By Wendell Berry
(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)
Thank you. I'm glad to know we're friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I'm sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As "fuel" while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that's fast or cheap to falsify
The body's health and pleasure—don't ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature's laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.
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I wish I had something exciting to report but I had another quiet day. Got up early because Superpoke Pets finally has Chanukah decorations. Took care of some forms and phone calls that need to get done this month and probably won't if I don't get on it, because once the kids are out of school, everything will get put off. Watched the Next Generation episode I need to review tomorrow, "The Inner Light," which is consistently rated the best episode of the series and that makes it intimidating (personally, I'd never vote for an episode that has no Troi at all and only gives glimpses of the rest of the cast -- sure, it's a great Picard showpiece and a moving story overall, but quintessential Next Gen to me by definition involves the ensemble cast).
A penguin vase at Art of Fire on the Countryside Artisans Tour last weekend.
Here is one of the glassblowers working...
...on something that will hopefully be as gorgeous as these when finished.
The view on the way to Art of Fire was pretty gorgeous on Sunday, too.
I'm not sure this sheep at Dancing Leaf Farm would agree...
...and the chickens made their displeasure quite apparent, since they were staying in the coop despite the wire being down.
Still, it was very scenic.
Here is the view of Sugarloaf Mountain from Sugarloaf Studio next door.
Our weekend plans are getting messed up due to ever-shifting weather reports -- first we were supposed to get snow Sunday night, then all day Sunday, now maybe Saturday night but not Sunday...I don't know what if anything to try to plan!
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