Questionnaire
by Wendell Berry

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

"Questionnaire" by Wendell Berry from Leavings. © Counterpoint, 2010. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Today is the birthday of the man who said, "Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire." That's writer Wendell Berry (books by this author), born in Henry County, Kentucky (1934), the son of a lawyer and tobacco farmer. His ancestors on both sides farmed the county for five generations. After going off to college and teaching creative writing in the Bronx for a couple of years, Berry joined that lineage, purchasing a 125-acre homestead near the birthplace of his parents, where he still farms and writes poetry, novels, and essays. From his outpost, Berry tackles the intersection of civic life and the natural world, writing that "essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the land."

His eight novels, including Jayber Crow (2000) and Hannah Coulter (2004), together with his many short stories, form a saga of a small fictional Kentucky town called Port William. Through the lives of the townspeople, Berry explores the costs of war, the effects of farm policy, and the challenges and pleasures of community.

Berry wrote: "The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."

And: "Every day do something that won't compute [...] Give your approval to all you cannot understand [...] Ask the questions which have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years [...] Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts [...] Practice resurrection."

It's the birthday of Conrad Aiken (books by this author), born in Savannah, Georgia (1889). His parents were wealthy New Englanders who had moved south for his father's medical practice. When Conrad was 12, with no warning or explanation, his father became increasingly emotionally unstable and violent. He woke one morning to the sound of gunshots and discovered the bodies of his parents — his father had shot his mother before turning the gun on himself. Aiken went to live with an aunt in Massachusetts, where he attended private New England schools before entering Harvard. He started writing a poem a day, always changing the form, paying little attention to the content. He met T.S. Eliot through the literary magazine and the two developed a lifelong friendship, bonding over literature, drinking, and Krazy Kat comics.

In 1952, Aiken published his autobiography, Ushant, all about the trauma of his childhood and his own attempt at suicide, his affairs, and many literary friendships. Toward the end of his life, he returned to his hometown of Savannah to live until his death in 1973 at the age of 84.

Conrad Aiken wrote:
"All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by."

On this day in 1850, Herman Melville (books by this author) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (books by this author) met at a picnic with friends at Monument Mountain near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Two days later, Melville visited Hawthorne at his little red farmhouse in Lenox. Hawthorne gave him two bottles of champagne and they took a walk to the lake. That same day, Hawthorne wrote to a friend, “I met Melville, the other day, and liked him so much that I have asked him to spend a few days with me before leaving these parts.” For a year and a half, the two friends lived six miles apart during the most productive time in their writing lives. Their five greatest books — The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Moby-Dick, The Blithedale Romance, and Pierre — were either being written or published. In fact, The Blithedale Romance and Pierre were written at the same time, and The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dickwere published only a year apart. In the fall of 1851, Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.

It’s the birthday of Guy de Maupassant (books by this author), born in Normandy (1850), one of the great French short-story writers. He became an apprentice to Gustave Flaubert, who used to invite him to lunch on Sundays, lecture him on prose style, and correct his early work. Flaubert also introduced him to some of the leading writers of the time, like Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry James. Flaubert said, “He’s my disciple and I love him like a son.” Maupassant began publishing his first stories a few weeks before Flaubert’s death. In just 10 years, between 1880 and 1890, he wrote most of the work for which he is remembered, including 300 stories and five novels.

On this day in 1957 a televised dance and music show, popular in Philadelphia, went national, introducing rock and roll to millions of people. Hosted by baby-faced Dick Clark, American Bandstand opened its first national broadcast with Jerry Lee Lewis’s song “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” The formula was simple: play records, invite local kids to dance, and get them to rate the records. Clark was savvy: he knew the program should air in the afternoon, when teenagers were getting home from school and housewives were taking a break. The show aired five days a week. Within six months, more than 20 million people were regular viewers. Bandstand launched the careers of Paul Anka, Chuck Berry, and a young duo named Tom and Jerry, who later became Simon and Garfunkel. The show popularized dances like the Watusi and the Mashed Potato. The show ran for more than 30 years. Clark was humble. “I played records, the kids danced, and American watched.”