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Wendell Berry’s Birthday

August 05, 2021

The Perquimans Weekly

While celebrating the 87th birthday of Wendell Berry today, we ran across this earnest review of Berry’s book Jayber Crow – published recently in The Perquimans Weekly, out of Hertford, North Carolina.  “It’s one of those rare books that when you read the last few words in the last sentence, you want to take a step back and take a new different look at things.” Yes, we do want to read that book – or circle back and reread it. 

In an interview last month, Bill McKibben said: “Wendell Berry has been a formative influence ever since I began gardening and writing about our entanglement with nature back in the 1980s. He showed me a path out of the usual dualism — culture or nature — that has dominated American writing about nature since the Puritans. Plus he showed me how to construct a sturdy sentence.”

That’s the thing about Wendell Berry. He shows us things both practical and philosophical, scientific and spiritual. As a man who lives his convictions, he has become an unusually inspirational paragon to many. 

To learn more about Berry’s life – including details about his multi-faceted political activism – read AWTT’s short biography and don’t miss this rare video interview (with Bill Moyers in 2014).  

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