Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky

Wendell Berry quoted in photographer profile

Wendell Berry, a poetic and philosophical critic who writes of nature and of simplicity, once said, "I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods." This appreciation for the simple, reverent interaction of hand and soil, the pursuit of domestic simplicity, shoots through much of Berry's writing and has since inspired a generation of young farmers, poets and American home-dwellers. And that mentality infuses the photography of Columbia resident Rachel Keren Nelson, who strives to capture the most intricate, glowing details of contemporary Midwestern hearth, home and heather.

via www.columbiatribune.com

Wendell Berry cited in "Toward an economy of Earth"

Like Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau idealized an agricultural society that was close to nature. Thoreau was a staunch defender of agrarian anarchy, and he focused even more closely on the individual than did Jefferson: “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” To my knowledge, no state governments believe we’ve yet reached that point.

Fast forward to the late twentieth century, and we find several other philosophers defending agrarian anarchy. Perhaps the best known examples are Wendell Berry, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, but the clearest voice for agrarian anarchy came from Edward Abbey in the years before he died in 1989: (1) “Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners”; (2) “Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others”; and (3) “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

via guymcpherson.com

from "Google Privacy and a Wendell Berry Poem"

So, what to do? Wendell Berry knew, way before Google existed:

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.  Love the Lord.  Love the world.  Work for nothing.  Take all you have and be poor.  Love someone who does not deserve it.  Denounce the government and embrace the flag.  Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

And he has some advice for us about how to know what is right in a world with so many questions:

Expect the end of the world.  Laugh.  Laughter is immeasurable.  Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.  So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men.  Ask youself:  Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?  Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

via www.nodepression.com

Of Interest: Wendell Berry noted in "The Soul of Slow Food"

When my fiancée, Juliana, and I were farming, we grew the most beautiful produce I have ever seen. I do not mean to brag. It is sort of like being a parent, or a pet owner. Anyone who has grown food with love probably feels that way about the product of his or her labor. We grew 300 varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, many heirloom varieties, and ingredients for cooking food from so many traditions. We sold them at a farmers' market in a well-heeled neighborhood, and we charged a lot of money. We did not think twice about charging $16 per pound for salad greens. We knew what work went into it, we knew how good it was, and we knew it was worth it. We sold out. And we made $12,000 a year between the two of us. We thought we were doing pretty well.

When low-income people came to our stand with food stamps, we gave them two or three for the price of one. But something was broken. At $12,000, we had low incomes ourselves, and the only people we could feed had high incomes. I wanted to change the world, and I saw farming as a piece of that work. Fairness for the farmer seemed to mean injustice for the eater. Fairness for the eater seemed to mean injustice for the farmer. How could we simply choose to fight for one, with the knowledge that it undercut the other?

via www.theatlantic.com

"Wendell Berry Is Still Alive and Well"

Wendell Berry is still alive.   Back in June of 2009, a blogger apparently pulled a “Twain” on the former professor at University of Kentucky and ‘exaggerated’ his death.  It turns out (although Thomas Berry passed away) the man who bought some land in Henry County (Wendell) has survived and continues to thrive.  Here’s a Youtube clip of the poet being introduced by Bill McKibben.

via thebarking.com

Wendell Berry considered in Joanna Campbell's "Find out what you're staying for"

We Americans are a people both fascinated and horrified by the notion of commitment. Note the most common sitcom plots, the predictable trajectories of our celebrity marriages, even the myth of the American hero striking out, away from the familiar, toward an unknown future. What is it about commitment that is so frightening, yet so compelling? Commitment scares us because the truth does. At least Wendell Berry suggests something like that:

“Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you -- and marriage, time, life, history, and the world -- will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way.

via www.faithandleadership.com

Wendell Berry cited in "Seeking a land ethic among the mining debates"

If you ask people in this country what are their most important relationships, I doubt few would include their relationship with the land. Most might not even be conscious they have one.

And yet how we relate to land — how we value it — underpins most of our personal and communal lives. The same is true of any culture. Whether people are aware of it or not, what they eat and drink, their health, their healthcare system, where they live, their transportation, their property rights, their farming practices, their religion and much else look significantly different depending on how their culture values the land.

via lacrossetribune.com

Wendell Berry cited in "An appeal for political imagination"

What message would it send our enemies if the world's foremost military superpower had the audacity -- the seeming foolishness -- to indeed drop food instead of bombs? If we reallocated a slim percentage from the fifth of the federal budget that pours into defense to the 1 percent trickling into foreign aid? This is "denounced as impractical" and "does not afford opportunities for profit," yet it "involves danger to practitioners" and "requires sacrifice," as Berry explains. An honest man indeed, he urges for a peaceableness that would perhaps require one's life. Ask the Amish, Berry says. Ask the martyrs and peaceful revolutionaries. Regardless, "as a practicable method," Berry claims, "it reduces helplessness in the face of conflict ... [For] the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one." Indeed, there seemed to be only one option ten years ago.

via delawareonliine.com

Relating Wendell Berry to the Occupy Movement

The Occupy Movement is a symbolic expression of this alienation. To occupy is a demonstration of the need to make oneself an affective part of something. At the same time, the Movement has no agreed upon agenda. It proclaims its alienation from the world of power politics and economics by stating they are "the 99%” and “this is what democracy looks like,” but it is powerless to even suggest a solution or a way forward.

It occurs to me these circumstances are symptomatic of the point poet Wendell Berry is offering us. We cannot bring peace to the conflictual condition in our world, nor can we heal our spiritual alienation, unless we begin to recognize the sacred nature of the world in which we live. “There are no unsacred places … [only] desecrated places.”

via www.bettendorf.com

Wendell Berry cited in review

"Love in this world doesn't come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place." So writes Wendell Berry in his breathtaking novel Hannah Coulter. If any four sentences can sum up the core thesis of Craig G. Bartholomew's Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today (Baker Academic), then surely it is these.

via www.christianitytoday.com