Old Crooked Tree
Old dead tree stands all gnarled and worn,
Its brittle limbs all battered and torn.
The passing centuries it has seen
When it was still mighty strong and green.
The marvelous stories it could tell
When critters would stop to rest a spell.
The youthful days when life was prime
Has withered since near the end of time.
Wind and storms try to force it to fall,
Old crooked tree barely standing tall.
Sheri Erickson, 7/23/13
Old Crooked Tree
“O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain,” was a start of a poem written by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor, who took a trip in 1893 to teach summer school in Colorado Springs.
Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the “White City” with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon’s Pikes Peak.
On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem, Pikes Peak, was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July in which the poem was titled America.
Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913, in which the “O beautiful for halcyon skies” was changed to “O beautiful for spacious skies” and the music we have associated with the poem was composed by a church organist and choirmaster, Samuel A. Ward.
Just as Bates had been inspired to write her poem, Ward too was inspired to compose his tune. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City, after a leisurely summer day in 1882, and he immediately wrote it down. He was so anxious to capture the tune in his head, he asked fellow passenger friend Harry Martin for his shirt cuff to write the tune on. He composed the tune for the old hymn “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem”, retitling the work “Materna”. Ward’s music combined with Bates’ poem were first published together in 1910 and titled, America the Beautiful.
Ward never met Bates as he died in 1903, and he never realized the national stature his music would attain. Bates was more fortunate, as the song’s popularity was well established by the time of her death in 1929.
Amber Waves of Grain
ain, Barn
I’m not sure if the smiley face is because it is Friday or because the temperature is supposed to get cooler today. But for whatever reason, you can’t help but smile too.
Smiley Face
The need for barbed wire arose in the 19th century as the American frontier moved westward into the Great Plains and traditional fence materials—wooden rails and stone—became scarce and expensive. Of the many early types of barbed wire, the type invented in Illinois in 1873 by Joseph F. Glidden proved most popular.
Glidden fashioned barbs on an improvised coffee bean grinder, placed them at intervals along a smooth wire, and twisted another wire around the first to hold the barbs in a fixed position. His U.S. patent was issued November 24, 1874 and the patent survived court challenges from other inventors. Joseph Glidden prevailed in litigation and in sales. Today, it remains the most familiar style of barbed wire.
Joseph Glidden’s wire fences were cheaper to erect than their alternatives and when they became widely available in the late 19th century in the United States they made it affordable to fence much bigger areas than before. Joseph Farwell Glidden’s simple invention, barbed wire, changed forever the development of the American West.
Barbed Wire
I did a double take when I saw what looked like an old truck with failed brakes coming through the barn wall.
Old Truck through the Barn Wall
These horses might like to hid inside yesterday’s barn picture with the approaching storm even if the roof might leak a little. No sunny pasture today for them like the other day.
Sunny Horses
This old barn may have more of its boards than yesterday’s barn picture, but there are some missing and the door is off its track. The roof has seen better days too but I bet this old barn has plenty of stories to tell from the horse and buggy days to the age of big machinery.
Aged Barn
This old barn has seen a lot of sunsets, but its sunsets might be numbered as the side boards are already gone and its useful days are gone.
Sunset Barn
This Belted Galloway calf looks as disgusted that the rainy days as I am. The Belted Galloway is a heritage beef breed of cattle originating from Galloway in the west side of southern Scotland, adapted to living on the poor upland pastures and windswept moorlands of the region. The exact origin of the breed is unclear although it is often surmised that the white belt that distinguishes these cattle from the native black Galloway cattle may be as a result of cross breeding with Dutch Lakenvelder belted cattle. It is the belt that gives them their name.
The distinctive white belt found in Belted Galloways often varies somewhat in width and regularity but usually covers most of the body from the shoulders to the hooks. The white contrast to the black coat, which may have a brownish tinge in the summer, sets the breed apart with its striking color pattern. Because of this distinctive look the cattle are also called as “Oreo cookie cows”.
“Oreo Calf”
The other day I posted a picture this barn from the other side and at the time, I couldn’t decide which view I liked better, so by posting the other view now, I don’t have to make the decision.
The gray tin siding makes this barn so different from the other older wooden barns and why it caught my eye so much and I why I had to back up to shoot this barn.
Old Tin Barn
