“The Making of a Marginal Farm," by Wendell Berry and "Back to Buxton" by Eula Biss

“And so our reclamation project has been, for me, less a matter of idealism or morality than a kind of self-preservation. A destructive history, once it is understood as such, is a nearly insupportable burden. Understanding it is a disease of understanding, depleting the sense of efficacy and paralyzing effort, unless it finds healing work. . . . In order to affirm the values most native and necessary to me—indeed, to affirm my own life as a thing decent in possibility—I needed to know in my own experience that this place did not have to be abused in the past, and that it can be kindly and conservingly used now.”-Wendell Berry, from “The Making of a Marginal Farm"

“I came, at one time, from a place by a river, where we lived under the flight path of an airport and I could see the bolts on the bottoms of the passenger jets as they passed overhead. It was a place of unmown fields and sand pits and back waters where I rode my bike with boys whose houses were flooded by the rising river every spring. Now, the road through that place has widened by several lanes, and is lined with K-Marts and Walmarts and a mall called Latham Farms, which sits on land where there were once, in my childhood, actual farms.” -Eula Biss

Opening Journal:
Respond to one of the following questions
1. Describe a landscape from your past that seems in some way "marginal."
2.What do you think Berry is saying about local landscapes? What do you think Biss is saying about community? How are their arguments similar? How are they different?
4. Have you ever felt marginalized?
3. Which piece resonated with you more? Why? What about the argument/writing style appealed to you?

TED Lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-cZRmHfs4

In Groups:

1-Craft a working definition of "marginalized environment" to share with the class. Then answer the questions:
-What are they good for?
-How are they treated?
-Who or what "marginalizes" them, if anybody/thing?

2-What connections do you see between Majora Carter, Wendall Berry, and Eula Biss? How have each of their causes been marginalized?

3-How would you define “environmentalism” or “environmental literature”? Has your definition of “environmental literature" changed during this class?

Homework:

from A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, pp. 265-281

(journal)