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Recommending #1176 · From Chad

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  Nobody is waiting for your review.
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  They're waiting for your recommendation.
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  There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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  Chad #1176 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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  yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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  you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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  This message is dedicated to Karen O Barbonell, a really good
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  recommender. You can get a free copy of my
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  book, The Most Powerful Story in the World by going to from
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  chad.gumroad.com. Why is it free?
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  If you haven't figured it out already, I'm a super nice guy.
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  But the other reason is I want to help people think better, and
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  it's a tool that does just that. The transcript of this message
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  and hundreds of others are always available at
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  www.fromchat.com. Here's the upgrade.
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  You may think you have nothing new to give anybody, but
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  upgraded thinking knows the best thing you've already found is
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  the best thing you have to hand off.
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  Here's the story. On Monday, Wendell Berry died at
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  his home in Port Royal, KY. He was 92.
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  Novelist, poet, essayist, farmer.
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  I did a message on him a while back.
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  It's #675 today I'm doing one more, because the best way I
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  know to honor a writer is to recommend him.
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  In the summer of 2011, I finished a novel called Hannah
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  Coulter, inserted the next one. On the same day, I wrote a
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  little post called on a Wendell Berry kick.
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  I said I was hooked, and I've been hooked for 15 years.
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  If you've never read the Port William novels, I'm recommending
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  them again today. Barry built a small cabin above
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  the Kentucky River in 1963 out of reclaimed family timber.
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  No plumbing, no electricity. He wrote more than 50 books at a
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  work table in that cabin, facing the woods and the river with a
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  pencil. He didn't have to live that way.
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  He had early success, a Guggenheim year in Europe, a
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  teaching job at NYU. In the mid 60s.
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  He walked away from all of it, went home to Henry County,
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  Kentucky, bought a farm with his wife, Tanya, and worked it with
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  horses. His New York colleagues called
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  it intellectual suicide. He said he was born for with an
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  aptitude for a way of life that was already doomed.
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  Then he spent 60 years telling the story of 1 Little town.
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  Port William doesn't exist, but Berry's stories about it run
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  from 1864 all the way to 2025, a span of 160 years.
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  One small community, farming, family loss, and the people who
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  stayed. He called them the membership.
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  When Dorothy Wicken visited him for The New Yorker a few years
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  ago, she asked about hope. Here's what he said.
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  Do write things today. Don't speculate about tomorrow.
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  Wickeden wrote that from that sliver of vanishing America,
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  Barry cultivated the unfashionable virtues of
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  neighborliness and compassion. That's what a recommendation is,
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  a small neighborly act you can do today.
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  Barry didn't fix American agriculture.
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  He wrote about one county. He didn't save every farm.
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  He worked one. And that one farm and that one
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  made-up town have been handed from one reader to the next for
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  half a century. Somebody handed a book to
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  Michael Poland, Somebody handed one to Alice Waters, Somebody
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  handed one to me, and now I'm handing it to you.
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  Here's what a recommendation says.
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  I found this. It was good for me.
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  I think it'll be good for you. That's it.
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  You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to be a person
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  who found something and didn't keep it to yourself.
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  You already have one, a book, a song, a person.
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  Somebody near you needs it and doesn't know it exists.
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  You are the whole supply chain. The better story to tell
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  yourself is somebody needs what I've already found.
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  Don't wait until you find something better.
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  Hand off the thing you've got. Go recommend something today
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  like I'm doing with Barry. Tell me a story of the best
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  recommendation anyone ever gave you at from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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  Send someone a text and tell them you need to read this.
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  Here's why and then tell them why.