Tag: The Unsettling of America

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Thomas Jefferson And La Fruta Del Diablo: The Promise And Problems Of Harvesting Food

Our third president farmed, and failed in quite a spectacular and yet illuminating way, as Modern Farmer’s  Thomas Jefferson”s Farming Failures reveals–“When it comes to agriculture, few have persevered more in their failures than Thomas Jefferson.”  His was a philosopher’s wonder as he walked the fields and forests of Monticello.  In a letter to Lafayette on April … Continue reading Thomas Jefferson And La Fruta Del Diablo: The Promise And Problems Of Harvesting Food

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Body and Soul: “our demands upon the earth are determined by our ways of living with one another.”

Most of the artwork through this post is by Joe Jones (1909-1963) who painted midwestern wheat fields, segregation in the south, and the effects of The Great Depression on American farmers.  The above painting The American Farm (1936) captures the stark ruin of soil and crops and the precarious struggle for life in rural America. … Continue reading Body and Soul: “our demands upon the earth are determined by our ways of living with one another.”

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Wilderness, Good Oak, And Moby Dick

In Chapter Three of The Unsettling of America, “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture,” Wendell Berry pointedly defends the primacy of “wilderness” within the conservation movement in America. What has to be acknowledged at the outset is that wilderness conservation is important and that it has a place in any conservation program, just … Continue reading Wilderness, Good Oak, And Moby Dick