At Wendell Berry’s Kitchen Table
Four students and a Wabash professor enjoy a three-hour conversation with the poet-farmer who says “education is a conversation that complicates our minds.”
Wendell Berry continues as a great contrary example to the compromises others take in stride,” journalist David Skinner wrote of the farmer, poet, novelist, essayist, and activist when Berry was named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Instead of being at odds with his conscience, he is at odds with his times. Cheerful in dissent, he writes to document and defend what is being lost to the forces of modernization and to explain how he lives and what he thinks.”
Assistant Professor of Political Science Lorraine Krall McCrary and four students spent three hours of a Sunday afternoon in September in conversation with Berry around the kitchen table of his Port Royal, KY, home. WM asked Professor McCrary and her students about the time Jake Budler ’18 calls “the highlight of my semester and a real liberal arts experience.”
WM: How did you and your students get the chance to talk with Wendell Berry in the first place?
Professor McCrary: My access to Mr. Berry came from some colleagues who are friends with him. They advised me as to how to write to him (I wrote him a letter—he doesn’t do email) and what to ask for.
We could only bring the number of students who could fit around his kitchen table. Mr. Berry’s wife, Tanya, sat with us, and behind them was a wall of books about farming, ecology, just about everything! All the different voices and influences on his thoughts.
What did you talk about?
McCrary: He said he wanted to talk about what we wanted to talk about. He asked about the work I had done on disability; he wanted to talk about the social contract. He thought about it in terms of farming communities: How do we help each other?
He wondered aloud if marriage is a contract; he had great personal observations. He has a lot of affection and respect for his wife. She’s a partner in his work. She types up what he writes, and this is part of why he does not own a computer—because he would miss his wife’s editing and that response to his work.
Matthew Ford ’18: I enjoyed listening to his thoughts on macro versus micro concepts relative to everyday life. He talked about a couple of men who have been trapping all their lives along the river. One day they noticed the changing color of the fish/animals they trapped. It didn’t take them long to figure out what the root of the problem was or that it needed to be solved quickly. But the large corporation took a long time to figure out the issue. Mr. Berry suggested that few on the micro level may know more than the many who govern/decide for them.
Will Amberger ’19: He said that we’re too focused on an economy of development, when we should focus on becoming an economy of conservation.
McCrary: He said that education is a conversation that complicates our minds— listing off influences on his own thought, from Milton to Chaucer to the Bible.
He inspired our students about the importance of a liberal arts education. He said conversation is the answer to the deep ideological divides in America. That the separation of disciplines in the university emerges from the rejection of dialogue.
He talked about the built environment as requiring conversation—a house should be responsive to the particular place in which it is built, and to the materials available locally; where lots are flattened and topped with identical houses, a sympathy with the ground is lacking. The values of conversation even permeated his praise for practical knowledge—using your own head to think; elevating practical knowledge articulates a democratic respect for your neighbor’s ability to govern himself.
The symbolism was really too much—a prism hanging in a window threw small rainbows across his face as he spoke to us!
Any surprises?
McCrary: When I wrote to him, he was very strict about the time being 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. But when 5:00 came around and I said, “Okay, thank you,” he stopped us and asked, “Who said I’m not having a good time?” So we got to talk for another hour and ended up having a three-hour conversation with him.
Jake Budler ’18: It was refreshing to hear from a person who is both interdisciplinary and nonpartisan in his thinking—a real liberal arts experience. He was very interested in economics, despite his lack of formal training in the subject. I was impressed by his confidence to tie his other thinking and writing into economics. He did not attempt to become an expert in a single, narrow field; instead, he thought broadly about how topics connected with each other and different fields impacted one another.
He would often make a point and then quip, “Now tell me...is that liberal or conservative? Because I certainly don’t know!” That was emblematic of how he thought, wrote, and talked.
McCrary: What I was most surprised and delighted by was Mr. Berry’s joy—he loves to laugh. He was delighted by his wife’s more direct approach. He expressed that he both works hard for and is passionate about his projects and arguments, but also is not trying to gain power. He seemed to be a very peaceful person.
It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
—WENDELL BERRY
Freedom, Discipline, Love
Professor Emeritus of Theater Dwight Watson H’85
Named Honorary Alumnus September 23, 2017
Your arrival at Wabash in 1981 marked a turning point in the College’s history. A theater department was born and over the following 36 years, you and your students used the stage to challenge us intellectually and dazzle us creatively.
Your classroom was the stage.
Bringing theater to life, and merging stage and experience, scholarship, and creativity were the tools of your teaching trade.
Your students, whether actors, advisees, or Wabash men picking up distribution credits, became your sons, and you cared for them as a surrogate father—giving them freedom to explore, encouragement to strive, discipline to learn, and love from which to draw strength.
— NAWM President Rob Shook ’83, at Homecoming Chapel
“Authenticity and Passion”
Professor of Spanish V. Daniel Rogers H’12
Named Honorary Alumnus September 23, 2017
We ask our faculty to immerse themselves in the lives of our students, and you set the standard.
You were a critical resource as the National Association of Wabash Men developed a strategy to shift the student perception of Wabash as a transactional relationship to one that imagines Wabash for Life. You helped the alumni more effectively engage with students and faculty on levels that were both comfortable and productive.
Your efforts have resulted in broader and deeper relationships between students and faculty and the alumni body. You have played a critical role in helping Wabash develop the nation’s #1 Alumni Network.
But you join the brotherhood today because of what you do for our students. You support them in class—whether in Detchon Center or Mexico City; you cheer them on at Chadwick Court; and you attend their concerts, plays, and faculty dinners. The men of Phi Gamma Delta so admire you that they initiated you as a brother.
Patrick Bryant, Class of 2015, says, “Though his vocation is teaching Spanish, he finds a way to equally bring a sense of authenticity and passion to his other callings as an advisor, guide, and champion for our College. I’m proud to call him a teacher, mentor, brother, and friend.”
—NAWM President Rob Shook ’83, at Homecoming Chapel
“ The Ultimate Role Model and Friend”
When WM asked alumni to name the person who most shaped their lives at Wabash, Bob Phillips ’86 and Dave Stamper ’64 said “Professor Austin Brooks.”
“Without a doubt he changed my life,” wrote Phillips who did summer research with Brooks ’61. “He came to my wedding.”
Stamper was a fellow student and fraternity brother in Delta Tau Delta.
“He was a senior when I joined the fraternity, was a leader on campus, and, as an alum, I have stayed in contact with him for the past 53 years. Aus is the ultimate role model and friend.”
but at this year’s Homecoming Chapel, it was Aus’s work as a community leader and advocate for kids that earned him the Fredrick J. Urbaska Civic Service Award.
“We pay tribute to your commitment to the Montgomery County Youth Service Bureau, Friends of Sugar Creek, and Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church, among others,” National Assocation of Wabash Men President Rob Shook said.
“You and Lucy have advocated for children throughout your lives. You became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for the Youth Service Bureau in 2006—giving voice and advocacy to our community’s most disadvantaged kids—caring for them when they had nowhere else to turn. You have even traveled out of town to spend time with your CASA kids long after they left this community for new homes.
“You served the YSB on its Board for many years, including as its President. It was during that period of your leadership when the YSB Director, Mike Scime, suffered a stroke and was unable to return to work for months. You stepped in to lead the day-to-day operations. CASA Program Director Jane Christophersen said, “‘Aus literally saved the Bureau by allowing the staff to continue with its work without worrying about the future of the agency. The Youth Service Bureau is what it is today in large part due to your hard work and impeccable leadership.’”
What You Didn't Know About Shades
Associate Professor of German Greg Redding’s article on Shades State Park in the Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History magazine reveals the surprising story of a favorite place of many in the Wabash community. The piece earned Redding the Jacob P. Dunn Jr. Award from the Indiana Historical Society “for presenting thoughtful, research-based articles on Indiana history in an attractive format to a broad audience of readers.”
Redding knows the park well: He trains there weekly for his long-distance endurance races.
An excerpt:
Shades State Park is known today as a place where nature lovers can, in the words of Indiana State Park founder Col. Richard Lieber, “seek surcease from the pace of an increasingly mechanized existence, and try to restore balance in soul and body.” As one of Indiana’s least developed state parks, Shades attracts those who wish to escape the crowds of flagship parks like Brown County and Turkey Run.
In the solitude of the landscape there is little to suggest that the Shades was once one of the busiest parks in Indiana. From the turn of the 20th century to the outbreak of World War II, the Shades was a bustling resort with an inn, guest cabins, a campground, and a concert and dance pavilion.
While it seems a bit generous to compare anywhere in Indiana with America’s grandest national parks, for a time the Shades did attract visitors on par with some of the most sublime natural spaces in the United States. In 1920 over 48,000 tourists came to the Shades, outdrawing the Grand Canyon’s 37,000 and on par with the 62,000 and 58,000 that had visited Yellowstone and Yosemite.
—Greg Redding ’88
Brothers in Song
More than 150 former and current members gathered for three days in late September to catch up, rehearse, and perform a concert before nearly 500 people in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the formation of the Wabash College Glee Club.
With my choral singers I have adopted a motto: canto ergo sum (I sing, therefore I am). When we sing, we exist as one—putting aside our individual differences—joining together to share a common message, to create sweet harmony.
The Glee Club celebration reminded me of the essential role that singing played for each of us during our time at Wabash. To a greater degree than our class year, major, and even fraternity house, the fact that we sing together is the essence of who we are and the very experience of Wabash. “We sing, therefore we are—Brothers in Song!”
ERIC STARK ’88
Artistic Director, Indianapolis Symphonic Choir
Director of Choral Activities, Butler University