Appalshop joins with so, so many in mourning the loss of Wendell Berry, who passed away this past week, at age 92. In his honor, in this edition of WMMT’s Mountain Talk, we spend our whole show with Wendell, through material we are lucky enough to have here, at the Appalshop Archive. First: Wendell’s longtime farm sits on the banks of the Kentucky River, in Henry County, in central Kentucky. Which of course meant he was downstream from us here at the headwaters of the Kentucky River, in Letcher County. But back in 1984, Wendell came upstream, to Whitesburg, to give a poetry reading here at Appalshop, and the theme of this reading was all about the Kentucky River— and what it means for all of us to be upstream and downstream from each other. In a rebroadcast of a segment we first put together for National Poetry Month this past Spring, for the first half of today's show, we hear a set of clips from that event, including Wendell reading the poems “The Heron,” “The Old Elm Tree by the River,” “The Slip,” “To What Listens,” selections from “Window Poems,” and more. Then: while he became nationally known as a writer, Wendell was also, famously, a farmer. And especially in living so close to the land, Wendell was a consistent, outspoken activist around environmental issues, including fiercely opposing the growth of large-scale, corporate, industrial-grade farming, which has largely replaced the smaller-scale farms of our country’s past. And back in 1977, Wendell took part in a unique, public debate on this very topic with Earl Butz, who’d served as Secretary of Agriculture for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Butz was a supporter of this shift to industrial-scale agriculture, infamously telling farmers to “get big or get out,” and in this special set of clips from this debate, which was held at Indiana University, we hear Wendell describe his farm, as well as some of his philosophy when it comes to farming (particularly his deeply-held belief in the importance of community, and working together with your neighbors), and then we hear a spirited, lively exchange between Wendell and an audience member who expresses some serious doubt about Wendell's ideas. Finally: to close the show, we head back to Whitesburg, for one more clip from Wendell’s 1984 reading here at Appalshop— a piece called “July, 1773,” a poetic adaptation of journals from the McAfee Expedition up the Kentucky River in the 1770’s. To hear, in full, the debate with Earl Butz, check out the Appalshop Archive’s youtube page. And to hear more from this 1984 reading, you can head to www.appalshoparchive.org, and search for Wendell Berry. (MUSIC in today’s show includes selections from: John McCutcheon, from “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” on June Appal Records; Andrew Boarman, from “Mountain State Music,” also on June Appal; and Glenn Jones & Laura Baird, from the Free Music Archive. PHOTO CREDIT - CC 2.0, by Ann Thompson, for the On Being Project, a photo of Wendell & his wife Tanya Amyx Berry.)
