notes

well, here follow my notes from the other night. i know the picture is fuzzy and distant, but i was far away and was simply happy enough to be there in his presence. i didn't worry too much about capturing a great image because it was wonderful enough to just soak in his words. he has a great drawl. may i call it a drawl? he just speaks differently than people around here, and i quite like it. my notes might not make the best of sense, but here they are. the q&a is really only a because it was hard to hear the qs. i enjoyed all of it. hope to live up to it.


ken sanders intro:

wb was last among us 20 yrs ago for the wake of edward abbey. now he's here in celebration of the cent. birth of wallace stegner

wb has over 40 books. so what? if you haven't read his novels/essays/poems then it doesn't matter

poet, farmer, essayist, citizen, and true american patriot...wendell berry


wendell berry:

first 7 pgs of a draft of an essay about the economy. following stegner's example in sharing an essay and a piece of short fiction

essay draft:

• money vs. goods
• i see my unqualification in looking at/analyzing the economy as a qualification
• economy is science only in restrospect
• i'm contributing my pov
• my pov is from ground level--agrarian
• put nature first: 1. nature 2. land use 3. manufacturing 4. consumer
• law of return--what's taken must be given back
• an authentic economy is renewable
• essential virtues...honesty, thrift, care, good work, generousity, imagination
• put nature first, consumption last
• goods from nature and human work
• give precedence to needs
• psalms 24: earth is the Lord's
• leviticus 25:23 land shall not be sold forever
• land is sacred
• land is priceless
• land ownership. land would be entrusted. use land as its servants and in behalf of the living
• our economy has become an anti-economy
• the order is inverted--based on consumption
• spending is not an economic virtue: spending>products>consumption
• saving is an economic virtue
• not wasting is an economic virtue
• authentic economy asks "what do people need"
• anti-economy creates needs, confuses real goods with goods that are merely marketable
• land...everything that has a price will be sold. everything that's sold will be ruined

"burley coulter's fortunate fall" (short fiction):

burley's favorite theological term is maybe

"it was either true, or it wasn't"


q&a:

• we may be surprised to find out how much we need each other again
• leadership from the bottom. recognize need and address it. saw what needed to be done and got it done or started doing it. good leadership is committment to community.
• through all hard times he's seen, he's noticed farmers have managed to do well bc of 2 things...1. they stay w/in their boundaries and 2. they're frugal
• loafing leads to conversation: when the young boys were getting tired and going home was when the old men were getting bed-weary and coming out to talk
• homecoming--college ought to teach this. for too long it's taught upward mobility. homecoming is teaching people in a way which prepares them to come home. we're raising children now who literally don't know who they are; they don't know the local plants, animals, birds, streams, etc.
• rather than taking orders, we need to answer these questions: what happened here? what should have happened here? what is the nature of this place?