Literary Dose #7

"From the perspective of the environmental crisis of our time, I think we have to add to [Thomas] Hardy's remarks* [from The Woodlanders] a further realization: if the land is made fit for human habitation by memory and 'old association,' it is also true that by memory and association men are made fit to inhabit the land. At present our society is almost entirely nomadic, without the comfort or discipline of such memories, and it is moving about on the face of this continent with a mindless destructiveness, of substance and of meaning and of value, that makes Sherman's march to the sea look like a prank."

*"Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given...old association -- and almost exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object...within the observer's horizon."

- Wendell Berry from A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (1972), excerpted in Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition (2007), edited by Vincent B. Canizaro.