From the desk of Miss Martha:
The cotton is white in the fields near my Alabama home. It has usually been picked and baled by now, but the record setting temperatures and the drought have slowed its growth. It’s hard to believe we are more that two feet behind on rainfall for the year! (Annie Mae used her wash water to water her tomato patch or those home grown tomatoes would have withered on the vine.)
This time of year brings back memories of when I was in elementary school and we got out for two weeks in the fall for cotton picking time. It was customary for school to close so the whole family could help with cotton picking. Although the big mechanical cotton pickers now zoom through fields plucking the snowy white cotton, I remember when my mom, my brother, and I picked cotton by hand, dragging our homemade pick sacks behind us. I can still recall the smell of the big piles of freshly picked cotton stored in the corner of my grandma’s porch. My brother Tommy and I enjoyed countless hours jumping into the large mound of cotton and burying ourselves up to our necks. It is this pleasure of life lived simply and honestly I have tried to represent in pieces like Emma and Abe.
I can still see vividly in my minds eye the cleanly swept yard and gray weathered boards of grandma’s four room farm house, with its rusty tin roof. Yes, seeing the cotton in the fields does bring back sweet memories!
Tressie has agreed to let her picture be taken again since she has been
given such lovely hair. She is very pleased with the wind blown look since none of the other AGC have this hairstyle. She has already lost her hat to the wind once so she is holding on tightly so it won’t happen again.
AGC :: Oct.22.2007 :: From the desk of Miss Martha :: 4 Comments »
This is Tressie after I forgot she was getting a tan and went to bed. Thankfully I remembered in time before she got third degree burns. She was so upset that she didn’t care about the modesty panel any more. To make her feel better, I agreed to give her pretty black yarn hair to make her look extra pretty. That’s the least I could do after such an incident. She would not agree to more photos until she was completely dressed. Can’t blame her, poor little thing.
I have let Miss Martha and the staff know that we had a group meeting and we think we should have more stuff about our history. Why, you should hear about the adventures of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman! Miss Sojourner Truth told me about the time she stood up in a meeting where Mr. Douglass was speakin’. His speech was distressful cause he did not seem to be trusting God like he ought to. So Miss Sojourner stood up right there in front of everybody and said, “Frederick, is God dead?” That sure changed the tone of that meeting. Anyway, Miss Martha has agreed to add more black history to the 
