Does anyone blog in November anymore? I guess I still do.
November is here and I missed the first day of a month of blog posts. That seems to be par for the course for me this year. Another year of pandemic with our county still in the red zone and our schools still mostly unmasked. I may get into that more in another post...or not. We'll see. But the continued caution added to reality of other world and national problems has taken a hit on my ability to get myself going to do the things that are important. Is it important for me to write? Maybe not, but possibly a month of writing will do something for me that a year of not writing has not accomplished.
The rest of this post was written in September and never posted. It's rewritten a bit to acknowlege that it is old. I may post twice today in order to get up to speed.
Walnut Valley Festival weekend happened a month and a half ago. The pandemic has kept me home for the last two years. I bought a streaming ticket this year, so I sat in front of my television, my computer casting the concerts to my Chromecast, and wore my tie dye dress while I watched John McCutcheon, Tom Chapin, Steel Wheels, and others.
I found it harder to miss the festival than I expected. When the image came up on the screen and the accoustic instruments started playing on that familiar stage, and I wasn't in a low chair right up near the front, the tears came unbidden.
I know it was partly because of this year was the 20th anniversary of the terrorism attack, and that was one of the most emotional trips to the Walnut Valley Festival I can remember. We went to the Festival that year, even though the world had changed. It seemed sacreligious to be there in some ways, but it turned out to be important. Somehow being in a huge gathering of people who were all stunned and afraid and grieving and confused and angry and all the other emotions...being in that space together was a way to process.
There is so much to process now as well, but I'm not able to sink into a collective sense of being emotionally together this year. This year we are so decidedly NOT together. We are divided and angry. And that is another reason for the tears, I think.
But it was also partly that the festival has been the thing that resets me most years. I used to go on Wednesday and it would take until about Friday morning before I was able to truly relax and just be in the space without worrying about who was playing where and what I might be missing. I would get into a sense of being present, grateful, peaceful. I can't get to that place in one day, so going out for just one day never appealed to me much. I haven't found another way to reach that state of being. It is time to figure out the other ways I can access that without relying on a yearly event I might not be able to attend.
* * * * *
When I wrote this, we were cutting corn, and the sows were having their babies.
That isn't a good time to be away for our farm, and over the years Chuck has had to skip a lot of the festival because of the urgency of farm work. This year he still had to skip a lot more than I did, but it wasn't quite the same as when I left Harvey County and spent time in Winfield with family and friends while he was home, working.
The corn was ripe, as I mentioned. We never used to plant corn. It didn't grow well in Kansas. But things change and the field across the road has corn in it.
There is an aesthetic difference between corn and wheat.
Wheat is the first thing green in the spring, brilliant green, the promise of summer. As it grows, it changes incrementally. Beginning like an emerald field of grass, it stretches into softly waving leaves. When the flag leaf appears, the plants briefly look spikey, until the heads of grain emerge and ripen. The field is softly golden, and whispers when the wind moves over it. A farming friend used to say it is ready when all the field is gold and every head is bowed.
This pic is from another year when we did have corn across the road.
Corn has the same intense green as it comes up and grows, but instead of becoming more beautiful through every stage, it gets less attractive, until at the end, it is a field of very tall plant skeletons blocking the view of the horizon.
This is the field across the road.
One woman's perspective. Not a universal opinion by any means.
Comments