Day: January 13, 2011

I became aware of Wendell Berry in recent years because so many people were telling me that they read his work and thought it was my writing. I wish.

Berry does speak my mind, though, sometimes so eerily that I get a bit of a shiver:

“The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation.

Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common – not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. It’s aim is to separate us as far as is possible from the sources of  life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to sell them to us at the highest profit…

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and create profitable diseases and dependences – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving.  In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.”

– Wendell Berry, “The Art Of The Commonplace.”

I love Berry because he is so eloquent and compelling on the awful partnership between politics and corporatism that is degrading so much of our lives, from media to travel to customer service to health care and jobs and work to the nature of government itself. Got three Berry books and poems today and can’t wait to wade in.

Glens Falls has become one of my favorite places in recent years. The city is a rich, delicious and atmospheric mix of mills, culture, industrial buildings, gracious homes and neighborhoods, history, and  new bustling art, restaurant and music sensibilities. Around every corner is a mix of new and old, and odd and evocative. I came across this mural downtown today. There are great thrift shops, a good museum, a symphony, theater company and impressive library. Even a semi-pro hockey team. On some blocks, you think you’re in a tiny little town, and around the next corner, a vast paper mill rises up, with blinking brick towers and plumes of steam. I love taking photos there.

There is not much that is more satisfying than watching a Lab in the snow, then seeing dogs live their lives, do what they were meant to do. Lenore is a storm dog. She has the right attitude about stinky and messy weather. Never too cold, too wet, too dirty.

So Maria and I went into the Pig Barn just now. Got into snowboots, put the camera around my neck, took the .22. Opened and came in. Not sure if anything is still in there, as there are no tracks leading out, although there are plenty of places for a sleeping animal to hide, including the old Pig Cauldron where pigs used to be slaughtered. This space will soon be an art gallery, to be run by my former girlfriend. A dog would flush an animal out, but too dangerous if it’s rabid.

A rabid animal would most likely be staggering around, even challenging us. Saw and heard nothing, and I had the feeling whatever it was – a skunk or raccoon, mostly likely, judging by the tracks – has left. We hammered up the clapboard and left the door open. Life on a farm is like that, surely. One thing leads to another, and not two experiences are ever the same. Back to the work of a writer. There is no such thing as a no-kill farm. The natural world is not as placid as we might like. But it is not fun shooting a living thing. Rabid cats and raccoons have attacked and nearly killed Rose in our early days at the farm and I don’t even want to think of Frieda encountering one. Anyway, this looks like no big deal. I’ll go back and check later.

The sun came out and it is a beautiful day in Bedlam. Chris came and plowed us out twice yesterday, and we got another good dose last night, so he will be back. Mother ventured out to say hello. Little more than a week for the library tour, January 23-29: Granville, N.Y., Cobbleskill, N.Y., Salisbury, Conn., Richboro, Pa., Providence, R.I., Osterville, Mass., Scituate, Mass., Edgartown, Mass. Help save our libraries. They are the best of us.