Light on Aging and Dying: Wise Words [Hardcover]

Helen Nearing (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

Quotations and poetry selected by a renowned ecologist from the likes of Henry James, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaac Asimov, Mohandas Gandhi, and Thomas Jefferson offer timeless reflections on life before and after death. IP.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Helen Knothe Nearing (1904-1995) and Scott Nearing (1883-1983) were well known American back-to-the-landers who wrote extensively about their experience living what they termed "the good life".

The Nearings began their simple life on an old farm on the foot of Stratton Mountain near Jamaica, Vermont in 1932, in the pit of the Great Depression. In 1952 they moved to Maine, ultimately settling on their "Forest Farm" at Cape Rosier (in the village of Harborside, within the town of Brooksville), where they lived until their deaths. Scott remained a thinker, writer, and lecturer on economics and social issues for many years. Their best known books (those which they wrote together) are Living the Good Life (published 1954) and Continuing the Good Life (1979). The first of these is often credited with being a major spur to the U.S. Back-to-the-land movement that began in the late 1960s.

Helen and Scott were devoted to a lifestyle giving importance to work, on the one hand, and contemplation or play, on the other. Ideally, they aimed at a norm that would divide most of a day's waking hours into three blocks of four hours: "bread labor" (work directed toward meeting requirements of food, shelter, clothing, needed tools, and such); civic work (doing something of value for their community); and professional pursuits or recreation (for Scott this was frequently economics research, for Helen it was often music - but they both liked to ski, also). They clearly honored manual work, and viewed it as one aspect of the self-development process that they felt life should be.

The Nearings were experimenters and were also very widely read. They frequently quoted authors of centuries past in their own books. They found wisdom in some of the attitudes of the past, but did not feel tied to the life patterns or technologies of the past. Apart from the necessity that drove them to the land, when they sought a good life during the Depression, keys to their success in the lifestyle included intelligence, commitment, and self-discipline.

Their best-known books draw mainly on their personal experience on their homesteads. Secondary content is drawn from reflections on mainstream-American society (which they were critical of and basically rejected), their neighbors, and the positive values they believed in: self-responsibility, healthy exercise and diet, social cooperation, environmental consciousness, etc. The cycles and rhythms of nature were the Nearings' guide as they successfully provided for about 80% of their food needs.

Their approach to living, based largely on the reduction of wants and a mostly non-monetary return from their organic horticulture and other sorts of labor, appealed to many people. The Nearings offered an almost "open-house" situation on their land for several decades, so that visitors could experience this way of life and learn a bit from them.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 153 pages
• Publisher: Tilbury House Pub (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0884481794
• ISBN-13: 978-0884481799
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 3.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #628,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Helen Nearing left city life with her husband, Scott, nearly sixty years ago to move first to Vermont and then to their farm in Harborside, Maine. The Nearings' food and living philosophies have provided the guidelines for many who seek a simpler way of life.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars World wisdom on aging and dying and living., August 10, 1999

By 

Linnea Johnson ([e-mail]) (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Light on Aging and Dying: Wise Words (Paperback)

Helen Nearing's galaxy of quotations from the likes of Ghandi, Freidan, Woolf, Einstein, Wharton, and Lao Tzu (and scintillating many more) on the subject of aging and dying is somewhat like meditating under a summer sky's meteor shower, each new light a brilliant, breath-catcher. With this collection, this "study for eternity" (Nearing quoting Emerson), Nearing restores elements of wonder and mystery to living and dying , rescuing them (and us!) from the pervasive and monotone hellfire school of western religious tradition. Among my many dozens of favorite Nearing choices is this from Hazlitt (Table Talk, 1821) : "To die is only to be as we were before we were born".

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, July 31, 2003

By 

MotherLodeBeth "MotherLodeBeth" (Sierras of California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Light on Aging and Dying: Wise Words (Paperback)

As the subtitle notes "An inspirational gathering of thoughts on living a good old age into death" this is a book of quotes from elder on subjects from Good Old Age to The Art of Dying and Death the Great Good. I find its value is simply in talking about death in a positive and not a dreaded manner. Quotes from all walks of life and belief systems.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helen Nearing, a good reader, June 5, 2008

By 

S. Lee "Art Not in Heaven" (College Station, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Light on Aging and Dying: Wise Words (Paperback)

I don't know much about Helen Nearing, having just begun to read books by and about her and Scott Nearing, her husband. Among a bunch of such books I checked out from library, this is a second title I picked up and read, following *Living the Good Life - How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World* (1970). Reading this title (Living the Good Life), it was really great to know that the Nearings were no simple folks when it comes to intellectual matters. So far from it. Both Helen and Scott Nearing were clear, elegant, and forceful, in their thinking and writing. To such an extent that you soon begin to trust them as your teachers.

And this book shows how--how Helen Nearing became what she was. The "Foreword," which was written when Helen was 91 and near her own death, is almost startling in its, yes, wisdom and profundity, which are clad in simple and clear words. In this regard, the opening words--"There is much speculation about life after death. What about life before death? To learn how to be old is one of life's last lessons. To learn how to die is the very last lesson of all"--sound almost like Rilke, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, who could be unfathomably profound in clear, simple, everyday, words.

The quotes in the book can very well stand on their own as the "wise words" about aging and dying, words that are "too good to lose," as Helen put it. On the other hand, they show us the *reader* Helen Nearing was. You realize early on that many of these quotes do really come from her reading of the books tht contain them. Such realization can be quite refreshing, considering that very many people make quotes (good or bad) from, well, quotes, or book of quotes. The authors and their books that contributed to the making of this gem-like collection of wise words on aging and dying were ones that inspired Helen and led her to what she became.

*My favorite comes from Edith Wharton: "In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."