M. D. (Mark) Usher

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

I am a Classics professor by day and a farmer, gardener, builder, and Zen practitioner the rest of the time. I trained as a carpenter's apprentice in Germany before doing a PhD at the University of Chicago. We built our own house and outbuildings, raise Scottish Highland cows, manage a maple sugaring operation, and grow vegetables and flowers. (See www.worksanddaysfarm.com weblink below) My writing/teaching focuses on ancient philosophy and literature and the environmental humanities. I am currently working on a book about the philosophy of work.

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

I read Unto This Last and The Nature of Gothic about ten years ago and it changed my life. To be part of an educational charity Ruskin founded in 1871 struck me as an ideal way to show my appreciation for his thought. I couldn't agree more with Ruskin’s reasoning for founding the Guild: "If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it . . . Utopianism is not our business—the work is."

Web links: www.uvm.edu/cas/geography/profiles/m-d-usher, www.worksanddaysfarm.com