Author, poet, farmer, activist Wendell Berry was recently honored at the White House for his contributions to the humanities. If you’d like to celebrate, here’s a good place to start.
Rufus F.
Rufus is an American curmudgeon in Canada. He has a PhD in History, sings in a garage rock band, and does a bunch of other stuff.
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I thought this was about Detroit Lions defensive end Robert Porcher.Report
You anagram “Hannah Coulter” and you get “HAH! Ann Coulter!”
Hope.
Change.Report
Brilliant!Report
Why would Obama go for the poacher vote?
oh wait, nevermind.Report
Poetry sticks to me. As a little kid, I had to memorize Bible verses, learned the knack of it, helped along by a shilling here and there as I dutifully swallowed and regurgitated bits of the Bible.
Grew up a bit, found poetry worth memorizing. Memorized a bit of Wendell Berry along the way. I’ve muttered this under my breath, many times, as consulting has dragged me around the world. It’s from “A Timbered Choir”
I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.Report
… who also penned the essay, “Feminism, Body, and the Machine.” Which I point out here only because this post made it twice today that I’ve been tempted to note the irony that Wendell Berry was honored on the same day that Northwestern Sex Toy-gate broke.Report
Also, in case, like me, you thought that Philip Roth genuinely was mentally/physically incapable of smiling (there’s a great line in a newspaper interview where the photographer takes a picture, Roth doesn’t smile, and the photographer says, ‘Let’s take it again, but smile this time,’ and Roth responds, bluntly, ‘I don’t smile.’), or, at the very least, that he simply smashed the cameras of all who caught him in a candid moment, this image was a little disappointing: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/gallery/2011/03/obama-honors-2010-national-medal-of-arts-and-humanities-recipients.php?img=4
I’m still going to go around being intrigued by the fact that a writer whose reputation was made on comic skill refuses to smile, though.Report
It’s a great picture though. He looks like Scrooge telling the lad to buy a goose for the Kratchets for it’s Christmas morn.Report
I know a humorist and a cartoonist. Neither of them laugh.Report
Here’s an old book review I did of Hannah Coulter, one of the most significant American novels ever written.
http://www.voegelinview.com/hannah-coulter-review.htmlReport
That’s a lovely bit of writing. My experiences with rural America are decidedly different. It’s a hard life, farming, especially dairy. My old man taught at Houghton College for a couple of years. There were two groups of kids at the central school: the townies and the farmers. I chose the farmer kids, since we lived in an old farmhouse the college owned. Lemme tell you, Fillmore NY was not Port William.Report
Dammit Blaise, if this keeps up we’ll be drinking Maker’s Mark and smoking finely crafted Hounduran cigars, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a source for Cubans. “My people” fought the bold warriors of the Ohio Nations, then farmed their land for generations in much the same way brother Berry speaks of.
Part of my contratiness is due to my nostalgia for those people and their culture. But, just a part.Report