From Massachusetts Artist, Illustrator & Printmaker, Barry Moser

Donald Hall

I’ve known Don Hall for a long time, and we have talked a lot. We have talked about the women in our lives. We have talked about our students and good teaching. We have talked about our mutually held passion for a disciplined work ethic. We have talked about poetry and art. But we never talked about baseball since I am ignorant of all such things. We broke bread together. Lots of times. And we lifted more than a few glasses together—from good iced tea to good whiskey.

                I could tell a story about Don that happened few years ago when we were on deck together at a literary conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan.

It was the end of the day. Both of us were tired. Anne Lamott was the keynote speaker at the big opening event that night, but neither of us were particularly interested in going. So we repaired to our splendid accommodations at the local Holiday Inn and took up immediate, though temporary residence at the bar. We talked a long time, about this and that, mostly trying to avoid the subject of his grieving heart and addressing lighter matters. The whiskey helped. I don’t remember much of the conversation today, nor do I remember leaving the bar that night. The next morning Don and I were to be on stage together—to talk about what to an audience I do not recall. I was already on stage and seated when Donald arrived a few minutes late. He was walking with a limp and a cane. Appears that he took a header when he was taking off his trousers last night. It was all my fault….

(reader: take a long pause here…)

oh…I said I could tell that story, didn’t I?, and that implies that I wouldn’t, doesn’t it?

So I won’t.

                I’ll tell another one instead.

In August of 1998 I was three years into my work on the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, a five-year long project in which I cast a few of my friends as characters.  Some of them you might know: Leonard Baskin, the sculptor, was Moses, though he allowed that he would be more comfortable being cast as God. Paul Mariani, the poet and biographer, was Apollos. Athol Fugard, the South African playwright, was Job. And so on. I asked Don if he would be my Ecclesiastes, the preacher, and he agreed. I thought it was an especially good idea given that the poetry in Ecclesiastes’ eponymous book is, in my modest opinion, some of the most beautiful in the King James Bible.

So, in the late, sunny morning of August 20th, my assistant and I drove the two hours from my house to his in Danbury, New Hampshire to visit and photograph Don for his appearance in the Bible.

Cara made a few shots as Don and I caught up with each other and shot the breeze about poetry, the Bible, Henry Moore, and Dylan Thomas. Cara asked if she could make a few pictures of Don in his study, to which he was amenable. Half an hour later we went outside to make the studies I needed to make in natural daylight. The sun was high in the western sky and the shadows on his face and beard were crisp and clean—just what I was looking for. We brought a red fold-up chair from the house and set it up in the front yard under an ancient tree, taking care to stay out of its shadow. Don sat down and we positioned him to get the light on his face just right. Cara snapped a few shots but then discovered that she did not have film in her medium format camera. Don sat patiently while she switched over to the smaller camera she brought along as a back-up. During all this none of us noticed, not even Donald, that the back two legs of the red folding chair were sinking slowly into the soft turf under the tree. Cara and I watched as Don and the chair sank backwards in an accelerating slow motion. And then…plop... he spilled out of the chair and onto the damp grass. He was no worse for the wear and we all had a good laugh as I helped him to his feet. A few grass stains on his elbows and knees was the sum of his injuries. Nevertheless, we did not press him to re-take the shot.

It was a short visit—less than an hour all tolled. Donald looked good—his hair was long and shaggy which was absolutely perfect for my purposes. He said, jokingly, that he had been letting it grow—just for me. Later though he said that Jane had always been his barber and without her, he just doesn’t get it cut any more.

It might have been one of the things we talked about that night in Grand Rapids.