cool article on M Stewart - recycler supreme

[bobbieinok]

from

RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen
The Dominant Paradigm Strikes Back

...

But to lone strangers that want the world to last into the next generation, we like Martha. Compared to other billionaires, she's practically a populist. She shuns fast-foods and the mass-produced glop that industry sells. Martha is the Queen Mother of reduce, re-use and recycle.

Like a 4-H leader for grown-ups, Martha helped us turn old piano benches into children's art tables and yard-sale trays into vintage art. We didn't care if her real home was staffed with cooks and gardeners any more than readers of Sports Illustrated care that the athletes are professionally trained and nourished. Just by showing up for the photo shoot and holding the platter of scratch-made cookies, Martha kept the dream of self-sufficiency alive.

More than any government program, Martha has helped small family farms. Market farmers know that if Martha features wilted greens, consumers will want greens to wilt and if she features sweet potatoes the demand will go through the roof. She taught us that home-grown eggs always taste better than store-bought and fresh in-season cantalopes are always preferable to imported. Conspiracy theorists take note: Maybe Industry doesn't want us to know how to make stuffing without a mix. Maybe Industry doesn't want us to shop at farmers' markets and ask the farmers how they raised their apples.

Martha Stewart could paste a "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm" bumper sticker on her station wagon. She is preservationist, conservationist, folk artist and promoter of the shabby genteel. So what if the recipes had too many ingredients? We simplified and we forgave her because she was the one who saved the promise for us, the promise that we could do it ourselves and even look stylish with our hair in our eyes and wearing our husband's cast-off shirts.

more


http://www.populist.com/04.7.mcmillen.html

[libbygurl]

1. Very interesting and gently, sneakily subversive!