Reading Wendell Berry in Berea, KY

WATCH VIDEO

A few days after we voted Barack Obama into office, I found myself in Berea, Kentucky. Joan’s father is from Bimble, Kentucky (or as he says in the title of his memoir, “The End of the Road at Bimble, KY), and we were driving him around for a few days to visit some old haunts. One of those was Berea, a town that’s pretty much wrapped itself around a fine little liberal arts college called Berea College. People familiar with the world of fine crafts probably have heard of the place, but for my money what’s more remarkable is that the college is one of the oldest incarnations of true radicalism that you can find in the US of A. Think back to 1855, and think of some missionary types founding a college in southeastern Kentucky that would be tuition free and would serve the children of Appalachia. Including blacks. And think of what it was to try to run a college founded on anti-slavery and egalitarian principles in a slave state just a few years before the Civil War. The college was run out of town by 1859 but its founders returned in 1865 at the end of the war, a rather impressive example of stubborn commitment to a good and important idea. The race problem would continue to dog the college for the next century, but it has held more or less true to its founding mission, still providing an education for kids who are smart enough to get in, and still paying tuition for those who can’t afford it. I talked with one young woman who has a half dozen brothers, and whose parents had no education beyond grade school (mother) and high school (father). She’s a dual major in chem and biology and wants to be a doctor. On the other hand, another student told me she’s quitting the college. It’s not a good fit for her. I sat in a smoker’s gazebo on campus, reading a from Wendell Berry’s book of essays published in 1991: Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, while other students dropped in, seeking a bit of protection from the cold rain, and the opportunity to smoke in a college -sanctioned spot.

To eat, or not to eat

This wet summer has soaked the ground and brought the mushrooms up, as many shrooms as we can remember in the half-dozen years we’ve been hunting and gathering them. We eat some 15 varieties that we’ve become familiar with, brands we know with certainty are tasty and benign. Black trumpet, hedgehog, painted sullius, blewit, oyster, bear’s head tooth, ash bolete, chanterelle, hen-of-the-woods, cauliflower, giant puffball, berkeley polypore, morel, and a few others. A few weeks ago we discovered a new prospect, American Caesar’s, an orange mushroom with a red nipple on its head that blooms up first as a bright red ball. It’s of the Amanita family, that bunch of mushrooms that brings you such scary characters as Fly Agaric and Destroying Angel. Interesting company for an edible mushroom to keep. Particularly because Caesar’s has a look-alike which will make you very very sick. But if you know what to look for, identifying the American Caesar’s mushroom with certainty is no problem. So why have I resisted doing that first taste test? (No matter that you are certain of a mushroom’s identity…you MUST always do a trial tasting test, eating just a half of the cap and waiting 24 hours…). The beautiful American Caesar’s, the promise of a tasty new mushroom, and, uh, the very, very low risk of mistaken identity. I’ve been stalling for weeks. Then I read about a world class expert on mushrooms who says, “I never eat Amanitas, period. Never.” To live is to manage risk, to balance the probable against the improbable. I like risk, and can accept more than most people, I think. However, just two days ago I decided to defer to the wisdom of somebody who thinks about the risks of having some mushroom toxin dissolve his liver…it ain’t worth the chance. The taste, that is. So I have adopted that rule. I don’t…do not…eat Amanitas.