Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Hester: More Wisdom than I Possess

Click to See Larger Image
More Wisdom than I Possess: Life at Hester's Store, North Carolina.

A collection of articles edited by Randolph Hester, describes a community typical of scores of rural crossroads around Durham. The articles were written by James Earl Hester: a newspaperman, freelance writer, farmer, and trapper. He detailed everything he did, observing the most common aspects of everyday life. He details the values and rhythms of his era.

His insights sometimes surprised even himself, "As a writer, I sometimes pull a piece of copy from the typewriter and come to realize that what I have written contains more wisdom than I possess." Randy Hester grew up working on his family's tobacco farm in Person County. He retired from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Evironmental Planning at UC-Berkeley in 2010 and now lives in Durham. He runs the Center for Ecological Democracy with his wife Marcia McNally.

Hester, James Earl; Hester, Randolph T., Editor. More Wisdom than I Possess: Life at Hester's Store. Roxboro (North Carolina): Person County Museum of History, 2014.

James Earl Hester was an extremely gifted man and dedicated most of his life to writing.  This book is a magnificent account of his personal experiences growing up in a small community in Person County, NC.

No comments:

Post a Comment