I had the pleasure of hearing Wendell Berry speak last night as he accepted the Art of Fact award here in Rochester. He looked a lot like this and I did get a couple of pages of notes and drawings. The honest, smart, kind and courageous thoughts were well worth hearing and I'm hungry now to read more Berry.

He talked a bunch about facts ("one has to believe in facts...that they exist" but that "facts never make a whole...just lead on to more facts") and how "honest facts" come with lots of qualifiers. The qualifiers of memory, and condition and how all of that comes from courtesy and concern. We're all trying to be true with all these facts but Mr. Berry stood up there and reminded us that imagination plus facts makes a more true truth, or as he said it, a greater whole.

He talked about limits and limit-less-ness, about how what happened after World War 2 was that our American pace was sped up. What happened when we went from mule to tractor? What's with our limitless hurry. He quoted T.S. Elliot's prayer "teach us to sit still".
And he made me (and the other couple of hundred people present) think. The talk, with it's not so subtle critique of big banking and big agri and other-wise business, was paid for by a bank. The bankers sat in the front row. There was high drama everyday politics of empty seats saved for latecomers while the plush auditorium filled with people.

And in the end, after the introductions of introducers, and after the applause, and after he read the essay an dafter he read from the novel in process, and after he answered a couple of questions, he pulled his small book of Shakespeare from his jacket pocket. It was a gesture quickly passed but the one I would want to paint.

All of this and more has me thinking about pace and place and change. The hectic-ness of work-a-day working, the silly effort has me exhausted and wanting to break, stop, rest and renew. I will soon enought but in the meantime, I just think of green. I'm in the dirt as often as I can be...little bits each day this week and lots I hope on Sunday.

And though, Mr. Berry doesn't own a computer I found this website of info on him and his work, very helpful. I can understand why he doesn't have a computer, he's got acres and mules...

goodnight,
Rachael