JLfromNH

Autumn Observations For 2022

On the eve of Halloween, we are half way between the beginning of fall and the beginning of winter. The weather so far has been reasonably benign with enough rain to bring an end to the drought conditions which afflicted my area this past summer. Minor frosts have gnawed away the tender vegetation, though as yet no deep freezes to harden the ground.

The brilliant fall foliage which made an excellent display this year has dropped away, literally, giving me an opportunity for aerobic exercise in the yard. I do not use those noisy abominations called leaf blowers. A conventional rake is my tool of choice along with an old beat-up plastic garbage barrel for collecting the leaves. The leaf litter gets deposited in a variety of spots around the house including as mulch for my gardens. All will rot down eventually, returning the nutrients they contain back into the soil for future trees and plants to take up in their turn.

The hawthorn trees in my front yard have dropped a percentage of their leaves, revealing bright orange-red berries. The berries reputedly have medicinal properties, being a source of antioxidants, anti-inflammatory substances, and may lower blood pressure and cholesterol. I haven’t tried them out, but the lovely glossy color does make it tempting.

They are popular with squirrels, turkeys and robins though my hope is that they will attract other berry-loving birds such as mockingbirds, cedar waxwings or the ultimate Holy Grail; ruffed grouse or bluebirds.

Turkeys have been trekking through the neighborhood recently. The flock I saw a few days ago numbered about fourteen. I couldn’t get close enough to determine if they were males or females, as in the fall turkeys will congregate in gender segregated groups, toms with other males and hens with their female offspring in their own group. The turkeys I photographed on my front lawn several weeks ago appeared to be females.

The usual fall invasion of mice into the house brought out my mouse traps. I show no mercy to these little rodents as they gnaw incessantly, can damage wiring and spread disease to boot. With a good crop of acorns this year, their population has boomed along with that of gray squirrels and chipmunks. Good pickings for the red fox I have seen occasionally short-cutting through the woods in back of the house. I can usually tell when he’s about by the shrieking crows which follow him as he goes.

Another predator of mice and rodents showed up recently in my garage. As I was returning from a walk and stepped into the garage, something scooted rapidly by near my feet. I caught a glimpse of a reddish back and assumed at first it was a red squirrel. But the movements weren’t right so I retreated back outside to see what would pop up.

Turned out it was a short-tailed weasel, a long lean creature, still in his summer colors. Attempts to capture a picture of this ferocious little beast for my blog were futile as he moved so fast, all I got was pictures of a blurry brown smear. So I had to cheat and download a little picture from the Internet.

I had wondered where the chipmunks disappeared to and I guess this answers my question. Weasels are relentless hunters, generally devouring anything smaller than themselves and, if they can, anything larger they feel they can tackle. They are the bane of chicken farmers everywhere as once inside a coop, they will kill any bird they can grab, often eating only a few internal organs or perhaps the brains, leaving the rest for the unhappy farmer to curse over. But if he will clean out the mice, I won’t begrudge him a few chickens (I don’t own chickens anyway).

That’s all for now. Until next month. Happy Halloween!

Halloween pumpkin with dancing cat and owl

Patent Medicines

Vintage advertisements are always fun to look at, giving a window into the early world of consumerism. These advertisements offered solutions to all your problems, be it indigestion, graying hair, wrinkles, jangled nerves or other issues. The promises they made were often extravagant.

Parker’s Hair Balsam would have you believe an aging codger can be transformed into a happy, youthful looking husband with children playing at his feet. Apparently it does more than just color the hair.

Some hucksters made use of Native American sounding names to give their product added veracity.

The front of this little vintage advertisement card lists many ailments treatable with this marvelous ointment. But if that doesn’t convince you, the reverse of the card gives a long list of ailments which most definitely can be relieved. If it’s sold by all druggists, it must be good!

I have to admit to a certain skepticism about sore throats responding to something slathered on your skin. Scurvy and rickets are nutritional disorders, but never mind that. All will be completely cured. Regrettably an Internet search revealed nothing about this product or what it might have contained, so there’s no way to tell if it actually had any virtue.

The next ad is a little more forthcoming.

Here we get a breakdown of the helpful ingredients in this cure-all. Sarsaparilla contains antioxidants so is potentially useful as an anti-inflammatory. Stillingia, also a root, is an old folk remedy for bronchitis, hemorrhoids and syphilis. Yellow-dock has anti-inflammatory properties and was used in respiratory ailments, as a laxative and also STD infections. Mandrake root is reputed to have effects similar to the other ingredients but can cause dizziness and vomiting, if the dose is too large.

Iodide of Potassium could potentially help the thyroid while Iodide of Iron served as a catalyst. It sounds like the druggists tossed a little bit of everything into their concoction in the hopes of helping their ailing customers. It’s hard to say if this medicine really helped its users but it brought its creator James Cook Ayer considerable success. Advertising was key to his popularity and while he took a fair amount of criticism from competitors, he did quite well for a while.

If his medicines did little good, at least they likely didn’t do much harm either. Not so for other patent medicines which often had alcohol, cocaine or opium as their main ingredients. Especially chilling was the use of radioactive elements such as radium as a curative, which led to the gruesome death of Eben Byers. A noted golfer, the Tiger Woods of his time, he had suffered a painful injury and seeking treatment fell victim to Dr. Bailey, a Harvard dropout posing as a physician, who recommended Radithor, a nostrum laced with radium, which he was hawking as a cure-all. Unaware of the hazards of radiation, the unfortunate Mr Byers swallowed the concoction twice a day for three years until he began developing symptoms of weight loss and bone deterioration which led to the loss of his entire lower jaw and finally his early death.

It was this tragic case which strengthened the FDA’s powers allowing them to eliminate quack cures of this nature off the market and away from vulnerable customers.

As resource shortages plus inflation begin biting, home cures and medicines are starting to make a comeback. Along with their return is the risk of quack nostrums reappearing. One way to avoid mistakes of the past is to inform oneself on how your body functions and what works best for keeping you in good shape. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If illness does crop up, knowledge of herbs and different therapies will help you distinguish between real healing and abject quackery.

And who knows. Perhaps those charming little advertisements of yesteryear will return, better vetted, touting genuinely helpful products.

Summer’s End

Labor day is almost upon us. Although summer still officially lasts for about three more weeks, Labor Day makes it seem like it’s the end of the season and the start of fall.

It’s been an abnormally dry season though some relief in the form of rain has begun arriving in the past few weeks to help the sweet corn along for the farmer’s market. There was a population boom of bumblebees in contrast to the scarcity of the insect last summer. Fire flies made a tentative reappearance though June bugs still seem to be in short supply.

It was a good summer for babies. A pair of Canada geese has been raising a brood in the tiny nature preserve near where I live. My sister-in-law took this adorable photo of a baby merganser goose-stepping across the road following his mother.

I’ve seen fledgling robins and heard young chickadees, nuthatches and chipping sparrows pursuing their parents begging for a last few morsels of food before they will have to fend for themselves.

Although the weather was on the dry side, a number of plants did well for themselves. The Black eyed Susans in my garden have bloomed prolifically.

The recent rains brought out a small mushroom nestled among the roots of a white pine.

My Jack-In-The-Pulpit bloomed its characteristic ‘jack’ and is now forming a berry cluster which will turn bright red.

While on a morning walk in late July, I encountered a Monarch butterfly feeding in a patch of milkweed on the corner of a parking lot.

It was a thrill to see this badly endangered butterfly still hanging in there. Now the milkweed has produced pods and if they can escape getting weed-wacked, I hope to collect a few when they ripen and try getting them to grow on the bank in back of my home.

Hope you had a happy summer.

Foot Work

One of the toughest parts of the human anatomy to draw for me is the foot. Getting those toes, nails, heels and arches to look right is tricky. This is why many art instruction books show the bones underlying not only the human form but that of any animal. There’s really no way around it. To get the outer part looking right, you need to know what lies beneath.

The human foot is made up of 26 bones, 30 joints, and more than 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons. No wonder the darn things are so hard to draw!

Our feet are highly specialized because they help us accomplish that amazing balancing act known as walking upright.

Our habit of walking on our heels and toes to do this is referred to as plantigrade locomotion. Other animals also use this method such as other apes and monkeys, raccoons, opossums and bears.

The above photo was taken by one of my brothers, showing an excellent bear paw print in new fallen snow with his hunting glove beside it to give some scale. Bears can also manage the trick of standing up on their hind legs and walking a bit, but this is not their preferred mode of walking.

Other four-legged animals have differently shaped feet, depending on their own style of walking. Cats and dogs, for example, don’t walk plantigrade as we do. Instead, they use the digitigrade form of locomotion. This involves walking on their toes. Many people do not realize that their pets literally tip-toe about. If you look at the ‘toe beans’ on the bottom of a cat’s paw, you’ll see the row of toe pads and underneath them is a pad which actually covers what for us would be the ball of the foot. The heel is further up on what many people take to be part of the leg but is really the foot of the animal. This photo of a kangaroo makes this a little clearer.

Like us, the kangaroo has a highly specialized foot. When at rest they are plantigrade like we are. But when they begin hopping, they rise up on their toes. Interestingly when they move at a slow walk, they use their large tails as an extra ‘leg’.

Hoofed animals, like horses or deer, carry the digitigrade form to an extreme. They don’t just walk or run about on their toes. They actually walk about on their toe tips. Hooves are just highly modified toenails. Ballerinas, eat your hearts out!

My art efforts for the foot are modest to say the least, even with the use of gestural drawing, which is useful for starting out, while learning to master the form of your subject. As always, practice makes perfect, so it’s a good idea to stock up on sketch books, so you can observe the evolution of your own drawing style. In addition to art anatomy instruction books, here are many tutorials on You-Tube to follow, to help you draw better looking feet.

Happy drawing!

Medieval Art

With the garden finally planted and growing, thoughts of artwork return. While my art instruction books focus on present day art styles, I find it both interesting and helpful to look back at the art of previous centuries.

Medieval paintings and drawings are always worth studying. While the artwork looks crude and even amateurish by today’s standards, I think that’s an unfair assessment. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, whatever schools or art styles were being taught likely vanished for the most part to be replaced by the art of the Germanic barbarians who moved in with their own traditions and set up shop. Absorbing the bits and pieces of what the Romans left, the budding new nations of Europe began developing their own style.

The lack of perspective is often remarked on. The figures on the castle ramparts seem way out-sized compared to the castle itself and the tents in the background nearly as big as the castle itself. But perspective wasn’t the goal here. The action itself was, so all players in this drama had to be seen clearly with their roles in the battle apparent along with their status, indicated by their mode of dress. Interest in any realistic perspective didn’t show up until the Renaissance.

Views of everyday life can be found in countless illustrations.

This image from the Hunterian Psalter, an illuminated prayer book from 12^th century England shows a family performing their chores. The wife uses a drop spindle for weaving yarn while the husband digs with his shovel in the field (barefoot no less!). At the wife’s feet sits a cradle with a placid faced infant firmly swaddled.

While the figures were meant to illustrate moral lessons or incidents from the Bible, they were drawn from ordinary life. Below is an image also from the Hunterian Psalter showing wine being produced.

Wine pressing must be hard work as the wine stomper appears unclad and looks like he is sampling some of the unfinished product to quench his thirst at the same time.

The next picture is from the Luttrell Psalter, showing sheep penned up, perhaps being sheared, while two women carrying water vessels pass by.

The Luttrell Psalter, from the early fourteenth century, is famous for its countless illustrations of everyday life. Some of the drawings, though, are definitely out of the ordinary depicting demons, strange animals and odd grotesques of every sort.

Here we have two gray faced beings battling each other, one getting a pot smashed over his head, perhaps a moralistic admonition by the artist about the evils of drinking. Other figures range from a spunky bishop pinching the nose of a demon,

to creatures so odd, it’s hard to make out what the illustrator was portraying.

One thing’s for certain, there was no lack of imagination and talent in the Middle Ages. One could do worse than to look at these colorful and often whimsical images for sources of artistic inspiration.

Happy drawing!

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