A writer with fertile soil under his fingernails
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
I am going to write about a book that you probably won’t find in your local bookstore and you might not be able to find it any where, but I feel compelled to share the book with readers. Even the title is unusual, "Letters from Kik-I-Allus," and as best I could determine from the writer, that means "a sense of place representing the lands and waterways of the fertile valleys of the Skagit Delta in the northwest corner of Washington state."
It is written by Glen Johnson and subtitled "A Farmer’s Perspective."
Johnson farms on land that was once occupied by the Kik-I-Allus Indian tribe and he honors Indians with poetic tributes in the book. What I found so unusual about the book, written between the years 2003 to 2005, is that it is letters to Johnson’s dad. However, Johnson’s father died January 3, 1988 so the letters are written posthumously.
"I didn’t think about how to write the book until the inevitable writing had to take place," Johnson said. "I mused on how to start and then realized that letters are a good way to communicate."
He says the book is both a way of honoring his father and at the same time chastising him for being a mediocre parent. It is almost as if Johnson never really got a chance to tell his father all the things he wanted to discuss with him in life, so his letters are making up for that loss.
Each chapter begins with a "Dear Dad" letter written from his farm, a strictly organic vegetable farm he and his wife, Charlotte, bought in Skagit Valley, Washington in 1989. Johnson out does himself in a poetic introduction of his wife, including a tale about finding her crying over six baby chicks that had apparently strayed from the nest and died of the cold. "I’m not sure what Charlotte was doing over the lifeless, limp chicks," he wrote, "but right there before my eyes all but one came back to life and are out there in the flock this very day."
The book is liberally illustrated with photos of his farm production.
The introduction, written by a friend, Darren Thompson of Edison, Wash., sums up the contents of the book as "a farmer’s memoir" of one "with the soil under his fingernails and mud on his boots," but Thompson promises the reader a discovery of "a man of passion."
In the letters, Johnson often vents about situations in the world today and remembers how proud his dad was over Johnson’s achievement as an expert rifleman while in the Army. In one letter he tells his dad that today peace has become an obsession with him. "Instead of Christians thinking Muslims are barbaric and Muslims thinking Christians are crass and devoid of compassion, we should press for compromise, understanding, tolerance and cooperation," he wrote.
He believes that food is the answer to peace in the world and wonders why there should be hunger anywhere in the world. He also worries that Homeland Security has not given enough thought to securing America’s ability to grow food — the very food, he says, that could bring about peace on earth. He is calling for a U.S. Army Corps of Peace whose mission would be as emissaries of peace by training the poorest and hungriest in the world in low-impact food production.
In his reasoning, it would cost much less than training a solider to kill. Johnson might be a dreamer but then it was Johann Wolfing von Goethe who said: "Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
Perhaps Johnson is dreaming big, but as we approach 2006 maybe it is time we gave peace a chance.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470. Nowhere in the book is a price or ordering information listed, but there is an e-mail site, info@organicpress.net for more information.)