Soil ≠ Dirt

Charles Waters is the iconic founder and Executive Editor of Acres USA, the premier magazine devoted to ecological (sustainable) farming practices. He is a word-wrangler par excellence, brilliant, and author of many books and countless articles and editorials.In the current issue of Acres (July 2008) Walters reviews a new book by his friend Gene Logsdon, a farmer-writer-philosopher cut from the same cloth as Wendell Berry, titled The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land). After a positive review of the book, Walters closes with this paragraph:

A critique should have criticism to offer. I have a small bone to pick with Gene. He uses a few words I still don't use, one of them being "dirt" when he means "soil." Dirt, the late Professor William Albrecht once reminded me—and one reminder was enough—is ring around the collar. A lone exception to the rule: an ungraveled road can be considered a dirt road.

If you're wondering about the point, I enjoyed several: the collegiality of war horses like Walters, Logsdon, and (genuflect, please) Albrecht; the way Walters referred to his friend Gene Logsdon as "Gene" instead of "the author;" the attention to detail in the use of language; the use of apt illustrations. There is such pleasure in reading well-written pieces by people who have forgotten more about the subject than others will ever know.