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Review:
American Experience- Troublesome Creek
Written
By Rick Ellis, April 18th, 1999
Like most people
who live in a big city, I like to think of myself as being born
sophisticated. And like most big city folks, I tend to define sophistication
in fairly narrow terms. I thrive on Starbucks Coffee, fancy art
museums and housing that costs more in one month than I used to
pay in six.
But the truth
is that I'm only one generation away from the farm. While I grew
up in a town of about 100,000 people, my Mom and Dad both grew up
in farming communities. And even though I fight it sometimes, that
experience is close to my heart.
So I'm a sucker
for a good story about farming, even though the Nineties have brought
a flood of tales centered around some worthy farm family who's losing
everything they've worked for all their lives. In fact, in some
ways the entire Farm Aid phenomena has trivialized the problem.
It's easy for many folks to look at farmers as some endangered species,
like Yugo mechanics and 8-Track manufacturers.
In the late
1980s, Iowa farmers Russ and Mary Jane Jordan faced a $70,000 debt
and a bottom-line oriented bank. The Jordans had farmed their land
successfully for four generations, but the family's good reputation
didn't count for much when a multi-state corporation bought out
their small local bank. As massive foreclosures swept the nation,
the Jordans came up with a dramatic solution to hold on to their
family farm. Jeanne Jordan narrates this winner of a Grand Jury
Award and Audience Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. .
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