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Re: [Livingontheland] Wendell Berry, American Hero
- From: henry walden <henrywalden@lycos.com>
- To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Wendell Berry, American Hero
- Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:29:40 +0000 (GMT)
Amen brother Wendell, a little help gonna be necassary.
On Apr 26, 2012, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
In NY TIMES. a few years ago we went to see him in Santa Fe mistaking him for Thomas Berry, but did get to talk with him while everybody else was in line for Gary Snyder.
Wendell Berry, American Hero
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/wendell-berry-american-hero/?ref=opinion
The sensibility of Wendell Berry, who is sometimes described as a modern day Thoreau but who Id call the soul of the real food movement, leads people like me on a path to the door of the hillside house he shares with his wife, Tanya, outside of Port Royal, Ky. Everything is as the pilgrim would have it: Wendell (hes a one-name icon, like Madonna, but probably in that respect only) is kind and welcoming, all smiles.
He quotes Pope (Consult the genius of the place in all), Spenser, Milton and Stegner, and answers every question patiently and articulately. He doesnt patronize. We sit alone, uninterrupted through the morning, for two or three hours. Tanya is at church; when its time, he turns on the oven, as she requested before leaving. He seems positively yogic, or maybe its just this: How often do I sit in long, quiet conversation? Wendell has this effect.
Tanya returns around noon, and their daughter, Mary, arrives shortly thereafter. (Mary lives nearby, runs a winery, and is engaged in enough food and farm justice issues to impress Wendell Berry.) We eat. Its all local, food they or their neighbors or friends or family have grown or raised, food that Tanya has cooked. Theres little fuss about any of that, only enjoyment and good eating. I note that I cant stop devouring the corn bread, and that the potatoes have the kind of taste of the earth that floors you.
And we chat, and then Wendell takes me for a drive around the countryside he was born in and where hes lived for most of his life. As he waves to just about every driver on the road, he explains that the land was once home to scores of tobacco farmers, and now has patches of forest, acres of commodity crops and farms where people do what the land tells them to. Thats one of Wendells recurring themes: Listen to the land.
There really is not that much to see until I try to see it through Wendells eyes, and then every bit of erosion becomes a tiny tragedy or at least a humans mistake and every bit of forest floor becomes a bit of the genius of nature. (If you imitate nature, hes said, youll use the land wisely.)
He knows the land the way I know the stops on the Lexington Avenue subway line and, predictably, I begin feeling like the fairly techie city person I am and wonder if it could have been otherwise. I have friends who back-to-the-landed it in the late 60s and early 70s, and a couple of them stuck it out. Although one of them seems to have disappeared somewhere near Leadville, Colo., another urban as he was in the beginning has gained the same kind of wisdom Wendell has, a sense of patience and understanding, a kind of calm despite full awareness of the storm.
Genuine and as much of a product of place as Wendell is, hes not a full-time farmer and never was, but a farm-raised intellectual and even a man of the world. Id never heard of him the first time I read his work probably in Harpers, probably in the 80s but his words have changed my life. As the years have gone by, Ive watched his stature change. If hes not a leader then hes an inspiration to those who are.
In any case, hes in Port Royal now, and has been for decades (his family has been here for 200 years), and there is something about his attachment to nature its not just the land but everything on the land that is so profound that his observations and his judgments (Wendell is a kind but very judgmental man) can be jaw-dropping. If you read or listen to Wendell and arent filled with admiration and respect, its hard to believe that you might admire and respect the land or nature, or even humanity.
In Washington this past Monday, Wendell delivered the 2012 Jefferson Lecture, the highest honor the federal government has for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. He titled the talk It All Turns on Affection. When I visited him last month he told me that preparing the talk taxed him greatly, and I can see why. Its incredibly ambitious, tying together E.M. Forsters Howards End, the history of his family and the country around it, and to summarize it rather crudely the costs of capitalisms abuse of humans and land.
I doubt there is a more quotable man in the United States. (You can readily see this by reading the text of the talk, or by visiting this lovely page of Wendell Berry quotes.) Monday, he spoke of the mechanical indifference of a financial trust, that it had the indifference of a grinder to what it grinds, saying, It did not intend to victimize its victims. It simply followed its single purpose of the highest possible profit, and ignored the side effects. This from a poet and an essayist who, by following his love of the land and its people, describes the current state of affairs as accurately and succinctly as anyone on earth: The two great aims of industrialism replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy seem close to fulfillment.
I knew that Wendell and I agreed on these things when I went to visit him. Oddly, I felt, as I imagine others have in making the same trip, as if I were seeking wisdom. Indeed, Wendells thoughtfulness and perception, combined with his outside-ness and demeanor (if anyone could persuade me to start worshiping, it would be Wendell), makes this only natural.
We spoke, as I said, for hours, and my two big questions for him were, essentially, How are we going to change this? and What can city people do?
He makes it clear that he doesnt think anything is going to happen quickly, except perhaps the possible catastrophe that lurks in the minds of everyone who believes the earth to be overstressed. You can describe the predicament that were in as an emergency, he says, and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency.
Change, he says, is going to come from people at the bottom doing things differently. [N]o great feat is going to happen to change all this; youre going to have to humble yourself to be willing to do it one little bit at a time. You cant make people do this. What you have to do is notice that theyre already doing it.
Then he takes me to the barn, where there are seven newborn lambs. And he says, When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.
We walk out of the barn, and say goodbye.
Three hours later, my phone rings. (Wendell, famously, does not own a computer.) Mark, he says. Ive been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people cant invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasnt invented by us, and we cant uninvent it. Well need some help with that.
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[Livingontheland] Wendell Berry, American Hero,
Tradingpost, 04/25/2012
- Re: [Livingontheland] Wendell Berry, American Hero, henry walden, 04/26/2012
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