[Updates] Wendell Berry's Portrait "Look & See" on Netflix too

[Andrew Stone]

Thank you very much for attending - two packed houses on a Tuesday night. What powerful words for us to heed. Proceeds are going to http://berrycenter.org 

And if you couldn't join us tonight, it's streaming on NetFlix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80105088

And if you wondered why I wanted my friends to see this, I wrote this short piece to explain:

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Wendell Berry makes me think and that challenges me to write those thoughts down to test their mettle later.

When I read Wendell Berry I can hear my grandfather Eslie Asbury, also a Kentuckyian and also from Henry County. Just this year I found out my grandfather was friends of Wendell's father John Berry, who helped lead The Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association which stabilized the price of this commodity, allowing decent income to every small family farm. This allowed people to stay and work on their farm and maintain a decent standard of living even as our cities were industriallizing and pulling away the youth from rural areas. His lament over the destruction of our lands and our way of life by industrialized processes is one we've all shared since 1962's Silent Spring.

Wendell's daughter Mary runs the Berry Center which advocates for farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies. An example is their establishing a fully certified meat processing facility to help small farms remain self-reliant for protein.   

Growing up visiting and then working on my grandfather's farm gave me the courage to try to be a farmer.  My New Mexican surrogate grandfathers, 'Mano Vicente Archuleta and Don Patricio Garcia, would patiently teach by doing and dichos handed down to them from generations long gone. The theme of love and care for the land remains the same here as in Kentucky and throughout the planet where people are still connected to the land, and without that care and respect, we can neither flourish nor last long.

Walk with me through time to old Kentucky where we enter a tobacco barn - sun streaming through specialized slats on the sides, hinged old weather beaten planks to correctly adjust the moisture in the pungent curing tobacco hanging from all the rafters. Breathe deep that earthy wholesome smell of a guaranteed price for a crop with its own set of moral issues. 

When you come out into the bright sunlight on top of the hill, you notice the paint on top of the roof of the tobacco barn: 

"SEE ROCK CITY"


Andrew Stone
@twittelator
http://stone.com

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