The [What Week Is This?] Update

Here are some of the highlights from the last week or so.

Firsts

• Put a tag in a calf’s ear.
• Notched that same calf’s other ear.
• Burnt pastures.
• Watched as Dad “put down” a cow with a broken hip.
• Took down a section of old barbed-wire fence.
• Made the rounds of feeding cattle.

Outside of my own personal history and context, this isn’t much of a list. Its unremarkableness is part of its significance, however. Consider the following from Wendell Berry’s “Think Little” and “Economy and Pleasure,” respectively:

The average American farmer is now an old man whose sons have moved away to the cities. His knowledge, and his intimate connection with the land, are about to be lost.

One of the most regrettable things about the industrialization of work is the segregation of children. As industrial work excludes the dead by social mobility and technological change, it excludes the children by haste and danger. The small scale and the handwork of our tobacco cutting permit margins both temporal and spatial that accommodate the play of children. The children play at the grown-up’s work, as well as at their own play. In their play the children learn to work; they learn to know their elders and their country. And the presence of playing children means invariably that the grown-ups play too from time to time.

The fact that I am now, as a forty-year-old, accomplishing some of these “firsts” that might have been accomplished long ago is indicative of the extent to which my own childhood was “segregated.” As a child and an adolescent, I saw that segregation as a blessing. As a younger man, I rarely thought about it. Now, however, I find myself lamenting the fact that I was so completely excluded from the work of my dad.


There’s an Angus Ambassador?

Last Thursday, the weather was wet and the creek was high, so Dad decided we should grab the kids and head to a bull sale over in Fredonia. A ranch down in this area that runs registered Angus cattle was selling about 80 bulls and a few high-end cows. I’d been to several cattle barns and livestock sales, of course, but I had never been to one that was quite this specialized. It’s a little bizarre. The sale included a twenty- to thirty-page program printed on glossy paper, with key stats for the registered bulls, almost like the batting averages or RBIs on the back of baseball cards. The stats included averages and scores related to everything from the birth weights of a bull’s progeny to ultrasound readings reflecting the muscle mass of the rib eye. The beginning of the program included a list of the ranch’s “Reference Sires,” the notable ancestors for the various bulls in the sale. If you’re at all familiar with horse racing (i.e., watch coverage of the Kentucky Derby or something), then you might have a sense of what I’m talking about. Otherwise, I suspect the whole thing would seem rather arcane and bizarre. I’m thinking there’s an essay in the whole experience—perhaps something akin to Susan Orlean’s “Lifelike” (BAE 2004) or David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” (BAE 2005).

As we were sitting in the sale barn, eating our complimentary lunch, and waiting for the sale to begin, a young woman walked in wearing a tiara. Kind of surreal. Later, after she had donned a leather sash (think of a cross between the Miss USA pagent and the National Finals Rodeo), I gathered that the young woman was the “Angus Ambassador.” Who knew?


The Writing Life

Quite apart from the challenges of time management (both the weakness I have cultivated over my life and the demands of ranching, fathering, and trying to write), the writing life during my stay in Kansas has been frustrating. Some of these frustrations have to do with audience. (Who is the audience for the essays I’m envisioning? Why would that audience be interested in what I have to say?) I’m trying to keep reminding myself about Peter Elbow’s article on ignoring audience, trying to realize that concerns of audience are a bit premature. Another frustration is focus. Because I’m thinking about these essays as a collection, and because at least six of those essays (not counting any new possibilities that might surface along the way) are related to the family ranch in one way or another, I find myself jumping mentally from one idea to the other without taking/making the time to really dive in on any of them.

Then, this evening, I picked up Essays of E. B. White, which I checked out from the Independence library, and encountered what I believe will be a new friend. To my recollection, I had never read any of White’s essays. Having now read only the foreward and the first essay (“Good-Bye to Forty-Eighth Street”), I’m hooked—both consoled and encouraged.

From the forward:

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

Can’t help but wonder what E. B. White would think about blogging.

A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a ply, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined life.

While I can’t claim the title of “essayist,” I’m at least encouraged by the degree to which my life embodies the “rambl[ing] about” that White describes.


From “Good-Bye to Forty-Eighth Street”:

[…] I would rather have a ringside seat at a cattle sale than a box at the opera […]

Pity Party

For the last year or two, the following passage from Wendell Berry's "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community" has been an lens through which I've come to perceive everything from my family to my colleagues to writing centers to the local church.

But a community makes itself up in more intimate circumstances than a public. And the health of the community depends absolutely on trust. A community knows itself and knows its place in a way that is impossible for a public (a nation, say, or a state). A community does not come together by a covenant, by a conscientious granting of trust. It exists by proximity, by neighborhood; it knows face-to-face, and it trusts as it knows. It learns, in the course of time and experience, what and who can be trusted. It knows that some of its members are untrustworthy, and it can be tolerant, because to know in this matter is to be safe. A community member can be trusted to be untrustworthy and so can be included. (A community can trust its liars to be liars, for example, and so enjoy them.) But if a community withholds trust, it withholds membership. If it cannot trust, it cannot exist. ("Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community")

I like Berry's distinction between a public and a community, between a social covenant and a communal tapestry of experience and knowledge. And, I particularly like the notion that the presence of community allows folks to be tolerant of--and even find pleasure in--those it might typically shun, such as Berry's untrustworthy and liars. This notion has reframed the way I think about the diverse range of personalities and perspectives accumulated in the communities of which I am a part.

But, this week it suddenly dawned on me that in at least one of my communities, I am the one being tolerated. In much the same way that Berry's hypothetical community would enjoy its liars, my community smiles, perhaps rolls its collective eyes, and extends a lot of grace to one whose ways of thinking almost never seem to align with the dominant perspective.

When positioned as a member of the majority, I find Berry's thoughts enable a tolerance for and an appreciation of the folks who are Other-than-me. But, when positioned as the Other, I find Berry's passage bittersweet, for even the good fortune of being tolerated, included, and enjoyed can eventually become tiresome. It can even feel a bit condescending. I suspect there are important distinctions to be made between the natures of tolerance, inclusion, and membership. When inclusion feels less like membership and more like tolerance, one simply wants to withdraw and invest his efforts elsewhere.

This, I think, is why Berry's emphasis on a local, largely geographically bound community is so important. When communities are plentiful and one can easily move from one to another, or when communities are virtual and possess little obligation for continued interaction, it is so easy to stick out a thumb and move on down the road. In a culture that celebrates--perhaps even worships--both literal and metaphorical mobility, it's so easy give up on the community of proximity and neighborhood and end up with merely a public. But, I'll admit that there are some seasons when a mere public seems fairly attractive.

One Thing Leads to Another

First, gotta love the Fixx. Another one of those weird convergence moments hit yesterday. To explain it, I need to go back. Last year, I applied for and was one of three persons interviewed for a position at a large state university. The committee decided not to make a hire, which, objectively, I can see was a wise choice for everyone involved. While I believe I could have done the job well, it meant redefining my professional life in ways I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue so singlemindedly. And, from their end, I didn't have some qualifications they desired--like a publication record or administrative experience at a university with a larger, more diverse student body. (Of course, I could have simply come across as a moron. One doesn't really get feedback after such interviews.) In any event, I don't know that I would have been a good fit for the job nor the job for me. But, as I told some friends, "It's one thing to not want to go to the party. It's another to not be invited."

Fast forward back to the present. After reading Wendell Berry's essay "The Unsettling of America" and beginning to consider what it might mean to pursue "settlement" in my life, my profession, etc., I stumble across the web to find a brief announcement about the aforementioned position being filled. I wasn't experiencing much in the way of "settlement," I'm afraid. Mostly indignation and dissatisfaction. Not because of the person who was hired, but because I wasn't.

So what do I do? I start Googling. I skim a couple of articles from the new hire's admirable vita. Insecurities surface. Indignation. Resentment and regret over all the choices that led me to where and who I am. The prideful part of me starts to reassure myself that I could have the new hire's vita if I really wanted it. I consider downloading the new hire's picture and using it as a motivational wallpaper on my computer's desktop. I start thinking about the school loans that could have been paid with the salary I would have made. Should have made....

About half way through the second article, however, I begin to realize that--admirable as the articles are--they aren't the kind of thing I really want to do. They are the kind of specialized scholarship that simply doesn't excite me. Perhaps I've been thoroughly converted to the liberal arts mindset, but I still hope to find a way to write (and perhaps publish) regularly and productively without having to select a narrow academic specialty.

So, I never downloaded the new hire's photo for my wallpaper (but I won't rule it out just yet), and I'm in the process of re-establishing an awkward peace about the whole thing. The peace comes from knowing that my insecurities and indignation arise from a prideful desire for a salary and position that aren't really connected with what I want to do. The awkwardness comes from the questions that linger after reading Berry--questions about the distinctions between "settlement" and merely "settling."

Settlement

Okay. I’ve decided that I really need to get (back?) into the habit of using this blog. Given the fact that I’m reading a lot of Wendell Berry for a presentation at the 2007 Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA) regional conference in October, this decision means that this blog is going to seem like a Berry blog for a while.

After talking with Liberty about my summer reading, I’ve decided that I’m going to alternate between Berry’s collection of short stories titled That Distant Land and his collection of essays titled The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (ed. Norman Wirzba). I just finished reading the essay titled “The Unsettling of America,” in which Berry sheds the dichotomy between conqueror and victim for the terms exploitation and nurture.

Let me outline as briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order--a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.(39)

Berry prefers these terms, in part, because they “describe a division not only between persons but also within persons” (39). When I consider this division in my professional life, I have to confront the fact that I serve--in some capacity--“an institution or organization.” Thankfully, my role as professor and director of a writing center place me in the service of the people who come to the university. I get to be one of the nurturers (I hope) within the institution. But, I can’t help wondering when and how I slide into the role of exploiter. For example, when do I find myself thinking in terms of the writing center (as institution) rather than the writers we seek to serve? When do I find myself thinking of my students in terms of “how much and how quickly [they] can be made to produce”? To what degree does the nature of the institution (generally or specifically) enable me to think, act, and live as nurturer rather than exploiter?

A classroom of students can respond just as unpredictably as a piece of land, and that response is tied to a whole bunch of variables--some of which are outside of the farmer’s/teacher’s influence. But the analogy breaks down when one considers that those students--individually and collectively--have a will that one doesn’t find in a piece of land. Students, too, can find themselves wrestling with the divisions between exploiter and nurturer. Thus, in addition to self-examination, one must end up asking how to help shape a community that tends toward nurturing.

Berry asserts that the answers (to his questions, at least) "are to be found in our history: in its until now subordinate tendency of settlement, of domestic permanence" (45). What does "settlement" look like for a professor? For a student? For a writing center? For communities--like institutions of higher education--that depend upon recurrent waves of students with an ambitious and decidedly unsettled eye toward the horizon?

Remembering

One of the things I love about my life and the purposes and people it includes, is the potential for convergence--between...what? ...plotlines? ...themes? When one's life is dominated by story, a certain intertextuality just seems to occur more often. I suppose the same happens for other folks with other jobs, but the frequency of those moments just seems higher due to my life as a teacher and a reader.

Tonight, during (literally) a couple minutes of reading while I was waiting for my wife, who was waiting to switch laundry before coming to bed, a couple of plotlines intersected. And in this case, as in many others, Wendell Berry helped usher me to the crossroads.

First, as part of the board for the Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA), I'm working on the proposal review stage for our conference in October 2007. My own proposal focuses on literary worlds and how literary places--like Berry's Port William--might generate questions or perspectives that could inform our work in writing centers.

Second, even though there is still a solid month and tons of grading and a million other things to be done before this semester is over, I've been wrestling with that melancholy which arises when I realize students whom I admire, respect, and treasure--students who come as close to being friends as the barriers of age and institutional position will allow--are on the verge of leaving campus. Such melancholy is wholly selfish, of course, but I suppose that is part of what makes it notable.

Then, tonight, I picked up Berry's collection of short stories titled This Distant Land, mostly to preview quickly before bed, in hopes of getting an early start on actually developing the project for the conference. I got through the epigraph, and now I'm staying up late to write this blog post. Here's the epigraph, which will probably end up becoming an inscription on a graduation card or two. The epigraph is a passage from Berry's novel titled Remembering, and the formatting is in the original.

Oh that I should ever forget We stood by the wagon saying goodbye or trying to & I seen it come over her how far they was a going & she must look at us to remember us forever & it come over her pap and me and the others We stood & looked & knowed it was all the time we had & from now on we must remember We must look now forever Then Will rech down to her from the seat & she clim up by the hub of the wheel & set beside him & he spoke to the team She had been Betsy Rowanberry two days who was bornd Betsy Coulter 21 May 1824 Will turnd the mules & they stepd into the road passd under the oak & soon was out of sight down the hill The last I seen was her hand still raisd still waving after wagon & all was out of sight Oh it was the last I seen of her that little hand Afterwards I would say to myself I could have gone with them as far as the foot of the hill & seen her that much longer I could have gone on as far as the river mouth & footed it back by dark But however far I finaly would have come to wher I would have to stand and see them go on that hand a waving God bless her I never knowd what become of her I will never see her in this world again

Having typed it out, I wonder if it seems a bit too much for the wholly expected and not-nearly-so-permanent departure of students from a university. But it resonates somehow. It reminds me of E. A. Robinson's poem "The Sheaves," which always dominates my thinking during times of seasonal change.