What would WJ say about what happened in Chautauqua on Saturday, in light of what he said of the place and the institution back in 1900, that "in this unspeakable Chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight anywhere, and no point of the compass visible from which danger might possibly appear..."? I guess he'd say he was speaking figuratively. Is there anywhere, any time in our world when danger and death might not possibly appear? That's not something to brag about.
So my friends and I had a brief but gratifying moral holiday, enjoying the Bluegrass State's finest autumn-like weather in August and sampling its noblest liquid distillations.
I asked our young Four Roses guide if he knew that William Faulkner was a fan of its product back in the day. He did not. I don't believe he'd heard of the 1950 Nobelist, in fact. "For Mr. Faulkner, the first sip of straight bourbon signaled the first day of fall in Oxford (MS)...Bourbon to him was also a means of aiding reflection. He liked to have a drink, smoke his pipe and think about his writing or about people or about life. And he also used it to assuage grief." Bourbon does help, in that department. That might begin to explain its late resurgence.
I asked our young Four Roses guide if he knew that William Faulkner was a fan of its product back in the day. He did not. I don't believe he'd heard of the 1950 Nobelist, in fact. "For Mr. Faulkner, the first sip of straight bourbon signaled the first day of fall in Oxford (MS)...Bourbon to him was also a means of aiding reflection. He liked to have a drink, smoke his pipe and think about his writing or about people or about life. And he also used it to assuage grief." Bourbon does help, in that department. That might begin to explain its late resurgence.
Anyway, the Four Roses tour (like our earlier morning tour at the Woodford distillery) was captivating and distracting. Both delivered a lovely denouement at the end.
"The joy of Bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of C(2)H(5)OH on the cortex but rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime--aesthetic considerations to which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary."
In that explosive instant, grief is the last thing on your mind. Unmediated delight is first.
Also delightful, on our moral holiday, was our rented place of lodging: an old cabin dating to 1818. Its period furnishings included an old collection of the works of Dickens, conveyed as an inscribed gift over a century ago and also claimed by one C.H Boone of Bardstown. My dad would have been proud to assert a family connection to the great frontiersman. I assert, again, simple and unadorned delight. Holidays displace present affliction and gird us for the ameliorative struggle to come. In the right company they solidify our strongest connections. Most of all, they're fun. No further rationale required.
It’s after midnight in central Kentucky, 70 degrees on the screened back porch of a cabin built in 1818. Perfect time and place to ponder the wisdom of Wendell Berry. And sip bourbon. pic.twitter.com/XuJuU5CIkD
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) August 12, 2022
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