Wendell Berry was awarded this month with the National Humanities Medal for history, literature, education, and cultural policy.* We say:Bravo! This is one decision from Washington that conservatives and liberals alike can applaud. The president is said to have leaned forward during the medal ceremony to say that he was an admirer of Berry's poetry...There's a lot to admire:

The Man Born to Farming

by Wendell Berry

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing.

He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap,

and rise again in the corn. His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight,

and like water

Descending in the dark?

*special thanks to Gene Logsdon for his post on this event at his blog THE CONTRARY FARMER