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" (available online here), 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 will host a two-part discussion on the nonprofit sector, specifically philanthropy, in rural America. BERRY and JACKSON will join 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," will feature LINDA REED , CEO of the Montana Community Foundation; DEE DAVIS, director of the Center for Rural Strategies (Kentucky); and ALEX ECHOLS, director of conservation programs, Philanthropy Roundtable (Washington, DC). Bradley Center research fellow KRISTA SHAFFER will serve as moderator. A light lunch will be served. Please join us!

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