Photographs by W. Garschagen

The author of "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" is leading
an army of grave, silent woodsmen in a backwoods
campaign against corporate greed

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Well, at least one debate is finally settled: Carolyn Chute -- novelist, wry Earth Mother, accidental militia leader -- has this election year's fiercest and funniest stump speech.

Pat Buchanan may want a "lock and load" foreign policy; Chute invites her admirers to bring their guns back to her place to "plunk away at dog food cans" and "smell the stink of sulfur." Lamar Alexander may tinkle away half-heartedly on upright pianos; Chute leads her gathered through a vigorously subversive rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" that includes stanzas such as "This land is Wal-Mart's! ... This land is Exxon's!" and that ruefully concludes: "This land weren't made for you and me." Steve Forbes may peddle his flat tax; Chute is for flattening greedy corporations, and she draws whoops and cheers with homely, old-fashioned similes. "A corporation is like a bad chair," she proclaims to the 100 or so people who have packed a remote former schoolhouse in this rural Maine town to hear her. "You sit on it, and if it pokes you in the ass, you throw it away."

Welcome to the spirited second meeting of Chute's 2nd Maine Militia, a loosely-organized and decidedly non-partisan group of pro-gun, anti-big business citizens that just may give American politics a much-needed poke in the ass.

Next page: Chute on corporate America: "Everything's getting cheesier."