October 12, 2014
The Johnny Appleseed of Red Oaks.
(Link to YouTube.)
BONUS: Here's the beautiful, inspirational, and surprisingly religious 1948 Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed:
Things to note: 1. Beautiful graphics connecting sky to land, clouds to blooming apple trees, heaven to earth, 2. Johnny is too small and scrawny to do the manly things he sees other men doing, but his innate limitation is transformed into a powerful opportunity, with unabashed American, post-war, can-do spirit, 3. An angel depicted as an old pioneer, 4. Much displaying of the Bible, 5. Subtle acknowledgment of the fact that the most valued use of the apple was for hard cider, 6. An apple used to facilitate a sexual assault (in a kissing game, not involving Johnny), and the woman's response is a straightforward, can-do slap in the face, 7. a proto-Pepe Le Pew, 8. The Indians really enjoying life with the settlers, 9. The song, which both Meade and I remember learning as children, "The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord," 10. Strong presentation of the work ethic, to the point where, when the angel returns to take Johnny to heaven, Johnny balks because he still has work planting apple trees, but the angel brings him along by telling him of the need for the planting of apples trees in heaven. That is, heaven is not rest after a lifetime of work, but an opportunity to continue working forever.
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31 comments:
Julia Child, on Britain wanting long ago to import poison ivy for its fall colors: I wonder where they thought that terrible rash came from.
You do get nice early yellows from soybeans though.
This has been a bumper year for acorns. The squirrels are fat and happy around here.
Right now I should be harvesting macadamia nuts from our tree. But some pests stole every last one of them. There is some consolation in this. Last year's nuts yielded a single seedling, and it is being carefully nurtured. With a little luck and ten years, it too will be a producer.
Euell Gibbons would've made a bowl of cereal out of that.
I love the sound of them hitting the roof, rolling down it, and then hitting the deck. Not.
I recall Althouse doing a similar post on Johnny Appleseed a couple years ago. It too was Meade-inspired IIRC.
Needs a tag: #spreading seed with Meade
John Chapman is one of the branches of my family tree.
@betamax: There's a whole chapter, I think, on Acorn Flower in Stalking the Wild Asparagus, or the Healthful Herb (not sure which) -- I don't think he advocates eating them whole.
"I recall Althouse doing a similar post on Johnny Appleseed a couple years ago. It too was Meade-inspired IIRC."
A search of the blog reveals no other post containing the word "appleseed."
John Holmes was liberal with his seed, also.
"6. An apple used to facilitate a sexual assault"
Now one would use an Apple.
"Now one would use an Apple."
Modern Eve.
Johnny Mapleseed
A Norway maple that I trasported from KMart on the back of my bicycle, on closeout at about six feet tall, thinking it would make nice shade in 1987 for my Doberman Susie.
It didn't grow that fast but there's lots of shade now.
A search of the blog reveals no other post containing the word "appleseed."
I was conflating blogposts with comments again and remembering this Meade comment (in context).
John "Appleseed" Chapman of Leominster, Massachusetts, was a devout Swedenborgian missionary. It would be surprising if this little movie weren't strongly religious. He donated the land for Urbana University in Ohio, one of the only Swedenborgian colleges in the country; they have a museum dedicated to his work.
My grandson lives in Leominster and attends Johnny Appleseed School. But he's never seen this cartoon. I'll have to fix that.
I doubt that this movie could be shown in a modern US classroom. And were it made today instead of 1948, it would bear no resemblance to this wonderful movie: all of the religion would be removed, it would have to be more inclusive (Johnny's angel would be Morgan Freeman, Johnny himself would be transgendered, etc.) You'd need scenes of the pioneers infecting Native Americans with smallpox blankets, of black slaves harvesting apples for Big Apple, and so on.
Don't forget "The Man Who Planted Trees", although the author admitted that the character was fictional.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7yEPNUXsU
Modern day Johnny Fappleseeds move east, not west, sowing seedy encounters. That's the problem in a nutshell.
Of course, the apple seeds that the real Johnny Appleseed was planting and distributing were for producing hard cider, as the apples were nowhere near sweet enough for eating plain.
Somehow that didn't make it into the Disney film.
@captain curt
Actually, it is there, subtly, as I say in point #5.
Watch again, the part where all the apple products are displayed. The don't say that the cider is hard, but it's in steins which are toasted.
The forest, dark and wide, looks like it was illustrated by Henri Rousseau. The cultivated farmlands look illustrated by the more cheerful primitivism of Grandma Moses. The woodland animals were pure Disney......,.The American Adam. The apple doesn't give us knowledge of good and evil, but rather apple butter.
Stylistically, that Disney feature is very close to "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad" (1949), two disparate stories narrated by Bing Crosby and Basil Rathbone, respectively. This was a time when Disney was gathering American lore for the planning and opening of his theme park a few years later. He knew there was a burgeoning market for his stuff.
@william
Yes, I too really loved the landscapes and thought the woodland creatures were too much the stock woodland creatures. And there was the maudlin pseudo-science of animals being friends if only we love them.
@bob
The reason the religiosity surprises me is that it is my observation that Disney tends to drain all religion from its stories and the story could have been presented with Johnny as the source of his own philosophy.
You can eat white oak acorns. You slice the shell and boil them to soften the shell and peal them like chestnuts. Then you boil them again to get the tanen out, otherwise they are very bitter. Then you can salt and roast them. They are not very tasty but they are edible.
"Botany of Desire" has a whole chapter on apples that focuses on Johnny Appleseed. He was a sort of mad monk. He would camp out ahead of the coming frontiersmen, plant apple trees and dig up and sell the saplings once the settlements caught up to his plantings.
Apples are kinda funny. No two apple trees produce the same type of fruit. Any tree that produces a known type of apple is actually some level cutting from the original tree.
Hard cider is not against most Christian religious traditions except for an odd temperance cult or two.
Disney was into telling American folk stories like John Henry and Paul Bunyon. Otherwise Disney has never been Christian.
A loner Swedenborgian guy out walking the frontier "for apple trees" may have appealed to Disney's love of spiritualist powers. They were never a traditional Christian denomination and believed the Christ had already returned since they felt a spiritual presence.
Could Jesus have been more pro-wine?
First miracle… Last Supper…
Wine is central to the story of Jesus. If his story had unfolded in America, there would have been hard cider.
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