Wendell Berry - Essays on Thinking Green - Introduction

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I am beginning a four week course on Wendell Berry's Agrarian Essays. As I go along I would like to present what I read and learn from this class here on Relevancy22. Having read through the early pages of the the book's preview it promises to take all the best of ecological preservation, growth and earthcare along with incorporating the land-bound attitudes of early American farming communities. An attitude I was raised amongst during the first part of my life. If you think of  today's Amish farming communities, and then think of even earlier pre-industrial farming eras, this would be my bailiwick of commonplace agrarian ideas intermixed with communal country living.

The closest I've come to these land-dependency-and-appreciation attitudes which I can remember arose from the experiences of my youth whenever in our summer camping travels and ramblings through America and Canada I would meet Native Americans on their reservations. Listening to the old men and women tell their stories I would later quiz those willing to share insights to my questions. Through these dialogues I felt the same deep affinity for the land as they had grown up with. It was like meeting older brothers and sisters from another mother from another country and culture. The bounds and feelings were close.

Since those days, I, and my immediate family, have undergone the way of all white men transitioning from off the farm and into the public school districts where I experienced post-industrial modernism (I never, never liked it). And later, during this more recent quarter century (though it began in the 60s) the displacing era of postmodernism (which I have felt infinitely more at home in, being closer to my original origins).

Now if you are reading along with me, follow the plan below. Michael Stevens, who I've asked to teach this course, has taught two earlier courses for me on Wendell Berry (cf. the books shown below). After this course I have asked Michael to teach one more course on the Poetry of T.S. Eliot.

Per Wendell Berry, Michael has meet and spoken with him several times and has done his graduate research papers on Berry. As an English teacher, Michael came with stellar references to me several years ago re T.S. Eliot from another stellar poetry professor, David Huisman, from whom I have taken many poetry and Shakespeare classes.

Here's the online link if you wish to join us through Calvin College's CALL program. It is open to anybody and begins Thursdays, Sept 7-30, 2021.

• Week 1 - 9/9: "A Native Hill," "The Unsettling of America," "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," "Think Little"

• Week 2 - 9/16: "The Body and the Earth," "Men and Women in Search of Common Ground," "Health is Membership," "People, Land, and Community" 

• Week 3 - 9/23: "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community," "Conservation and Local Economy," "Economy and Pleasure," "Two Economies," "The Whole Horse" 

• Week 4 - 9/30: "The Idea of a Local Economy," "Solving for Pattern," "The Gift of the Good Land," "Christianity and the Survival of Creation," "The Pleasures of Eating"

Online Class Registration

Note: With paid membership ($40) the first class may be free ($30)

Amazon Link

Amazon Link

Amazon Link

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The Art of the Commonplace:

The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry 

Product Description

Collects twenty-one essential essays by the award-winning writer on agrarianism, agriculture, and community to discuss such themes as the cost of dwindling agriculture, the causes and treatments of social disintegration, and the corporate takeover of social institutions and its impact on natural environments. 30,000 first printing.

From Library Journal

Writer and farmer Berry has long been an inspiration to the contemporary agrarian movement and a guiding light to people who care deeply about the health of their land and their communities. In his numerous books of essays, he has thoughtfully and articulately shown how the current consumer-based, profit-driven industrial society not only destroys our natural world but also increasingly harms our social and personal well-being. The 21 essays in this collection, written over the past two decades, provide both a splendid introduction to Berry's work and a stimulating compendium for those already familiar with it. These are beautifully crafted essays, replete with social criticism, righteous anger, moral guidance, and lyrical wording. Above all, they contain a reverence for the beauty and complexity of our natural world and a call to be good stewards of the earth and our limited resources. Berry states that we do not need to rely on constant technological progress to improve our future: "If we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us." Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Ilse Heidmann, Olympia, WA     [*Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.]

About the Author

An essayist, novelist, and poet, Wendell Berry is the author of more than thirty books. Throughout his career, Berry has received various awards and honors, including the award for writing from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Foundation Award for non-fiction, and the Ingersoll Foundation's T. S. Eliot Award. Berry lives and works in his native Kentucky with his wife, Tanya Berry, and their children and grandchildren. Norman Wirzba is an associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown College, in Georgetown, Kentucky. He is the author of the forthcoming Becoming a Culture of Creation. Wirzba lives in Kentucky with his wife and four young children.