Arlington Public Library

Wendell Berry at Arlington Reads – Now with Video

Watch video of the full program on vimeo.

The Real Deal arrived last night in Arlington.


It wasn’t the Beatles at Shea or Hendrix at Woodstock. Or even the Jonas Brothers at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But it might have been. For when farmer-writer Wendell Berry slipped through the side door of the Central Library Auditorium, he caused an unprecedented eruption of goodwill and generosity, the likes of which he had never before witnessed. And neither had we.

So the evening began, our fifth annual Arlington Reads main event, presided over by a courtly storytelling philosopher who kept his audience both spellbound and hopeful. His messages were simple: keep faith with yourself, your community, your land—messages that have been lost in the haze of hubris and hucksterism.

He spoke of his influences — Wallace Stegner and other writers of place — and his progress as a writer. And he read from “The Memory of Old Jack” in a voice rich and sonorous, languid and unperturbed, sharing the excerpt about the ambiguity of leaving, the passing of the torch from the seasoned old to the barely formed young, like they did in the communities of bygone eras.

He told us to know and be proud of our space; to ignore what the educators tell us and to be from some place. To know the world through truly knowing what is familiar. To go back to biology, to touch, to feel and to value what is tangible. To stop using too much. To buy local. To exercise leadership from the bottom up. To understand that life is both lucky and luckless, something as a farmer he would know all too well. To know that to feel joy one must also feel pain. To value hard work, to be useful. To have hope, to look within ourselves for the strength and courage to beat back the false idol of bigger/better.

A class act – the real deal.

It has taken us five tries to get here, but with last night’s event we have finally created the Arlington Reads community that we have sought. It just took the right topic, the right persons, the right audiences, and the right time. Last night was absolutely Mr. Berry’s, but both he and Novella Carpenter have helped launch us on this path to transformative civic engagement.

It’s now up to us to look within ourselves and find the means to take the conversations we have been having during this season of Arlington Reads and pursue sustainable actions for the betterment of the whole community of Arlington.

We urge you to join us.

And we now know that one can not go wrong with any brand of Kentucky bourbon.

(Photos can be viewed on the Library’s Flickr collection.)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Many thanks to Arlington Library, Diane Kresh and Wendell Berry for one of the most edifying literary evenings ever. The questions were well thought-out and articulated and Mr. Berry's responses were direct yet philosophical: he taught us well that agrarian values should be our values.

  3. Wondering if the video transcript will be posted to this blog…I know they said that it would be a few days before it was posted…just wondering where?

  5. Thank you so much for bringing Mr. Berry to Arlington, his writings have shaped my life and it was such a gift to be able to see him. If we ever get him back again, we definitely need a larger venue.

  6. Mr. Berry sat there with us on a balmy Tuesday evening, figuratively in the middle of his Kentucky farm — financially enabled, I imagine by his book royalties more than any crop sales – saying in his quiet folksy way "Change, don't come in here." And his listeners, most of whom probably had college degrees, including Ms. Kresh with her MS in Library Science, dutifully nodded when Mr. Berry told us "to ignore what educators tell us." He bemoaned the fact that rural Kentucky kids, once educated, decided they had to go elsewhere to make a living, and even perhaps, to have a fuller urban life — as do, I imagine most his suburban audience, who really don’t want “to go back to the farm and its country ways. I was intrigued by some of Mr. Berry’s evasions to questions, e.g., on marital fidelity and on non-racial "exclusions" in small time life. His talk reminded me a bit of these nostalgic paeans friends e-mail about the good old days when everyone knew their place and times were great — except for the many for whom times weren't so wonderful and even crippling and deadening if you wanted something different from your peers. Anyway, I like Mr. Berry's writing and his evocation of place, even if I don’t exactly buy into his Luddite philosophy!

  7. Without conversations, you cannot have stories. Small talk is important to creating our personal mythology. With the advent of grab and go, and machines replacing people, there is less opportunity to enjoy a neighborly chat in the course of our daily lives. And so the thread is broken on the loom, and only an empty space remains.

  8. [Corrected version!]Mr. Berry sat there with us on a balmy Tuesday evening, figuratively in the middle of his Kentucky farm — financially enabled, I imagine by his book royalties more than any crop sales – saying in his quiet folksy way "Change, don't come in here." And his listeners, most of whom probably had college degrees, including Ms. Kresh with her MS in Library Science, dutifully nodded when Mr. Berry told us "to ignore what educators tell us." He bemoaned the fact that rural Kentucky kids, once educated, decided they had to go elsewhere to make a living, and even perhaps, to have a fuller urban life — as do, I imagine most of his suburban audience, who really don’t want “to go back to the farm” and its country ways. I was intrigued by some of Mr. Berry’s evasions to questions, e.g., on marital fidelity and on non-racial "exclusions" in small time life. His talk reminded me a bit of these nostalgic paeans friends e-mail about the good old days when everyone knew their place and times were great — except for the many for whom times weren't so wonderful and even crippling and deadening if you wanted something different from your peers. Anyway, I like Mr. Berry's writing and his evocation of place, even if I don’t exactly buy into his Luddite philosophy!

  10. Alida, you may have trouble viewing the video if you don't have the latest version of Windows Media Player on your computer. We suggest downloading the latest version for your system, and then try viewing the video again. You may also need to restart your computer after completing the upgrade.

  11. The room chosen for Mr. Berry's "Arlington Reads Main Event" neither had enough seating nor was well ventilated. I could barely breathe from the heat and lack of circulating air. Participants either had to fan themselves or leave.

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