Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky

Welcome

In the sidebar to your right under Content, you will find pages with links and lists related to Mr. Berry's work.

This website is not owned, operated or sanctioned by Mr. Berry, whose disapproval of computer technology is well-documented.

The one person responsible for all of this is me, Br. Tom Murphy (btwb@brtom.org). All opinions expressed within posts— outside of quoted content—are also only mine. I am not a personal friend or employee of Mr. Berry and am thus not able to arrange interviews or appearances by him.

Please note that most of the posts below will refer you to a larger article. Just click on the "via" link at the lower left side of each post.

Works: Generic lists specific essays within collections.

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Consider joining the conversation at Wendell Berry's Work, an email discussion group.

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Reflecting on Wendell Berry, total economy and local economy

Berry believes the way for people to protect themselves is by developing a local economy, beginning with the idea of a local food economy, which shortens the distance between producers and consumers, to make the local economy benefit the local community, to preserve the livelihoods of local farm families and farm communities, to give consumers influence over the quality of their food, and to preserve the land. In doing so, people begin to see the difference between a local business that shares the fate of the local community and a large absentee corporation that is set up to escape the fate of the local community ruined by corporate malfeasance.

As Berry says, “To be a consumer in the total economy, one must agree to be totally ignorant, totally passive, and totally dependent on distant supplies and self-interested suppliers.  From the standpoint of corporations, the corporate economy brings unprecedented economic growth, but from the standpoint of the land and its local populations … [a corporate economy brings] destruction and slavery. Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.”

via www.madisoncountycourier.com

Blog Watch: Wendell Berry cited in "Mystery meat: friend or foe?"

For those in favor of environmental protection in an increasingly consumer-driven society, these sci-fi inspired patties could be part of the solution to today’s ecological crisis. Unfortunately, such scientific manipulation could actually serve to drive a deeper wedge between humanity and the environment that sustains us.

As Wendell Berry and other agrarian thinkers have suggested, a true appreciation for creation can only be fostered when we recognize the inherent relationship between the land and the products it provides. For example, in today’s society, it is not uncommon for children to grow up having no idea where their food comes from. In fact, some children cannot even identify what the beef on their plates is, let alone where it comes from.

via ameliakrauss.wordpress.com

Blog Watch: "Wendell Berry and William Carlos Williams"

Wendell writes an impressive critical analysis of the writing of William Carlos Williams. Honoring Williams' commitment to his own local community, Berry praises his efforts to find a language that expresses Rutherford, New Jersey and the people and things of that locale.  At the time Williams was writing, New Jersey was considered "provincial."  Most of his poetry peers traveled and lived in Europe.

As a doctor, he was of use to his community and as a poet, he sought to be of use to Rutherford and America. Instead of separating himself, becoming academic or writing in the classic forms with meter and rhyme, Williams had the courage to inhabit his own place in the world of writing. Berry borrows the ecological term "local adaption" to express the effort to connect oneself to place.  This is the goal of the writer, to find the right relation to the land and community where he or she lives; Berry contrasts this with the focus on self or autonomy in the phrase "identity crisis." 

via sheilapacka.blogspot.com

Blog Watch: "Wendell Berry gets a fake Twitter"

The prolific Kentucky author and poet Wendell Berry received one of the highest forms of social media flattery.

A fake Twitter account.

Berry should be lucky, however, because @notwendellberry has no malicious or satirical intent.

via bluecoastlive.wordpress.com

"The Prince's Speech: On the Future of Food" reviewed

The setting was a conference about the future of food at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

As the keynote speaker began to talk, people in the room took special note, and not just because they were listening to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

"Honestly, as I was listening to him speak my jaw dropped, along with everyone else's, because the speech was such a clear and comprehensive explanation of what has gone so wrong with how we produce food in this country and what we need to do to get back on track," recalls Laurie David, an award-winning producer.

via www.kansascity.com

The Berry Center - Supporting Sustainable Agriculture

The Berry Center has revamped its website.

The Berry Center was established to continue the Berry family's work in culture and agriculture by working on issues of farmer education, consumer education, land use, agricultural policy and urban / rural connectedness. We are committed to the idea that we can live well without doing harm.

via www.berrycenter.org

Like The Berry Center on Facebook.

Marion Nestle on the Prince's food book

Americans in general love royalty. Whether food movement participants care about royalty is a different matter. I can't imagine anyone in America having more weight than Michael Pollan and Alice Waters but it's great to have Michelle Obama and now the Prince on our side.

via www.theatlantic.com

Prince Charles Calls for a Greener Food System

Last May, just a day after his son William's eagerly anticipated marriage to Kate Middleton, Prince Charles flew to Washington D.C. to give a speech at the Future of Food Conference, in which he outlined the social and environmental problems associated with industrial food systems and some pragmatic solutions to them. Author and environmentalist Laurie David was in the audience that day and like many others (including Ecocentric bloggers Chris Hunt and Kai Olson-Sawyer), was deeply impressed. Laurie immediately set out to convince the Prince -- and Rodale Press -- that an essay adaptation of the speech would make a great small book.

Today, that little book is out in print and called The Prince's Speech: On the Future of Food, with a foreword by poet and farmer Wendell Berry, and an afterword co-written by urban farmer/MacArthur genius Will Allen and longtime food journalist Eric Schlosser.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Dan Carpenter on Scott Russell Sanders' "Earth Works"

In "Earth Works" (Indiana University Press), the nationally honored practitioner Scott Russell Sanders has collected 30 of his first-person-singular writings in continuing pursuit of "perennial human questions" that will never have definitive answers but suffer tragically from being too seldom asked.

By turns somber and snap-out-of-it buoyant, these elegant artifacts of restless inquiry cover subjects as intimate as the author's sexual awakening and his father's alcoholism, as broad as the origins of the universe and the disarray of contemporary hyper-urban society.

via www.indystar.com

Rodale Books to Publish Prince Charles "On the Future of Food"

In THE PRINCE'S SPEECH, HRH Prince Charles lays out a persuasive case to support the fact that sustainable and organic agriculture can, indeed, feed the world and addresses the real reasons why an industrialized system-one deeply dependent on fossil fuels and chemical treatments-is promoted as viable while a much less damaging one is condemned. THE PRINCE'S SPEECH provides a concise and convincing roadmap for how individuals and nations can achieve a situation where food production is at once affordable, available to all, and not overly taxing of the Earth's quickly diminishing natural resources.

THE PRINCE'S SPEECH will include a foreword by noted author and farmer Wendell Berry and an afterword by urban farmer Will Allen and bestselling author Eric Schlosser-available only in this special commemorative edition. Beautifully packaged as a small-format paperback with flaps, the book will retail for $6.99 and will also be available as an e-book. This stirring, thought-provoking, and ultimately hopeful call to action is a must-have for anyone who cares about the survival of our planet and its people.

via www.marketwatch.com

On reading Wendell Berry's Andy Catlett

Berry is interesting to me because he is so simple. He doesn't spend a thousand pages developing his characters like Dostoevsky. He doesn't overflow with witty banter like Austen and Wilde. He doesn't weave intricate, sometimes surprising plots like the Bronte sisters or Dickens. He doesn't create fantastical worlds like Tolkien, Lewis, or, more recently, Wilson.

And yet his simplicity is every bit a piece of perfection.

via thoughtsaftergod.blogspot.com

from "Wendell Berry on the Necessity of Limits"

I have taken the opportunity this weekend before and on my way to the retreat to read some of what Wendell Berry has said about the necessity of limits.  I’ve been meaning to do so for awhile, but this weekend I stumbled upon this fabulous essay that Berry wrote in 2008 for Harpers Magazine — Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits.  This is a short essay and well worth reading.

Berry gets to the heart of the issue:

The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. We have insistently, and with relief, defined ourselves as animals or as “higher animals.” But to define ourselves as animals, given our specifically human powers and desires, is to define ourselves as limitless animals—which of course is a contradiction in terms. Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself: “I am that I am.”

via www.patheos.com