" Andy said, "You're worried because they've left the membership...They've gone over from the world of membership to the world of organization. Nathan would say the world of employment."

And I said, "Yes. That's the trouble I have in mind."

One of the attractions of moving away into the life of employment, I think, is being disconnected and free, unbothered by membership. It is a life of beginnings without memories, but it is a life too that ends without being remembered. The life of membership with all its cumbers is traded away for the life of employment that makes itself free by forgetting you clean as a whistle when you are not of any more use. When they get to retirement age, Margaret and Mattie and Caleb will be cast out of place and out of mind like worn-out replaceable parts, to be alone at the last maybe and soon forgotten.

"But the membership," Andy said, "keeps the memories even of horses and mules and milk cows and dogs. "

― Wendell Berry , Hannah Coulter