“Gather round you all
the things that you love, name
their names, prepare
to lose them.”
from Song in a Year of Catastrophe by Wendell Berry
Celebrated American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry has died at the age of 92. My friend Katie and I talked and we decided it is a lot for humanity, maybe too much, to bear losing him and Dolly in the same week. Wendell Berry lived a beautiful, long life, and still I have a hollow ache in my chest at the news of his passing.
I opened up his “New Collected Poems” this morning and tears streamed down my face. This man sees (saw) the world from the vantage point of his family farm, as do I. He sees (saw) the earth between our fingers as sacred, as do I. He taught me, at a time when I wasn’t sure how to reconcile our family farm with my environmentalism, that those ways of seeing are beautiful and important and real and intimately connected.
Don’t worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you
can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own.
If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his
throat every time it hailed.
But the real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind and
the cropland itself.
If he raises a good crop at the cost of belittling himself and
diminishing the ground, he has gained nothing. He will have to
begin over again the next spring, worse off than before.
Let him receive the season’s increment into his mind. Let him
work it into the soil.
The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.
Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better piece
of ground.
Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer (XIII) by Wendell Berry
I owe a lot to Wendell Berry’s writing, and though he was not as world famous as Dolly Parton, the two have a lot in common. They were both artists who changed the world, respected elders in a society that despises old age, and courageous truth tellers. They both honoured their roots and showed humility and strength in equal measure, and they both marched to the beat of their own drums. They both loved this world beyond explanation.
On Friday September 11 Katie Hoogendam and I are hosting a celebration and remembrance of these two lodestar humans. We’ll share songs, poems and essays - mostly theirs and a few of ours inspired by their work. Admission is free, this will be a simple and sacred offering full of the joy and hope Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry both insisted on.
“Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.”
from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry
Celebrating Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry
Friday September 11 at 7pm
Old Camborne Schoolhouse
Free Admission