To the mobile professional, the gun has become the symbolrnof the immobile redneck. It must be confiscated; he must bernemasculated. ‘Yuppies moving into our town post their land,rnholler for more police and want everyone to mow their grassrnand spruce up to their tastes and you guessed i t . . . no more gunfire,”rnwrites Carolyn.rnHer novels are about tribal loyalties; Chute is an encomiast ofrnvillage life. Her politics, and those of her militias, are largely anrnoutgrowth of this faith.rn”We don’t see how dangerous the loss of small town life is,”rnChute insists: “small biz, interdependence, the front porch,rnaunts and uncles who live next door, Grammies who live nextrndoor. We call these losses progress, or just a little trade-off forrn’success.’ NOBODY IS HOME! NOBODY IS EVEN INrnTOWN!”rnYet “[i]n our blood and bones we remember real mothers,rnreal fathers, real aunts and unks. We remember protection. Security.rnWe remember being stroked, fondled, cherished, beingrnthe future of our tribes. We remember (more recently) friendlyrncops. Some of us remember before TV when the living roomrnchairs faced each other. Further back, we remember the frontrnporch. We remember when singing and stories were free. . . .rnAnd yuh, those songs and stories were about us and our families,rnour personal histories, in which our parents and unks and auntsrnwere featured in heroic ways.”rnOur job, she writes, is to recreate “a country made of thousandsrnof small healthy & various communities -i- tribes.” Thisrnwill not be done at the point of a gun. “Wc do not plan to shootrnANYBODY,” she scrawls in a militia recruiting poster. “Wernwant everyone safe and happy. Everyone. Our guns are not forrnstarting trouble. We only protect. We are not an Imperialistrnarmy. That is what the USA government military is for.”rnHer militias do not propose to dismantle corporate privilegernthrough Naderite regulation; rather, they demand, inrnbest Jefferson-Jackson fashion, the revocation of corporate chartersrnand a law that “no one person or corporation can own morernthan one newspaper or magazine.” This may run afoul of thernFirst Amendment, though change that to “TV or radio station”rnand now we’re talking. But still, given that it is the bottom of thernninth and the home team is trailing by several dozen runs —rnCarolyn and Michael Chute on the porch of their Maine home.rnmaybe the game was over 50 years ago, but there are somernthings we are better off not knowing—desperate times call forthrnradical solutions. As these Loco Foco measures would effectivelyrndismantle IVIicrosoft, Disney, the New York Times, andrnGannett, they will become “issues” when Peter Jennings anchorsrnthe coverage of the death of a 69-vear-old diabetic janitorrnwho loved his family but never dated Darryl Hannah.rnAt the end of Merry Men, Chute introduces a lady preacher,rna Casy for the laid-off millworkers of Southern Maine, whorngives a succinct formulation of the Chute program;rnOur only hope . . . is interdependence. We need to startrnsaying “no” to jobs with big business and their productsrn.. . whenever there’s a choice. We need to rely on eachrnother. We need to support each other. .. whatever’s leftrnof your small businesses and farms, your tradesmen. Tornhell with buying American. Buy or trade with yourrnneighhorl Buy from that face not the brand name! Dornthis whenever there’s a choice, even when it costs a littlernmore. What price can we put on our freedom?rn. .. For thousands of years we grew our own food. Inrntwo or three generations those skills have been strippedrnfrom us. Schooling has done this. And we condoned itrn. . . this reverence for the white shirt, the desk, the cleanrnhands, the books, the computers, the bucks, the conveniences,rnthe “good job” somewhere else! How many survivalrnskills do your children have? How many kids todayrncan provide for themselves food, tools, clothing, warmthrn. .. Please, please, please, in the name of God, pass alongrnany skills you have . . . any of the old skills.. . teach .. .rnyour sons and daughters . . . whisper your secrets to yourrnneighbor’s child!rnThe teaching will not be done in the schools, according tornCarolyn, for the purpose of education is the creation of the Professional.rnWhen, in Snow Man, the senator’s wife asserts thatrn”education” is the key to solving every problem under the sun,rnRobert retorts, “don’t gimme that s — about education fixin’rnthis. We don’t wanna be yuppies. We can’t stand the sight ofrnyuppies. The only education we want is to find out what thernhell’s really goin’ on.”rnRobert’s son “has a computer that the school pestered thernparents to get. Some deal with a big company through thernschool. Since the computer arrived. Josh never does anythingrnwith Robert, never even looks at his father, because his face is alwaysrnstuck to his computer.”rnCarolyn believes the school is the enemy of the family. It isrncold and vast. “Look at a small town,” she says. “How cozy peoplernare. We look after each other—even those we don’t like.rn’He’s one of ours.’ New York City is big and impersonal—whyrnwould we take a school and turn it into New York City andrnthink that’s an improvement?”rnMichael adds, “They don’t teach faah-min.” (Pardon thisrnlone lapse into dialectal transcription —the Chutes’ accents arernso natural, so unaffected, so unlike the popsicle-stick-on-tonguernn “aaaah” of the cartoon New Englander.) “How to live off therntl land—they don’t teach those skills. They look down on faah-rn2 min.”rng “If you can get people skill-less, they have to work in yourrnI mill,” says Carolyn, who fingers the industrial revolution as thern^ culprit. “Spend the whole day in school with a pen and paperrnwhether you can do that kind of thing or not. We have all thesern24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn