Hello from Wisconsin! If you or friends are in the area, please join me for book events in Milwaukee tonight at Boswell Book Co., La Crosse tomorrow (Tuesday!) at Pearl Street, and Madison on Wednesday at Mystery to Me (register for free here!).
On Saturday night, I saw a series of Wendell Berry poems transformed into a play, of a kind. It was being performed by students of the Thoreau College and two professional actors in the auditorium of a high school and community center in Viroqua, Wisconsin. The “play” opened with a recitation of Berry’s poem “Look Out.” I shivered every time the actor spoke the word fire:
your place, wherever it is,
your house, your garden, your shop, your forest, your farm,
bears the shadow of its destruction by war
which is the economy of greed which is plunder
which is the economy of wrath which is fire.
And:
The Lords of War sell the earth to buy fire,
they sell the water and air of life to buy fire.
And:
Say no to the Lords of War which is Money
which is Fire.
Do you, like me, hear Israel and the USA in these words: “The Lords of War which is Money which is Fire”?
When I think about the US economic commitment to war—which is an unacceptable commitment—I return to another thing I once heard Berry say, a decade ago. My mom had invited me to La Crosse to join her in interviewing Berry for the radio show she hosted. In our conversation, Berry said, “I’m more and more concerned with the economic value of intangibles – knowledge, familiarity, affection, loyalty, sympathy. If you have livestock, sympathy is an economic asset.” He talked about love and affection, not as sentimentalities but as the basis for human action and inspiration. It felt like he was describing the antidote to an economy built on “War which is Money which is Fire.”
I’m not interested in using the cold rationale of modern economics to measure the ROI of intangibles. I am interested in living and working within a culture that values “knowledge, familiarity, affection.”
I hear, see, and experience glimmers of that culture often. After the play, my mom’s partner George recalled when Berry’s essay collection The Unsettling of America was published in 1977. That very year, Berry came to speak at the university in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and all the back-to-the-land farmers came to be near him, to learn from him, and most of all to thank him. They came bearing gifts, George told me—food that they’d grown and preserved—as an offering to someone who’d given them so much. Somehow they all knew to bring gifts. I find this so sweet! How did they know? How do we remember to make offerings? To protest and fight and also give honest and welcome gifts? We need it all!
A week from today, I’ll be in New York City. Dear friends have invited me to join them in a conversation for the final night of the Brooklyn Book Festival.
Please join us in New York City on Monday, Sept. 30 for GROUP CHAT: When Friends Become Family.
Starting at 7, we’ll have a short film screening, panel conversation, and community book swap. We’re celebrating and exploring chosen family and communal care.
Alongside me:
Lilly Dancyger: author of First Love: Essays on Friendship
Amrita Vijay and Andrew Stephens: writers, podcasters, & filmmakers
Moderated by: Shane O'Neill, Washington Post Style writer
Please join us on the Lower East Side! Tickets for GROUP CHAT are sliding scale.
We’re asking everyone to bring a book they’d like to swap with someone else. I’ll bring a Wendell Berry book. Let’s trade!