Mr. Berry waxes eloquent about scythes, likes them better than weed eaters, but Michelle (or Jackie K) couldn’t use either, and insults the ground she pretends to rake. And I don’t for one millisecond care.

But it makes very great difference from what moral angle one starts spoutin.’

The judge in Arkansas who tossed a case out of court and lectured the dumb lawyer who brought it by saying “Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. It can’t be done, and it annoys the pig.” has my question exactly right.

Mr. Berry saluted a White House that adds backyard produce to its menu rather than a general Fatwa against Broccoli or Suffi Love Poems about cheeseburgers, deadly pretzels and delicious pork rinds. The central point is that he acknowledges, inadvertently or otherwise…. the fact that the people of this country, against their best interests now treat the White House as though it was the Kaaba at Mecca…waiting patiently for the portents from on high to come down and provide the fundamental signs as to how we must live. Perhaps the Kaaba is an unfortunate metaphor, it is more of the nature of Delphi, complete with intoxicating sulphureous gasses and the gibberish of many well-paid oracles. It sounds more like a Pagan Cult to me than anything having to do with Christianity. Come to think of it, for the decisions currently emanating out of the holy city of legislative devotions, chicken entrails divination would likely suffice.

1,000 of the 1001 cameras in our besotted media are trained upon the Federal District and we think it newsworthy….no matter who utters it…. that someone might characterize a piece of ground bathed in the klieg lights of our continuous attentions as “the most important plot of land in America”? About the time that 501 cameras of the 1,001 are trained anywhere but Washington or its Wars and Financial Chicanery, then it just might be worth our while to note something going on there as though it might be worthwhile or worthy of emulation. Personally, I’d just as soon pull the plug on the entire sorry lot of them. Our federal government has grown beyond moderation to an addiction and with this addiction comes all the various pathologies of addiction, physical and psychological. The dirty curb looks entirely normal to those who inhabit it and like any drunk, this drunk can’t help himself, he is the author of his actions but these actions are set in place by the embrace, not of evil per se but of a weak acquiescence in service to short term gratification that flirts to readily with evil. In other words, whose fault it all is becomes immaterial and secondary to the need for the drunk to step away from his poison, both internal and external.

I think it is good Stegall pointed this out because even those who disdain much of what this government does, remain closely fixated upon it as though this fixation might provide that burn in the gut as the liquor hits its mark…..myself included.

I’m not surprised, that in your salad days you ran with a crowd of mind-blown hippie dudes and dudettes who, I would remind you, are somebody’s grandpa and grandma and doing their best to hide their past in much the same manner a cat covers his droppings.

And, for your information, I own the a copy of the first issue of Mother Earth News published in 1968, I believe!

However, in all honesty, my worst offense was a toke or two. When offered an acid tab by an old friend just returned from the ‘Nam,’ I chickened out, and am forever pleased with my prescient decision to “just say no,” in agreement with Nancy Reagan. My pal lives out on his farm, in a house he built on his own, making furniture and forever doomed to search for his mind…I love the dude!

Again, thanks for the advice!

Cheeks, you need to concentrate on a more productive enemies list. Maybe Haldeman might have left something in writing about it. Next thing you know, your compound hit list will include “gay Dog Show groupies” or “wiccan vegetarian lesbian rock climbers” and its going to get complicated.

You need to try harder to be a little more Dude-like. Buy yourself a ratty cardigan, some bermuda shorts and sandals and Dudify Dude.

To say nothing of mountains of dead babies.

I don’t care if one of ‘em puts up a fence and start raising cattle — none of those folks have anything to do with me or mine.

No disrespect to Mr. Berry intended. Nobody’s perfect. But he is mistaken to give any of Those People any credit whatsoever for their posing and posturing.

It’s like praising Obama for our now having a humbler foreign policy. Ummmm……

“And at least he knows enough to put on some work clothes, and gloves! Yeah, I can see my wife working our garden in that outfit.”

LOL from those lines, Mr. Stegall. If the guys who made SPINAL TAP were to do a movie about politics, the image in question would assuredly appear in it.

Maybe along with a scene where the President works on a Ford assembly line dressed in a polo shirt & khakis.

(I apologize, BTW, for going off the handle a while back over the whole Takimag / Pagan-Christianity thing. It caught me by surprise, and I was somewhat blunter than I perhaps intended.)

If I remember correctly Wendell expressed a certain appreciation for those various and sundry political programs that benefited the ‘small’ farmer, which makes him either a political pragmatist or one of the them FDR New Dealers. Nothin’ wrong with that if you think the system, that gets regularly pounded here on the Porch, is salvageable.
However, you’ve also got that enviro-weenie business, and Wendell has been known to run with them people. Plus, he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a Christian!

So here we have a fellow, arguably America’s most significant living novelist, who likes gummint programs that benefit the small farmer, likes wacky, long-haired, back-to-the-land, enviro-wacko, Yazgur Farm wannabees, and prays to Jesus! AND, on top of that, this righteous dude is praising our first undocumented, Kenyan president and his lovely wife, the ever gracious Michelle ma’ Belle, for having a “organic” garden in the backyard, knowing full well that thanks to her idiot husband’s commie policies everybody damn-well better have a garden in their backyard if they plan on feedin’ the kids next year!

So my concern is that Wendell is turning his back on the Port William Membership! There ain’t none of them people would ever get in a line for a gummint handout, or to vote for some socialist talkin’ about redistributing the wealth!

DW, you can share my chops’n'applesauce any day of the week.

Byron, Patrick. Patrick, Byron. Since I know you both and this here internet gizmo makes normal societal relations so awkward, let me play mediator and vouch for both of you. Which is enough to get you fired in some quarters. But since Byron is an entrepenuerial left-wing localist small bookstore owner in rural PA who has probably read everything Berry has ever written and since Patrick is a tenured radical in the belly of the university beast who has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about Berry, political theories of decentralization, the alternative tradition in America, and pretty much every other subject worth knowing, I guess you’re both as safe as the White House sod under Michelle’ma’Belle’s rake.

Not.

You miss my tree-like point for the forest of your indignation. Sadly, there’s a lot of focus on one minor detail of an interview with Wendell Berry that took place on a live radio program. I wouldn’t conclude that this statement reflects his deep consideration of the many implications of what is probably a sense of satisfaction that there’s an organic garden at the White House. After all, this is a man who has been excoriated and damned for decades by the Political and Industrial Powers for being a fringe lunatic – and now there’s an organic garden at the White House. I can’t begrudge the man some degree of felt satisfaction that his life’s work and words may have had some effect – however imperfect – in the world.

That said, if you’re going to draw conclusions about him based on his words, I’d spend some time with his 30+ books before drawing conclusions from 30 seconds on a radio show. Sheesh.

Is it now a “localist” virtue to support federal government providing symbolic “permission” for people to grow their own food? I think this shows just how deep the Progressivist rot runs in the American character. When people need to look to a couple of ardent big government leftists for approval to be self-sufficient, then the phrase ‘self-sufficient’ is meaningless.