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.

Reading the Hopeful, Part 2: Enough

A typical Boreen, or green lane, at Cleanderry, County Cork

One of the reasons that I haven't finished the re-write/re-edit of More News From Nowhere is that the utopian impulse seems to be a fairly common one. No sooner do I think I've read everything I need to read in order to wrap up the project, someone writes something so relevant and/or useful that I have to read that in order to continue. 

The most recent preoccupation comes from a review I read in The Idler back in late 2019, which was followed by my purchasing the book and getting about halfway through it before I underwent yet another cardiac surgery (this time a stent in one of my old bypasses) and, soon after that, the world closed down with Covid 19. I recently went back to the book, The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology, by Mark Boyle and found it well marked up with notes and comments and have been drinking it in ever since. Just the thing to help me answer the naysayers who have (and will in future, no doubt) insist that nobody could live like my utopians live in my book. [The link to Boyle himself goes to the Wikipedia article on him, which can give you a good idea of what he's about.]*

Boyle does live without complex technology. He gained a bit of notoriety with his first account of un-modern life, The Moneyless Man: A year of freeconomic living (at the above link), but this one goes further and does a spiffing job of making readers question their dependence on mod-cons. His account of living on his little Irish freehold challenges the presuppositions of even old Luddites like me. I find much to admire in his steadfast carrying forth of his principles. Were I fifty years younger and not dependent on the latest medical technologies for my continued existence, I'd be more than willing to give it a try. 

What we can all learn from his account is that educating our own desires is foundational to saving the world. That education begins with wondering about how much of what we have or desire is actually necessary, and how much of it has been programmed into us by our having been brought up in a capitalist economy that sees money (and what it buys) as a measure not only of economic status, but also of moral worth.

Reno Gazette Journal, 4 December 1930
via Ancestry

Reading Boyle, I am constantly reminded that I am barely two generations away from my grandmother's early life near Nevada mining towns, in a hand-built cabin with no running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, or refrigeration. They farmed the desert, and my great grandfather carried mail and passengers from town to town in a stagecoach. The only reason they crossed the border into eastern California was because the children needed to be educated, and there were no local schools. So the family packed up and rode the Slim Princess, a narrow-gauge rail service, to the Owens Valley, where my father and his siblings (and, somewhat later, I) were born. Big Pine wasn't exactly a bustling burg in the 1920s, but it did have electricity, and, within a decade, automobiles. In 1930, my father's little sister Adele was killed by one of these soon-to-be ubiquitous machines on her way home from school, when she she was only seven.

When I was about five years old, my father was transferred to a US air base near Tokyo. Because of my mother's desire to get to know the Japanese people, we rented a tiny little three-room house in a tiny little town. It had a rudimentary kitchen with a hand pump, and an outdoor benjo (squat toilet; or, better translation:  shitter), and a Japanese dancing school next door. In exchange for English lessons from my mother, the instructor agreed to teach me a traditional form of dance (Fuji Musume), and that's where I acquired the "baby Japanese" language facility that would enable me to communicate with veterans of the Japanese occupation when we were stationed in Taiwan some years later. But the rusticity of our living conditions provided an early lesson in how to live with limited technology. Our cottage was heated with a pot-belly wood-burner in the living room (which was where my parents slept), and that may have been where we got our hot water for cooking as well. I don't remember, though, and everyone involved is now long gone, so that question will go unanswered. But I do recall going together as a family to the public baths every evening, except when the snow was so deep outside our front door that we couldn't get out. 

We had to leave for base housing a year later when I started school--and the parallel with my grandmother's experience does resonates here--but that brief experience imprinted itself on my child's brain as adventure rather than hardship. I thus have a much better idea of what living without modern comforts is like than most middle class children of my own generation. Even our time in Taiwan (1958-1962) found us living in old Japanese houses with, if we were lucky, ceiling fans to cool us through subtropical summers, and hibachi heaters in the winter. Oh, and no television! For five years at the beginning of TV's golden age!

So, for me, Boyle's book provides a thoughtful, generous, and compelling look at what rejecting the overwhelming effects of increasing technological "innovation" could look like. And when approached as a conscious choice, rather than a matter of privation and injustice, the beneficial effects of living on enough (rather than too little or way too much) can offer us alternatives to the economic excesses and environmental degradation modern human lifeways are inflicting upon the world.

The question that undergirds my writing life these days seems to be a popular one among sociologists, economists, and philosophers alike: Just how much is enough? What do we actually need in order to live a satisfying and fulfilling life? William Morris called answering these questions "the education of desire" and saw that education as instrumental to bringing about a just and fulfilling society.

In my efforts to offer a plausible path to the good life in More News From Nowhere, I began to realize that what my utopians were really after was twofold: an escape from the economic and environmental crises facing twenty-first century humanity, and an alternative way to exist in a reimagined world where human goals were not defined in terms of wealth and power. And two recent books, with very similar titles, approach these questions from different but compatible viewpoints.

In 2022, Avram Alpert published The Good-Enough Life, a counterpoint to the prevalence of quests for greatness that have dominated human ambitions throughout history. Although most of us have been brought up to seek excellence and greatness, Alpert notes that striving for lofty goals develops hierarchies that inevitably lead to unceasing competition to be best at something. His reasons are complex and his evidence interdisciplinary, and he draws from both eastern and western philosophical and economic traditions. Fairness, equal opportunity, and the survival of the natural world are vital to enabling us all to flourish. Making America "great" again is hardly a worthy goal if it means that the planet and its denizens are the "losers" at the hands of the "winners." As I read this book, daily news broadcasts provided ample examples of the inevitable consequences of continually ignoring what is decent and fair and sufficient for everyone so that those with much more than they need can compete to build extravagant, wasteful, grandiose evidence of human wonderfulness. Especially since the artifacts these endeavors produce are only wonderful for a tiny fraction of humanity.

In 2024, Daniel Miller published The Good Enough Life, which combines political economy with an ethnographic study of the inhabitants of a small Irish town. This project provides a real-life grounding for the exploration of what economic sufficiency and "good enough" might mean in an everyday setting. Ethnographies often employ an almost narrative structure, and this one offers a cohesive framework for illustrating what "good enough life" means to those living it. This book is also carefully grounded in the philosophical notions of the good life that have developed since the Greeks. My favorite part of the book, however, is Miller's focus on geezers like me, living in an environment remarkably similar to that of my grandmother's life in my home town in California. Miller lived in "Cuan" (not its real name) for sixteen months, and interviewed 170 people to determine their views on life and technology and necessity in the modern world. 

My main reason for seeking out books like these was to be able to counter accusations about my naivety and what might seem simplistic solutions for complex problems. But criticism of a low-tech, philosophically informed way of living because it seems (to modern folk) impossible seems rather shallow from an historical perspective. My generation's very proximity to the much simpler lives of our grandparents and their parents, to people around the world who manage with many fewer modern conveniences, and to those who have no choice in any of this should make it fairly simple for us to at least imagine much less complicated and less technologically compromised ways to survive on this planet. Perhaps simply considering alternatives, and being able to better manage our choices might eventually lead to significant change.

William Morris ended News From Nowhere, having "lived" for only a short while in the world he had imagined, with this wish: " . . . if others can see it as I have seen it then it may be called a vision rather than a dream." Considering a good-enough life, rather than some gazillionaire's notion of worth and greatness, seems much more likely to produce ideas and models that could ameliorate the damage already done to this fragile planet and its inhabitants. 

I have one more post planned to conclude my offering of usable resources for changing minds (if not the world). Some quite hopeful and capable people have been writing and talking about how to heal the planet, and have come up with some actual strategies for accomplishing change. Life is getting in the way again around here, but I hope to be able to get it together within the next month or so.

Meanwhile, stay cool if you can, and do a rain dance or two if you think that might help.

Source and image notes

*I do not have a partnership agreement with my online shop of choice (Bookshop.org), but urge you to order from them if you don't shop on-ground. The "convenience" of Amazon costs more to my conscience than any benefits, and using Bookshop diverts a bit of my cash to an independent bookshop of my choice--and you can do the same if you're not currently all that fond of multi-billionaires. My links to books, however lead either to the original publisher, or to useful critical responses.

The brief note about my Aunt Adele's death came from Newspapers.com, bits of which I have access to through Ancestry.com.

While reading Mark Boyle, I learned a bit of Irish, thanks to his use of traditional words for some of the objects in his little community. One such term is boithrín pronounced (roughly) "bor-EEN." It describes a narrow path with grass growing in the middle, between wheel tracks--often from carts. Such routes were also common in both Taiwan and in the Owens Valley when I was growing up. The photo I've included, "Unpaved boreen on the Beara Peninsula, County Cork," is a good example. It was taken by Nigel Cox as part of the Geograph Project in Great Britain and Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons.

Metaphor and Possibility

McKinney, April 18 2026 (and below)

McKinney, December 30, 2023 (rare winter thunderstorm at sunset)

 
The appearance of mammatus clouds as the weather warms always seems to add a tinge of foreboding to both weather- and news-watching. They're so called because of their resemblance to udders or breasts, and are usually associated with thunderstorms.  I've always been a cloud fan (the atmospheric variety, that is), because of my father's meteorological interests. He had flown over and into Atlantic hurricanes during our time in Bermuda (ca. 1950) and often had a weather station in a back yard wherever we lived. Before I moved to north Texas, however, the most dramatic clouds I was familiar with were the lenticular "Sierra waves" that form regularly over the Owens River Valley. We watched this one develop at sunset during our last visit:

Lone Pine, California, June 2025

My first encounter with mammatus clouds occurred on April 10, 1979, just after I arrived in north Texas, on the day Wichita Falls was hit by an F4 tornado that killed 45 people. Although we were 140 miles away, the local sky was filled with the cloud formations I now always associate with the possibility of really bad storms. I was eight months pregnant with my daughter, and my son and our cats and I spent our first tornado watch in the bathtub, under a mattress. 

What brought all this cloud stuff to mind was an article in this week's New York Times Magazine, "Why Smart Products Have Started to Look Like the Dumb Choice." Nitsuh Abebe writes a column on language for the Magazine, and this one combines two of my particular interests: metaphor and the philosophical assessment of technology. 

Abebe takes us through the evolution of words like "smart" and "dumb" as metaphors, and explains how utterly absurd and problematic the designations have become. Smart phones, homes, TVs, and even kitchen appliances, now demand internet connectivity in order to work. I've been ranting about the notion of planned obsolescence for so long that I can hardly have a conversation with an appliance salesperson without spouting off about why I've had to buy a new refrigerator only ten years after I bought the one I now have to replace. And mine aren't even "smart" because I absolutely refuse to own an electronic object that talks to me. (And no, I do not use Siri.) I live in a hundred year-old house that can't even accommodate an automatic ice maker, so that a fridge that doesn't come with one is actually a selling point. 

Over the past twenty years, I've been working on a bit of speculative fiction that (among other things) imagines a world without electricity. As a thought experiment, this is the perfect exercise for examining our dependence on a now-pervasive technology that was unthinkable only 250 years ago. And the premise isn't built on disaster or dystopia; it's based on choice. The focus of my graduate research was on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, and central to Morris's philosophical approach to art and design was the education of desire. To Morris, human dignity, creativity, comity, and culture were all based on the distinction between need and want. His novel, News From Nowhere, imagined a world where work and art were conjoined rather than opposed. The machines responsible for the polluted air and waters of Victorian Britain were absent from Morris's utopia, and his musings inspired me to think about how the modern, post-industrial, digitally-dictated age might beget something more philosophically satisfying than what we're now experiencing.

Of course, it takes an old Luddite like me to even want to think about a life free of complex machines, but other visions of lower tech, more humane ways of living are emerging as I type. A newish literary genre commonly referred to as "solar punk" has generated a number of novels like Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot books (A Psalm for the Wild Built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy). Many of Ursula K. Le Guin's novels and short stories consider the relationship between need and want and delve deeply into human relationships with technologies. And then, of course, there are the deeply anti-technological and anti-industrial themes of J. R. R. Tolkien's novels. So I don't think it's coincidental that, as Abebe notes in his essay, "more than a quarter of younger Americans are curious about switching to a 'dumbphone.'" I'm also heartened by the growing interest in "retro" tech like vinyl records, portable turntables, and manual typewriters.

The current state of the world, with its various antagonisms--including greed, power hunger, and disregard for the consequences of the technologies we've fostered and embraced--doesn't offer many of us much hope that things will get better any time soon. But perhaps one way to approach the problems is to look for better metaphors: Sibling Dex in A Psalm for the Wild Built goes looking for cricket song. And Mosscap, the Robot, goes looking for what human beings need. 

I've been thinking lately, as I watch the fairyland of fireflies arise in our garden each evening (they're scarce anywhere else in the neighborhood, but because we don't use pesticides, we offer a sort of firefly utopia), I wonder if maybe fostering fireflies might be a good place to start. Or using the plenitude of cloud formations to represent the multitude of ways we could make things better. Mammatus clouds, for example, might be seen as motherly rather than scary, since they often signal the approach of thunderstorms that bring much-needed rain). 

A bit of silly speculation and wishful thinking, perhaps, but an alternative to spending time thinking along lines that will only make things worse: "The Cloud" as a "storage space" in which to cram all the digital output of the energy- and resource-consuming machines billionaires keep building to feed the coffers of people who don't really need any of it but produce simply because they can. 

I won't deal with this now, but we might start considering very seriously just who is going to benefit from all that stored "data" and all that AI. 

Slouching Toward Gilead

Because nearly every day recently has contained elements that seem to portend the beginning of the end of rational life on earth, I've been reading more than my usual quota of science fiction. So, while I was looking for something to use as a banner for this post, I came across this wonderful diagram of The History of Science Fiction by Steve Jurvetson on Wikimedia Commons*, and I think I've managed to link to a high-res version (which is the only possible way to use it without getting a headache). Although as an infographic it's a bit difficult to follow, Jurvetson's connections among different genres and media throughout history (from Gilgamesh to now) offer a really useful way of following what I've come to think of as the literary genre with the longest history of all. 

Imagining different worlds and universes seems to characterize major shifts in historical events, ways of thinking, and--eventually--life, the universe, and everything.** Among the stories I've always loved best, even though I've been pretty much a free-range reader, have been those attempts to imagine what we could become at moments where what are becoming seems to be particularly problematic. Only recently I'd plowed through all three of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem novels (and watched both television renditions) and was left longing for something that would restore my persistent suspicion that things might just turn out okay in the end.

I often return to Ursula K. Le Guin's early stories that feature striking contrasts between fairly simple economies (like the Kesh in Always Coming Home, or Falk's rescuers in City of Illusions) and their antagonists (the Condor People and the Shing), or that follow emerging connections during contacts between indigenous peoples and explorers (such as natives and ethnologists or colonists; I think the best of these, and the most relevant to the present is The Telling). But Le Guin tempers utopian leanings with realistic assessments of the things that get in the way: greed, power-hunger, fear/hatred of the other.

Living through the current election cycle seems more and more like being ensnared in an ill-conceived saga about people who yearn for a past that never really existed, others who have a better idea of what is actually going on but are powerless to effect any kind of meaningful change, and a much larger population of those who would rather not think about it at all.

So, I keep reading. Rather recently I discovered Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and its companion (within the Penumbraverse) Sourdough. As often happens to me, at just about the time I'd finished both, Sloan's newest entry into his 'verse came out: Moonbound. I pre-ordered it and devoured it upon arrival. None of these books is actually science fiction as usually defined or experienced by folks like me. Instead they're variations on a magical-realistic view of the present (the first two), and a fantasy adventure that riffs off most of the stories/tropes that belong to boomers, gen-exers, and their descendants: C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot more I'm not even tangentially familiar with. Sloan's worlds are amusing, smart, with-it (I think; since I'm not, I'm not really sure what that means--but they seem particularly attuned to my children's generation), and engaging, even for old Luddite farts like me who fell out of the gaming world when she couldn't make it through Myst. [Note: I'm leaving the sourcing up to interested readers, since everyone seems to harbor preferences as to booksellers and critical resources. Searches can lead to beneficial excursions through accidental rabbit holes, so have fun.]

Another new favorite is Becky Chambers, whose Robot and Monk books, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy are much better, and far more healthful, than drinking too much wine in order to make it through the current epoch. They're both gentle, sanguine, philosophically sound, and way too short (not really; each one is exactly as long as it needs to be--but I want more). Her niche in contemporary SF has been called "hope punk" which seems rather appropriate.  I can't remember how I found out about them, but will search back through last year's journal to see where they first come up so I can thank whoever's responsible. When I'd finished them (twice), I read her earlier Wayfarer series (A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few, and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within), and a stand-alone novella, To Be Taught, if Fortunate.  Twice, each. In the Robot and Monk books, dystopia has been bypassed (the robots give up on humanity and left town for the wilderness). In the Wayfarer series, dystopia still beckons among some species, but the crew of Wayfarer and their friends are making their way(s) toward a more harmonious universe. If this intrigues you at all, see this essay in Wired by Jason Kehe: "Is Becky Chambers the Ultimate Hope for Science Fiction?"

So, while this country seems bent on making at least some aspects of contemporary dystopic film and fiction (like The Handmaid's Tale, Mad Max, and various warnings about the coming Singularity) come into being, I'm revisiting William Morris and Le Guin. 

But in case you haven't had enough of dystopia (or if you're bingeing the stuff I never read or watched, like The Hunger Games and such) here's a classic, which everybody needs to read: 

In 1909, E. M. Forster published his short story, "The Machine Stops" in the Oxford and Cambridge Review. It's available at the link in .pdf  (thanks to retiring U. C. Davis professor Phillip Rogaway; I'm not sure how long this text or his web page will be available after the end of the month). I used this story in my Technology And Utopia classes both at UTD and the Art Institute, and my students found its prescience striking--even before the F-book and its ilk had taken over our own world. 

But I'm not going to end on a completely sour note. My bedtime reading (after my third time through Le Guin's The Telling) is currently Andy Weir's latest novel, Project Hail Mary. . . .

[Several days later]

I started working on this post on or about the Ides of July, when things had started looking quite ominous. Since then, and since my last little bit of input, things have changed and a modicum of sanguinity has returned (that's "sanguine" in the sense of "optimistic" rather than "bloody"). We'll still have to wait to see how things turn out, but the prognosis is somewhat more promising than in recent weeks.

That said, I've now finished Project Hail Mary, and I don't remember having quite so much fun reading a book about the probable demise of Mother Earth. A mild spoiler: Earth seems to have survived, thanks to the efforts of Ryland Grace and his buddy Rocky. Weir once again has his characters "science the shit out of" every problem that erupts (actually, many, many problems) just as Mark Watney does in The Martian. I'm sure the biophysicists (?) and other sciency types who read the book (or see the film, due out next year, with Ryan Gosling as Grace) will find numerous flaws, but I'm more than willing to suspend whatever disbelief arises because the whole thing is poignant, smart, quirky, amusing, and very much fun. I can't wait to see how the film crew manages to pull this one off!

Good science fiction is really no different from good fiction of any other genre, as long as the writer can build an engaging world, create believable and compelling characters, and deal with issues important to human being-in-the-world. Once upon a time, in a world long past, I was asked "where have all the philosophers gone?" I rather flippantly answered that they'd all run off to write science fiction. As it turns out, though, the tendency of SF writers to engage questions of philosophical importance, deal with cultural conundrums, and explore the meaning(s) of sentience and consciousness by posing interesting questions and conducting thought experiments along the way makes my answer from about 1980 practically spot-on today. 

Any of the writers I've mentioned in this post are well worth reading. So, if you're looking for a beach read, or just something smart to take your mind off current events, have a go. As I mentioned above, I haven't linked everything, but using the google machine can often lead you along interesting paths, so I decided to leave the door open for serendipity.

Enjoy the rest of the summer, and try to stay cool.

*Steve Jurvetson's Flickr page is here. My finding this image also led me down a rabbit hole--this guy is really interesting.
**Thanks, of course, to Douglas Adams. 

Hope, Springing

This post was begun about three weeks ago, before I knew that I'd be undergoing yet another invasive coronary procedure (an angiogram) that turned even more invasive when the doc found the expected occlusion of one of my old bypasses (now 25 years old) and transformed the scan into an angioplasty. The catheterization team inserted a shiny new Onyx drug-eluting stent into the offending vessel, and all the while I was wide awake with only mild sedation. As uncomfortable as it was, it sure beat the hell out of having my chest cracked yet again. I had four bypasses in 1995, and my aortic valve was replaced by a mechanical one in 2009. This time I left for home only a few hours after the cath, and got to sleep in my own bed. The only really negative aspect of the whole experience is that, for the next year, I'll be a teetotaler because of the anti-platelet therapy being added to my current drug mix. 

If you add the mechanical valve to the two artificial corneas received in cataract surgery a couple of years ago, this new stent ramps up my membership in the Borg club bigtime. So far, though, nothing shows except under appropriate scanning technology, so I'm no Seven of Nine in that regard. Well, in most ways I'm no Seven of Nine.

Anyway, I'm feeling fine and it should be a spell before I have to undergo another of these little encounters, even though it seems inevitable that I will. I'm certainly not getting any younger, and my genes aren't getting any better.

All this drama began just about the same time the bad news about COVID-19 was coming down the pike. In fact, the day of the procedure was the last day before the hospital (which I came to call the Baylor Heart Hospital, Hotel, and Spa after the valve job) began to institute new protocols for both patients and staff.

We've managed to do most of our home-prepping (and no, we didn't buy toilet paper) which has consisted of stocking up on a few things, but mostly just doing our weekly shopping. This week we're also getting most of our doctor visits (including the vet) taken care of, so that we won't have to do much getting out and about over the next month. We're looking into a local farm supplier for later needs, and once the food panic has subsided it may be possible to pop into Trader Joe's or Whole Foods for what we can't easily get online, or maybe get it delivered.

The truth is that as someone who reads and writes about depletion and abundance, and about non-capitalist political economies, I've been something of a prepper for a long time. We've also been revising our various impacts on the environment and economics in general by buying little and living as lightly as we can. So doing without has become a way of life with us, and except for an odd obsession with high-resolution television, we're not as technologically plugged in as our children are, and as long as the electricity stays on and the water keeps flowing, we'll be about as comfortable as we need to be. We can muddle through, abide in place, and (mostly because we're essentially hermits anyway) be able to handle social distancing quite well.

This is where the post I was originally preparing comes in.

Every now and then I get inspired by something that sets me off in a different direction. Sometimes that something is so transformative that it makes me rethink my current trajectory, shift gears, re-focus, and move on.

Such an event occurred when I read Margaret Renkl's lovely article in the New York Times last month (Feb. 23, "One Tiny Beautiful Thing") about surviving a bleak, soggy winter in the South. One particular paragraph struck home with a force I seldom experience in editorial writing. She is, of course, talking about politics, but her essay also resonates with the current, even more problematic situation.

Paying attention to what is happening in Washington is a form of self-torment so reality altering that it should be regulated as a Schedule IV drug. I pay attention because that’s what responsible people do, but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can continue to follow the national news and not descend into a kind of despair that might as well be called madness. Already there are days when I’m one click away from becoming Lear on the heath, raging into the storm. There are days when it feels like the apocalypse is already here.

But on a walk through a park, she noticed a small green sign of spring in a knot hole in a tree that completely changed her perspective. In order to survive the political (and climatic) moment, and instead of giving up watching the news for Lent,  she's going to be looking for more tiny beautiful things.

Now, as anybody who comes by The Farm even once in a while knows, I am not by nature an optimistic person, and by no means any kind of believer. But Renkl's column stirred my philosophical juices to such an extent that she provided a kind of intellectual epiphany, and made me wonder why it is that I can let the political climate, with its egregious absence of reason, drive me into the particular kind of malaise to which I seemed, when I read her piece, to have fallen victim.

Just yesterday I read another of Renkl's essays and sent it on to my children. It's about comfort food and making it through dark times: "Cornbread. Now, More Than Ever--Comfort foods, and the old ways of making them, bring solace when you really need it." Once again her logic and philosophical clarity reached into the darkness and offered a glimmer of light.

Please know that I fully realize that many, many people in this country and around the world are in no condition to be hunkering down and making cornbread. Even retired old codgers like me and my Beloved Spouse, who are insulated by a fixed income, an owned house, and some small financial security (that isn't attached to the stock markets), are only "safe" for as long as our health holds out and the city keeps the basics running. But, at the risk of sounding much more sanguine than I actually am, this experience for many of us can be a lesson in true economy: oikonomia, in the Greek sense, and the relationship between ends and means. This notion is also tied into William Morris's description of economics as grounded in the education of desire. Since I'm in the process of rewriting my own thought experiment based on Morris's utopian vision in News From Nowhere, I'll be doing a great deal of thinking along these very lines.

And so, as I try not to despair of our national (or global) fate, and as I hope that science, if allowed to do what it does best, manages to accomplish what actually needs to be done, I'm going to use this blog to work through some possibilities.

I'll be looking in the knotholes of trees (in my case for baby squirrels), spotting the phenological evidence of Spring (which begins tomorrow), wading through my soggy garden to think about where we might be able to grow more food, and baking cornbread.

Be well, everyone, and may the Spring bring about Tikkun Olam, a healing of the world.

Image credit: This photo, Single blossom and leaves growing out of knot hole in old log originated on Pixio, the public domain image website. I obbtained it via Wikimedia Commons. I thought the image did a nice job of mingling the notion of something inserted into a cavity, with a sweet illustration of Renkl's first essay.

Phenology 101: Spring 2018 Edition

As I realized last year on this day, I haven't been particularly faithful about celebrating Spring on this blog. But lately I've been thinking about seasonal things more than usual, and have managed to stay aware of changes both small and monumental.

Phenological markers have been delayed a bit, at least compared to the last two years. The wisteria, for example, is only now beginning to bloom out, in contrast with last year's appearance at the beginning of the month. And the redbud (shown above), which last year was already past its prime, is in full flush. The holly flowers outside the dining room and next to the front porch perfume the air so boisterously that the aroma permeates the living room  in the evening, even with the doors closed. The wisteria is beginning to do the same in back, and soon the chinaberry and catalpa will replace it--although neither are even budding yet.

The garden is becoming somewhat less accidental than it was (I have a habit of letting things grow where they want to) because we've been evicted from the north side by the neighbor's noisy pool pump, and I'm giving up on being able to use the area for anything peaceful. As a result, I've cleared out planting space outside the wild gladiolus volunteers, and am adding other flowering plants around a transplanted bird bath.  Since we plan to build a greenhouse over the potager (to hide the unsightly structures added by the neighbor), the converted copper fire basin damaged by the previous neighbor's cowboy tree guy's bad aim and turned into a large, bent, funky bathing pool for bees and cedar waxwings had to be moved anyway. So now it has a new home and the bees are loving it. Having denuded all our tree-berries, the cedar waxwings have moved on to juicier fare elsewhere, and other birds don't seem to have discovered the new location.

Following William Morris's idea that gardens should be made up of outdoor rooms, we've begun to envision a series of these. The first includes the area just outside the trailer door, where I've moved my hammock (it used to be where the pool pump now registers its loudest decibel level), and where we've installed a garden bench and a couple of chairs, as well as some strategically placed tree stumps--of which we have a never-ending supply. Now there are places to put one's feet up or rest a drink, and the hammock gets fairly consistent, dappled shade. The area is bounded on one side by a large, flowering holly tree, and on the other by a small copse of privet, cedar, and some variety of flowering tree I haven't identified yet. We installed a trellis-arbor a few months ago, and completed the sequestering of the area by transporting the remains of an eighteen year-old pile of logs (from an area soon to become a tomato garden) to build a partial wall.

The newest space offers our ageing and gimpy (torn knee ligament) Arlo (he's under the hammock) a nice space to sleep in soft mulch and shade, and we can enjoy an afternoon conversation and tipple after TBS returns from coaching, which he's still doing as a volunteer. The holly tree makes the highway noise seem more distant, and things will be even quieter after the trees all leaf out. When we first moved in, the expressway nearly two miles away consisted of four lanes; now it's ten. Things were somewhat less noisy before progress caught up with us. These days we're thankful for the fact that the more trees come into leaf between us and the main route out of town, the quieter it will become--especially while people who aren't retired are at work.

And so, we're managing to deal with new challenges and to come up with solutions that address them and keep us sane. Soon the pecans will be leafing out and the light will soften. The grass will green up and need mowing. The crisp Spring air has almost made us forget about the two solid weeks of rainy sog we put up with last month (was it only last month?). And all that rain may make things cooler in Summer, although we're not counting on it.

For now we're enjoying the daily phenological changes.  The date of the equinox doesn't really determine the onset of Spring. It's really the appearance of significant signs, and for us some of these are beginning more or less on time. I doubt if folks in the northeast will be noticing snow drops or forsythia in the immediate future.  But the date does remind us that it shouldn't be all that long until the snow and ice abate up there--and the first supercell thunderstorm appears, a harbinger of tornado season down here. A good reason for us to celebrate while we can, and enjoy this probably all-too-short respite between extremes.

Looking Backward, Going Forward

As I begin to transform my old website Owldroppings into a more complete exploration of the concerns that show up in this blog (which will become a component of a newly realized Owl’s Farm: The Website), I keep running into questions about what I really want to think and write about.

After all, I’m about to turn seventy, an age I never thought I’d reach. So what does a seventy year-old former academic, wannabe political economist, sometime philosopher of technology, lapsed archaeologist, retired art and design history teacher, and compulsive writer do with what remains of her life?

Early on in my musings I realized that I want to stop being so grumpy. Even though I don’t have grandchildren, my siblings do, and so I do have a small genetic investment in the future. It might behoove me, therefore, to begin to consider better alternatives than seem to be available in the present political moment.

Owl’s Farm: The Blog has always been about utopia. It was inspired by two of the best utopian thinkers I ever ran across: William Morris and Yi-Fu Tuan. Morris was a celebrated designer and an early socialist, and Tuan is a humanistic geographer with a profound understanding of place. Both developed creative visions of the notion of home, which led to my explorations into its many meanings.

As I searched for a focus for the new iteration of the website, I realized that it still had to be about education, and should still embody the “teaching philosophy” I was required to articulate for my annual evaluations as a college instructor.  But it also needs to spend less time on the current state of education and more on locating what could improve it—especially since there are good models available.

In addition, instead of just complaining about current economic conditions, perhaps I should focus on locating bright spots on the horizon, like alternative energy solutions or promising community developments.

The website should also continue to provide resources for the curious, since former students still occasionally use it for the links. I’ll also archive my topical essays for courses I taught (not just art and design history, but philosophical perspectives on food, anthropology, culture, and the Arts and Crafts movement), and see if I can stay on top of issues relevant to them.   

All along this blog was meant to be an adjunct to my novel, More News From Nowhere. That, too, is in the process of being revised somewhat—now that I have the time to revisit its reason for being.  As a lifelong interdisciplinarian, I want to use the novel (and others in various stages of development) and the blog(s) as outlets for the results of curiosity. It’s often difficult to compartmentalize my many interests, but occasionally I can focus on a single aspect (museums, for example) and develop lines of inquiry that can be labeled. Hence: Owl’s Cabinet of Wonders. Other attempts (like The Owl of Athena, a blog on educational concerns) kept leaking into The Farm, and so were abandoned (although they, too, will be archived on the revised site). 

The ultimate aim now is fun—as much as is possible in this moment. I’m too old to keep wasting time being a complete curmudgeon. I can’t promise that I won’t ever go off on another grumpy rant again, or that sarcasm won’t sneak into my commentary on life, the universe, and everything. I am by nature a cynic, in its original sense. I’m dog-like: suspicious, reluctant to trust without reason (see my post from The Owl of Athena on the topic). But also both faithful and curious, and willing to explore new ideas and approaches.  

And yes, I can be a cranky old bitch. But I’ll try to do more Frisbee chasing and romping around in the garden, and less pissing on the flowers. I hope what I’ll have to offer is interesting, entertaining (in a very broad sense of the word), thoughtful, and educational. I also hope it will provide a sense of hope for the future, and tools for building more of a eu-topia than an ou-topia. I’d rather that we move toward a good place than continue to imagine what can only be a no-place, a place possible only in the imagination.

Wish me luck.

PS: owlfarmer.com is “live” but practically devoid of content. Design work will progress as I have time, depending on concurrent pursuits.

Image note: The photo is of Mount Whitney, taken in the Alabama Hills outside of Lone Pine, California, during our winter trip in 2015/16. Whenever I stayed with my Grandmother, I could see a more distant version of this image from her living room window.

Lush Life

 Still Life with Books and Garden Stuff

The Farm is actually doing quite well these days, and this farmer--instead of grousing about how tough life is on the Populated Prairie--has decided to acknowledge the wonders and plenitude of this particular Spring season. Perhaps the proximity of retirement has something to do with my improved attitude, along with the relatively large amount of free time I can now devote to the abject pleasures of reading and thinking. The reading has involved two books I picked up at the Half Price emporium that makes this town tolerable: Michael Boulter's Darwin's Garden: Down House and The Origin of Species, and Gerard Helferich's Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See The World. (Remind me never to burden any publisher with a subtitle nearly as long as the book.)

As usual, fortunate conjunctions have occurred that make the reading all the more felicitous, and I'll get to those in a minute. But I should mention that the pleasurable moments in the garden, both reading and working, have been enhanced by lovely weather interspersed with bouts of rain (and the usual terrifying Tornado Watch events) that have turned my modest half acre into a veritable jungle.

Woody enjoys sniffing the organic fertilizer in the raised veg bed.

 The "North Meadow" with Showy Primroses and Mullein

The animals are all enjoying the garden in their various ways. Mrs. Peel has figured out that if she stays still the dogs won't chase her, so she happily joins us--usually perching herself on one of the tables. Woody is fascinated with the manure-based fertilizer in the raised bed, and I've had to put barriers up to keep him out.  Arlo just looks for the shadiest spot near a human (or as near to Emma as he can get), and adorns his tail with pecan catkins, all of which have to be removed at the back door before he can go back inside.

 Emma amidst the Lambs Ears and Catnip

 Arlo observing the pots

The Humboldt book especially has made us both (The Beloved Spouse and I--not Arlo) aware of the role the younger of the von Humboldt brothers played in our current understanding of ecological relationships. Our conversations about him (and his influence on Darwin) led us to a talk on YouTube featuring Andrea Wulf (who's written a biography of Alexander) and others--including an art historian (Eleanor Harvey) from the Smithsonian who's preparing an exhibit for 2019-20 on Humboldt's cultural impact. The talk was recorded at Washington College last year, and runs about an hour and a half, but it's enormously interesting and well worth watching--especially if you're unfamiliar with Alexander von Humboldt himself. Wulf's biography is now on the wish list, and will be ordered along with his Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent and Views of Nature--unless, of course, I can snag copies of the latter two at HPB.

At any rate, Humboldt's major work was called Kosmos, in five volumes and incomplete at his death in 1859. It was on my mind on Friday when I headed to the University of Dallas with TBS for this year's Heidegger Symposium. I even had a copy of Helferich's book in my bag, in case I had time to read between sessions. The second talk of the morning, by Richard Capobianco of Stonehill College, was about "Heidegger on Kosmos and the Independence of Being in Relation to the Human Being," and I found myself wondering if Heidegger had ever read Humboldt. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because Dennis Schmidt (of Western Sydney University, who would deliver the Richard Owsley Memorial Address on Saturday) asked the question. I am immensely glad that he did, because I tend not to comment or ask questions during this conference; I'm not a Heideggerian, but he's the main focus of many of the readings considered in DASEIN (Dallas Area Seminar on European Inquiry), a local philosophical discussion group that the Beloved Spouse helped to found, and I'm essentially a hanger-on. Anyway, as it turned out, nobody knew if Heidegger had read Humboldt or not, and it looks like a nice research project for new retirees.

But I'm also interested in Darwin, of course, and Ernst Haeckel (the link is to the Wikipedia article because it includes some of his prints from Kuntstformen der Natur), and William Morris (especially his travels to Iceland) and numerous other nineteenth-century intellectuals preoccupied in one way or another with natural history. So when people ask me what I'm going to do in my retirement, it hardly looks like I'll be retiring at all.

In the end, it's about curiosity--the very component of intelligence and creativity that I find so lacking in so many of my students. All of those I mentioned, and the writers whose travel narratives I've been reading over the last year, were profoundly curious.  It may well be that the absence of widespread social media fostered this curiosity, and made it necessary. After all, I can just call up a web page on any of them and find myriad links to more--along with books, photos, drawings and paintings, manuscripts, letters, and other ephemera which help bring them all alive.  And I'm not at all unaware of the fact that if I had lived in the nineteenth century and developed any of their interests, I'd have had no way of satisfying my own curiosity.  But what stumbling into Humboldt and the others has done is to generate enough questions to last me for quite some time.

And now for a glass of wine and a spell in the garden with the animals while we await the arrival of my husband.  No doubt the good weather and the relative absence of bugs (although we're usually plagued with mozzies this time of year, the cool weather and my "mosquito dunks" have kept the population down) have combined to create the several pleasant evenings we've enjoyed. I can't help but feel grateful that no matter how bad the critters get, though, my discomfort is small compared to what Humboldt and his companions suffered on the Orinoco in April of 1800. Anyone who thinks of these great quests for information were romantic romps for the rich boys who went on them needs to read some of the accounts.  No spoilt brats involved here:

But even more troublesome than the [vampire bats] were the voracious insects that appeared every night after sundown and, able to pierce through clothing and even hammocks, covered the explorers with painful bites. Every visitor to the rain forest--not to mention the Indians and missionaries who made it their home--cursed the mosquitoes, gnats, flies, ticks, fleas, ants, and myriad other insects, and Humboldt's experience would be no different. Biting, chewing, stinging, burrowing, preying on their fellow creatures, the most numerous class of animal made life hell for every other species that came into unfortunate contact with it.

--Gerard Helferich, Humboldt's Cosmos, 121-22 

How We Live and How We Might Live

Morris's Red House, watercolor by Walter Crane

Although it's a relatively fine day (good sun, but chilly in the shade), I'm indoors, having just moved from the fire-warmed living room where I'd been reading all morning. Part of that reading consisted of my new avocation: pornography of the architectural variety.  I'm down to teaching one day a week (a long one, with two classes back-to-back), so I tend to while away my day less frugally than I once did.

I have borrowed as subject and description for this post the title of a lecture that William Morris delivered at Kelmscott House before the Socialist Democratic Federation (Hammersmith branch) on 30 November 1864 (it appeared in Commonweal in 1887). This is not to be confused with his unpublished lecture, "How Shall We Live Then," (1889) although, as always, the sentiments overlap. But I'm absconding with the title for my own purpose, which is to describe the dilemma the Beloved Spouse and I face as we meander toward real retirement and the realities of living a life of reduced means and (thankfully noted) less tsuris. We have led short professional lives by most standards, having only begun to teach full-time in our thirties (him) and forties (me).

But as teaching has become less rewarding and more angst-enducing, the idea of leaving the profession has become inescapably appealing. I would like to point out, to any of my students who might chance upon this blog, that this is not their fault. They are the products, through no failing of their own, of a damaged education system that has reduced them to test-taking automatons and has denied them the most fulfilling aspects of learning how to learn. This is, in turn, the result of an economic system that privileges monetary success above the life of the mind and makes being an educator one of the most frustrating jobs one can hold.

And, as I have noted repeatedly in my more recent posts, living in Texas has become more of a trial than we had ever imagined it would be.

Thus, my essay into living and being is only flimsily connected to Morris's, although my reasons for writing are firmly rooted in his social philosophy: especially in his idea of work. I should also note that in our case "reduced means" doesn't truly mean that we will be poor, in the sense against which Morris raged, and in which many of our fellow retirees find themselves after they either lose their livelihoods (having been made redundant, often because they've grown "too old" for their jobs) or leave on their own despite diminished 401Ks.  Even teachers, who used to be able to count on decent pensions, have been encouraged to choose market-based accounts, gambling on the possibility that the stock market might yield higher returns than the standard, guaranteed annuities of the past. Fortunately for us, my Beloved Spouse chose the latter (unlike many of his cohort) and his pension will allow him to retire early enough to enjoy some time with me. And although I have a small retirement account, I've seen it diminish considerably during the recent market downturn, so we've never counted on it much in our future plans; instead we will make do with his annuity and my Social Security check.

Those plans are, in fact, the real subject of this post.  And the question is not simply about how we live now and how we might have to adjust things for the future; it's also about where we might live, because place is such an important aspect of our concept of the good life.

Thus, I spend inordinate amounts of time surfing the interwebs for affordable locations that might be less philosophically difficult retirement venues, or at least so beautiful that we could deal with dodgy politics a bit more affably than we can here. Using online real-estate sites, I peer voyeuristically into peoples' homes, ever critical of their taste, but always eyeing their rooms for possibilities. The basic criteria involve big sky, deserts or prairies, mountains or oceans, lack of proximity to major thoroughfares, a hospital with available cardiac care (I'm "fixed" but need occasional maintenance), a smallish town, and reachable by children who may be enticed to visit a really great place.

As I mentioned in the last post, western Montana was high on the list, but a recent article in Sunset on the best places to live in the west mentioned Bisbee, Arizona, and Lander, Wyoming--both of which (upon investigation) have much to offer.  So they join the Owens Valley as possibilities, as do some of the university towns in Oregon and Washington (as long as they have enough sunny days per year to stave off my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder).

What I didn't mention last time was what kind of house would work.  The House (which has so far avoided being named) we live in would be a hard act to follow. As problematic as it's been, especially in terms of the amount of work it takes to maintain a 93 year-old antique house, we love this place. And the problem with thinking about leaving it is that any new work or adjustments carry with them the subconscious, if not overt, question of how change would affect the sales value.

Two winters ago, before the mulberry in front was cut down.

Because we live in a relatively desirable area, and if the requests to buy the house (a couple a year) we get in the mail are any indication, we can probably sell it fairly easily. But getting a decent price--one that helps mitigate the 150K we've put into it on top of the mortgage--will depend on the market, and the passion of the prospective buyer.  We knew that this was The House almost as soon as we walked in the front door, despite the gold shag carpet and the doll collection. And the white aluminum siding that hid all the great exterior details. And the Astroturf on the front porch.  I can only imagine what visitors might ask about what we've done: Why isn't there any air conditioning? Why haven't they refinished all the floors? Why did they remove the sheetrock and leave bare shiplap? Why haven't they modernized the kitchen?  Why do they have so many books? Etc.

What I look for in a substitute: Either a log cabin with good wall space or a craftsman-style that hasn't been "modernized." (That means no new cabinets, no granite, no stainless steel, no new fixtures, etc.) Preferably no carpet, but at least wood floors under existing stuff (that hasn't been stuck down). If in town, walking distance to necessities, big enough yard for a garden. If out on land, space and view, possibility of off-grid with not too much investment. Not in a forest, but some trees on property OK. If major work needs to be done, the price has to be low enough that we could afford to do it, even if that means living in the Shasta while work gets done. Ah, and space for the Shasta in the back yard.

In a future post I'm going to sort out the "before" and "after" shots of the last major upgrade (a year ago last summer). Some of the changes were so heart-pleasing for us that they would be hard to leave. But sometimes circumstances just occur that make leaving necessary--as they did for William Morris, who had to give up Red House because it was too far from London, where the work was.  Instead, he found Kelmscott Manor, which inspired some of News From Nowhere.

Frontispiece to News From Nowhere

Kelmscott Manor, 2006

Kelmscott Manor, by May Morris (1862-1938)

The ruminating and searching and discussing will continue for at least another year, by which time we will be getting close enough to a retirement date for the Beloved Spouse to get serious. And the process will probably continue after that, because we'll have time to take the Shasta out to visit prospective venues. During that time we'll probably keep messing with the place, making it more and more of our own, and then having to decide, in the end, if we're really willing to give it up.

Image credits: all images except the one of The House are from Wikimedia Commons.

Earth Day 2012, Part 2: Living Here, Living Now

 

 As an antidote to yesterday's depressing assessment of the State of the World, I thought I'd offer a second look. I seldom stay down for long, and it didn't take much to set me on a more optimistic track this morning.

After slogging though the Sunday edition of the Daily Poop, I picked up the February/March edition of Mother Earth News (in preparation for a day in the garden), and read this from the "News from Mother" column:

These days, if you find yourself feeling negative about the future of humanity, you may find some solace in looking at the past.

Well, looking at the past is something I do for a living, so the invitation is a natural for me.  In fact, my Art History 2 lectures just last week focused on conditions in nineteenth-century England at a time when folks like William Morris, John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites,  and other admirers of the Medieval world were all themselves looking to the past for better models of how to live.

As the Mom article pointed out, however, there are many aspects of human life that have actually improved since both the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century: life expectancies are way up, violence is (amazing, but true) way down, and we're generally kinder than at any previous moment in recorded history.  We don't hold slaves, we don't sanction cock fights, and we generally don't kill people we don't agree with (even though we might talk about doing so during election years).

The article ends with an acknowledgement that we've still got a way to go, but instead of throwing up our hands in despair (which is what I probably seemed to be doing yesterday) it notes that we actually have examples of how we've improved things in the past:

. . . looking at what we've achieved, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think we can solve present and future challenges. We can live on this planet in a sustainable way. We can preserve its health and vitality for future generations. And we can make the lives of future human beings even better than the lives we lead today--we have a track record for that kind of achievement.

So, instead of whining about what we haven't accomplished since 1970, perhaps it's time to note that some significant changes have occurred, and to relish them rather than keep complaining about what we still need to do. At least for today.

For example, when I first became a vegetarian back in the late seventies, I did so because I didn't like the way animals raised for food were treated.  I figured that if I couldn't take the responsibility for killing an animal myself, I didn't have the right to eat it.  Eventually, I relented when my kids started insisting that they were being deprived, but we still ate meat sparingly, and I did the best job I could in finding humanely treated animals.  Nowadays, we still eat meat infrequently, but when we do there are numerous outlets from which we can buy "happy" cows, pigs, and chickens.  I can buy eggs that are expensive but come from chickens raised more like the ones we had when I was a kid.  I'm quite willing to pay a premium to do so, even if it means that most of my diet needs to come from grains and vegetables (all organically and/or sustainably raised, some home-grown).  In truth, however, we could largely solve our national obesity problem by doing just that: changing our diets substantially, and weaning ourselves from overly-processed foods.

When I drive to buy my food, I can now do so in a fuel-efficient car that sips gas and causes far less particulate matter to enter the atmosphere than any car I've ever driven.  The good thing about high gas prices is, after all, that manufacturers are producing more and more automobiles with higher and higher levels of fuel economy and lower emissions.  These days I'm watching the highway fill up with hybrid cars, even though in this part of the world pickups will probably rule in perpetuity.

Advances in medicine, although expensive, mean that I got an extra twenty five years with my father, and have myself lived eighteen years longer than I might have done (and another three years than I might have from the valve problem).  New drugs have kept me essentially healthy, and will probably prevent my daughter from ever having to endure bypass surgery at all, even though she shares my crappy genes. Cures for various cancers are being developed, and we've already seen declines in occurrences based on improved ways of life; as drugs and diets and living habits improve, fewer people will have to suffer from them, and those who do may well see even more cures developed in the next several years. 

As much as I might rail against technology, I'm always aware of what I owe to innovation. We have lived in an old house (celebrating its 90th birthday this year) for the past twelve summers, relying on its solidly-built bones and dual attic fans to help keep us cool.  We've gotten by with three small air conditioning units for three rooms, and have stayed relatively comfortable.  This year, thanks to tax rebates and technological availability, we're hoping to install a geothermal heating and cooling system, in part to replace the aging gas furnace installed when we bought the house.  The plan is to wean ourselves as much as possible from fossil fuel consumption.  Of course, even ten years ago, this option would have been a mere pipe dream--so our fuel consumption options are improving rather rapidly.

These changes are, in truth, rather insignificant in light of the challenges that lie ahead.  Big Oil is still in charge, Big Consumption is still the economic model, and much of the world still has no access at all to any of the improvements we enjoy.

War, pestilence, pollution, and greed are all still there, lurking.  But we may be getting better at ridding ourselves of their threats--or we could be, if we can figure out how to meet the challenges of educating our kids well enough so that they can ensure their own futures.  As much as I complain about how little my students know, I can't help but think that they'll work it all out, as long as we can help them develop the tools. 

Image notes: this shot was taken facing east one evening last month with the Nikon D80.  We've had an abundance of rain this spring and the skies have been lovely.  Yesterday's post features a view west, probably taken later that same day.

Earth Day 2012, Part 1: Hunkering Down

I can't say that this Earth Day finds me particularly sanguine about the future of this planet.  My puny efforts to shore up my half acre and shield it from encroaching doom seem almost like a bad science fiction novel about the end of the world.  Continuing efforts to learn to love the prairie (of which there is really very little left) aren't working especially well--and I frequently find myself indulging in "real estate porn," looking for affordable properties in the desert west.

In the meantime, the carbon sink is wilder than ever except for the patch I've cleared out for tomatoes. We'll have to do a bit of work tomorrow to open up a little more sunny space, but if I can remember to water them, they should do well enough.  But the abundant rain this spring, along with the lack of a true winter, have both meant that the whole place is lush and jungley. I'll have to clear out a mass of mint soon, because it's taking over the entire potager. A lettuce plant from last year has taken over the entire pot, is now nearly three feet tall, and has bolted, producing rather lovely yellow flowers.  The leaves, alas, are too tough to eat.  My Swiss chard is massive and not particularly tasty, but pretty to look at.  The few things I've planted seem to be doing well, and there will be banana peppers for salads along with the tomatoes--but I'm skeptical about my ability to get anything else in before it's too  late. But all this what's going well.

The truly depressing news has to do with oil and gas and tar sands and fracking. There seems to be no end to the American lust for fossil fuels, and the Obama administration is too interested in re-election to buck it.  I'm not sure anyone there really wants to anyway.  I do have to laugh at the far-right characterization of Obama as a Socialist, because he wouldn't know one if it bit him. Hard. On the nose. The Keystone pipeline has been delayed, for "further study," but the lower half of it has received a go-ahead. So now we can expect a large chunk of what's left of the prairie in East Texas to be plowed under in service of transporting oil to the Gulf for processing and (inevitably) to be shipped off to China.  So much for ensuring the energy future of the United States.

I truly long for some really convincing report to announce the arrival of Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas so that the oil industry (which is, of course, a Person, with rights equivalent to mine--or better) might finally put its mighty weight behind alternative energy sources. But it most likely won't happen in my lifetime, and I'm becoming quite thankful that I won't have grandchildren who'll have to deal with the consequences.

Last year's Earth Day post was far more optimistic, and I apologize for being so gloomy this time. But the evidence for climate change mounts daily, and its increasing rapidity is daunting.  All that old crabby utopian social-anarchists like me will be able do do in the future is to sit baking in our lawn chairs under the ravaged no-longer-bearing pecan trees and say "I told you so."

When I think back to that first Earth Day nearly forty years ago, I remember some of the cranky folk I knew then: long-haired hippies crying doomsday slogans and warning of environmental devastation if we continued on our wicked, planet-destroying paths.  For much of the last thirty years we've been wrapped in a cocoon of possibility, insulated against reality, and even gigantic oil spills (the most recent Gulf spill, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show last night, has taught us no appreciable lessons) and devastating weather can't shake us out of our complacency.

My only recourse seems to be to build a thicker cocoon.  I've already let the birds plant a perimeter forest around this small plot, and during the summer I can hide out in the back yard between teaching assignments. In the winter I can draw insulated curtains to hold out the cold, if it ever really gets cold again. In a couple of years I can retire and take a trip out west, because Vera's 56 miles per gallon  will probably be enough to make one last visit possible.  At the rate we're pumping oil, there should be more than enough for another decade, especially if the price keeps rising and fewer people drive. 

But it's difficult to muster any optimism at all when the real price of all this pumping will be smuttier skies, less breathable air, smoggier sunsets, and universal lung problems. 

Ever hopeful,  however, I'll spend Earth Weekend in the garden, communing with the bees and butterflies that are still around, enjoying the sultry southern aromas of spring, mowing down prairie grasses, re-reading Morris, and dreaming of utopia. 

May the next year prove me wrong and provide us with a path toward change.