Emma Collins brings up the point that no one calls Wendell Berry a “country writer,” like we call musicians from rural areas “country musicians” and “country singers.” Perhaps, we should, like she does, start calling them “agrarian singers.” Her piece, Not the Times, The Eternities goes into the American love of nature. Since you can’t dig into America’s fascination with our natural beauty without mentioning the transcendentalists, she quotes Thoreau.

Thoreau spoke about chastity of the mind. “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities,” he thundered in his essay “Life Without Principle,” as he marveled that people allow “idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought.”

Time to touch grass?