Andre Leon Talley

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.