This Week



COVER STORY
Farming
This week in Studio 360, Kurt Andersen and Verlyn Klinkenborg explore the culture around agriculture.

Tractors
A beautifully designed tractor is the kind of farm equipment that's guaranteed to induce childlike awe in even the slickest city dweller. Lu Olkowski visited a few farmers in upstate New York and asked them why these machines inspire so much devotion.
Go to a link to Stub Ploutz's farm market and B&B for pictures of his tractors
Go to a John Deere Collector Magazine websites
Go to the unofficial Allis-Chalmers tractors site

Teatro Campesino
Luis Valdez has written and directed such films as "La Bamba" and "Zoot Suit" for Hollywood. But in the late 1960's he didn't even have a theater, just a flatbed truck, a few costumes and fake moustaches, and the drive to bring theater to Mexican-American laborers. Valdez founded Teatro Campesino -- the Farmworkers Theater which has entertained fruit pickers and their families for 40 years. Peter Crimmins talked to Valdez about his dream of art for the people.
Go to Teatro Campesino’s website
Streaming video clips and a virtual tour of the theater
Go to a website with a biography of Luiz Valdez
Go to a magazine article on Teatro Campesino's social action theater

Buy a book about El Teatro Campesino

Matt Moore
The unrelenting sprawl of tract houses and big box stores has made its way to Wadell, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, pushing out small farms. Matt Moore's family has farmed there for decades, and before his farm becomes a subdivision, he decided to make art about it, by plowing the floor plans of tract houses into his barley fields. Abigail Beshkin from KJZZ in Phoenix has the story of the farmer with a Masters in Fine Art.
Go to Matt Moore’s website
Go to a website for the Center for Land Use Interpretation

SPECIAL GUEST
Verlyn Klinkenborg
Verlyn Klinkenborg is a writer and farmer. He grew up in Iowa on his family's homestead and he lives today on a farm in upstate New York. He's the author of The Rural Life and Making Hay. He's a member of the New York Times editorial board his essays on rural life are featured regularly in the New York Times
More about Verlyn Klinkenborg

Buy The Rural Life
Buy Making Hay







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Gizmos Galore
Over the past couple of months, critics have been breathlessly extolling the Tim Hawkinson retrospective at the Whitney Museum here in New York. Hawkinson's work can grab you in unexpected ways — like his tiny, perfect bird skeleton that on closer examination is constructed from the artist's own fingernail clippings. Since so many of the pieces come alive with sound, Studio 360's Sarah Lilley brought her microphone to the museum — where she asked the artist about the method behind his madness.
Go to the Whitney's page on Tim Hawkinson
Go to the Ace Gallery's page on Tim Hawkinson
Buy the Tim Hawkinson catalog

Introducing Vakoka
Engineer Sean Whittaker took a job in Madagascar, thinking he would spend the next few years building and operating windmills. One day, Sean overheard the melody of a healing ceremony and it sparked an interest in music he didn't realize he had. Now Sean produces albums; his latest was a worldwide hit that featured Madagascar's top female singer. Rob Weisberg has the story.
Go to artist/producer site
Go to label site
Go to fRoots' magazine's Madagascar music discography
Buy Introducing Vakoka


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