Poet, novelist, thinker, farmer – lover of God and people and his Kentucky home – Wendell Berry died on August 31, 2026. Other lives well lived: Martha Ingram, Annie Trost, John Beasley. We will not soon forget you in Nashville….
Pepper and Poems
125 Articles
125
I was driving a loaner vehicle in Green Hills when I heard the news. My car’s AC is being repaired at an outrageous price because it’s hard to go without AC in Nashville. I was on my way to Paper…
Nashville friends: the new film about Mary Oliver is coming to the Belcourt! See details below. (Many thanks to my friend Grace for noticing and letting us know!) Please note: this film is also currently available for purchase on Apple…
On the banks of Lake Tillery, God drenches the world in blood. And it is beautiful. Many miles away, in my weedy yard, the ageratum opens. The agastache – unsteady – leans. The Rose of Sharon weeps. (Why keep your…
Two decommissioned robots travel from their tiny apartments in Seoul to Jeju Island. One of them wants to see fireflies again before her system shuts down. The other wants to reunite with his former owner, who is also his dearest…
I spent last weekend at St. Joseph’s Monastery in Kentucky taking part in a silent guided retreat: no phones, no books, no words. The nuns sang psalms at the appointed hours. Birds awakened us in the morning. I became accustomed…
I’ve been watching a mourning dove on her nest. I discovered the nest while removing some dead branches from the magnolia. Rogelio and his crew got the big branches down after the ice storm. The remaining ones were smallish…
The world is broken and sparkling. My friends, displaced from their homes, tell me first about the trees – bending and breaking under the weight of their own beauty. It’s a horror show – and also magnificent – the…
I took the ornaments off the tree and put them on the glass-top table in the sunroom. I felt ineffably sad doing so. The ornaments rested on the table for several days. I felt overwhelmingly lazy and sluggish about getting…