Wellbeing

 John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet and abolitionist, wrote about the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in which the Society of Friends banned members from dealing in slaves. If you wanted to be counted among the Quakers, you had to get out of the enslavement business.

The year was 1758, more than a century before the larger society settled the question with the Civil War.

Whittier recorded the objections of those who knew that slavery was wrong but who had money tied up in the ugly business. There were all kinds of arguments — not about the wellbeing of individual people who were enslaved, but about the wellbeing and prosperity of society. Whittier wrote:

 

To this it was answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of such as held slaves.

 

I came to the story by reading a lecture by Ira De Augustine Reid, a sociologist who is known for being among the first Black professors at a predominantly white college before integration. He was hired by Haverford College in 1947.

He was a graduate of Morehouse in Atlanta and was hired by W.E.B. Du Bois to teach at Atlanta University. I imagine he was qualified to teach at any college in Georgia. His Ph.D. was from Columbia.

I’m repeating the story because when we talk of “wellbeing” we usually stop well short of “a searching inquiry … into the circumstances and motives of such as” do x. Such as those who are racist in their hiring practices.

I think states still do this kind of thing routinely. If you start “a searching inquiry … into the circumstances and motives of such” as charge more than 600 percent annual interest on payday loans, for example, you’ll hear a lot of arguments about the wellbeing of the business community, and how business interests must be free for burdensome regulations.

I think our society has a lousy record of balancing the wellbeing of individuals against the society’s powerful, wealthy and “respectable” interests.

• Source: Ira De A. Reid, “Peace and Tranquility: The Quaker Witnesses”; William Penn Lecture, delivered at Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, 1958. The lecture was published as a pamphlet. It’s here:

https://quaker.org/legacy/pamphlets/wpl1958.pdf

The quotation is on p. 20.

These woods were dark

 The woods south of Stone Mountain are always lovely and deep, but they are not always this dark. It was an overcast day in late summer. The canopy is dense.

As we entered the woods, it was as if we had entered a dark theater. It was hard to believe. I wished I had a light meter, just so I’d have an objective measurement.

We walked along, and our eyes adjusted. Then I saw a yellow flower on Oenothera biennis, which is called evening primrose because it blooms at dusk. Evening primrose has adapted to make use of nocturnal pollinators such as moths.

I understand almost nothing of how the failing light and falling temperatures at dusk trigger the sudden opening of the flowers.

But I realized that I did have a light meter, just not the usual kind.

The raw material of writing

 Louis L’Amour, who had sold 200 million books when he got around to writing an interesting memoir, said this about writing:

 

The raw material is not important. It is what the writer does with the material. … 

At least once a week I get a letter from someone who has material he wants me to shape into a story (wanting, of course, a piece of the action). But a writer builds a readership because those readers like what he does with a story, not because of the material.

 

It’s a way, I suppose, of looking at the craft of writing, although I don’t imagine that L’Amour would dominate the curriculum at most writing programs.

This way of thinking about writing is foreign to me. It’s taking me a while to think through it. The writers I most admire conduct some kind of experiment with their life — go to Walden Pond, for example, or try to escape the Jim Crow South — and write about the process of imagining a better way to live.

A writer like Thoreau or Richard Wright owns his material, maybe is his material. The material is important.

Writing is a broad subject. Sometimes we find ourselves talking apples and oranges.

• Source: Louis L’Amore, Education of a Wandering Man; New York: Bantam Books, 1989, p. 85.

A newspaper thing

 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a thing called UATL that I wish more newspaper editors knew about.

I prefer the technical term thing to a “dedicated media brand and digital franchise.” It seems to me that if newspapers create interesting things, they ought to come up with a better way of talking about them.

I like UATL, which is put out by members of the newspaper’s black culture team. One of the standing features is called “Let Me Put U On.” Writers put you on to something that you might overlook. One recent piece was about taking the time to find the liner notes in the age of musical streaming.

This week, a young business reporter named Mirtha Donastorg wrote on the habit or practice of keeping a journal. I’d spent the week thinking about writing and the craft of writing. Having a young person talking about the basics was just right. Her advice:

 

There is no right way to write. Just begin.

 

• Source: Mirtha Donastorg, “Let Me Put U On: How journaling has shaped my life, and can shape yours too”; UATL, Aug. 17, 2026. It’s here:

https://www.uatl.com/news/2026/08/let-me-put-u-on-how-journaling-has-shaped-my-life-and-can-shape-yours-too/

Muscadines

 Muscadines, Vitus rotundifolia, grow throughout Georgia, but they thrive in the Georgia Piedmont. The experts say the wild grapes ripen from July to October. I think August is the peak.

Some varieties of muscadines have made their way into the gardens. Those are the early bearers, or so it seems to me.

Ripe muscadines come in many colors: purple, oxblood, black. There’s a variety of bronze grapes. People call them scuppernongs.

I think just about all the songbirds eat muscadines, as do turkey, quail and ducks. Many mammals, including the bears of North Georgia, love them too. The paths through the woods are covered with half-eaten muscadines.

Terry W. Johnson, a naturalist who keeps a blog, says that some butterflies get drunk on fermenting muscadines. I’ve been watching for two kinds he mentioned — question marks and commas. But I haven’t seen any flying drunk.

• Source: Terry W. Johnson used to write “Out My Backdoor” for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. His column on muscadines appeared here:

http://georgiawildlife.com/out-my-backdoor-wildlife-love-muscadines-too

Since retiring, he posts at the “Backyard Wildlife Connection.” It’s here:

https://backyardwildlifeconnection.com

Fact and value

 U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff called his Republican opponent Mike Collins a “crumbling little bigot.”

That line, reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was overlooked in national news accounts. This race, of course, is just for Georgia voters, but it’s getting national attention because Ossoff has been scathing in his review of the Current Occupant of the White House. He’s urging voters to purge all enablers.

When I was in school, a crack about “crumbling little bigot” would have been flagged as name calling. But I’m not sure that’s what this is.

Since the time of Hume, philosophers have generally made a firm distinction between fact and value.

But Philippa Foot, one of the great philosophers of my lifetime, punctured the notion that this distinction was some kind of red line. She did that by asking about rudeness. We can all deplore rude behavior. That’s a value judgment. But what is rudeness exactly? Our opposition to rudeness might be a statement of value, but we can’t really talk about whether Joe was rude without getting into the facts of his behavior.

I have been wondering whether Collins is a crumbling little bigot or whether Ossoff was just name calling.

Merrian-Webster says a bigot is

 

a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices

especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership. …

 

Collins is a public figure. He’s a member of Congress. Enough of the facts of his life are known to make me think Ossoff’s description is accurate.

I think that voting for Collins would a mistake in some way. In part, this is a question of fact; it is not solely a disagreement about values.

• Source: “Bigot.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot. Accessed 18 Aug. 2026.

The unexpected happens

 A line in Henry Seidel Canby’s biography of Thoreau is haunting to me: 

There are no records of intellectual interests of any kind in the Thoreau family before Henry’s generation.

 

Canby was referring to Thoreau’s father’s side of the family. His mother’s side was a little livelier. But the starkness of the sentence reminded me of what a wonder college can be — what an education can be.

Suddenly, the curtain goes up, and a young person begins to think in ways you wouldn’t expect, even if you looked at all the generations that came before.

Canby calls it a flowering of the mind. He said in Thoreau’s case, it happened about halfway through college.

• Source: Henry Seidel Canby, Thoreau; Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, p. 15.