Getting Corn-ier

Eating Over The Sink

Dear Zack:

What can I do when the corn “is as high as an elephant’s
eye,” but I don’t want to eat any of it because I live Low Carb?

Signed,
Curley

 

Dear Curley:

Amazingly enough, you can find mazes of maize, and walk through them, searching your way from one end to the other, with nary a kernel passing your lips.

Corn growers in the Midwest have found a new source of income. Recreational corn. These mazes, or labyrinths if you had a classical education, are paths that have been mowed in amongst the corn stalks in the multi-acre fields. And, lest you think these are low tech as well as being low carb, consider that they are laid out with the help of Global Positioning Satellites. There are miles of trails, with hints and refreshments served along the way. (I wonder if they have corn dogs?) Some of these mazes even have educational exhibits along the way, teaching trivia of corn and corn agriculture, while the designs themselves rival the crop circles of extraterrestrial fame. To actually see the design of any maze you have to get up into the air, but when did that ever stop anybody?

You can find a bucking bronco, a running quarter back, a pair of fighting dinosaurs, some crows, and some castles. Or at least those are what they say the designs are. You wander around taking this wrong turn or that one, and it apparently takes several hours to get through. It is family entertainment sure to please. Glorious Spouse has been on my case to take her to Iowa to see one of these things ever since she first heard about them, but it being August, I prefer my hammock.

August is of great interest to me, probably because while lying in selfsame aforesaid hammock, I have contemplated it carefully. A long time ago, some 2000 years or so, Augustus, who was a grandnephew of Julius Caesar, defeated Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, and thereafter became Emperor of Rome. Augustus so impressed the Roman Senate that they decided he should have a month named after him. Understand that they were in month-naming mode, the calendar having recently been messed-around with to change Quintillus to July, and to correct errors such as it being Winter when it was supposed to be Spring. Small stuff like that.

Anyway, the month Sextillus (sixth month) was chosen as the perfect match for Augustus. Senators spoke long about the deeds of Augustus, pointing out that he had “thrice entered the city in triumph and victory” during that month, and that hence forth it should be called Augustus.

Now, you’d think that would be good enough to make anyone happy, but nooooooo. The month Sextillus/Augustus was only a 30 day month, obviously inferior to months with 31 days. Under the Roman calendar, the months alternated between 30 and 31 days, except for February which had 29 days. (That couldn’t be helped, because as powerful as Rome may have been at the time, they could not control the actual length of the year. Something had to give, and it was February.)

Why, you may be asking yourself, did the sixth month Sextillus become August, the eighth month? Did the Romans have some other way of counting to twelve? Did those X’s, V’s, and L’s, and D’s they used for their numbers get them confused? No, none of it. The answer is the year started in March, so what we think of as the 8th month, was the 6th month.

But, getting back to Augustus getting only 30 days. You can see that that would not do. They solved this simply: by taking another day from February and giving it to August. After all, since February already had less days, what difference would one more less day make?

Quagmires Royale arise when you start juggling things around like that. Since, the Roman months alternated between 30 and 31 days to give nice round edges to everything, adding an extra day to August meant that Quintillus/July, Sextillus/Augustus/August, and Septillus/September would all have 31 days. This took away the nice round edges. So, to avoid three long months in a row, the lengths of some of the others had to be switched around. Thus, it comes down to us as “30 days hath September, April, June, and November.”

To be sure, other Roman rulers after Augustus tried getting their own months, but it didn’t work. To be sure, this was not for lack of trying. May was changed to Claudius for a while, and Nero declared that April should be Neronius. But people’s hearts weren’t in it. (Did they think it was just too corny?)

August could have been something else again. Another narrowly missed calendar disaster, dear friends. Augustus didn’t really want to be called Augustus. He wanted to be called Princeps, which meant First Citizen. If that had been his name, we’d be walking through the corn mazes in the month of Princepember (Princepuary?). That might have been okay, but there’s another thing. Augustus’ actual name was Octavian. If he hadn’t already changed his name by the time the Roman Senate decided he needed honoring, they would have had to change the name of Sextillus not to Augustus, nor even to Princepuary, but to Octavius. In that case, we’d have both Octavius and October. What would we do then? We might lose track of Halloween. Catastrophe avoided by a quirk of fate.

So, here I am between the trees in my backyard, sipping sugar-free lemonade, and thinking about these things. Corn is on the mind, but not on our menu. The mazes are laid out in field corn anyhow, the kind that is fed to animals. I’ll take my corn second hand, in a pork chop. Nonetheless, I’m thinking that maybe next year I’ll drive Glorious Spouse to the Midwest to walk through one or two of those bright, sunny, hot, dry fields of maize. On the other hand, maybe not.

***************************

Zack Grady writes from Southern California, and always from a cool spot in the shade.