ABSTRACT
On both days that I journeyed to Wendell Berry’s home in Port Royal, Kentucky, with my friend Timi Reedy (sustainability and holistic life consultant), the sun was shining brightly and the skies were that brilliant shade of breathtaking blue. As we traveled I began to hear a song in my head that we sang in grade school: “I look at the sky, the clouds floating by, the blue like no blue on earth could be. I greeted the air and whispered a prayer, for god made this loveliness for me.” And as the song in my head ended, I repeated aloud a line of poetry “the world is charged with the grandeur of god.” Those two journeys were heavenly. I was on my way to see and talk with Wendell Berry poet, essayist, novelist, cultural critics, farmer, a fellow Kentuckian whose work has influenced my intellectual development. I was downright giddy. Our first visit there we sat with Wendell and Tanya (his wife of long years) around their kitchen table eating pound cake, drinking tea, and talking. There was much wit, laughter, and general silliness on display as well as much serious and deep thought. There was no tape recorder documenting 185our conversation. In the past I have often scoffed at those folks who cannot go anywhere without a camera, a recording device, video, without some instrument to document for the future. Now that I have witnessed the deep pain and grief that can be caused by loss of memory, through illness, dementia and Alzheimer’s (my mother begin to fall into a world of profound forgetfulness shortly before my first visit to the Berry household), I can acknowledge the value of documentation for a future time. I know firsthand what a blessing it is to have a record — a way to remember that goes beyond the mind.
