Henry County

He was 92.

Wendell was a 7th generation farmer in Henry County, Kentucky.

He became university educated, actually a professor for a while, then went back to the land.

He's a poet, an anti-war activist, and a sage.

Among his best-known books, The Unsettling of America, What Are People For?, and The Peace of Wild Things.

After studying at the University of Kentucky and Stanford and teaching at New York University, Barry returned to his native Henry County, Kentucky in the 1960s.

There, he and his wife Tanya began farming.

Barry spent the rest of his life in Kentucky, farming and writing poems, novels, and essays about tending the land, about community, and the costs of an increasingly industrialized society.

Recently, I mean, I'd heard of him my whole life, but really this last couple of years, I've just fallen in love with his work so much.

And he passed away 92 years old from Henry County, Kentucky.

So I wanted to just take the Monday Matters and kind of as a tribute to him, talk about the ways that some of his stories and lessons and poems have helped me think about school leadership.

But before we do that, How are you? Welcome back to the beginning of a new school year for Dublin City Schools, but also I know you've been working with leaders all over the place.

Jaber Crow, one of his most famous books, The Town Barber, you think you're following the story of an orphan boy who's rescued by this community, but really you're also discovering that what happens when farms farm too close to their borders, the loss and devastation of soil erosion, the loss of forests.

And Berry practiced what he preached.

Another thing I've discovered in falling in love with his work is that the Berry Foundation, which is now run by his children in henry county kentucky has helped small farmers reclaim more than 2 000 acres across that area that have been reintroduced to small farm practices so his compelling call to let's do something about this isn't just limited to his work it's also something that he and his family have spent their life doing what they can right there where they live so i'm going to stop there jen because even as i say those things out loud there's probably thoughts you're having um about some of the things i've said but because i want to make a transition here with what does this have to do with school leadership but what are some thoughts you're having even before we go down that road

Well, no, I'm glad you're bringing this up because it actually has a lot to do with school leadership, even though it would be easy on the surface to think they're not related at all.

My family moved for my dad's job when I was a kid.

we moved for economic advancement and that often meant that uh don't have the the sense of roots that others have here like the berries do in henry county kentucky one funny thing about this is that i was born in houston texas and sometimes i'll meet a texan and i'll tell them that and they'll say oh you're a texan i'll be like i guess but i left when i was pretty young i don't know if you Really want to bestow that honorific on me.

And sometimes, and it's more often than not, they will look at me and say something like, no, you are a Texan.

It always feels they're scolding me, but they're claiming me as well.

I've been in enough arguments to know that sometimes they do.

But the Land Grant University, at least the big one in Kentucky, gave up its mandate to serve the people of Kentucky a long time ago.

About, I think, two years ago, Extension celebrated its 100th anniversary, and I couldn't, I passed the sign in front of the Extension's office in Henry County every day on my way to work, and then, of course, passed it again on my way home.

And it congratulated, well, saying happy anniversary to Extension.

We think about someone who is probably as far away from some of the disturbing headlines and images that we see on television as one can imagine.

A man living out in Henry County, Kentucky, writing poems and novels, doesn't seem to have anything to say to this.

But Barry is informed by a religious understanding in kind of the same way Flannery O'Connor is informed by such.

Flannery O'Connor, of course, by her Catholicism, but Barry is a Baptist, but the kind of Baptist who's suspicious of the church and who critiques John 3.16.

I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

That is Wendell Berry, who farmed his Lane's Landing homestead in Henry County, Kentucky.

He preferred draft horses to diesel-powered tractors, and he used crop rotation and manure fertilizer to naturally nurture his field.

He was a poet farmer and a passionately committed Christian Baptist.

As I mentioned earlier, one was activist and journalist Gloria Steinem, a true pioneer who worked to inspire and uplift women and all of us for decades.

And the other was perhaps a lesser-known giant, a writer and poet who began his career in the lofted halls of institutions like Stanford and New York University, but found his true calling while farming a piece of land in Henry County, Kentucky.

His name was Wendell Berry.

And I'd like to begin this evening with a passage from his 1973 poem entitled Wild Geese.

He was 92 years old.

Berry spent his life farming his family's land in Henry County, Kentucky, and writing about it.

In a 1998 interview with All Things Considered, Berry told NPR's No Adams, "If at all possible, young people should look for opportunities to stop someplace and stay there, learn the history of it and the names of the plants and animals and the neighbors." In 2012, President Obama presented Berry with a National Humanities Medal.

Three years later, Berry was the first living author to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.