We are killing ourselves. I'm not kidding.
Every day, with some of our most mundane practices (driving cars, running refrigerators, buying "cheap" food at a supermarket chain), we are ensuring the ruin of mountain tops (for coal), the water cycle (well, everything...now
hydrofracking, too), and the health of ourselves, the natural systems in which we operate (even when we build walls that physically and conceptually obfuscate the truth), and ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS.
I don't mean to be a downer, but I'm here to make change and this is what I'm up against. Me, and lots of other, much smarter people. But it's an uphill battle.
Read
this article by Derrick Jensen and you'll realize, like I did, that personal change is great, but it really won't matter. The vast majority of what ails us can only be solved at a much larger, more political scale (eww, young Grace would say...but now I know it's a fact of the matter and must be faced), because it is at that level that nearly all of issues are occurring. We've given big agriculture and industry 50-100 years to suck all that is good out of the world and we're being left with a toxic, dying shell. Downer.
I'm going to digress, but then you'll see, it's to bring us further along in the same conversation.
Alright, to be honest, I was worried about Wendell Berry. He is perhaps my hero insofar as his eloquence as a writer, thinker, and activist. His sheer intelligence, ability to craft complicated issues into clear problems with solutions, and creative use of poetry and prose to discuss the root causes of many societal and environmental ills, while continuing to advocate for change even in the face of collusion, greed, and incompetence, all give me hope and inspiration.
"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts," he writes in
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.
And, it seems, others are also just a bit concerned. And with good reason. Berry has been fighting this battle for over half a century. He is not young. The feeling that I had, that I wanted to hear him speak with my own ears and interact in a community of thought that includes him, is shared by many other young people that I have talked to. "I want to see him in my lifetime [and his]," I've heard and thought more than once.
Good news. Berry is as determined, clever, and enthusiastic as ever!
When I heard that Berry would be appearing alongside like-minded writer/activists
Wes Jackson,
Scott Russel Sanders, and
Sandra Steingraber (among others) at the annual Land Institute Prairie Festival, I couldn't help but ache to take part in the gathering. The land is what sustains us and is our hope for the future. Many environmental, social, and economic issues can be solved if we change the failed systems that support them and agriculture is a big player in all of this. Hence, my determination to incorporate it into my graduate studies.
The Land Institute researches Natural Systems Agriculture, a mimic of nature's ecosystems. Friends and supporters just call it, "The Land". It holds a weekend of barn dancing and barn conversing during harvest time every year. I was lucky enough to attend the
32nd annual assemblage of minds and hearts.
(Let me be clear, I'm still the same broke twenty-something I have been since entering my third decade on earth. Working for good causes often means volunteering, particularly during tough economic times. I have been able to scratch by because of the generosity of others and the ridiculous work ethic my father instilled upon me. My ability to get to Salina, KS without missing any classes was a product of my loved one's various education- and work-related travels, frequent flyer miles/credit card points, and said generosity. I did make sure he, too, could come, so I had someone to share the experience with.)
So, I had the pleasure to spend my weekend with a few hundred other people--often under the shelter of the big barn--as artists, economists, and scientists (I love that most of them were many of these things and I aspire to do the same juggling trick) shared their thoughts, fears, and hopes with us and we, in turn, continued the conversation with them and among ourselves. Several readings/lectures were interspersed with shared meals, music, dancing, bonfires, and tours of the new research building. We were giddy to be sharing time and space with people who cared about and understood the same issues overlooked by so many of the people we exist alongside every day, but we also understood that the lack of perceived time, education, and willingness to broach tough issues that we faced left us not optimistic, but still hopeful. We were abuzz because those of us engaged with making change were finally all in one place and had to use each other's energy to reignite and maintain the passion that drives us all to push against a broken system most people don't have the opportunity to even recognize.
We were a few feet from "stage," a simple podium with reading light attached against one side of the reclaimed-wood barn. Behind us, a few hundred attendees looked on attentively.
Beyond a member of "The Land" team (a cow), attendees line up to tour the new research building. 
The barn was also host to several musicians.
The harvest moon rose behind the bonfire on our first night in Salina.
Who can say no to a barn dance?!By participating in the system, we reinforce it. By removing ourselves from the system, we stand by and watch it continue to erode our environment and our communities. By actively supporting alternatives, we strengthen a market for positive invention. By communicating truth, advocating change, and demanding that our basic systems are realigned with reality and the vitality of human and environmental communities, we will assist with the transition from global and local peril to healthy, just communities.
It was a beautiful weekend. We camped out--alongside many others--on The Land's land. I was reinvigorated with the energy needed to keep learning about and working toward much-needed change (local, global, human, ecological, etc).
John summed up how small my niches is when he leaned over to me during a lull and whispered: "All of the people you idolize are here in a barn and 1000 people paid $10 to see them." :)
So....Wendell Berry is doing well, the world is in shambles, you can make a difference, but small changes won't get us very far. Systems must be transformed. Short-sighted economic and political interests cannot keep driving us into the ground.
I look forward to working with you.
Berry, giving the annual Strachan Donnelley Lecture on Restoration and Conservation Saturday (Sept. 25) morning, discussing "our constant vulnerability to unintended consequences," and some authentic reasons for hope, including: leadership from the bottom, actual conversation and discourse about the limits of our knowledge, and conservation as an integral part of living.
