No.818: Last Week at the Farmhouse // The Anti-Library

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Soooo….I went down a bit of a rabbit hole.  It started with this article which linked to this article, which shared this quote:

Taleb uses legendary Italian writer Umberto Eco’s uncommon relationship with books and reading as a parable of the most fruitful relationship with knowledge:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Guys.  There’s a name for my piles of unread books!  It’s an anti-library!

I actually have a Storygraph account that I use to catalog all the books I’d like to revisit.  If I’m reading a book and it references another interesting one, it goes on the list.  If I read about a historical figure to my children for school and realize I know very little, I add a few books of my own to the list.  If I hear about how a classic novel or religious text influenced someone’s life, it goes on the list.  And on and on and on.  As of this writing, my list stands at almost 1600 books. (!!!)  Realistically, I will never finish all of those books in my lifetime.  But it stands as representation of my humanity, a constant reminder of the virtue of humility.  The more I know, the more I realize all I don’t know.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of my latest additions to The List:

• The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski // Hillsdale College recently provided a free video series on the Inklings and I want to know more about this group!
• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler // A title on a reading list that I’ve never heard of before.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful by Joseph Pearce // I heard about this from the Clear Creek Abbey bookstore.  The monks read this during refectory.
• Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America by David S. Reynolds // I just bought Uncle Tom’s Cabin and this looked like an interesting book to pick up after.
• Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self by Manoush Zomorodi // A surprise find and something that connects with the video from The Commonplace below.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ a busy week on the farm!  We’re definitely hitting the crazy part of the growing season where there is so much to do and never enough time.  Our tasks were filled with moving animals around: pigs rotated on pasture, broiler chicks out of the garage and onto pasture, etc.  We held our noses and mucked out the chick area.  (My least favorite farm chore!)  We picked up twenty new hen chicks and got them all situated in the brooder.  We dug trenches and planted seed potatoes and I also hardened off marigolds and some tomatoes to plant next week.  It’s a little early, but the future temps look promising and I need to get them out from under the grow lights!

+ finding an outfit for a fundraising gala.  Between losing some weight and not going to fancy events…ever…I needed a new dress!  Thankfully, I found a beautiful dress and shoes, new without tags, for a deal on Poshmark.  I love the secondhand market.

+ turning off the heat for the season and playing my favorite game of the year: “How long can we go before turning on the A/C?”

+ selling eight unneeded items for the Farm Sitter Vacation Fund: five pieces of clothing, a pair of sandals and two homeschool teacher guides.  After shipping and fees, I made $49.47!

Reading //

• A Guide to Booklegging: How (and why) to collect, preserve, and read the printed word from School of the Unconformed // The article that started all of this reflection!
• The Accidental Community from Heather Hawkins // This was so cool.  I would love to do this someday!
• The Philosophical Act of Wonder from Rachel Wooham at Circe Institute // “Recently, as I spiraled into motherly worries about my children’s spiritual development, it occurred to me that as long as they continue to call, ‘Look!’ something very good is taking place in their souls. This marveling is the harbinger of wisdom.”
• Home Economics by Wendell Berry and his 1982 essay, “Getting Along with Nature” // I’m reading this book slowly and have really been thinking about this paragraph on page 20:

To make this continuity between the natural and the human, we have only two sources of instruction: nature herself and our cultural tradition.  If we listen only to the apologists for the industrial economy, who respect neither nature nor culture, we get the idea that it is somehow our goodness that makes us so destructive: The air is unfit to breathe, the water is unfit to drink, the soil is washing away, the cities are violent and the countryside neglected, all because we are intelligent, enterprising, industrious, and generous, concerned only to feed the hungry and to “make a better future for our children.”  Respect for nature causes us to doubt this, and our cultural tradition confirms and illuminates our doubt: No good thing is destroyed by goodness; good things are destroyed by wickedness.  We may identify that insight as Biblical, but it is taken for granted by both the Greek and the Biblical lineages of our culture, from Homer and Moses to William Blake.  Since the start of the industrial revolution, there have been voices urging that this inheritance may be safely replaced by intelligence, information, energy, and money.  No idea, I believe, could be more dangerous.

• The Power Of Doing It Yourself from April Jaure at Hearth & Field // “In my reality, learning to craft these simple, but crucial items taught me to be attuned to the present moment, which is to say that it taught me to be present to my own life. I had been so accustomed to living life in my head, I’m sad to say that if it weren’t for motherhood and the necessity of acquiring some practical skills, I think I could have lived my whole life without being truly present for any of it.”

Watching/Listening //

• How to Get an Oxford English Education for Free from Benjamin McEvoy // Barring the crass first line, this was a great video.
• How a nearly blind schoolteacher invented the comic medium from matttt // A recommendation from one of my sons.  Very interesting!
• Contemplation in Mother Academia (Or, You Need to Be Bored) from The Commonplace

Loving //

• All the electrolytes! // One possible side effect of carnivore is muscle cramping and it’s generally due to mineral and electrolyte imbalances.  I haven’t really had any issues, but to avoid this possibility, I try to have an electrolyte drink daily.  We have a variety of brands in the house, from LMNT (pretty good, but I only use 1/3 to 1/2 a packet at a time) to Nuun (my favorite, but actually has little of the important stuff) to Jocko Hydrate (my husband’s favorite).
• this quote from Henry Ward Beecher:

A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of man’s history.  It is man’s duty to have books.  A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.  Be certain that your house is adequately and properly furnished – with books rather than furniture.  Both if you can, but books at any rate.