jabel

Growing up, I watched my dad check the door locks every night–and I picked up the habit from him. I’m probably worse than him, actually. I have my theories about why we each acquired this compulsion, which I won’t get into here. And though I don’t know where the clinically compulsive line is, I’m probably too close to it.

Besides, it sucks as a nightly ritual. This morning it occurred to me that this whole thing needs a reframing. Beginning tonight when I check the doors, I’m going to move away from that mild anxiety toward a nightly blessing. A far better way to end the day.

Bless this house,
Bless these doors,
Blessed are those
who walk these floors.

Shard of the sun
spalled into space,
hidden in bodies
in far-distant days.

In jubilant work,
we spend our new heat,
continuing creation.
The task is complete.

The fire within
cools to a cinder.
Other warm bodies
become the new tinder.

The cycle renewed,
the new morning dawns.
Heat calls to heat:
our body responds.

Dear A—,

You asked me why I love Wendell Berry’s fiction. There’s no accounting for taste, as you’ve heard, but here’s my attempt.

First you should know what the man himself is about. Famously, he left behind a promising academic career to write and farm at his old home place. In the decades since he has become one of the leading lights of localism and agrarianism. His influence has been significant, touching everything from the literary world to family farms to the local food movement.

A few years ago he summarized his principles as follows:

1. An elated, loving interest in the use and care of the land.
2. An informed and conscientious submission to nature.
3. The wish to have and to belong to a place of one’s own, as the only secure source of sustenance and independence.
4. A persuasion in favor of economic democracy; a preference for enough over too much.
5. Fear and contempt of waste of every kind, and its ultimate consequence in land exhaustion.
6. A preference for saving rather than spending.
7. An assumption of the need for a subsistence or household economy.
8. An acknowledged need for neighbors, and a willingness to be a good neighbor.
9. A living sense of the need for continuity of family and community life.
10. Respect for work, and (as self-respect) for good work.
11. A lively suspicion of anything new, contradicting the ethos of consumerism and the cult of celebrity.

These principles are, he would say, simply the continuance of what he learned from his father, grandfather, and those in the small community of Port Royal who paid an affectionate attention to their land and work.

Port William is the fictional counterpart to the real-world Port Royal, a farming community on the Kentucky River in Henry County, Kentucky. Earlier this year, I drove in and around Port Royal. I’m fairly sure I found Berry’s house and writing shed! The area reminded me a bit of Springville, one of the (diminished) farming communities in our area.

M– mentioned in our group text that one of her favorite parts of Berry’s work is the way it reminds her of people and places now gone. I completely agree. I have a lot of roots in Springville, and Berry’s characters are recognizable to me.

At the same time, it is important for me to emphasize that my love for Port William is not mere nostalgia. That’s why I said Lake Wobegon isn’t the right analogy. Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average, is nostalgia.

Berry is doing something harder: he is chronicling the decline and death of a community and way of life. The characters often worry about young people leaving the community for the promise of “modern” life off the farm. Even those who stay don’t always farm wisely, indebting themselves for new technology, then trying to “plow their way our of debt” by ignoring the rules of good husbandry and damaging the land.

Burley Coulter is, in some ways, the heart of the Port William membership. (“Membership” being Wendell Berry’s word for that community of human and non-human working together toward mutual flourishing.) He lived a wayward life as a young man. He didn’t follow the usual pattern of men in the community, but he did stick around and came to be one of its keepers.

One day in Wheeler Catlett’s office, Burley said, “The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.”

A beautiful summary of Wendell Berry’s values—spoken by an old man preparing his will. Death is everywhere in Port William, both the usual sort of death and the looming death of a way of life and a moral vision.

And yet, the stories are not only an elegy. They are a picture of what could be ours if we turned back to the land with affection. It is for this reason I sometimes find myself laying down the books gently, because the stories feel precious to me. They present to me a possible life. Not the only life: cities also need renewal and their renewal will obviously look very different from what is presented in Port William. But that is work for city folks to do, and I wish them well.

For those of us living in rural and small town America, the stories offer a vision of holistic community. It is a vision in stark, irreconcilable contradiction to the vision of high-tech consumer capitalism offered to us today. That way is the way of death.

I don’t have any predictions about which vision will win out, though it doesn’t look good for those of with a preference for the small, simple, and humane. But whatever happens, a few of us will return again and again to have our hearts broken and mended by Wendell Berry’s work.

Yours in contrariness,

Jeremy

In one of his Just a Few Acres Farm videos, Pete was repairing a plow and mentioned the coulter. Being a Wendell Berry nerd, I recognized that as one of the surnames in Port William. That led me down a rabbit hole. Let’s be clear: the following is pure speculation based on internet research and could be wrong.

Coulter A blade or disc set ahead of the plowshare that cuts into the soil, resulting in a neater furrrow.

Feltner Appears to be an Americanized version of a surname with roots in the German word feld, meaning “field.” Could have agricultural connections?

Beechum Beech-Nut tobacco was a popular, early chewing tobacco brand. I have my doubts about this connection, though: 1. It’s admittedly a stretch, and 2. Beech-Nut was acquired by the James B. Duke tobacco empire and we all know how uncle Wendell feels about Duke.

Wheeler The draft horse in the position nearest the front wheels of the wagon.

Pettit Possibly derived from an Old French word meaning “small.” This was the last name of the money-obsessed man who married Old Jack’s daughter Clara, who rejected her father’s way of life and cared nothing about what he loved.

Burley Coulter This is a particular character’s full name, not a family name. Burley is the type of tobacco grown in Kentucky and surrounding regions. Burley Coulter is in some ways the heart of the Port William membership. Sometimes wayward, not a traditional family man, he comes to feel the value of the membership keenly. “The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.”