Tag: Gracy Olmstead

Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.

James Rebanks and Grace Olmstead discuss his book, Wendell Berry, his vision for future farming methodologies, and the conversations surrounding agricultural reform in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Daniel Elazar was emphatic that a “renewed sense of localism” was essential to America’s future. For Americans, this means renewed intentionality about our local communities, not merely living in one place for a sustained period of time.

Fidelity to place needn’t (and shouldn’t) result in stuckness, a condemnation of ever moving at all. But we must beware falling into that second trap: rejecting roots altogether.

My guest this episode is Grace Olmstead. Grace has done excellent work for several years on issues of localism, just the sort of thing...

Uprooted is partly a memoir of her extended family, partly a paean to a way of life that is both dying and which she never really understood while she grew up in the midst of it (and thus feels the loss of all the more deeply now), and partly a study of the causes of that dying, and how what has endured--the habits, the connections, the sense of place--has shaped her extended family nonetheless.

At the heart of Gracy Olmstead's book is the conviction that roots do not just serve the individual person or plant—they also are vital to the health of one’s soil, place, and neighbors.

Each week, I’ll try to post links to recent essays and stories that might interest Porchers. If you have additional essays to recommend, please...