Tag Archives: Wendell Berry
FREE RANGE: FOOD, NATURE, PLACE, AND MORE
Microbiomes and individual identity: Alexander Pope and the archbishop of Canterbury
I learned a startling fact the other day while listening to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross interviewing Dr. Nathan Wolfe, author of The Viral Storm, a disconcerting account of his research into pandemics like avian flu and AIDS that leap from … Continue reading
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Tagged Alexander Pope, Enlightenment, Human Microbiome Project, individualism, Nathan Wolfe, Rowan Williams, Terry Gross, Wendell Berry
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Take me to the river
Last week I started rowing again after an eight-month hiatus. It has been pure pleasure, despite the inevitable price of blisters on my baby-soft hands. First, the pleasure of seeing my friends at the dock, including the ducks and C.J. … Continue reading
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Tagged Bible, books, cancer, Colorado River, marriage, rowing, sex, Wendell Berry
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Angels in the dark
Jesus said to them… “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be … Continue reading
Dorothea Brooke, Big Ag, and Betty Friedan
I’m a lousy housewife, which, in my initial phase of housewifery, is exactly what I aspired to be. Not for me the bourgeois passion for clean baseboards and orderly closets, especially after graduate school in literature in the mid-1980s, in … Continue reading
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Tagged agribusiness, farming, feminism, George Eliot, Harper's, Wendell Berry
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Tragic waste: some thoughts on the s-word
Michael Pollan notes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Mealsthat industrial agriculture has taken an elegant solution—crops feed animals, whose manure in turn fertilizes crops—and “divide[d] it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm… … Continue reading
Posted in Nature
Tagged agribusiness, bat guano, chickens, Lent, Madroño Ranch, manure, Michael Pollan, Nuclear Boy, Wendell Berry
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Lenten reflections: dead trees, bafflement, and submission
Fittingly, this Ash Wednesday began with a vigorous north wind, the kind that knocks dead branches out of trees and can make you a little leery about walking outdoors. It blew me back to the moment that I first got … Continue reading
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Tagged bafflement, Dai Due, feral hogs, hunting, Lent, limits, submission, Texas Hill Country, Wendell Berry
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"If you got a field that don’t yield": writer’s block and the language of community
Isa Catto Shaw’s show at the Doug Casebeer, with whom she shared the show, each spoke movingly about the impetus behind their individual efforts. Knowing that she had been working like a madman for several months, I was glad (and … Continue reading
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Tagged community, Isa Catto Shaw, Jessica Hobby Catto, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wendell Berry, writing
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Singing in the dark
The relentless sunshine of the current weather here in Austin might make those in the Midwest or on the East Coast sigh with envy. A photo on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times shows an Ohio man ineffectually … Continue reading
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Tagged Advent, chupacabra, darkness, Joy Howard, Lent, tohu-bohu, Wendell Berry
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Barbers, bison meat, and the invisible hand
I was back in my shiny new persona as salesperson last week, driving out to all the dude ranches around Bandera in hopes of scaring up a market for the hundreds and hundreds of pounds of bison meat we will … Continue reading
Posted in Food
Tagged Adam Gopnik, Adam Smith, bison, community, economics, The New Yorker, Wendell Berry
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“A cup of tea, a warm bath, and a brisk walk”
A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. (Wendell Berry) If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them … Continue reading
Posted in Place
Tagged dogs, Henry David Thoreau, Madroño Ranch, Roaring Fork River, snakes, Texas Hill Country, walking, Wendell Berry
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