You Can Go Home Again: Adventures of a Contrary Life - Hardcover

Logsdon, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253334195 ISBN 13: 9780253334190

Publisher: Indiana University Press (IPS), 1998

Synopsis

Gene Logsdon's story embodies both the frustrations and longing so many of us feel as we search for our essential selves and a harmonious life. The measure of his courage -- and contrariness -- is that he has been successful. In You Can Go Home Again, he tells us what motivated him and what success has meant.

For Logsdon, to create a "home" is not to escape from the world, but to establish a nexus of people, all working together to produce a home-based economy as a bulwark of stability under the larger economy gone crazy with paper money. "Home" is a local community tied to other local communities. But mostly Logsdon's philosophy must be read between the lines. What he writes about are the sad, funny, and sometimes harrowing adventures of those who live seemingly humdrum lives: understanding creeks; shepherding sheep; coping with blizzards; winning softball tournaments; losing sanity at rock concerts; hiding in haystacks; enjoying Christmas; surviving a buggy ride; overcoming grief, not to mention absentminded professors, dictatorial editors, and fervid priests; and why it might not be a bad idea to go to church in our underwear. What transpires is an inspiring picture of a very American life.

About this title

From the Author:

I try to consider deeper thoughts.
Dear readers of my books:

Thanks to all of you for buying my droll musings about life beyond the parking lots. Without you, my wife and I would have to get government welfare assistance like all the millionaire farmers do. Thanks especially to those who have taken the time to write nice reviews. Sometimes my nose gets so high up in the air I can hardly work this damn computer.

I notice one reviewer describes our farming as "highly profitable." It is highly profitable in human values, which I presume is what the reviewer meant, but the amount of cash money we make from it is pretty small potatoes.

Our potatoes are rather small too, come to think of it.

My latest book, YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN, is a little different from most of the earlier ones in that I try to consider deeper thoughts. Deeper than potatoes. I manage to insult institutional religion, institution education, commercial journalism, and commercial agribusiness, which probably means that I will lose what few friends I have remaining.

I notice that Amazon now carries another new book of mine (with Steve Zender, my good friend) called THE BIG THINGS IN LIFE ARE THE LITTLE THINGS. You won't hear much about this one because we published it ourselves and can't afford to advertise it much. If you want to learn what life in all its humor, charm and sadness is really like in rural areas and small villages, this is a good book to start with.

I get lots of requests for my old, out of print books. Sometimes Powell on the Internet has some. I am trying to get my publishers to reissue these books with, finally, a bit of success. My older WILDLIFE IN THE GARDEN will be out next year, updated, and with some changes to make you laugh while the deer eat your shrubbery. I wanted to retitle it "Wild In the Garden" and add a chapter on nude gardening, but my publishers are such killjoys.

Sincerely, Gene Logsdon

Synopsis:

Will lead with quotes from Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, and perhaps Wes Jackson. 'I grew up on a farm in the 30s and 40s, in the embrace of an agrarian society that was closer to the latter 19th century than to the world I would have to cope with in the latter 20th, condemning me to march out-of-step all the days of my adult life. I belonged to the last generation of that old rural society that dominated America's value system until about 1955. I witnessed the dying down days of a farming culture that had really not changed much since the invention of the scythe, the reaping hook, and the three divine persons in one God. To accentuate the sense of loss and death that my accident of birth thrust upon me, I spent 10 years in Catholic seminaries where I witnessed the last days of the old monastic lifestyle too. Until I was 24, my life was in a time warp' - Gene Logsdon, from the Preface.Here is a book for everyone who has dreamed about going back to the land to live a simpler more meaningful life. Gene Logsdon's story embodies both the frustrations and longing so many of us feel as we search for our essential selves and a happy harmonious economic existence.

The measure of his courage - and contrariness - is that he has been successful. In "You Can Go Home Again", he tells us what motivated him and what success has meant. For Logsdon 'home' is a not an escape from the world, but the establishment of a pattern of homes, all working together to produce a home-based economy as a bulwark of stability under the larger economy gone crazy with paper money. Home for Logsdon is a local community tied to other local communities.'If the whole county were covered with fresh snow and all the tracks of my wanderings over it were imprinted on it, almost every section of land in any of the 13 townships would show my trail. In some places, my crisscrossing footsteps would be so numerous as to pack the snow solid. The 800 miles of roadways in the county I had also traveled many times. Along every trail and every road were places where little events important to me had happened...This was home, and it was so vast and deep and high and wide that I could never tire of it'.But Logsdon's philosophy is mostly between the lines.

What he writes about are the sad, funny, and sometimes harrowing adventures of those who live seemingly humdrum lives: understanding creeks, shepherding sheep; coping with blizzards; winning softball tournaments; losing sanity at rock concerts; hiding in haystacks; enjoying Christmas; surviving a buggy ride; overcoming grief, not to mention absentminded professors, dictatorial editors, and fervid priests; and why maybe we should go to church in our underwear. What transpires is a lovely picture of a very American life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press (IPS)
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0253334195
• ISBN 13: 9780253334190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224