RIP, Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry, one of the greatest writers and advocates for rural America, died yesterday in Kentucky at age 92. A number of his books grace my bookshelves.

Sarah Ladd wrote an excellent obituary for the Kentucky Lantern, noting that Berry "leaves behind a sprawling legacy of advocacy, conservationism, literary pursuit and protest that inspired people from the hills of Kentucky to Hollywood and beyond."

On Substack, Mike Small wrote today: "We have lost one of our most important thinkers. ... On education, community, health, technology and economics, his writing poured out home truths and wisdom. He was an iconoclast who was rooted in tradition(s) but not bound by them. Berry wrote at least twenty-five books (or chapbooks) of poems, twenty-four volumes of essays, and fifteen novels and short story collections — including the seminal The Unsettling of America (1977). ... His writing style had range, from poetry to polemic, often in short essays and aphorisms; it was deep, insightful, and wise but remained untainted by academia or jargon."

In a late-1970s essay, Berry wrote: "People who are willing to follow technology wherever it leads are necessarily willing to follow it away from home, off the earth, and outside the sphere of human definition, meaning, and responsibility." Those words seem particularly apt all these decades later, as we grapple with the spread and implications of generative artificial intelligence and technology that consumes our humanity.

Earlier, in "Think Little," a short 1970 essay on environmentalism and sustainability, Berry wrote this: "But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living."

Related post [from 2019]: Lost Corners: Review of Wendell Berry book from 12 years ago

Two-thirds of the way through the movie viewing year

We're two-thirds of the way through 2026, and I thought I'd share my work-in-progress ranking of favorite first watches of the year. It will be interesting to see how this list changes between now and the end of the year, in terms of both new additions and thinking more deeply about the films already on the list.

1. Harold and Maude (1971, director: Hal Ashby)

2. The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophüls)

3. Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)

4. The Great Dictator (1940, Charlie Chaplin)

5. UFOria (1985, John Binder)

6. Sinners (2025, Ryan Coogler)

7. Times Square (1980, Allan Moyle)

8. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994, Stephan Elliott)

9. Backrooms (2026, Kane Parsons)

10. Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)

And here's the big catch. My favorite segment of the year, by far, is Federico Fellini's "Toby Dammit," (starring Terence Stamp, pictured above) from the 1968 anthology film Spirits of the Dead. However, the other two segments are not compelling enough to pull the film as a whole into the Top 10. (Sorry, Fonda siblings.)

Overall, I've had 34 first watches so far this year. And I will say that list includes Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and just leave it at that. The oldest movie I've seen is 1922's The Toll of the Sea, which is important historically but problematic on multiple levels. 

Here was 2025's final list. I ended up not ranking them last year, and that may be the case again this year! 

Scholastic book: "M for Mischief"

I brusquely dismissed this book as "fine" in a 2020 pandemic shelfie post, but it deserves more attention than that, especially given that it's one of the very first books that I distinctly remember having, circa second grade in Clayton, New Jersey (this cover, specifically). I've been invigorated lately by the posts and robust community discussion on the Vintage Scholastic Books and Vintage Paperback Books pages on Facebook, so here's a full look at this one...

• Title: M for Mischief
• Author: Richard Parker (1914-1990). He has an entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and I mentioned one of his other books in this 2014 post.
• Illustrator: Carol Wilde (born 1938). It appears that she was born in Virginia, studied art in Philadelphia and later in life moved to northern Italy, where she became a painter. I could not confirm whether she's still alive.
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 1254)
• Cover price: 50 cents
• Year: Fourth printing, March 1972 (first published in 1965)
• Pages: 95
• Format: Paperback
• Provenance: A previous owner, likely long ago, wrote "Ruth" in pencil on the inside front cover.
• Random passage from the middle #1: "It was something more than ancient. None of the children had ever seen a stove quite like it. There were so many curly, twisty bits. The four legs were like eagles' feet, with the sharp talons really biting into the wooden floor. The scale and feathers were so clear they seemed almost real. Up the sides of the stove were sprays of fern made of iron, and clusters of odd flowers, also made of iron."
• Random passage from the middle #2: "Then the cookie dropped to the floor and their mother disappeared! Where she had been standing was a speckled brown hen, which looked at Peg with one eye, then began pecking up crumbs from the broken cookie."
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.89 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: R. Lee Frankenstein recently wrote: "This is just a great kids story that is partially responsible for a lifetime of reading enjoyment so, the 5 stars may be based slightly on sentiment."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2013, R.M. Clinkscales wrote: "I still have my 1971 Scholastic Book service copy that I remember my mom reading with me on the porch of our house. My copy still has my elementary school aged handwriting on the inside cover giving my name and address. As you can tell this book had an impact on me and helped launch my love of reading. I have read the book to many children over the years and it continues to be a well loved early reader story."
• One last memory: In a 2014 post on Gransnet, Upsydaisy writes: "M for Mischief by Richard Parker was my favourite ever children's book. The story of a magic oven. That is as much as I can remember about the book, but I can remember reading it so many times. It was funny so I always read it either when I was poorly or feeling sad and it always cheered me up and made me feel better. Its funny but as an adult I always tend to go for books that are lighthearted and are a good laugh out loud kind of a book."

Yinzer blepping.