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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Joshua Doležal

Wonderful piece Joshua! I've come across several essays/articles on gardening as an act of sustainability, today, but Berry's notion of gardens as a form of sustaining community memory is another aspect to gardening as a political act that I rarely see mentioned. Thanks for sharing this.

Just in case it might be of interest, I wrote a piece for a food publication called 'heated' a while back about Wendell Berry's influence on Michael Pollan's writing: https://heated.medium.com/the-wendell-berry-quote-that-frames-michael-pollans-environmental-writing-8695d70d7f1c?sk=04d226b368468e00fdf980b2c626c23c

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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Joshua Doležal

On sustainability through affection

As my life has progressed, I have found myself more and more to be, as one colleague put it, "the keeper the of the lost." I have always gravitated to the marginalized, and especially those whose marginalization is invisible. Invisible because no one cares, or because people don't see it as marginalization. I know the maintenance people, whom others pretend don't exist. I "see" them, offer even the quiet dignity of being recognized as a colleague, and persist for years on end. I see you. I will know if you are unwell. I will know if you are gone. I will remember you, even if we never speak a word. One of my colleagues gave me the now-cherished title of "keeper of the lost" when I was looking after another colleague, who is embittered by hardship, by what should have been, and who is shunned by the others. It's not lost on me that the marginalization is as much ethnic as dislike for her calling them out on unprofessionalism.

I mention this kind of affection because, as I often do, I find the lost, the unspoken, the accepted but never quite comes to mind. I could have written about my experiences of rural community, which is still new to many urban dwellers, but I seek to find those whom others hide in plain sight with their disregard. Sometimes I find whole communities, and sometimes just a solitary individual who didn't really need my help.

Maybe sometime I'll write about Joe Runningwater.

I rarely write of such things, and I cringe at how much I write of what I do, because reactions in the past have treated it as so weird or pretentious. I will admit that I've grown world-weary at the gravitational pull of social unseeing. But I do think it will be better received here.

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Ross Gay writes at length in his new book, Inciting Joy about gardening as a form of community and entanglement. With clear nods to Berry, and Anna Tsing

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Apr 28, 2023Liked by Joshua Doležal

I'm just doing it more than reading about it.

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