October is one of my favorite months! Maybe because it's my birth month or maybe because of two childhood memories that it evokes in me.
One is the poem by James Whitcomb Riley (an Indiana native), 'Little Orphant Annie' . Riley was the 'Hoosier Poet' and 'America's Children's Poet'. The Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis was built as a memorial to him. Our teacher would read this poem to us each year just before Halloween. Please take the time to read it for yourself and any children in your life! It's fun and a bit 'skeery'!
I just realized by reading more information about this poem that it is based on an orphan girl, Mary Alice Smith, who when she was just 10 yrs. old, came to live with the Riley's and to care for the four Riley children. She used to sit in front of the fireplace and tell ghostly stories to the children.
The other memory is of the Chicago Tribune Magazine Section running a story of 'Injun Summer' by John McCutcheon on the Sunday before Halloween.
By Sid Smith
Tribune staff reporter
Deadlines roll around every day in the newspaper business, whether a writer or an artist is fired by an idea or not. One day in the early fall of 1907, cartoonist John T. McCutcheon found himself groping for inspiration for a drawing to fill his accustomed spot on the front page of the Tribune. He thought back to his boyhood in the 1870s on the lonely cornfields of Indiana. "There was, in fact, little on my young horizon in the middle '70s beyond corn and Indian traditions," he recalled later. "It required only a small effort of the imagination to see spears and tossing feathers in the tasseled stalks, tepees through the smoky haze...."
The story and pictures were first published in 1907 and on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011, The Chicago Tribune ran 'Injun Summer' again, the first time since 1992. They had stopped running the story each year for a time because they felt it was 'politically incorrect'. Those of you who grew up in the mid-west and particularly near Chicago will relate to this memory. I hope they run the story again this year!
Well, now for a smooth segue into other things!
Maybe it's time to make your own Fall/Halloween traditions and we have just the tickets! We now have kits for these small projects for your fall enjoyment that are from the 2012 Fall Issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects.
and the
2012 Winter Issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects is on its way to us as we speak.....and is chucked full of more great projects!
Enjoy the beautiful fall weather, but be careful,
'Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
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