to see Erma and catch up with her to give condolences in the passing of her dear husband. COVID has kept us apart and out of touch, so I was late to know this. Others were sick or out of town, so Mike, Gail, and I looked over some art works for inspiration.

Georgia O’Keefe: Leaves, 1925

The Georgia O’Keefe Leaf painting treated these single shapes as unique objects, a radical idea in its day. This allowed her to limit her color palette and focus her design on the positive and negative spaces. A somewhat similar painting is Norman Black’s surrealist Autumn Leaves. It differs in feeling because the individual leaves are isolated, floating in space, rather than being layered one upon the other like cozy coverlets.

Norman Black: Autumn Leaves

One of the aspects in painting we often overlook is the source of light. Light is what gives our work sparkle, just as the light makes the world visible. As we wake to darkness now, we’ll appreciate the light more and more when we come home in the dark, for the days gradually grow shorter. Most artists pick one direction as the source for their light in the painting. This allows them to control the shadows of the objects in their canvases. They prefer the afternoon or morning light, not just because the sun is lower in the sky, but also because these times have distinctive temperatures. The morning has cooler colors, while the afternoon has warmer colors.

Paige Smith-Wyatt: Autumn Sunset

We looked in our cell phones for images of autumn leaves. This is when we discovered our phone search systems aren’t all created equal. While my phone will turn up every single yellow, red, or orange tree or leaf photo, plus a few pumpkins thrown in for good measure, other peoples’ phones list photos by month and date. Technology frustrated us right off the bat. Rather than waste half our class time looking for an image, Gail and I decided on one.

Sometimes the perfect is sacrificed in favor of the good when the time is short. Perfection is a goal, not the necessity to begin the journey. This is why we Methodists say we’re “going onto perfection,” rather than we’ve already arrived.

Gail’s Red Leaves

Mike chose the first one that popped up in his phone. He went straight to work. Gail likes to find the best before she starts. Sometimes we need to accept what is before us and make the best of what we have. The perfect isn’t always available. Also, she was working on too little sleep. Newborn babies will do that to grandmas. We can take a halfway good image from our phone and use it as an inspiration or jumping off point. We don’t have to recreate the image.

Beacon Manor Landscape Photoshopped

When working from a photo, it’s good to crop the image to the same scale as the canvas. This helps you get the proportions of the subject true to form. I also photoshop the colors, sharpness, and contrast. This preparatory work helps the mind sort out the important shapes. Once these decisions are made, drawing the basic shapes on the canvas starts and colors start happening.

Cornelia’s Autumn Landscape

Mike got out of the class to get back to the office before I could set a photo of his tree, but I recall it was an overall image with multicolored leaves. I worked from an old autumn photo from the grounds of my condo. I’d pushed the colors past realism in my computer software program, so it was already bold. I eliminated much of the extraneous details and painted just the simplest elements of the landscape. This is called “artistic license.” We don’t have to paint every leaf, but we can paint the shape of all the leaves in the mass together.

Artists and poets both seek to strike a chord in the hearts of their audience: one uses colors, light, shape, and form, while the other creates their images and emotions through word and metaphors.

Song for Autumn by Mary Oliver

If we remember nothing about this glorious autumn, let’s remember John 8:12, in which we hear Jesus proclaimed as the Light of the World:

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Fall Foliage Dates

https://www.5newsonline.com/article/weather/when-is-peak-fall-color-across-the-usa-state-by-state-foliage/527-c4986dff-ffb9-4b27-9335-65ead54a1c10

History of Tongue Twisters

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/513952/history-behind-famous-tongue-twisters

USGCRP, 2018: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock, and B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 1515 pp. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.

https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/19/