NOT BY CHANCE

My 16-year-old daughter, Sanjina Marie, and I made our periodic trek yesternight to one of the big-box bookstores here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (with soymilk latte for me and hot chocolate for her) so she could lose herself for hours in the fantasy section and I search for articles to annotate for Journal of Geography. There I found a new poem by fellow Kentuckian Wendell Berry in the current Harper's (Feb. 2009, p. 20). Its title is "By Chance, Of Course," is just 26 lines and has a startling last two lines, which I will not repeat here.

I will, though, copy its prolegomenon with my insertions:

"While attending the annual convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists [must have been a conference of theoretical astrophysicists] at the local provincial research university [most likely the University of Kentucky, where he has long been an adjunct professor; the use of "provincial," of course, is mildly pejorative and has the connotation of "lacking refinement"], the mad farmer [ha! W. B. himself; neat contrast to scientists] intercedes from the backrow" [a clever way to introduce the piece by literally emplacing himself, as poet-observer, on a distant perch where he can observe the scientistic view of life].

The poem is about the reality of Chance, in which--it is clear (caustic and emphatic ending, as I said)--W. B. does not believe. Berry's is a spiritual view of the Universe, I'd say, without talking directly about religion.

Sorry I did not copy the entire poem; but I wanted you to seek it out, if this is your wont.

To be fair to science, though, it does not...oh, heck, let science speak for itself. Our everyday experience of life is indeed poetic.

STEWARDSHIP OF LAND AND SURVIVAL

I have great admiration and predilection for the thinking of Wendell Berry, who has been a major influence on my life. I first saw Berry up close at Alfalfa's, a health-food restaurant across from the University of Kentucky, on Limestone Ave., just up the street from the tobacco warehouse (which makes that area of Lexington redolent with the sweet pungency of drying burley). I was part-investor in the espresso machine in the restaurant. This was ca. 1970. Then, in my first graduate program, at Ohio University, a few years later, in a Geography of Agriculture course, we were assigned his The Unsettling of America to study. (Thank you, Prof. Frank Bernard.) And, study it I did--several times. What Berry does so well is to tie the individual and her personal ways of living with resource and land use.

From a July 2004 interview in Sojourners magazine http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0407&article=040710x> I'd say that Berry is now being more direct in his language about the role of corporate totalitarianism. Good for him. In Unsettling he places emphasis on individual habits of living, which I'm sure he would still say is the responsibility of each of us. I agree. But, in the interview he seems to be saying that corporate takeover of our lives--our ability to feed ourselves, our very existence--makes it nearly impossible for society to maintain RATIONAL systems of resource and land use. It is an insane policy for cities to not depend on their own local market areas, their own "foodsheds." It IS unsustainable.

I am glad he brings in the question of peak oil. Because when oil prices start to rise at a much faster pace, it will be farmers like Berry whom we will depend upon to supply nearby cities with food. We cannot continue to rely on Chile and even California. In the meantime, Berry and farmers like him are maintaining the health and productivity of their land--small parcels of it--as insurance, and also as exemplars of how to be productive in a sustainable way--for the time when they will be the difference between the collapse of the food production system and survival. At that crucial moment, we shall be so appreciative that farmers like Berry had the foresight to be good stewards of the land.