Wendell Berry and "The Mad Farmer Poems”

It was a conversation that went much like you might expect. 

“I don’t understand it,” the executive said. “They hate us. They hate what we do. They don’t even really understand what it is that we do. They don’t understand how important our products are for farmers and for the world’s food supply.”

 

I was sitting in the executive’s office, working with him on a speech he was to give. What he was talking about wasn’t the subject of the speech, but it was clearly on his mind. I listened to what was essentially a rant, and then I asked a question.

 

“Have you read Wendell Berry?”

 

He stared at me. “Who’s that?”

 

And there it was. The animosity about the company’s products, the position of the company in the marketplace, the company’s close identification with “Big Agriculture,” and the executive’s being perplexed with the activists and animosity on social media could all be summed up that that question – “who’s that?”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Adventures in Storytelling – Andrew Motion at The New Statesman.

 

A Woman Was stabbed to Death on a Train. Wikipedia Wants to Erase Her Story – Ashley Rindsberg at The Free Press.