Lee Hoinacki, Stories of Place … Slowly, over the years, I became familiar with many of the stories of this place, with the continuous oral tradition that held the history or these people, which expressed the beliefs of this neighborhood and the surrounding community… As I had suspected, the stories contained the collective historical experiences, the wisdom of the place... Looking back now, it is possible to see the invasion of this lovely landscape, together with all the other rural landscapes of the world, as the principal theater of a war, a war against subsistence, against a way of life where people stand on their soil and reach out to one another. Some dare to assert that the campaign was necessary, good even… But if one looks, not at the graphs and charts of the profiteers [business and academics] but at the land and people affected, one sees the costs: the ugliness, the emptiness, the sadness. An unbiased story reveals the cruel imposition of industrial efficiency and economic competetiveness, together with the all-important fact that it was a war, with both winners and losers... If one searches one can find isolated voices pointing out that the primary victims in these vicious rituals of superstitious belief — legislation of bureaucratic decrees...are farmers, both in America and in other countries, especially those of the South. But, as individuals, they are only part of the story. Indeed, as I learned from experience, it is not exact to call them individuals at all. They are--or were--members of living histories, of beautiful communities … And to see what was destroyed one must travel to where they lived, to the battlefields… Rural space, if untouched, is always beautiful, always wondrous. When populated with a rooted people whose principal bond to their land is one of affection. Such space can still shine with a marvelous radiance. But when affection is absent, dishevelment inevitably comes to reign. The one sees the disaster of dead and decayed rural space... Rural space, if it has been touched by human presence, needs the fruitful warmth of a community's affection or it deteriorates like any unloved creature… Finally, I came to see that small-scale subsistence farming opens one to an awareness of the genius loci. Each place has its protective spirit. One does not have to travel to Tibet or other so-called exotic regions to experience the unique power and beauty of a place. The poets have spoken truthfully: To know a place is to be captured by its spirit-demon and hence to live there in awe and reverence, in humility and gratitude. Lee was an active member of CPF
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