Finished reading Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry. Fictionalized account of a formative event in the Berry family, and its impact over generations. Do you really need me to tell you it’s wonderful? 📚
Amish wisdom
From Uncle Wendell’s latest: Since his return, Andy has lived his story and his family’s in that place for sixty years. The place as it was when he returned is no more. It is now, to him, a strange country with a familiar story surviving in it. Port William’s fatal mistake was its failure to value itself at the rate of its affection for itself. Gradually, it had learned to value itself as outsiders—as the nation–valued it: as a “no-where place,” a place at the end of the wrong direction.
Test run at hand-dipped candles, using old candle nubs and a can. Obviously greater volume of wax will be needed for proper length candles but I’d call the test successful.
Finished reading Kingsnorth Against the Machine. I both want and don’t want to say a lot about it, so I’m opting for less over more. With one notable exception (which I won’t get into here because, unlike him, I don’t think it’s central to his argument), I agree with most of it. In fact, most of the arguments are familiar to the localist, agrarian, human scale, neo-Luddite crowd. And his recommendations are also good.
But I don’t trust him. Some of this is my inability to forgive him for a stupid thing he said in one of those holy well essays. Aside from that, I wonder how many years it will be before he says something truly ugly.
I can’t help but compare him to Wendell Berry, who has been a major influence on us both (if I understand correctly). Berry is deeply humane and patient and rooted. Kingsnorth wants to be—and, while that desire is very commendable, I don’t think he’s there yet. He feels too “of the moment” and tapped into certain trends that don’t help my worry about where he’s going. For being a student of Berry, Kingsnorth talks less about localism than I expected. I think if he moved that direction more fully, I would be a bit less suspicious about his motivation.
So this stuff is crazy, obviously. But could it not be the case that we’re in a fad period and everyone will be slightly embarrassed by it in a few years? Don’t people mostly return to a sane baseline? That’s not to say it won’t cause real destruction, but does it seem likely to redefine humanity?
As your accountant, I don’t recommend a fifty-year mortgage.
Dumbing down my iPhone
There are a few signs that my iPhone is nearing the end of its life, so I’ve been thinking about the Light Phone lately. Today I was discussing it with Rachel and she suggested turning my iPhone into something like a Light Phone to see how it goes. I took her advice. Turns out, I didn’t end up with exactly a Light Phone equivalent, but it is drastically different than it was.
My worldview is more aesthetic than rational—and I’m fine with that, since no one is looking to me for answers about anything.
Adam Kotsko: “That time I unexpectedly stopped ruining my own life” I’ve found Kotsko’s writing helpful for many years now—but I was never a fan of his relentless sarcasm. I’m glad he’s getting over that. It’s depressing how many good, intelligent folks are ruining their lives with social media.
Actor and humorist Nick Offerman on what he has learned from Wendell Berry. When Offerman asked to adapt Berry’s stories for the screen, Uncle Wendell replied:
I like you, and I like your letter, but I consider the whole of my writing to be an ongoing project, and, as such, I’m not interested in seeing anybody else’s take on it.
Thank God for that.