People, Patterns and Philanthropy in Rural America

Transcript Now Available - Click Here! (PDF format, 41 pages, 1.5 MB)

A complete, edited transcript is now available of the Bradley Center's June 30 panel entitled

People, Patterns, and Philanthropy in Rural America

Monday, June 30, 2008 - 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Hudson Institute - Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center
1015 15th Street, NW - Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005

Event Description

Author, teacher, social activist, and fifth-generation farmer WENDELL BERRY has written thoughtfully, carefully, and forcefully for many decades about American culture and society, drawing from his experience of rural life. In his 1981 essay "Solving for Pattern" (click here to read), Berry advised people responsible for systems within communities - specifically farms, but also households, school systems, sanitation systems, and health care systems - to keep in mind that systems involve patterns, and that problems as well as solutions play themselves out in those patterns. He urged readers to think carefully about how we judge a problem, lest the cure we come up with "proves incurable"; to consider carefully the pattern of which it and we are a part; and to craft a solution in a way that it is not simply the next problem to solve. Berry's ongoing dialogue and friendship with geneticist WES JACKSON, founder of the Salina, Kansas-based Land Institute, advocate for sustainable agriculture, and himself an author of several works, dates back to the early 1980s.

On Monday, June 30, Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal hosted a two-part discussion on the nonprofit sector, specifically philanthropy, in rural America. WENDELL BERRY and JACKSON joined University of Maryland steady-state economist HERMAN DALY to discuss "How the Land Economy Became a Consumer Economy" on the first of two panels. The second panel, "How Philanthropy Can Solve for Pattern," featured DEE DAVIS, director of the Center for Rural Strategies (Kentucky); LINDA REED, CEO of the Montana Community Foundation; and ALEX ECHOLS, director of conservation programs, Philanthropy Roundtable (Washington, DC). KRISTA SHAFFER served as moderator.

Program and Panel

11:00
Introduction by KRISTA SHAFFER

11:05
First Panel: "How the Land Economy Became a Consumer Economy"
WES JACKSON
WENDELL BERRY
HERMAN DALY

12:00 p.m.
Question-and-Answer Session

12:20
Short Lunch Break

12:40
Second Panel: "How Philanthropy Can Solve for Pattern"
DEE DAVIS
LINDA REED
ALEX ECHOLS 

1:30
Question-and-Answer Session

2:00
Formal Adjournment, Informal Reception     

Further Information

To request further information on this event, the transcript, or the Bradley Center, please contact Kristen at (202) 974-2424 or kmcintyre@hudson.org.