#1444 The Language of Cottonwoods

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, an interview with Clay S. Jenkinson about his new book, The Language of Cottonwoods.

You can pre-order Clay's new book at Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble, or by contacting your independent bookstore. The Language of Cottonwoods is out on June 22, 2021 through Koehler Books.

Find this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc. You can learn more about Clay's cultural tours and retreats at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Check out our new merch. You can find Clay's publications on our website, along with a list of his favorite books on Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and other topics. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	good day citizens and welcome to this week's edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour.
0:06.9	And it's a bit different than any Thomas Jefferson Hour. I think we've ever done.
0:10.8	Maybe I'm wrong, but Clay, you allowed me to interview you about your new book and it,
0:19.4	well, it led to a pretty interesting conversation. I hope that folks who are not enamored
0:25.5	with North Dakota in the way that you and I are will find it interesting.
0:30.4	Well, you know, I'm from North Dakota. I love North Dakota. And when I travel, people say,
0:37.3	really, North Dakota and professionally, people have sort of looked down on me a little like,
0:43.6	how can what you do be very interesting about M&H from North Dakota? So we all understand that,
0:49.1	but I love this place. I am shaped by this place as I know you are shaped by this place.
0:57.1	And I'm a Jeffersonian in large part because I'm a North Dakota. When I was growing up,
1:02.2	we were a family farm state and family farming had mythological. When you said family farming,
1:09.3	that was like a sacred phrase about the, you know, these hardworking people who lived quietly on
1:14.9	the land and provided their own food and food for the world. And they were simple in the best
1:21.4	sense of the word simple. And they believed that they were doing something that had virtue and
1:26.1	even nobility. They were growing food for a hungry world. That's all changing now, David. And it's
1:33.4	not changing, in my opinion, for the good. But I love this place. And I wanted to write a love
1:40.3	song to North Dakota, but you can't love a place without also trying to reckon with what's not
1:48.2	really in harmony in the place. And we have several disharmonies. First of all, we have an unsustainable
1:54.9	economic model of extraction. That's the one that's killing the planet or certainly endangering it.
2:00.8	Our relations with Native Americans have been on the whole pretty bad. We're still occupying
2:08.0	North Dakota. And we're still not listening very much to this other culture that was here first.
2:12.9	And it really found a way to live here. Our conservation ethic is pretty weak in North Dakota.
	...

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