Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter:
There can be places in this world, and in human hearts too, that are opposite to war. There is a kind of life that is opposite to war, so far as this world allows it to be.
Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter:
The living can’t quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can’t because they don’t. The light that shines in darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room [of love]. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.
… No big happiness came to me yet, but little happinesses did come, and they came from ordinary pleasures in ordinary things: the baby, sunlight, breezes, animals and birds, daily work, rest when I was tired, food, strands of fog in the hollows early in the morning, butterflies, flowers. The flowers didn’t have to be dahlias and roses either, but just the weeds blooming in the fields, the daisies and the yarrow. I began to trust the world again, not to give me what I wanted, for I saw that it could not be trusted to do that, but to give unforeseen goods and pleasures that I had not thought to want.
Our little pond is mostly frozen now, except where a little water flows. I wonder if Nessie is still there.
Finished reading Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry. 📚 This was his first novel but my edition is the revised 1985 paperback. He edited it so that it would fit in what would become the overarching history of the Port William membership. I think I’ll read Hannah Coulter next.
I’m disappointed that it’s too cold to be in my garage working on my weekend project but I’m going to console myself with a big breakfast for lunch and reading Wendell Berry this afternoon. I’ve nearly finished Nathan Coulter.
I have my weekend project: a router sled. Attempting to surface my low bench with a hand plane didn’t work for a few reasons and it beat the hell out of the blade because the bench is built from rough old lumber. This will allow me to keep moving on the project and make plane adjustments later.
In the barber shop today, the person before me and the person after me were having their mullets cut off. May ever more poor souls come to see the light.
Well worth reading: “Dancing in the Theatre of my Enslavement: Reflections on turning forty as a female, and forty things I know.”
I’m going to have to make this pine needle soda. Easy and, according to Old Farmers Almanac, more vitamin C than orange juice.