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Chips of Red Paint

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K. Martin Beckner

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“As a working definition of art, I lean toward Tolstoy's: "Art is a human activity having for it's purpose the transmission to other of the highest and best feelings to which mankind has risen." It seems to me that, regarding agrarian art, the farther it moves away from the natural world, especially when the main goal is money profits, the more difficult it becomes for it to reflect "the highest and best feelings" of humanity. The same is true of, of course, of agriculture itself. The farther it tries to remove itself from nature in search of money, the more it moves away from the highest and healthiest kinds of food.”

“WOMANHOOD IS NOT MAKE-UP Your uterus is your symbol of womanhood. Your womb is a significant mark of your divinity. Your monthly menstruation is not just bleeding, but a sign of life. Your menstruation is a reminder that you can carry creation within you. No one else has these things except you, woman. Make-up doesn’t make you a woman. Clothes don’t make you a woman. It is the crown on your womb and the power within your uterus that make you a woman. Your birth canal was created to stretch and deliver life. It was designed to bring children into this world. And because you are a divine woman, it returns to its original form and function with grace and ease. You're a woman because your womanhood cannot be replicated, no matter what. You're the ultimate bearer of life. You're chosen to birth both men and women. The continuation of nature flows through you. Yours in womanhood,”

“Agrarians are committed to preserving both communities and the material means of life, to cultivating practices that ensure that the essential means of life suffice for all members of the present generation and are not diminished for those who come after. Agrarianism in this sense is, and has nearly always been, a marginal culture existing at the edge or under the domination of a larger culture whose ideology, social system, and economy are fundamentally different. So agrarian writers, both ancient and modern, always speak with a vivid awareness of the threat posed by the culture of the powerful.”

“The escape from industrialism is not in socialism or in Sovietism. The answer lies in a return to a society where agriculture is practiced by most of the people. It is in fact impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper regard for the soil, no matter how many urban dwellers think that their food comes from grocers and delicatessens, or their milk from tin cans. This ignorance does not release them from a final dependence upon the farm and that most incorrigible of beings, the farmer.”

“Agriculture, however, is not and never has been a single monolithic interest in our society. We have always known differences among farmers of different regions, different crops, and different incomes. The difference in the forms of political organization have been determined principally by the manner in which economic differences have been resolved. (pp. 15–16)”

“It seems fitting, however, that the single Western film which most unambiguously endorses the agrarian ideal, The Covered Wagon, should contain one of the cinema screen's most graphic attacks on Industrialism. The film's intertitles inform viewers that one of the most formidable hazards facing the character of Wingate (Charles Stanton Ogle), the leader of the wagon train, is greed arising from the California gold strike of 1849. Several pioneers opt to dig gold in California rather than plow land in Oregon. In a visual composition symbollically resonant with the importance and irrevocability of that choice, the wagon train divides, one part going north and the other south, while visible in the foreground lie the discarded plows of those who have foresaken the agrarian ideal. These shots from a silent Western summarise a major split in the American psyche.”