Entrance to the back yard. Watch out for hanging cucumbers!

Bad news: I got a minor cut from one of my chisels. Good news: I’ve successfully put a sharp edge on a chisel.

Today is Darcy’s first day on her new job at Bath and Body Works. It’s a new chapter for her!

In episode 17 of the M&T podcast, Joshua mentions his influences and it’s all the usual suspects:

• Wendell Berry
• Ivan Illich
• EF Schumacher
• Albert Borgmann

I’ve recently discovered Borgmann but I haven’t read much at all of his work. I read Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful many years ago but I’d like to read it again.

Also, when they start writing his biographies, it will be amazing how influential Wendell Berry has been, despite being virtually unknown to the general public.

As with all opinions that don’t matter, I hold firmly to the idea that the Midwest consists of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. It seems to me that the historical roots of the Midwest lie in the Old Northwest Territory (named because it was northwest of the Ohio River), which consisted of the states named above plus a piece of Minnesota.

The Midwest is also characterized by industrial centers–Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee. The further you get from those classic industrial cities the less Midwestern you are. Honestly, here in southern Indiana we’re more of a border region between the Midwest and the South.

But you know what’s even better than state line and arbitrary region names? Watersheds. It grounds our sense of geography in something more real than political boundaries. In this post, Todd writes about one way to do that. If we use his system of naming regions after river watersheds, I live in the nation of Ohio, state of Wabash, county of Patoka-White, and city of East Fork White.

Rachel and I are now lifetime members of our county’s historical society. This is not step one of my Grand Plan to Change the World. It is, however, step one in connecting with my community, warts and all. Localism doesn’t mean much if it’s all just in your head.

We’re shifting to late summer and that means the buzzing drone of annual cicadas. Nothing sounds more like summer than that.

Over the weekend, Rachel harvested 3.5 pounds of Concord grapes and made jelly! I’m having some on biscuits now. So cool!

Easily my favorite, most used flea market tool is a Klein folding rule. Sturdy, compact, and better than a tape measure in several ways. And the solid feel when each section snaps into place is satisfying. 😄

Sometimes I go looking for Rachel in the backyard and can’t find her because of the density of the vegetation.

I was glad to read this bit from Bill McKibben in his tribute to Wendell Berry:

I’m lucky that I was reading Ed Abbey at the same charged moment, because that helped me love the wild as fully as the pastoral, and the irreverent as fully as the good.

I’ve often considered the same contrast, but with Berry and Robinson Jeffers. Berry a poet of the domestic; marriage and community are some of his most common themes. Jeffers is a poet of the wild; hawks and granite and the roar of the Pacific are everywhere in his work.

Having read quite a bit of both of them, I cannot imagine them anywhere other than where they are. Wendell Berry writing and working his farm, considering the soil along the Kentucky River. Jeffers looking out over the Pacific as it washes over the granite cliffs. They are the two most “placed” writers I’ve ever encountered. Some day when I have more time, I’d like to write more about this, with specific examples from their work.

William Stringfellow’s discussion of the Powers in An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land had a large impact on me when I read it many years ago. (I’m less familiar with Walter Wink’s more substantial and systematic writing on the subject, which I believe is derived from Stringfellow’s thought.) The Powers, Stringfellow said, are essentially every institution, corporation, ideology, etc. He also argued that they have some sort of creaturely existence, i.e., they’re not just “ideas.” And, just like humans, they are fallen, fighting against their own death and in rebellion against the Creator.

Here’s where I get sloppy with ideas and start (mis)using them for my own ends. I’ve written about my interpretation of the Garden of Eden here and here. Essentially, I think it’s the mythological rendering of our break from the nonhuman world deep in our evolutionary history. I agree with the “wrongness” at the back of the idea of “fallenness”, but I think it’s a problem with humans, and not shared by the rest of the cosmos.

So while there are indeed Powers, I do not believe they are universally fallen. I believe Stringfellow is right in a lot of ways, but I prefer a more pagan shaping of the idea. The Powers are indeed primal and ancient forces that are greater than humans and shape human lives. And because I’m an animist, I believe the Powers have some sort of independent existence outside the heads of humans. (Jung’s idea of archetypes is useful here but I’d rather stay out of that mode of thought for the moment.)

The Powers just are. They may or may not be interested in your or any other human life. They may or may not be perceived by you as harmful or beneficial. Like the more materialist idea of the “powers of nature,” they are simply doing their thing.

Stringfellow’s belief in the incorrigibility of the Powers is right in some ways. There are some Powers (the nation state, corporations, ideologies) that will always resist any diminishment of their status. And those who are made captive by those same Powers (politicians (yes, all of them), CEOs, ideologues) have been in some sense possessed. Those who try to reform them into something essentially different will be disappointed.

But all Powers are not like this, are they? I’ve been struggling to name the difference. The metaphor that comes to mind has to do with distance. The incorrigible Powers are, relative to the self, distant. They have influence over any given individual of course, but it’s a mediated influence. And the influence is unidirectional: they have some power over you, but you have none over them. You must suffer their existence.

But then there are what I’ll call the Homely Powers. These are the Powers with whom you can have some sort of relationship. These are the powers that constitute your life, e.g., your ancestors and the beings who live in your immediate environment. A daily prayer practice can be seen as an exercise in presenting yourself before the Homely Powers; in it, you are reminded of your place in the nexus and recommit yourself to your responsibilities in the relationship.

Framed like this, the Powers are not a monolithic, evil force. Rather, they are amoral in the same way as the forces of nature. Some subset of them are, in fact, actually constitutive parts of your self. In this way, a person is not simply a mariner caught in hostile winds. Certainly there are hostile winds. There are also, however, winds that carry you home.

Happy 90th birthday, Wendell Berry!

Have you seen these integrated LED light fixtures? “No bulbs to replace”—which means when the bulb goes out you have to replace the entire fixture. And we know how the longevity of LEDs is overblown. It’s the majority of replacement light fixtures at my local Lowe’s. I’m a grouchy old man today.

New song from Nick Shoulders: “Apocalypse Never.”

Cling to joy, don’t let it die

Like the waters, we will rise

He’s also selling a poster (image attached) that will benefit the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

As Andrew Belfield said yesterday:

Well, between “friend” & Google’s Olympics ad, it’s been a bad couple days for humans.

It’s true! Which is why I am glad to have read the chapter “Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass” in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass yesterday. It’s a refreshingly humane contrast to the artificiality of Silicon Valley.

The chapter discusses an experiment performed by Kimmerer and a graduate student at the request of some basket weavers. The ancestral wisdom of the weavers stated that sweetgrass wanted to be harvested, in accordance with the principles of the honorable harvest (e.g., never take the first plant you see, never take more than half). That was known and acknowledged. What was not agreed upon was the method of harvest—snip the stems at the base or extract the plant, roots and all.

So, knowing Kimmerer is a botanist, they asked her to determine if one of the two harvesting methods might be the cause of sweetgrass’ ongoing disappearance. Kimmerer proposed the task to a grad student, who then presented it to a faculty committee. They were not impressed. The project had an insufficient theoretical framework, they said, and “everyone knows that harvesting harms a population. You’re wasting your time.”

The grad student went ahead, however, and worked on the project diligently for two years. Some grasses were harvested by snipping, some by uprooting, and some were untouched as a control population. The results were surprising: it didn’t make much difference which harvesting method was used. Both havested stands flourished. The control group, on the other hand, did not. “It didn’t seem to matter how the grass was harvested, only that it was.”

Later analysis also compared areas where sweetgrass was known to have once thrived and since disappeared and areas where it still thrives. The areas where it still thrives were found to be clustered around Native American communities that use sweetgrass in their basket weaving.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that it is Sweetgrass that reveals this story. Wiingaashk was the first to be planted by Skywoman on the back of Turtle Island. The grass gives its fragrant self to us and we receive it with gratitude. In return, through the very act of accepting the gift, the pickers open some space, let the light come in, and with a gentle tug bestir the dormant buds that make new grass. Reciprocity is a matter of keeping the gift in motion through the self-perpetuating cycles of giving and receiving.

Our elders taught that the relationship between plants and humans must be one of balance. People can take too much and exceed the capacity of the plants to share again. That’s the voice of hard experience that resonates in the teachings of “never take more than half.” And yet, they also teach that we can take too little. If we allow traditions to die, relationships to fade, the land will suffer. These laws are the product of hard experience, of past mistakes.

I don’t know what future the machine minds are planning. The world as it actually exists, however—the world of flesh and stem, soil and water—has an essential place for us.

More on the signs of the reversal of technological progress: it’s interesting that Goia frames it as a reversal of progress. The signs he discusses are evidence that high technology is worsening as a tool. If high tech was actually being dismantled, I’d be happy. But it’s just increasingly bad.

I’m kinda glad I’m not a subscriber and can only see about a quarter of the 52 reasons to fear that technological progress is reversing

Lord of the Rings has obviously had a huge impact on me. I’ve mentioned before how the Litany Against Fear from Dune is a part of my life. Recently the line from Wheel of Time has been popping into my head regularly: “The wheel weaves as the wheel wills.”

In other gardening news–to balance things out–the squirrels have absolutely demolished our sunflowers. They haul their fat asses up the stalks (bless ‘em), bite the heads off and bring the whole thing down. Or they reach out from the privacy fence and eat like they’re in a Golden Corral. Ah, well.

Check out these Concord grapes! They’re still a touch sour but they’re almost ready.

We found the graves of the first owners’ of our home today. We put some flowers from our backyard—theirs and ours—on the grave.

I read through the abstract for our house this evening and worked out the history of ownership. The property that includes our house began as a grant of 160 acres from the US government to William Carmichael in 1818. For the next century it was sold off in pieces and parts and was the subject of several lawsuits. One of the owners was Dr. Winthrop Foote—doctor, lawyer, and founder of the local limestone industry.

Our particular lot took its current shape in 1907 when John and Laura Owens purchased it. From there is goes as follows:

1. John and Laura Owens 1907-1929
2. Elizabeth Norton (nee Owens) 1929-1939
3. Dr. William and Delzena Schroer 1939-1961
4. Florine Kern (nee Schroer) 1961-1974
5. Gloria Elliott 1974-2009
6. The Abels 2009-present

All told, we’re the fourth family to live in this house. The three previous families all lived here 30+ years. We plan to keep that tradition.

Two unlikely dreams re: the Bedford pie safe:

1. Acquire one of the 16-20 known to exist and preserve it. Something this unique shouldn’t be allowed to vanish.
2. Build a reproduction. I will never have the skill of an actual 19th century professional cabinetmaker but it would be a heck of a project.

I found out this week that my hometown has a unique piece of furniture: the Bedford pie safe. It is unique in being three panels wide instead of two. Research by the local historical society found that they were built by a cabinetmaker named John Reath (1817-1898). I’d love to see one in person!