Harvest Home

RAISE THE SONG OF HARVEST HOME,
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Over The Garden Wall

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Vintage Pumpkin Heads

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Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin . . .

Henry Alford (1810 – 1871)

Idyll VII. Harvest-Home

Now look, this road holds holiday to-day:
For banded brethren solemnize a feast
To richly-dight Demeter, thanking her
For her good gifts: since with no grudging hand
Hath the boon goddess filled the wheaten floors.
So come: the way, the day, is thine as mine . . .

. . who so glad as we?
A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead;
Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on
From the Nymphs' grot, and in the sombre boughs
The sweet cicada chirped laboriously.
Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away
The treefrog's note was heard; the crested lark
Sang with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan,
And o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee.
All of rich summer smacked, of autumn all:
Pears at our feet, and apples at our side
Rolled in luxuriance; branches on the ground
Sprawled, overweighed with damsons; while we brushed
From the cask's head the crust of four long years.
Say, ye who dwell upon Parnassian peaks . . .

As, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us
All by Demeter's shrine at harvest-home?
Beside whose cornstacks may I oft again
Plant my broad fan: while she stands by and smiles,
Poppies and cornsheaves on each laden arm.

Theocritus
Greek poet, born in Sicily
(born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC)

New College Gardens, Oxford

On this old lawn, where lost hours pass
Across the shadows dark with dew,
Where autumn on the thick sweet grass
Has laid a weary leaf or two,
When the young morning, keenly sweet,
Breathes secrets to the silent air,
Happy are they whose lingering feet
May wander lonely there.

The enchantment of the dreaming limes,
The magic of the quiet hours,
Breathe unheard tales of other times
And other destinies than ours;

The feet that long ago walked here
Still, noiseless, walk beside our feet,
Poor ghosts, who found this garden dear,
And found the morning sweet!

Age weeps that it no more may hold
The heart-ache that youth clasps so close,
Pain finely shaped in pleasure's mould,
A thorn deep hidden in a rose.
Here is the immortal thorny rose
That may in no new garden grow--
Its root is in the hearts of those
Who walked here long ago.

Edith Nesbit (1858 – 1924)

Carpe diem!

Facebook food pics

Veggies & recipes

Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, November 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

One Long Staircase

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Golden Stair, 1880
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833 - 1898)

There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show . . .

~ from Fiddler on the Roof ~
Believe it or not, we have actually lived in a couple of houses over the years that seemed to have staircases going nowhere, just for show. In our recent Indiana Victorian, for example, the front stairs and the back stairs met at exactly the same spot on the second floor landing, so it was not entirely clear what the extra stairs were for or how they had ever been useful. Yet, as it turned out, we went up and down the back stairs ten times a day, and rarely used the main stairs at all. Turns out the back stairs were incredibly useful and the front were just for show!

We decorated the wall over the front bannister with the above picture of a beautiful, showy staircase. The original hangs in the Tate, but I'm sure we purchased the poster from the museum shop at the Lady Lever Gallery, our favorite haven of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, in Port Sunlight, England. I never glanced at this ethereal painting without thinking of these otherworldly lyrics of the 1970s:

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

And she's buying a stairway to heaven
There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know, sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven . . .

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

from Stairway to Heaven (1971)
by Led Zeppelin

Symphony in White, No. 1, 1861 - 62
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903)

"a lady . . . who shines white light . . . "

Symphony in White, No. 2, 1864-65
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903)

See also
Symphony in White, No. 3

And
paintings at the Frick

And previous posts:
To See A Fine Picture
Going Barefoot
Kitchen Art
Complication and Plenitude
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Complication and Plenitude

LONGING FOR FALL
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Dandelion Clock
William John Hennessy (1839 - 1917)

Dandelions . . . or Michaelmas Daisies?
And, in keeping with the observation of Michaelmas
on September 29th, I like to read the following as
"Late September" . . .

"Late August brought with it a longing for fall. By the end of the month the grass was brown, singed by days of heat and no rain. Mirella's impatiens, usually a bright pink and red mound on either side of the back doorstep, were small and lack luster. The air smelled strangely of basalt and car exhaust, and of marine life flung up on the beaches by the tide and cooked by the sun. . . . With so much wanting came all the promise and damage of the world" (295, 298)
*****************
" 'Listen to me, Howard. You and Mirella are adults. The lives of adults are complicated and generally somehow bad.'

" 'Thanks,' said Howard, surprised to find this observation reassuring. . . . somehow in the end everything in his life would still happen to him. (191)

"Mirella wondered if what she herself had been forgetting all this time, for years and years, was that none of this would last very long, that all of this, the terrible desirable, exhausting plenitude of her life -- the children, Howard, this house, her job -- all of her worries and failures and abilities and cares, all of it mattered so dearly, but so briefly, and that it was all in a way nearly over, even the parts of her life that were still to come." (301)

from A Perfect Arrangement
by Suzanne Berne
[see also Longly, Nanny, 2003, Houses]

Also by Hennessy . . . It's complicated . . .

The Pride of Dijon 1879
William John Hennessy (1839 - 1917)

Just when I think I may have finished my review of paintings that we enjoyed every day on the walls of our old Victorian house, I seem to recall a few more favorites. The two above by Hennessy were in our dining room; and the two below were in the kitchen. I don't know how we managed to fit them all in, but somehow we were always finding space in our ever - expanding design scheme of complication and plenitude!

Flower Pots 1887
Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

Hollyhocks, 1911
Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874 - 1939)

Next Time: More Ladies in White Dresses
Previously: To See A Fine Picture
Going Barefoot
Kitchen Art
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Kitchen Art

READING AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
SOLITARY OR NOT
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

At Breakfast 1898
Lauritz Andersen Ring (1854 – 1933)

A few ~ more small prints lost in the diaspora.
I loved seeing these scattered around my kitchen:
contemplative coffee hours, shared teatimes,
and elegant household interiors.

The Morning Paper

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions
soak in.

I don't need to name the countries,
ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

Mary Oliver (1935 - 2019)
from her book A Thousand Mornings

The Breakfast, 1911
William McGregor Paxton (1869 - 1941)

Every Morning

I read the papers,
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into the neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a gray rubble before
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul
shivers: you don’t want to know more
about this. And then: you don’t know anything
unless you do. How the sleepers
wake and run to the cellars,
how the children scream, their tongues
trying to swim away—
how the morning itself appears
like a slow white rose
while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,
move among the smashed cars, the streets
where the clanging ambulances won’t
stop all day—death and death, messy death—
death as history, death as a habit—
how sometimes the camera pauses while a family
counts itself, and all of them are alive,
their mouths dry caves of wordlessness
in the smudged moons of their faces,
a craziness we have so far no name for—
all this I read in the papers,
in the sunlight,
I read with my cold, sharp eyes.

by Mary Oliver

Additional Favorites ~ All By Paxton

Tea Leaves, 1909

The House Maid, 1910
~ Previously on Kitti's List ~

The New Necklace, 1910

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Going Barefoot

GOING BAREOOT OR WEARING SHOES:
WHICH IS MORE ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS?

Barefoot Prodigy (1963)
Gold Medal of Honor ~ National Arts Club of New York
By Martha Elizabeth Moore (1913 - 1982)

Two weeks ago, my fortnightly blog post featured various paintings and pictures that have been eliminated from our walls due to lack of space. The Barefoot Prodigy is yet another one, gone but not forgotten, and worthy of commemoration. This musically themed piece of art has been in my life for about as long as I can remember, as a 5 x7 cardboard print from the "Royale Academie Collection of Precious Miniatures," which I'm guessing was a way to teach kids about art. Apparently, the series contained numerous other prints, but this was the only one in our house, propped on the piano throughout my gradeschool and highschool years.

Somewhere along the way, two things happened: 1.) I bought a poster-sized print of The Barefoot Prodigy and had it framed; 2.) I retrieved the 5 x 7 print from my mother's house (during her downsizing) and stored it in my piano bench. Our own recent downsizing required us to part with the over-sized Prodigy, but luckily the smaller version from my childhood was on hand and is now once again propped on the piano, reminding us daily to practice our music with the earnestness of this serious, barefoot child.
******************
On another wall of our home hung the print of another barefoot child, Marc Chagall's daughter Ida:

Ida at the Window (1924)
Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985)

These two Chagall prints,
in pastel green and blue frames,
graced our guest room for many years.

Flowers in Mourillon (1926)
Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985)

More Barefoot Connections

1. Beloved coming of age novel
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright
by Katie Letcher Lyle (1938 - 2016)

2. A couple of fabulous songs, Sweet Old World & You Will Be the Light, both of which include searching for truth and going barefoot, not necessarily related themes, but in this case, yes! Whenever I hear either one of these songs, I always think of the other and have to play them both.

You Will Be the Light
You'll never be the sun turning in the sky
And you won't be the moon above us on a moonlit night
And you won't be the stars in heaven
Although they burn so bright
But even on the deepest ocean
You will be the light

You may not always shine
As you go barefoot over stone
You might be so long together
Or you might walk alone
And you won't find that love comes easy
But that love is always right
So even when the dark clouds gather
You will be the light

And if you lose the part inside
When loves turns round on you
Leaving the past behind
Is knowing you'll do like you always do
Holding you blind, keeping you true

You'll never be the sun turning in the sky
And you won't be the moon above us on a moonlit night
And you won't be the stars in heaven
Although they burn so bright
But even on the deepest ocean
You will be the light

Songwriter: Donagh Long
Performed by: Dolly, Emmylou, Linda
Also by Dolores Keane
******************
This Sweet Old World
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
The breath from your own lips, the touch of fingertips
A sweet and tender kiss

The sound of a midnight train, wearing someone's ring
Someone calling your name
Somebody so warm cradled in your arm
Didn't you think you were worth anything

See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world

Millions of us in love, promises made good
Your own flesh and blood
Looking for some truth, dancing with no shoes
The beat, the rhythm, the blues
The pounding of your heart's drum together with another one

Didn't you think anyone loved you See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world . . .

Music & lyrics by Lucinda Williams
[ More about Lucinda]

3. Play ~ movie ~ television series
Barefoot in the Park
by Neil Simon (1927 - 2018)

Thanks to Nancy!
Next Fortnightly Post ~ Kitchen Art
Wednesday, September 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

To See A Fine Picture

WALL ART FOR THE HOME
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Blue Vase (1887)
by Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song,
read a good poem, see a fine picture
and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." ~Goethe
Moving dilemma: more large windows = lots more light but a lot less wall space. Bittersweet solution: time to bid farewell to some of our favorite wall art.

The deaccessioning began with the brass rubbings (thanks Robert) and the sheet music (thanks Town & Gown). Next came numerous frames and prints suitable for studio use (thanks Artists' Own) and a collection of musically themed paintings (thanks Daniel). The down - sizing continued, with the help of our artistic, literary, and creative friends who were all willing to adopt, re-envision, and repurpose our surplus objets d'art (thanks Beata, Katie, Katy).

Gone from my walls but never forgotten, these pictures (and so many others) will always have a spot in my heart and on my blog:

An Al Fresco Toilette (1889)
Luke Fildes (1843–1927)
[Along with Seurat]

The Cello Player (1896)
Thomas Eakins (1844 – 1916)

The Fifer (1866)
Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883)

Parisian Interior (1910)
Jozsef Rippl-Ronai (1861 – 1927)
&

An Old-Fashioned Garden (1915)
Anne Bremer (1868 – 1923)

One of Gerry's Long-Time Favs
Of Unknown Provenance

******************

A Tale from the Decameron (1916)
John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917)

The Enchanted Garden (1916 - 17)
John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917)

Apple Blossoms (1856- 59)
John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896)
[See also: "Love Is Not All"]

Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)

L’Envoi: Earth's Last Picture

When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried
When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workers shall set us to work anew!

And those that were good will be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from—Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in our separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as we see It for the God of Things as They Are!
(1896)

by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

******************
Next Fortnightly Post ~ Going Barefoot
Sunday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com