The Day After the Night Before

A mere twenty four hours ago I lived in a different world. Ever the pessimist, I had been denying any of the positivity being expressed on the left. Having been bitterly disappointed in most recent elections, I was simply not interested in getting my hopes up only to have them dashed by the reality I had become used to. I am, by nature a rather hopeful sort, but recent years have slapped me down more times than I care to acknowledge, and I was damned if I would set myself up for yet another bitter disappointment. 

The Beloved Spouse and I had voted on the first day of early voting, almost as soon as the polls opened. Things were busy, the parking lot fairly crowded, and there were lines. The process (despite the fact that we had to fill in little bubbles with a special pen, rather than poke boxes on a screen with a cotton swab, which had been the case for the last two elections) took little time, and we were soon on our way to pick up groceries on the way home. By late that evening, reports of record turnouts were popping up on the news. At least folks were treating these midterm elections seriously: more seriously, it turns out, than they had treated early voting for the last general election.

So, by the time local polls closed, I decided to retire upstairs to read, and my somewhat more sanguine spouse made plans to check in on results between his evening dose of tennis matches. But I made the mistake a bit later of checking my phone to see what was up, and to my surprise, things had started looking encouraging. My daughter started texting me at 7:31 that a significant Senate seat had turned blue, and my resolve dissolved. I went back downstairs to watch Rachel Maddow and her crew grow giddier by the moment as the world began to change. 

After Ann Richards lost to Dubya in 1994, I made a bumper sticker with a yellow rose on it that read "I Miss Ann Richards." It didn't last for long (I didn't have a proper bumper-sticker making printer), but I had planned to make a better one this time.

But this time I don't have to. 

A big blue tsunami took care of most of the significant races in Texas, and in the country as a whole, and I'm looking forward to what can happen when kind, smart, honest, concerned, thoughtful people get a chance to repair the damage that has occurred under the current regime.

Pacem in terra, People. May the Force be with us all.

Image notes: A sunrise shot I took a few days ago while on one of Alan's freedom walks. It seemed wonderfully appropriate.

Skywatch Friday in the Park with Alan

 

Morning mist with crows and grackles at the ball fields

I've been meaning to post about our progress with civilizing Alan, our sixteen month-old pointer mix (with border collie, maybe?) but have been too wrapped up with that process and other life issues. We adopted him way too soon after suddenly losing our lovely Nylah, and just as he was entering adolescence. I'll probably recount that experience, but for now let's just say that he's growing up and calming down. Mainly I wanted to get in a Skywatch Friday post, which I've been neglecting for too long, and this morning's skies at the local parks where we take Alan on his "taste of freedom" excursions (part of his training program) were just splendid. 

We get out early to miss the disc golfers who take their off-leash dogs out on the course with them, and that meant that this morning, still in the midst of our post-drought rain benefits, we got mist!

Same view, moments later.

Further along this particular path, we came to a pass under one of the major cross-town streets, where at some point someone had gussied up the concrete pylons nicely. Along an adjacent path we visited a pond where a fella had been fishing the other day, and it was nicely misted up as well.

El Dorado underpass

One of the creek-fed ponds along the way

After that, we headed home, with Alan all calm and happy. 

The true benefit of getting out several times a week with the pup is that we've discovered some real treasures: places to walk and explore, several nature trails, and parts of town we hadn't even known were there! And we've lived here for over a quarter century!! So at some point I'll try to show off some of what is beginning to reconcile us to the necessity of staying in Texas, on our own little patch, with an "accidental" dog whose presence has opened up a new way to tolerate a place we have been trying for most of our lives to escape. 

Alan
Named after Joyce's adopted mutt who made his debut
in Richard Osman's The Bullet That Missed.

Note: in my haste to get this post finished so I can get at dinner construction, I seem to have mucked up the settings. For now if everything ends up in the right order, I'll be happy. But if I have time, I'll try to figure out how to get it right.

Remembering Wendell Berry

 

A New Harvest, with Wendell Berry, Henry County, KY 2011
photo by Guy Mendes, via Wikimedia Commons

There's sure a lot of dyin' going on these days: Good people who lead meaningful lives amid the chaos, clamor, and confusion of this mad, mad, mad, mad world. 

Just a few days ago it was Dolly Parton, for whom, it seems, an entire world has wept. She was a good woman who did good deeds, and made lots of people happy, using her fame and fortune to better the lives of people everywhere. 

Yesterday, it was Wendell Berry, whose life, prose, poetry, and philosophy have inspired me for the better part of my adult life, and whose work informed my academic pursuit of the philosophy of technology more than any other writer except William Morris. In fact, it was in a course called "Poet Economists, Poet Ecologists" at UTD that I first considered the two together, and outlined a plan of study that compared their mutual views on technology and political economy. The seeds of More News From Nowhere were sown here, and have been evolving ever since. 

The opening photo was taken when Berry, who famously refused to buy a computer and eschewed most modern complex technology, had solar panels installed on his farm. The major source of electricity in Kentucky has been coal--the reliance on which which Berry protested tirelessly. Like so many of us who dwell problematically within the contradictions of progress, Berry argued for the careful assessment of new technologies before their adoption. Solar generation of electricity, even though problematic, is far preferable to strip mining and other consequences of coal production, and so Berry switched to the newer tech in order to procure a cleaner source for his modest electrical needs.

Judging by the elegaic outpouring of praise for Berry's life and work I've come across today, it would be decidedly difficult for me to even begin to do him justice in my usual mode, where I note significant works and comment on their personal import. I had already planned to include an essay on Morris and Berry with the supplementary materials for More News From Nowhere, so I wouldn't know where to stop for this short post.

But Wendell Berry must have been fun to write about, judging from some of the older articles I've come across in my files. So here are a few items I've revisited today, on my way to coming to terms with losing one of the best models of a human being I've ever encountered. And since he was a poet, essayist, philosopher, novelist, historian, teacher, and academic, as well as farmer, his readers are legion.

Wendell Berry's Advice for a Cataclysmic Age: Sixty years after renouncing modernity, the writer is still contemplating a better way forward, by Dorothy Wickenden. The New Yorker, February 21, 2022.

A Shared Place, Wendell Berry's Lifelong Dissent, by Jedediah Britton Purdy. The Nation. September 9, 2022 (September 23 in the print issue). 

Going Home With Wendell Berry: The writer and farmer on local knowledge, embracing limits, and the eploitation of rural America, by Amanda Petrusich. The New Yorker. July14, 2019. 

A documentary worth watching: Look & See: Wendell Berry's Kentucky, directed by Laura Dunn. PBS: Independent Lens. April 23, 2018. [I would be very surprised if this doesn't get featured on PBS in the coming days, but you might be able to stream it from their archives now.]

For a biography with an extensive bibliography of Berry's works and critical commentary, see the Wikipedia article.

Wendell Berry died at home, in Kentucky, at age 92. It was still far too early.