Interactive L.H. Bailey Timeline

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The Cornell Countryman Comments on the History of L.H. Bailey

Outlook to Winter

    Most of us, I fear, look upon winter with some feeling of dread and apprehension. It is to be endured. This feeling is partly due to the immense change that comes with the approach of winter. The trees are bare. The leaves are drifting into the fence-rows. The birds have flown. The deserted country roads stretch away into leaden skies. The lines of the landscape become hard and sharp. Gusty winds scurry over the fields. It is the turn of the year.
    To many persons, however, the dread of winter, or the lack of enjoyment in it, is a questions of weather. We speak of bad weather, as if weather ever could be bad. Weather is not a human institution, and is not to be measured by human standards. There is strength and mighty uplift in the roaring winds that go roistering over the winter hills. The cold and the storm are part of winter, as the warmth and the soft rain are a part of summer. Persons who find happiness in the out-of-doors only in what we call pleasant weather, do not really love nature.
     We speak of winter as bare, but this is only a contrast with summer. In summer all things are familiar and close; the depths are covered. The view is restricted. We see things near by. In the winter things are uncovered. Old objects have new forms. There are new curves in the roadway through the forest. There are steeper undulations in the footpath. Even when the snow lies deep on the earth the ground-line carries the eye into strange distances. You look far down into the heart of the woods. You feel the strength and resoluteness of the framework of the trees. You see the corners and angles of the rocks. You discover the trail that was lost in summer. You look clear through the weedy tangle. You find new knotholes in the tree trunks. You penetrate to the very depths. You analyze, and gain insight.

Getting Unplugged and Back in the Child's Realm

The Kaiser Family Foundation  reports that American children's use of iPods and MP3 players and other electronic media has increased more than an hour in the last five years. Today a child will spend over 7 hours plugged-in.  (Children's Media Use, By Platform - Kaiser Slides) Solution? Connect back to nature as Bailey confesses in this poem, where even the grand Dean of Cornell was snubbed by a child enthralled in their timeless world.

CHILD'S REALM


A little child sat on the sloping strand
Gazing at the flow and the free,
Thrusting its feet into the golden sand,
Playing with the waves and the sea.

I snatched a weed that was tossed on the flood
And unravelled its tangled skeins;
And I traced the course of the fertile blood
That lay deep in its meshed veins;

I told how the stars are garnered in space,
How the moon on its course is rolled;
How the earth is hung in its ceaseless place
As it whirls in its orbit old.
The little child paused with its busy hands
And gazed for a moment at me,
Then it dropped again to its golden sands
And played with the waves and the sea.

L.H. Bailey, Wind and Weather

Quotable Bailey

"Sad would be the day were there no objects higher than man." L.H. Bailey

(This inscription by Bailey found in the frontpiece endpage of his 1927 Background Book, Harvest: Of the Year to the Tiller of the Soil, dated January 13th, 1928) 

Herald-Mail Article: Gardening, Bailey & Children

Dorry Norris's article supplies a well crafted thumbnail sketch of Bailey, his connection to gardening and how we can reconnect.

Lifestyle: Growing gardeners, by Dorry Norris
These days, gardening programs for kids are growing in popularity. Everyone, from The Herb Society of America to the National Gardening Association to local garden clubs, is creating strategies aimed at introducing children to the joys of nature through gardening...None of this emphasis would come as a surprise to Liberty Hyde Bailey, but the money expended might shock him.

For Feb 12 - Charles Darwin Day (1809-1882)

I have seen great surprise expressed in horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners in having produced such splendid results from such poor materials; but the art has been simple, and, as far as the final result is concerned, has been followed almost unconsciously. It has consisted in always cultivating the best known variety, sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly better variety chanced to appear, selecting it, and so onwards. -Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

The story goes that around 1870, a young Liberty Hyde Bailey found a used copy of Darwin's The Origin of Species in a South Haven library. Bailey's father, a Quaker from Vermont, took the book and informed Master Bailey that he needed to approve of its contents first. After a week, Bailey Sr. laid the book in young Liberty's hands explaining, "I don't understand a lick of it but he sounds like an honest man so go ahead and read it." Origin listed important scientists such as Asa Gray and Alfred Russel Wallace.  Later in his career, Bailey would study under Gray at Harvard. Bailey would tour Wallce at Michigan Agricultural School (now MSU).  The book continued to inform Bailey throughout his career.

Quotable Bailey, "What does a flower think?"

"What does a flower think? Who are the little people that teeter and swing in the sunbeam? What is the brook saying as it rolls over the pebbles? Why is the wind so sorrowful as it moans on the house-corners in the dull November days? There are elves whispering in the trees, and there are chariots of fire rolling on the long, low clouds at twilight. Wherever it may look, the young mind is impressed with the mystery of the unknown. The child looks out to nature with great eyes of wonder." L.H. Bailey, The Nature Study Idea, p. 36

An Evolutionist's View on Nature and Religion

A woman who knew my evolution beliefs once asked me where heaven is. There seemed to her to be no place left for it in the cosmos of the evolutionist. This is a type of difficulty which perplexes many persons. They dwell upon the physical symbolism of faith and creed, as if the things of the spirit must be measured by time and space and materials. I could only answer that I never expect to be able to discover heaven with a telescope. Perhaps heaven is much nearer than we think.

- L.H. Bailey, from the 1899 article, "An Evolutionist's View on Nature and Religion" in The Idepedendent

CLICK ON TITLE LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

The Separate Soul: Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Reflections On John Muir

The new Ken Burn’s documentary, The National Park: America’s Best Ideas will take to the airwaves on September 27th. One of the featured personalities will be that of John Muir, no less reintroducing the legacy of this profound man to many Americans. Muir’s activism ripples through our culture with concentric waves touching the founding of Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, the Sierra Club, and bringing awareness to Americans of the landscape they inhabit. Liberty Hyde Bailey too was effected by Muir’s legacy. Not too long after Muir’s death in 1914, Bailey wrote of him in The Holy Earth in the chapter entitled, “The separate soul.”

Click on the title link to dowload this chapter from Bailey's, The Holy Earth.

Recommended Reads

Two leaders in environmental thought influenced by the writings of Liberty Hyde Bailey continue to inspire. Parts of Bailey's classic The Holy Earth can be found in Wendell Berry's What Are People For?: Essays. Aldo Leopold's classic A Sand County Almanac furthered Bailey's idea of how one is to live with their environment. Great reads and food for thought. What would you recommend?