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Posts Tagged ‘rainbow’

On Twitter, I have been following @LakotaMan1, who notes on this weekend that “America wasn’t discovered — it was invaded.”

As I don’t want to take anything from Italians who are proud of the ancestry of Columbus but I need to acknowledge what indigenous people suffered from European contact, I have decided just to talk about corn. We all know that Europeans knew nothing about corn until they opened their minds to learn a thing or two from the continent’s original inhabitants.

Dina Spector wrote at Business Insider, “Glass Gem corn, a unique variety of rainbow-colored corn, became an internet sensation in 2012 when a photo of the sparkling cob was posted to Facebook.

“Shortly after, the company that sells the rare seeds, Native Seeds/SEARCH, began ramping up production to meet the high demand. The Arizona-based company still sells Glass Gem seeds on its website.

“Meanwhile, a Facebook page devoted to Glass Gem allows growers to share pictures of the vibrant corn variety. But the story behind Glass Gem is just as remarkable. It begins with one man, Carl Barnes, who set out to explore his Native American roots.

“The history was largely retold by Barnes’ protégé, Greg Schoen, in 2012, when the corn gained national attention. …

Barnes, who died in 2016, was half-Cherokee. He began growing older corn varieties in his adult years. …

“In growing these older corn varieties, Barnes was able to isolate ancestral types that had been lost to Native American tribes when they were relocated to what is now Oklahoma in the 1800s. This led to an exchange of ancient corn seed with people he had met and made friends with all over the country.

“At the same time, Barnes began selecting, saving, and replanting seeds from particularly colorful cobs. Over time, this resulted in rainbow-colored corn.

“A fellow farmer, Greg Schoen, met Barnes in 1994 at a native-plant gathering in Oklahoma. Barnes had his rainbow-colored corn on display. Schoen was blown away. That following year, Barnes gave Schoen some of the rainbow seed. Schoen planted the first seeds that summer.

“Schoen and Barnes remained close friends, and over the years, Schoen received more samples of the rainbow seed. In the beginning, Schoen only grew small amounts of the colorful corn in New Mexico, where he moved in 1999. In 2005, Schoen began growing larger plots of the rainbow corn near Sante Fe, alongside more traditional varieties.

“When the rainbow corn mixed with the traditional varieties it created new strains. Each year of successive planting, the corn displayed more vibrant colors and vivid patterns.

“According to an account from Schoen, Barnes told him that the rainbow seed originally came from a crossing of ‘Pawnee miniature popcorns with an Osage red flour corn and also another Osage corn called “Greyhorse.” ‘ …

“In 2009, Schoen passed on several varieties of the rainbow seed to Bill McDorman, who owned an Arizona seed company called Seed Trust.

“At that time, McDorman was the executive director of Native Seeds/SEARCH, a non-profit conservation organization. He brought the Glass Gem seeds with him, and they can now be purchased online.”

Saving ancient seeds is important work. To learn about the Svalbard Island Global Seed Vault in Norway, read my 2015 post, here, and my 2017 update highlighting concern that the protective permafrost is melting there.

For a bit more background on rainbow corn and some lovely photos, click at Business Insider, here. No firewall.

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The calendar says we have more days of summer to come, but for school children, it’s over. Also for me.

For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t my happiest summer, but one has to be grateful for the beauties all around. It certainly is my favorite season for taking pictures. In winter, after I’ve shot all the snow-covered fences and bent-over trees, the photographic opportunities are mostly versions of gray. I’m no Sally Mann, in love with black and white, although I want to get better at finding curious shadows in winter.

The photo collection below starts with the working harbor where one boards the boat to New Shoreham and continues into sights that caught my eye in late August: horse chestnuts, Dusty Miller holding down the fragile dunes, a house sign with a sailboat, a gallery sign with a scarecrow, and the famous Painted Rock. I was so happy to see that 2018 at last had a good piece of art on the rock, not to mention that it stayed up a whole day without getting sloppily spray-painted over. The local paper promised to print my picture of the octopus side and seek out the artist.

Finally, I give you a curious sunset rainbow on an oppressively hot and humid evening. The weather had really gotten me down when this rainbow showed up, so beautiful I felt like saying, Sorry, Sorry, because one needs to remind oneself when feeling down that one won’t always feel that way.

This rainbow was amazing in a couple ways. First of all, there wasn’t even any rain: The air was just loaded with moisture. Second, the sunset on the clouds seemed to spread out the rainbow into several times its true size.

You have to be grateful for these things when you see them.

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Something reader KerryCan said in a comment one day got me thinking that I’d like to see if I could get a photo of Providence that could make a part of the city pass for rural. At first, I found only bland vacant lots left over from the rerouting of route 195. Then I went to Blackstone Park, where a treehugger tree and an ersatz teepee caught my eye.

The soccer-playing kid is in a suburban-looking area on the East Side, and the glowing tunnel is right downtown.

I thought the sandbox looked lonely.

In Massachusetts, I went looking for skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit plants, but it was too early. Not spring yet. I did hear peepers. And I saw gracefully rotting tree stumps, a bird on a mailbox, and a wonderful rainbow.

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As usual, the Fort Point area is swimming in art this September. The few examples below don’t begin to scratch the surface, but they caught my eye: a longtime mural in a Farnsworth Street garage, a mosaic at Channel Center, and the rainbow-like installation “Shimmer” that draws a smile from many passersby.

Says the Fort Point Arts site, “ ‘Shimmer‘ is a temporary public art installation by Fort Point artists Claudia Ravaschiere and Michael Moss. Using the refractive qualities of florescent and jewel toned plexi glass, this piece activates the the Congress Street Bridge and changes the public perception of a familiar urban environment.  The piece is constructed to catch the natural and ambient light to create a luminous field of color and alternating hues. The visual impact of the’ Shimmer’ will change as the light changes throughout the day.”

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Wish I could have captured the transformation of the sky over Boston about 4:30 this afternoon. It was like a sci-fi flic of a force from outer space taking over the world in one fell swoop. One minute the sky outside my window was all blue sunshine and puffy white clouds — the next, an ominous dark front was racing out of the northeast and eating everything in its path.

I would have liked a picture to contribute to Sharon Silverman’s art installation. She is building one in December and needs sky photos in a 4″x6″ print form (only sky, no buildings or trees or anything else in the picture): Sharon Silverman, P.O. Box 1212, Haverhill, MA 01831, silvermanarts@comcast.net.

Sharon says, “Remember to put your name and address on a separate piece of paper so that you can be added to the list of artists who are contributing their work to this project.” It sounded like a rare chance to be an “artist.”

I have quite a few sky pictures, but could round up only two for Sharon that didn’t have anything else in them. (Maybe only one, since a bird showed up in a print.)

Here are a few recent sky photos — two that are just sky.

And check my previous post on ForSpaciousSkies.com.

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First there were ghost leaves embedded in the sidewalks. And then … mystery messages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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