Wendell Berry

[catherine]

I keep reading and seeing things by him and about him that just makes me love him more and more.

See this webpage where there's a great video (38 minutes, moderated by Bill Moyers) that encapsulates his life-long work in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, environmentalism, activism.

https://openspacetrust.org/wsls-wendell-berry/

[iris lilies]

I have not read anything by Wendell Berry but thank you for reviving his work Catherine. I imagine he’s going to die off like many well-known writers because people don’t read him anymore.

[Yppej]

I like his novels and would have read more of them of my library owned more.

[catherine]

It's not just his writing I will miss when he passes. I value his whole mindset--his writings are a tool to spread his ideas, which are, as described by Wikipedia:


Berry's nonfiction serves as an extended conversation about the life he values. According to him, the good life includes sustainable agriculture,[38] appropriate technologies,[39] healthy rural communities,[40] connection to place,[41] the pleasures of good food,[42] husbandry,[43] good work,[44] local economics,[45] the miracle of life,[46] fidelity,[47] frugality,[48] reverence,[49] and the interconnectedness of life.[50] The threats Berry finds to this good simple life include: industrial farming and the industrialization of life,[51] ignorance,[52] hubris,[53] greed,[54] violence against others and against the natural world,[55] the eroding topsoil in the United States,[56] global economics,[57] and environmental destruction.[58] As a prominent defender of agrarian values, Berry's appreciation for traditional farming techniques,[59] such as those of the Amish, grew in the 1970s, due in part to exchanges with Draft Horse Journal publisher Maurice Telleen.[60] Berry has long been friendly to and supportive of Wes Jackson, believing that Jackson's agricultural research at The Land Institute lives out the promise of "solving for pattern" and using "nature as model."

Jedediah Britton-Purdy has considered many of Berry's major themes and concerns:

Over the years, he has called himself an agrarian, a pacifist, and a Christian—albeit of an eccentric kind. He has written against all forms of violence and destruction—of land, communities, and human beings—and argued that the modern American way of life is a skein of violence. He is an anti-capitalist moralist and a writer of praise for what he admires: the quiet, mostly uncelebrated labor and affection that keep the world whole and might still redeem it. He is also an acerbic critic of what he dislikes, particularly modern individualism, and his emphasis on family and marriage and his ambivalence toward abortion mark him as an outsider to the left.[61]
The concept of "Solving for pattern", coined by Berry in his essay of the same title, is the process of finding solutions that solve multiple problems, while minimizing the creation of new problems.[62] The essay was originally published in the Rodale Press periodical The New Farm. Though Mr. Berry's use of the phrase was in direct reference to agriculture, it has since come to enjoy broader use throughout the design community.[63][64]

Berry's core ideas, and in particular his poem "Sabbaths III, 1989 (Santa Clara Valley)," guided the 2007 documentary feature film The Unforeseen, produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford.[65][66] In the film Berry narrates his own poem.[67] Director Laura Dunn went on to make the 2016 documentary feature Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, again produced by Malick and Redford.[68]

Bolding mine. If I could create a map of my values and overlaid it on that paragraph it would completely match. He shames me that I have not done more to "be the change."

[razz]

Your thread triggered me to look at some of his writings. I agree with his values as well.

[razz]

That is a neat video to watch. Thanks for providing the link. I have friends who have lost hope and fear the future for themselves and their family's future generations. I have not given up hope.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't know to what extent it matters if one has hope or not. What is one supposed to do with it either way? I mean if one gets too overwhelmed then they need a break from thinking about it perhaps, certainly just ruminating beyond a certain point is unproductive. But hope seems neither here nor there.

[catherine]

What I've recently read about and pondered about hope is that it can be bad if you do things expecting an outcome. It's better to not hope, and just do what you think is right. It's funny that that has come up a few times for me over the last week or so in various writings and interviews, so I'm taking it a sign of something I need to learn.

[Rogar]

It's been so long since I've read Weddell Berry that I've forgotten most of it. What I do remember and what I think about sometimes are a few of his comments on "sense of place". A concept that sometimes seems lost in our mobile society and urban sprawl, and is important in our role as custodians of the planet.

[bae]

I’ve loved his books.

[HappyHiker]

Mr. Berry's writings and his life are inspiring. I watched the interview and it was very special. Thanks for sharing this link...

[Simone]

I kept a copy of "The Peace of Wild Things" on my desk at work for the first year after 9/11.
I know we've spoken of Berry many times on this forum, and decided to do an advanced search.

He's been mentioned 18 times in the past ten years. He's meant a lot to many of us.