Two Old Tobacco Barns

Old barns can be hazardous.

This time of the year, many of the old barns along the rural roads of western Kentucky are put to use. They are tobacco barns, constructed with "tiers" (horizontal braces) that support the tobacco-laden sticks.

I shuddered when I saw the barn above loaded with tobacco to its very top. The old barn isn't in very good shape. Its board siding is springing loose and curling up and it's got some kind of problem with its roof (left side.) I hope they checked to see if the timbers of the barn were still solid before they started filling the barn.

I know a fellow who was on the top tier of a barn, laying out the sticks of tobacco as they were handed up to him. The tier broke and he fell to the barn floor, breaking his leg terribly. He is a big guy and he probably shouldn't have been up there, but it does illustrate how dangerous an old barn can be.

Technorati tags: tobacco harvest, tobacco barns, tobacco barn pictures

13 Things To Do Before an Eagle Scout Award Ceremony

A Thursday Thirteen

Do as many of these things as possible several weeks in advance!

1. Find a date and time that will work out for the greatest number of people possible.

2. Arrange to use the place where you'll have the ceremony.

3. Get a guest speaker.

4. Use scripts and programs of past Eagle Scout award ceremonies to help you develop a script and a program.

5. Make copies of the script for all the adults who will be in the ceremony.

6. Make a guest list and send out invitations.

7. Go to the Scout store and buy blank programs, napkins, cups, etc. with the Eagle emblem if you want them. Also, buy the Eagle Scout neckerchief and slide.

8. Get the programs printed.

9. Find a recipe if you're having punch at the reception. Order the cake if you're having one made.

10. Decide what else you're going to serve, make a list of everything, and go shopping.

11. Ask someone to take pictures. Ask other people to help with serving at the reception.

12. Make sure all the Scouts and adults in the ceremony know how to find the place where the ceremony will be held.

13. Make sure the Eagle Scout candidate's uniform is clean and ready to wear.

UPDATE:

A few more suggestions, written with hindsight:

• Set up a guestbook.
• Write out a complete menu so you don't forget anything you planned to serve (like the carrot sticks.)
• Bring some ziplock bags for packing any leftovers.
• Make time for some formal pictures either before or after the ceremony.

Eagle Scout Ceremony This Saturday

Important event for Isaac

Our son's Eagle Scout award ceremony will be held on Saturday afternoon. It's a major achievement for a Boy Scout to earn his Eagle badge, so this is a special event for Isaac. I'll be busy getting things together for the next few days. I can't say when or if I'll be posting to the blog, but I rarely abandon Prairie Bluestem completely. :)

Hay Shortage in Christian County, KY

Cornstalks baled for winter feed

Rain was a welcome sight!

One day last week, rain came down in torrents in Hopkinsville. Low spots in the streets were flash-flooded, and the electricity all over town went out for a while because of a TVA substation problem. Hopkinsville and Crofton got about two inches of rain from this little cloudburst.

When I went home, it was disappointing to learn we'd only received a sprinkle. To the west, east, and south of Hopkinsville, much less rain fell, and in many cases, there was no rain at all.

Though it's too late for most of the crops, rain would still help the grass in the pastures and relieve the fire danger of crisp-dried fields.

Coming home from town the other day, I passed by a parched and barren pasture with a herd of cows in it. A little creek (dried up, no doubt) runs through the pasture. I saw a cow balancing on the very edge of the gully and stretching as far as she could, so she could eat leaves off a little tree that grows in the stream bed. It was a pitiful sight -- she wouldn't be doing that if she had anything else to eat.

Farmers are baling their cornstalks and soybeans for winter feed. We really only got one half-decent cutting of hay this year. Usually, we would get three cuttings. The first grass was set back by the late freeze, and then the weather turned so dry. Prices for a big round bale of hay are around $70, compared to $20 a year ago. [UPDATE: An ad in the Kentucky New Era on September 5, 2007, offered "horse-quality" hay in big square bales, 3x3x8 feet, for $85 each.]

On the radio a few days ago, they announced that the Montgomery County, TN, extension service had located 5000 bales of bermudagrass hay in Oklahoma. (Montgomery County is just over the state line from us.) Planter's Bank will front the money for shipment, and farmers can purchase the hay when it arrives.

The lack of pasture grass and the shortage of hay has forced many farmers to sell calves early and to reduce or sell out their cattle herds. It's a very bad year for agriculture in this area. Even though we're not totally agriculture-dependent in Christian County, we'll feel the effects of the drought on our local economy.

A trailer of baled cornstalks

Technorati tags: hay shortage

Life Pictures by William B. Dyer

Illustrations for the poems in Riley Love-Lyrics

Over four dozen "Life Pictures" by William B. Dyer (1860–1931) illustrate the book, Riley Love-Lyrics. For this post, I've scanned nine of the Life Pictures of women, but men, children, nature, and still life are also represented in the book's images.

Riley Love-Lyrics, a book of love poems by James Whitcomb Riley, was first published in 1883. My copy of the book is the 1905 edition. I don't know if early editions of the book included the Life Pictures, but I don't think so. William B. Dyer would have been only 23 years old in 1883.

By the turn of the century, cameras and film had advanced enough that photographs could be natural, casual, and expressive, rather than contrived and stiff as in the past. The Life Pictures are experiments with photography as an art form.

I had a hard time finding much information about William B. Dyer. The following paragraphs piece together many scraps of information that I gleaned from more hours of search than I should have invested!

Dyer was a native of Racine, Wisconsin. He moved to Chicago in 1894 at the age of 34, and he worked there for 10 years. Like James Whitcomb Riley, he was a Midwesterner. I don't have any other information about how he spent his life, except that he was a pioneer of modern photography.

I found the following few phrases of information about William B. Dyer in an antique book seller's description of Riley Love-Lyrics. These exact words are repeated on many book-selling websites:

William B. Dyer became a professional photographer in 1897. His first and only solo illustrated book was the above title [Riley Love Lyrics]. He was elected a member of The Linked Ring, championed by Clarence White to Alfred Stieglitz and published in Camera Notes and Camera Work.

Source: Book description on cahanbooks.com

On the Internet, Dyer's name often appears in association with Alfred Stieglitz who was (among other things) the editor of Camera Works. a journal published from 1903-1917. The journal brought publicity and respect for the photographs of Steiglitz and other early photographers whom he admired and published.

Stieglitz published two of Dyer's photos in Camera Works and at least one photo in Camera Notes. The Stieglitz papers include correspondence with Dyer. I am unable to determine the extent of their acquaintance with each other.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) included a chapter about William B. Dyer in their 1978 catalog , The Collection of Alfred Steiglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography. This book is a catalog of the museum's collection and a reference volume about early photography.

If you have access to JSTOR (perhaps through your library,) I believe another article about Dyer is available there.


The Princeton University Art Museum owns a collection of Dyer photographs. I found only three examples of Dyer's photographs online, so this post will quadruple that number. Bear in mind that these are scans of pages printed over 100 years ago -- the original photographs probably didn't have the sepia tones.

Related post: James Whitcomb Riley and Me