Country folks and city folks meet every sweltering August at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville for corn dogs, horse shows, games of chance, beekeepers and bumper cars.  You can count on donkeys and the Oak Ridge Boys each year, too. The fair just wouldn’t be the same without big Asses and Elvira. 

Notions of healthy Kentucky grown produce – and there is plenty around in local farm markets - are pushed aside for ten days of corn dogs, snow cones, funnel cakes and elephant ears. (A delicious beef brisket barbeque was the closest thing to Pritikin I could find.)  The atherosclerotic-inducing donut bacon cheeseburger was this year’s sensation. Add an order of chili cheese fries and you could clog the next oil spill. (You wonder why, in all of “Fast Food Nation,” no one ever came-up with a donut bacon cheeseburger before, and then you’re reminded that it took 5,000 years for someone to put wheels on a suitcase.)

Standing in line for a donut cheeseburger, the toast of the 2010 Kentucky State Fair
Photo: Allen Bush

Neither horses nor tobacco (not even fried food) come close to the pumpkin’s historic significance in Kentucky agriculture: Pumpkin’s kin were here first. And in 2010 the Largest Pumpkin Contest carried a lot more weight than Farm Bureau Freddy, the eighteen-foot-tall mascot who’s been sitting ram rod stiff on hay bales, greeting fair goers outside Freedom Hall for fifty-three years. The oldest archaeological remains of pumpkin - over 10, 000 years old - were found in Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Incredibly, the oldest known corncobs (Zea mays), dating back 6,000 years, were found in the same cave complex at Guilá Naquitz.)

But an important clue to one of the possible ancient pumpkin’s kissing’ cousins, if not a direct progenitor, was found in Kentucky. Seeds of an ancient gourd were found in the Red River Gorge in Powell County, Kentucky, fortuitously preserved in the dry environment of a rock shelter. (Cucurbita pepo, a New World species, includes squash, yellow-flowering gourds and pumpkins. Cucurbita pepo subspecies ovifera is the pear gourd; Cucurbita pepo subspecies pepo is the pumpkin.)

It was first presumed those seeds found in Kentucky had been domesticated, selected over millennia for improved performance, by indigenous people. But according to research published in the Journal of Ethnobiology by C. Wesley Cowan and Bruce D. Smith (1993), these were wild seed and represented one of the most eastern U.S. locations of subspecies var. ozarkana. Carbon dating tests confirmed that the Kentucky discovery of the Red River Gorge material was 4,500 years old.

Pumpkin genealogy?: Cluster analysis of taxon means of Jaccards’s Coefficient of Genetic Similarity values among infraspecific taxa of Cucurbita pepo and C. argyrosperma.
Fig.: Deena Decker-Walters, from Documenting Domestication by Melinda Zeder

(The trail diverges here: More recent mitochondrial DNA studies suggest the possibility that subspecies ozarkana, may have been the progenitor for subspecies ovifera. And subspecies ovifera, according to mitochondrial DNA, could have given rise to the pumpkin. It’s all a guessing game of haplotypes.  In all likelihood, there were two probably distinct genetic lines.)

Well alright. The pumpkin probably took shape in Mexico, and not Kentucky. But at least we had a historic role, as small as it may be, along a long trail of pepos. And the important discovery of prehistoric seeds of Kentucky’s native gourd predated the domestication of gourds by 2,500 years. Kentucky was at the center of early plant domestication. (And Wes Cowan found a new niche, a few years ago, on Public Television’s The History Detectives.)

Which brings us to the Large Pumpkin Contest at Kentucky State Fair —a big deal.

Jimmy Sowers, a school bus driver, lives near Stanford in Lincoln County, Kentucky. He’s been tinkering with giant pumpkins for three years. He drove to Louisville with grandson Jansin and sat impatiently at a corner table, eyeballing the competition, a half-hour before the Large Pumpkin Contest. Frank Mudd from Flaherty, KY, in Meade County, is Kentucky’s godfather of big melons and pumpkins. He didn’t have anything for this show. His giant pumpkins, “just quit growing in the heat,” he said. Mudd still had plenty of reason to be proud. He has won the pumpkin contest 6 times, and has been the defending champ the last two years. He’d also won the big watermelon contest the day before with a 224-¼ pound whopper – the biggest in the state’s history.  Terry Meiners, afternoon drive-time host on WHAS radio and emcee of the contest, introduced Mudd as a “pumpkin growing legend.”

Mudd liked the look of Sowers’s entry. “It comes down to good luck with weather, genetics, the right ground and stuff like that,” the champ said.  Mudd knew a couple of pumpkins at the fairgrounds were getting a little “tired.” Dwight Slone of Prestonsburg, Kentucky, who holds the state pumpkin record of 1,278 ½ lbs, was here. (The world record of 1,725 lbs is held by Ohio’s Christy Harp.)  Slone had entered his Kentucky State Fair entry in last week’s Indiana State Fair.  Pumpkins lose water weight every day, but while they are actively growing they can add 35 – 40 lbs a day. A dollar per pound was being offered to the contest winner with one simple proviso: it had to reach one thousand pounds.

Ken and Christy Harp with Christy’s world-record-setting pumpkin—1,725 lbs.
Photo: Courtesy of Pam Diffenbaugher

The first two pumpkins were little more than jack o’lantern-sized, weighing in at 18 ½ and 79 ½ lbs. Sowers sat back taking it all in. He’d brought a serious contender but didn’t know if his would tip the scales at more than 1,000 lbs.  The next entries - big ones, indeed - had to be hoisted to the weigh-in by a crew of four who carefully attached straps to a front-end loader. John Thompson of Pleasure Ridge Park, near Louisville, didn’t embarrass himself.  His hit the scales at 669 lbs. Dwight Slone was up next with his traveling pumpkin.

The Kentucky Pumpkin Mafia strikes fear with Hoosiers. The ground warms up sooner south of the Ohio River and that gives Kentucky growers a head start.  Last year’s Indiana winner was John Van Hook of Somerset, Kentucky, whose mighty pumpkin hit the scales at 1145 lbs.  But the Kentucky summer heat played havoc in the build-up to this year’s Indiana State Fair.  A Buckeye, Samuel Durst of Piqua, Ohio, trumped the Kentucky Pumpkin Mafia with a hefty 1,106 pounder. Slone’s pumpkin could only muster 873 lbs and finished 6th. Kentuckians were shutout in Indiana for the first time in two years. By the time Slone weighed-in a week later in Louisville, the Prestonsburg pepo had shed 9 1/2 lbs.

Jimmy Sowers finally stood-up. Frank Mudd, the gracious reigning champion, whispered that he thought Sowers might win.  Sowers started seeds in late April and lined-out the plant on the 10th of May after any danger of a late frost. It was vital to get the soil tested, to “get it right,” he said. Right on was a sweet spot pH between 7.0 and 7.2.  Some growers will use nighttime lighting and heat cables. Others will set-up little tent-like greenhouses to absorb heat and retain some on cool spring nights. The long hot summer kept Sowers busy with the hose.  His thirsty behemoth soaked-up 19,000 gallons of water like a sponge.  The pumpkin was harvested the afternoon before the contest, “as late as I could,” Sowers said, and was loaded on the back of his pick-up with a front-end loader.

Jimmy Sowers and gourd-aids: his pumpkin won this year’s contest at the Ky State Fair
Photo: Allen Bush

The Fair crew delicately moved the Lincoln County pumpkin closer to the scales. Sowers moved-in closer.  Terry Meiners, hoping for a thousand pounder, watched as it landed softly on the scale. Meiners announced: “977 lbs!” There was a brief collective sigh. This wasn’t quite a thousand pounder. “But, wait, “Meiners interrupted, “there’s a late addition.”  He looked around the crowd of nearly one hundred, spotted two young girls, and asked them to come forward and stand on the scale with the pumpkin. “We have a winner…1041 lbs!” Meiners had maneuvered quickly, not wanting a few pounds to interfere with a good show. Jimmy Sowers smiled, accepted the blue ribbon, trophy and the check for $1,041. The water bill would be paid.
 

There’s flying under the radar. There’s also flying over the radar – a mode of transportation accessible to a select class of travelers. Ex-U.S.-presidents qualify if, like Jimmy Carter, they’re internationally known human rights advocates who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, flew to Pyongyang, North Korea, August 25. Their trip was ostensibly to secure the release of a U.S. citizen, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for entering the country illegally. That was the Carters’ official purpose. But such a high-profile visit suggests lots more diplomatic knitting: to gain North Korea’s cooperation in nuclear disarmament? to begin normalizing relations with the U.S.? to ease somehow the animosity between the two Koreas since the sinking of a S. Korean ship in March? Who knows? That’s what flying over the radar is all about.

The New York Times reported,  “Gomes is believed to have entered North Korea in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian activist from the United States, who crossed into the country from China in December to call on [N. Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il] to release all political prisoners. Mr. Park was expelled after some 40 days.”

But Gomes remained in custody and, according to several sources, had attempted suicide since his incarceration in April.

Carter made the trip as a “private citizen” rather than a U.S. official, opening the way for many friendly gestures that would not at present be possible for the Obama Administration. (Even so, South Korean leaders were said to be incensed at the visit).

Ceremonial flowers appeared throughout the Carters’ short stay, maintaining an air of kind formality. Upon his arrival in Pyongyang, the ex-president was welcomed by a young girl, who handed him a bouquet and extended a vivacious salute. Baring his signature smile, he accepted the flowers and “blew her a kiss before getting into a black stretch Mercedes-Benz.”

By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group

The earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and the Earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals.—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Wilderness areas provide plant enthusiasts – and anyone else with eyes to see and a mind to wonder— with occupations for a lifetime. In the wild, we may witness, explore, photograph, and write about the natural beauty of plants, their botanical diversity, visual complexity, fascinating life cycles, and valuable ecological roles—all within the thought-provoking and memorable settings of adventure and solitude. Encounters with nature and wilderness can reawaken our sense of awe and fascination. Such experiences help recalibrate our inflated estimates of 21st-century humans’ importance and degree of control over nature.

Many thanks to Nona Ferdon for filling in some of the gaps in our story of flowers in the history-making March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. We noted that several of the Civil Rights marchers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wore leis.

“You wondered how they got there,” Nona writes of the floral garlands. “We took them. There were five of us representing Hawaii on the march.“

In our earlier story we had credited the pastor of Honolulu’s Kawaiahao Church, Rev. Abraham Akaka, who had befriended Dr. King the previous year, with sending the leis. He, in fact, may have been behind this effort in some way, but Nona, who delivered the flowers, doesn’t recall ever meeting Rev. Akaka or hearing of his involvement in this gesture. “I don’t know who organized on the leis,” she writes. “It was all on short notice and we showed up at the airport around 5 in the afternoon. There was no publicity or anything like that, we just said goodbye to some friends and left.  Taking leis was just something that anyone from Hawaii would do almost automatically.” Only after the march, when the leis had made their glorious statement, did the flowers inspire curiosity. Floral garlands around the neck weren’t, and still aren’t, a common sight in the Deep South.

By Allen Bush

My friend Mike Hayman phoned the day after “The Decision” —the LeBron James’s televised public relations disaster. LeBron and his handlers had spent the previous two weeks shopping pro basketball teams for a winning deal. Now Hayman wanted my decision. Did I want to patent Cercis candadenis ‘Alley Cat’: a variegated redbud that popped-up as a chance seedling in my back garden down near the alley?  (Unless Tinker Bell sprinkled pixie dust, I can only guess that seed must have blown in on the fair winds to my little spit of land.)

“Are we talking LeBron money?” I asked Hayman. Could this be my ticket to fortune? I wondered. Mike laughed: “No, this looks like the amateur ranks.” (At least he didn’t say Bush League!) 

It’s referred to as the “Chinese love flower” but we don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say about the Chinese, or love—or flowers either. Just look at it.

This is a fungus, Cordyceps sinensis—an entomopathogenic fungus, meaning it grows on and, in time, into and out of insects. That’s hard on insects—lethal, as a matter of fact—as well as enormously weird and disgusting (just our opinion).

You might call its growth habit an “incursion.” But it’s human incursion into the fugus’s habitat, the very high territory along the China/India border, that prompted the Telegraph’s recent story about this plant.

Indian officials are claiming that small groups of Chinese troops, forces with the People’s Liberation Army, have been coming across “the disputed MacMahon Line” that separates the two countries. Dean Nelson writes that crossing the line “remains highly sensitive for both countries which fought a border war in 1962 in which China captured but later returned Tawang district, which it claims is part of Tibet” – also considered disputed territory. This moist, mountainous environment, between 10,000-12,000 feet in altitude, is where Cordyseps sinensis grows.

By John Levett

Last Thursday was my birthday. I answered mail until noon. It never used to be like this.

The group of photographers that I have the privilege of working with is having its annual show, opening next week and going through to September. We’ve got seventy-five entries this year, our largest number since we began back in 2007. It’s a fine group. We never get bogged down in the technicalities of the process; we’re just there for the images, for the back-story, for the sharing. We’ve got enough energy & enthusiasm for the first timer as for the old pro and sometimes you’ll not know the difference. People keep coming, people keep coming back; that’s always the best judge that something’s right about a group. The mail box keeps growing too.

I once knew the secretary of my local Labour Party in south London. He kept a large bag of pennies & ha’pennies in the bottom draw of his desk. Whenever anyone new came in and asked if they could help out he took out the bag and said: “People keep dropping their small change into our collecting boxes & I never get around to counting it. Do you think that’s something you could do for me?” It never failed. Everyone wants to be useful. So the mail keeps growing and the jobs keep getting done and the show opens and we all wonder at how it got to look so wonderful. The mailbox is the bag of pennies. Everybody gets to be useful.

That’s why you answer mail ’til noon on your birthday.

I broke. Sun was up; I hadn’t noticed. I took a mug of nuclear-strength tea and my book of the month (Austerity Britain by David Kynaston: social history without compare) out to the deckchair under the now-ripening heps of early-aging summer; a chapter read thence to the station.

I can’t read histories on the train. Too many conversations, too much mobile-phoning. Currently my ‘train books’ are re-reads of post-war fiction: Flight into Camden, This Sporting Life, Room at the Top, A Kind of Loving, the ‘London’ trilogy by Colin McInnes. Strange reads; reminders of how much time we spent trying to keep warm; how long London stayed a bomb-site; how we courted. Now King’s Cross: Larkin’s walls of blackened moss still visible in parts.