09/03/2026
It is okay to mourn the passing of celebrities that you never met. People can be important to you, even if the relationship is entirely one directional.
To lose Dolly and Frank-N-Furter, Steinem and Optimus all in a couple of weeks is brutal.
We feel all of those, but the one that’s hit us the hardest is the passing of Wendell Berry.
He was a Kentucky writer who made a career of beautifully expressing his love of nature and of traditional agriculture.
He believed people should live closer to the natural world, and that our food should come from small farms, not factories. We’re not sure if he would have used the word “magic,” but that’s what he was talking about in his many essays on plants and farming.
As much as he will be missed, one of the great joys of civilization is that his voice, and the voices of those other talents now lost to us, will endure.
So pour a libation or two out for these lost titans, then listen to Jolene, watch Legend and Transformers (the animated one, obviously), and read some essays by Berry and by Steinem.
And go to a farmer’s market this weekend and buy a vegetable from the human being who grew it.
