Today I’m (re)posting the story below because, as much as I dislike MAGAts, I keep wondering who is benefitting from our being at each others' throats and in each others' faces. I really hate being played for a sucker.
Using Art to Bridge the Rural-Urban Divide
by Anya Petrone Slepyan, The Daily Yonder March 21, 2025
As the 2024 election approached, news channels and commentators once again revived a familiar narrative: the urban-rural divide.
But Laura Zabel, executive director of Minnesota-based arts non-profit Springboard for the Arts, was more interested in urban-rural solidarity.
“Going into an election year, we knew that there was going to be a lot of narrative that focused on ways we might be different, or ways that people assume we’re different,” Zabel said. “And we wanted to do something to not only counter that narrative, but to help people build real relationships and real solidarity across urban and rural places.”
Stoking resentment between urban and rural communities serves to divide largely working-class constituencies that could gain more political power if they work together, Zabel said. Emphasizing what these communities have in common, across different geographies and demographics, can help counter that divide. But it’s not easy to overcome a narrative that is so deeply ingrained that many Americans take it for granted.
So Springboard for the Arts launched a new initiative, consisting of over 35 artists working on projects across Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, and Colorado that connect urban and rural communities. The installations include phone booths that connect communities in rural Northfield, Minnesota and Minneapolis, a culinary project that celebrates the fusion of a chef’s Southeast Asian roots and rural midwestern upbringing, and a Kentucky poetry slam honoring the renowned theorist and professor bell hooks.
Artists Drew Arrieta and Maddy Barsch created cozy phone booths that connected the communities of Minneapolis and Northfield, Minnesota. (Photo by Drew Arrieta)
The results, Zabel said, demonstrate “all of the different ways that we’re connected, and all of the different creative ways that we might reach out to one another and build that kind of understanding.”
Using art projects to foster connection and understanding is effective, according to Zabel, because they leave room for nuance and complexity that is often flattened by media narratives. Creative projects can also help people approach new ideas with a more open mind, she said.
“Art has a tremendous ability to build shared experience in ways that takes people outside of their comfort zone, or makes people more open to thinking of things in a different way,” Zabel said.
A project installed in two Minnesota elementary schools demonstrates the principles behind the projects. Artist David Hamlow worked with 2nd and 3rd graders in rural St. James and urban Minneapolis to design wall sculptures made of recycled materials. Each student was also given a yearbook photo of a participating student from the other school, and asked to incorporate that picture into the sculpture. The resulting walls of faces serve a purpose similar to pen pals, according to Zabel.
Each student was given a class portrait of their counterpart at a different school, and asked to decorate the picture with recycled materials. (Photo by David Hamlow)
“The goal of this whole project in a nutshell is to just get people thinking about one another as individuals and as people who are living full lives and having similar experiences and to help people be more curious about what those lives might be like,” Zabel said.
The youth-focused project also hopes to reach urban and rural children before they’ve internalized the harmful stereotypes these communities can apply to one another.
Project installations by the initial class of 35 artists are ongoing, but Zabel hopes to expand the initiative further in coming years.
“I think that if we are able to build greater understanding and connection, and help people see a more complete picture of what it looks like to live in different contexts, we end up finding out that there is a lot of shared interest and shared hope for our future and our children,” Zabel said.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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"They do not talk about national Democratic Party decisions in 2000 and 2004 to move resources away from the rural battleground and to metropolitan strongholds, opting for base strategies over outreach."
"Nor do they mention that Texas which is 83% metropolitan, and Florida, which is 91% metropolitan, both rejected Obamacare."
"Two would-be terrorists living in major metropolitan urban areas with over a million residents each, yet the rage narrative is about rural insurrection."
"Those relatively few Capitol insurrectionists were disproportionately metropolitan, not rural, but who’s from what Zip code is not what’s alarming."
It is unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the Federal Government has something in the neighborhood of three dozen different definitions of rural. However, the distinction between urban, rural, and metropolitan becomes clear if one scans the maps of Minnesota displaying Three rural definitions based on Census Urban Areas and compares it to the map of Rural definition based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) metro counties. It looks to me as though there’s quite a bit of nonurban area in metro counties.
If, as I hope we do, we truly want to manage to bridge and heal the urban rural divide and/or split, I strongly suspect it would be helpful if all of US were talking the same places. I’m disappointed Dee Davis doesn’t appear to share that perspective.
Full disclosure: I live in what, not long ago, was a township in an OMB "metro county" that’s not part of the official 7 county Twin Cities Metro Council area. The township in which I used to live has been annexed [in]to a city because, in Minnesota, townships are considered little more than holding areas awaiting urban development. If it’s not clear, that’s not my view of what should be the role of rural area townships. My perspectives are more in alignment with those of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison in The Founding Gardeners.
Many (most?) of our feathered neighbors become “snow birds” and migrate south during ice and snow season, only to return “home” with spring thaw. Today we saw a number of these prodigals as we were traveling around taking care of errands. The first pair of sandhill cranes appeared in a pasture across the road from a local sheep farm. Several pair of Canada geese floated on several different local ponds. A pair of low flying swans managed to startle me early today as they passed behind us [the dogs and I] and started honking. A different swan almost caused several vehicle crashes as s/he walked/flapped along a local highway centerline. More and more robins are flitting about treetops. Abundant life is returning to the North Country. Soon we may even see fresh blades of grass.
This has been about the gentlest winter in the five+ decades I’ve lived here, but that doesn’t bring the equinox or solstice any quicker. Seasonal change is part of life in the temperate zone and toning down the extremes reduces winter’s pains, at least for many humans. But others have missed some skiing, ice fishing, and other outdoor winter activities. Now it’s time to enjoy freeze-free activities for six or eight months,, remembering that in Minnesota, there’s only one month of the year in which it hasn’t snowed.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
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“Over the last two years, our communities have been literally ringing alarm bells about the fragility of the system,” Bradley Peterson, CGMC’s executive director, said during a Zoom call about the organization’s legislative priorities. “Reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance are simply not keeping up with the services provided. The fee-for-service model is, frankly, in many of our communities, not sustainable.”
If the real issue is the reimbursement rate, wouldn’t metro area cities be facing the same issues? The article fails to mention that aspect.
Across-the-board cuts in Medicare payments and reductions in reimbursements for uncollected patient debt disproportionately have impacted rural hospitals, whose patients are more likely to be enrolled in government health programs.
Rural hospitals must support fixed costs with fewer patients. They frequently struggle to comply with regulations that are not designed for small facilities, or maintain aging buildings that date back to an era when hospital stays were longer and inpatient care was more common.
But wait! he wrote, there’s more. Right here in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Fairview, Sanford call off health systems merger . This, after a prior merger between Fairview and the UM Medical Center hospital. Even the “big guys” are having real problems. Is it time to consider nationalizing our health care system? Are we getting what our insurance companies are paying for?
I tried to write about hope But wasn’t sure I had the audacity The pandemic took a toll And our last president was a fascist He Said he did more for Christianity Than Jesus And between the BLM protest and right wing hatred we just Stayed inside and tried to live Contemplating if loans would be forgiven To provide a little relief We were safe at home but had to march in the streets To beats Of Black Lives Matter See I was flattered To be part of the Healthcare Hero’s Until I start telling the truth and the death toll added zeros And zeros Until the number reached 100000 And still people believed it was a hoax And wouldn’t wear masks in public places The deck was stacked against us and the government held Aces But they underbid as the death toll continued to rise But as the number grew there were fewer tears from eyes Of the privileged Because big business needed that money Propaganda had normal people acting funny Yet still I dared to hope Until I couldn't breathe as George Floyd choked and his killer walked the streets free See We're going back into summer But instead of George Floyd the name we will march to is Daunte Wright And we again will wear our masks as we continue to fight Systems of oppression The National Guards were called and wore bullet proof vest When we said Black Lives Matter But were nowhere to be seen when the right wing Unhinged the government’s seat of power And the hours Continued to tick on 525600 deaths but rent wasn’t on But Nurses were on The verge of a mental break down every day Saving lives of the people who claimed don’t tread on me And yet I say I’m going to write about hope As a black woman in America it’s impossible not to choke On the repetitious contradictions Vaccines vs quarantine things while the seams are bursting On the national debt “Make 600 dollars enough” because it’s all you gone get As you try to survive this crisis Going hungry while giving the nation its slice is Your patriotic duty I’m a poet and I know it sounds looney That I can’t write about hope 2020 had me riding a high worse than dope And when I came down it was comparative to death Knowing that nothing would change So I inhale and deep breath And continue to think about hope
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Many, many years ago I encountered the quote: “Demography is destiny,” probably in a college sociology course. This morning, and in other recent readings, I’ve seen the truth of the observation in question.
Today, her county of Fremont, a New-Hampshire-sized area home to 40,000 people, has gone from two birthing hospitals and many obstetricians, to one delivery facility and a single pregnancy doctor for the general population. The trend prompts women in increasing numbers to travel out of the county to give birth—an expensive and logistically challenging option. “I just think it’s insane,” Wachter said. “It puts women at risk.”
The statistics bear out her observation. Women who live farther from delivery hospitals are more likely to experience adverse medical outcomes, such as requiring neonatal intensive care.
Conclusions and Relevance In this cross-sectional study of births in US rural and urban counties, risk of SMM [severe maternal morbidity] was elevated for low-risk and higher-risk obstetric patients who gave birth in lower-volume hospitals in rural counties, compared with similar patients who gave birth at rural hospitals with greater than 460 annual births. These findings imply a need for tailored quality improvement strategies for lower volume hospitals in rural communities.
Urban and rural fertility rates appear similar enough that one distinguishing major variable is likely to be total population and density differences between urban and rural areas. For example, Fremont County, Wyoming’s popullation of 40,000 compares to New Hampshire’s 2024 population of about 1.5 million. The former has shown a significant decline in births by mother’s county of residence between 2008 and 2022. This, of course doesn’t address the chicken and egg question of which came first, loss of birthing centers or decline in number of births. It does suggest that Earl Butz took an extremely short term, short sighted, view years ago when he suggested farmers and ranchers should “Get big or get out.” Perhaps rural areas would have been better served over the long term if he had said “Use it or lose it.”
The sky is bright blue and cloudless from where I sit. Warm sunshine contributes to above seasonal temperatures. Almost all of the snow from earlier this week has melted. The Better Half and the two dogs are napping. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what happened to the bat house. I noticed this morning that the front is missing. Also, the box is now hanging by only one screw and I think part of the roof is missing.
Earlier this year one of the bluebird houses got destroyed by what I believe was a bear. Unless the unseasonable weather prompted one out of hibernation, I don’t think it was a bear that dismantled the bat house, but there haven’t been any recent lightning strikes in the neighborhood either. I suspect we get to just chalk it up as another mystery of country living.
Actually, thanks to a recent annexation, technically we now live in a city, but in the rural portion. At the county level, according to the American Communities Project, we live in a “Rural Middle American” county: "Largely rural and white communities. Middle income and average educational attainment." [That doesn’t help explain the Trump signs we see driving around, unless educational attainment averages have plummeted recently.] Anyhow, the ACP uses fifteen different categories of community types. That certainly seems to complicate any urban-rural divide. I’ve become more and more interested in the emphasis being placed in the media on what divides US rather than what unites US. For next year, I’m thinking seriously of exploring such questions. As an example, when one thinks of rural areas, the role of the arts doesn’t often come to the fore, and yet, there’sResounds: Arts and Culture on the High Plains.
Perhaps as a holiday present to ourselves, and a New Year’s Resolution, we could check our stereotypes at the door and learn more about the actual people who live in various parts of our country. Waaay back when I was in college, I learned in a sociology course that there are three kinds of lies. See today’s title.
We’ve reached the time when even the oak leaves are changing color. For the first time this season, snow showers have appeared in the extended forecast for late next week. I’ve not yet got around to starting up the snow blower but my motivation just increased. This afternoon or tomorrow we’ll get fresh gas and go from there.
There’s an article in today’s Daily Yonder that made me feel a smidgen of hope for our future. It’s republished below and followed by today’s poem.
Progressives Hope ‘Rural New Deal’ Will Address Economic Issues and Appeal to Voters
by Janie Ekere, The Daily Yonder October 18, 2023
Progressive Democrats of America and Rural Urban Bridge Initiative have co-authored a policy paper laying out a set of strategies to revitalize the economy in rural areas through “federal investment in bottom-up solutions.”
With input from rural leaders and advocates, the Rural New Deal brings together economic policies that are popular with progressives and tailors them to suit the needs of rural communities.
Democrats have a chance at winning in 2024 if they work to rebuild trust with rural voters, Anthony Flaccavento, director of Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), told the Daily Yonder.
“The federal government is proposing this policy template, but every element needs to be organized such that it's sensitive to the specifics of the regions, that the programs are being applied and that there is local input into how they actually operate at the local level,” Flaccavento said.
The Rural New Deal is made up of 10 overarching economic policy goals, or pillars. These include items such as breaking up corporate monopolies and ensuring livable wages, among others. Each pillar comes with a set of actions that either the federal government or other rural community leaders can take. These range from providing subsidies to small businesses to expanding road and rail infrastructure.
Additionally, the Rural New Deal focuses on other policy areas like sustainable food production, broadband expansion, affordable housing, public education, and healthcare. It calls for measures such as Medicaid and Medicare expansion, investments in vocational training, and free community college.
The release of the policy document comes at a time when the Democratic Party is becoming less competitive in national races, according to Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of political history at Gannon University in Pennsylvania who studies rural elections.
He said the Democrats have increasingly focused their electoral strategy on urban areas since the 1960s, while gradually devoting less attention to rural voters. They performed especially poorly in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, losing the rural vote to Republicans by more than 20 percentage points in both.
Progressive candidates like Pennsylvania U.S. Senator John Fetterman and former Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin won their seats after years of organizing in their states’ rural communities. But Democrats as a whole often don’t run candidates in rural areas, especially at the state and local level, Bloodworth said.
“Half the state legislative seats in Mississippi, the Democrats don't even run a candidate,” Bloodworth said. “And Mississippi's not an outlier. Democrats were competitive and controlled the state legislature in Mississippi well into the ’90s they just quit trying. They don't show up anymore.”
Alan Minsky, the director of Progressive Democrats of America, and Flaccavento view the Rural New Deal as an important step in building a relationship between progressive candidates and rural communities, both during and beyond elections. But they both see potential issues with its implementation. They anticipate Republican opposition to the Rural New Deal’s calls for increased government investment or decreased privatization, as well as lingering biases against rural voters from Democratic politicians and pundits.
Urban progressives have assumptions about how rural Americans vote: that they all vote Republican, that they vote against their own interests, or that they simply don’t care about the same things urban progressives care about. Flaccavento said these assumptions can lead Democrats to dismiss the issues that rural Americans face. Republicans, by contrast, are more likely to try to appeal to rural voters, Minsky said.
“The Republican Party has consistently presented itself as the ally of business and therefore it fits in with this notion of being the party that advocates for pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, do hard work, etc,” he said.
Though Republicans have consistently outperformed Democrats among rural voters in recent elections, rural voters themselves – especially young rural voters – have expressed dissatisfaction with how both parties handle economic issues. Minsky, who remembers Ronald Reagan’s elections in 1980 and 1984, saw how unpopular his administration’s economic policies were among rural workers, policies that are still part of the Republican Party’s platform.
“He really initiated an era of economic policy of not securing and supporting independent businesses and family farmers and allowing the process of corporate monopolization to begin. And then sadly, when you get the Democratic administration coming in ’92, they in no way reverse that,” he said. “In fact, they again acquiesced to the policies for the most part.”
Republicans’ use of “culture war” strategies has also produced mixed results in capturing rural support. In Ohio, a 2013 state constitutional amendment that would have restricted abortion rights failed to attract as much support in rural areas as candidate Donald Trump did in 2020. Similarly, rural Wisconsin voters shifted 5 points to the left in the 2023 election of pro-choice progressive, Janet Protasiewicz, to the state Supreme Court this past April, compared to senatorial and presidential elections.
Flaccavento said that voters’ responses to these strategies are complex and often informed by their material conditions.
“Culture war issues are way more effective in dividing us in large part because people feel abandoned economically,” Flaccavento said. “As Democrats begin to really prioritize the needs of everyday people across geography, but especially in rural, … then it's much more likely that those other issues will be like, ‘Well, we don't agree, but that's OK.’”
Bloodworth added that urban progressives need to understand the nuances of rural political attitudes if they want to get support for policies like the Rural New Deal.
“We should not assume that people in rural America are naturally more conservative…Their liberalism, where they are liberals, has a different sensibility,” Bloodworth said.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
As I was rereading the first chapter of Joy Harjo’s Catching the Light this morning, my day was brightened by this paragraph:
The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth’s peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming.
Those thoughts became a great lead-in to an article in today’s Daily Yonder which we’re republishing below. Those who would ban books be damned!! They would keep us from knowing who we are.
A ‘Little Town Poets Society,’ and the Woman Behind It
by Presley West, The Daily Yonder May 24, 2023
Growing up in Scott County, Tennessee, Cheyanne Leonardo's passion for poetry and the arts made her feel like a bit of an outsider.
"It's hard growing up and feeling different, feeling like no one is interested in the same things as you are … I definitely felt like a weirdo. But I kind of liked it, in a way, and I tried to make it my super power."
Community members gather for a Little Town Poets Society meeting. (Photo courtesy of Cheyanne Leonardo)
"Little Town Poet" Cheyanne Leonardo. (Photo courtesy of Leonardo)
Today, her poetry – and gift for sharing it with others – has become just that. In the past three years, Cheyanne has published three poetry collections, cultivated a thriving group of local poets, launched a local poetry anthology that's received more than 100 submissions, and assumed a leadership role in a recently formed nonprofit working to advance arts in the community.
Though she is now doing what she considers her life's work, it happened by accident.
Only three years ago, Cheyanne was living in Stuttgart, Germany, at the tail end of a decade-long odyssey of boarding school, graduate school, traveling, and living abroad, which she started when she first left home at fourteen. Fluent in French and German after extensive travel in Europe and a graduate degree in modern language and literature, she taught English for two years before the Covid pandemic hit Germany. In the face of so much uncertainty, homesickness — and a chance at a love she’d left behind — brought her home.
"If I'm perfectly honest, the reason that I came home was because I'm a romantic. I was waiting for the right time to be with someone here in our hometown," she said. "When I was faced with the possibility of the imminent death of all my loved ones, I thought, okay."
So she moved home, rented a small apartment behind her old childhood dance studio, and began working as a barista. She wrote poems to process her feelings about her time abroad, her journey home, and everything in between. Those poems eventually became the foundation for her debut poetry collection, More Than Metaphor, published in the summer of 2021.
Birth of the Little Town Poets Society
What began as a personal exploration of her feelings became a way to connect with her community more deeply than she ever had before. Surprised by how much people connected with her work, and humbled by the encouragement she received from friends, family, and strangers while selling her work at the coffee shop, she decided to start a free weekly poetry class.
"So, I am starting a club. And everyone is invited," she wrote on Facebook. "The LITTLE TOWN POETS SOCIETY will be a place for YOU – to join me in creating poetry and art of your very own."
Little Town Poets Society meetings, like the one pictured above, started as weekly free poetry classes taught by Leonardo.
Despite early fears that no one would show up or care, eleven people – ranging from teens to seniors in their seventies – showed up to Little Town Poets Society's first meeting at the coffee shop. And they've continued to show up since, sharing their work, forming unexpected friendships, and opening up about their feelings.
"More than once, a grown man has cried at Poets Society, which I feel is progress," she said.
The group has been transformative for Whitney Swain. "The little community that [Cheyanne] has created has opened a world of possibilities that I didn't know would exist for me," said Whitney, who is studying to become a licensed counselor. "She gave me space to find an artistic voice that I did not know I had."
A discussion at the Little Town Poets Society.
Weeks after launching Little Town Poets Society in the fall of 2022, a couple of friends and family approached Cheyanne with an idea to start a nonprofit arts organization, a moment she remembers as a "sign that everything was moving in the right direction."
Friends made through the Little Town Poets Society. (Photos courtesy of Leonardo)
"When I started out, I was kind of hoping it would evolve into something like that."
Today, she serves as Director of Literary Arts for that nonprofit — the Appalachian Society of the Arts — which recently hosted its first fundraiser for a Budding Artist scholarship fund and is planning free and low-cost classes in music, photography, acting, and crafting.
Supporting access to the arts and emerging artists from Scott County has been incredibly meaningful for Cheyanne. "I was dissuaded from pursuing [the arts] for so long because they're “not valuable.” And that's the exact thing I'm trying to break — this notion that it's not helpful or doesn't contribute. Because [with] what I've done in the last two years with poetry alone, I've seen more of a positive impact in terms of other people's lives and the world, that I've been able to do, than anything else ever."
The Hometown Poems Project
Her current project, "Hometown Poems," is an example of that. It’s a local anthology she created for residents of Scott, McCreary, and surrounding counties that will benefit the Appalachian Society of the Arts. She’s received poetry, photo, and drawing submissions from over 100 residents. "The youngest person who submitted is four years old, and the oldest is in his 80s. So we've got the whole range of life," she said.
She’s also writing, with her current work focused on spirituality. "I'm always a romantic. So there's always love in there as well," she said. "But I like the idea that everybody has a little piece of the divine in them, whatever their name for that is. And for me, poetry is what gets me in touch with it."
Personally, Cheyanne is living happily with her partner — the one who inspired her journey home — and their dog and cat. She quit her barista job to write poetry full time and has wholeheartedly embraced her identity as a Little Town Poet. "I hope to continue representing rural places, especially in Appalachia, and inspiring people to represent themselves.”
While she hasn't ruled out a future odyssey — “there's part of me that still fantasizes about running away and being alive somewhere else." — she's putting down roots for now.
"I really like being here right now … growing up, I felt like, kind of an outcast. So all of a sudden, it's like I'm really active in the community, and I like it. I feel like I'm making a difference, and that is what matters to me."
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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I remember when I was a kid, we weren’t the first family on our block to have a tv. I watched Howdy Doody and similar programs at a neighbors and had to be sure to get home in time for supper. Here we are almost three quarters if a century later and, thanks to “progress,” things haven’t improved much. In fact, in many ways they’re worse. Having no service in many ways improves on having shoddy service.
Using our less than broadband internet service, I can’t locate a local serviceman to check and/or replace our Over The Air [OTA} antenna and coax cable. I’m not sure if HDTV would be a better option. Where we live, cable is as much of an option as broadband.
Between our antenna and the broadcast towers, several oak trees west of the house are now taller and broader than they were when we bought the place. Because of oak wilt, ideally we shouldn’t prune until November. I’m not inclined to take some sort of technical course to learn how to select and install an antenna since I’m not likely to need to do it more than once. I’d rather hire someone qualified, if there were anyone.
We know what a lousy job government has done at insuring availability of rural broadband internet. I know for a fact that our county has been “studying” broadband for about five or more years. To the best of my knowledge, there is no good, reliable, source identifying OTA broadcast availability, nor is there a mandate that cable providers service an entire township by date certain.
Add to the above the fact that our township supervisors have decided to merge most, but not all, of the township with an adjoining city, leaving several sections of the township to be potentially annexed by other cities that, as far as I can tell, will do little, if anything, to benefit current township residents, and combine that with the failure of our state government to enact critical legislation despite a $9 billion surplus, and the outcomes of the January 6 hearings in D.C., and I’m developing severe doubts about the viability of democracy in a global, neoliberal, mass market economy. Once upon a time we had the TVA and the Rural Electrification Act. These days it seems to be mostly “I’ve got mine. Vote with your feet.”
This is the grass your feet are planted on. You paint it orange or you sing it green, But you have never found A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend: Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye. But you have never found A cloud sufficient to express the sky.
Get out there with your splendid expertise; Raymond who cuts the meadow does not less. Inhuman nature says: Inhuman patience is the true success.
Human impatience trips you as you run; Stand still and you must lie. It is the grass that cuts the mower down; It is the cloud that swallows up the sky.
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I know it won’t be easy, but I’m determined to put more energy every day into accomplishing something good than I do into bitching about what’s wrong with people. (Complaints about weather, bugs, etc. come under a different category.) With that in mind, today I call your attention to a recent article published in the Daily Yonder: The Power of Place: Educator Helps Literature Teachers Connect Students to Their Rural Roots.
Parton, Ph.D., spoke to the students about her project, Literacy In Place, which promotes expanding literature curriculums to include works that speak directly to young rural students in middle school and high school classrooms.
We are losing more and more of our rural population and I don't believe that's good for the country. In part, my New England upbringing accounts for my concern. Town meetings are a fundamental form of democracy. In part, I am vehemently opposed to industrial agriculture and Confined Animal Feeding Operations. Providing sustainably raised and grown food requires more people in farm country. If kids are ashamed of where they come from, they’re less likely to want to live there when they grow up.
We need urban and rural. We need country and city. That doesn’t have to mean that rural is dumber or that urban is slicker. I find that, while I concur with much of Parton’s thinking, I can’t agree with this:
“I realized that rural culture is a culture and that it’s different,” Parton said.
Based on my experience, education and reading, there is more than one rural culture. I’m more and more interested in exploring the concept of bioregionalism, which incorporates urban, rural, working lands and sometimes wilderness or oceans, and various cultures and subcultures in a bioregion.
With the exception about cultural pluralism stated above, I heartily agree with Parton’s principles:
Parton said that she based Literacy in Place on three principles:
Rural stories are worth telling.
Rural stories are worth reading and worthy of study.
And rural cultures (imperfect as they may be) are worth sustaining.
I was surprised to see her listings didn’t appear to include any of Wendell Berry’s fiction. He’s fundamental to contemporary rural culture as far as I’m concerned.
You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty: you misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their hands in your pockets, their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them. And once you say you are ashamed, reading the page they hold out to you, then such light as you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you. You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready. When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them: "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon will come around you. The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.
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Please be kind
to each other while you can.
This morning I drove through the countryside to pick up our weekly CSA share. This week we get:
Arugula
Brentwood Lettuce
Chives
Broccoli Raab
Cutting Celery
Kale Mix
Mustard Greens
Radish
Spinach, and
Sunflower Microgreens
After the events of the past few days, the drive through a nature-dominated rural area helped a lot. Picking up a share of products grown through the sanity of sustainable agriculture reinforced a sense that the entire world isn’t crazy, just too much of it. Fortunately, lilacs are coming on nicely. Trillium are still in bloom. Many of the dandelions have blossoms converted into seed heads. Full leaf out is in evidence in the tree tops. Many farm fields are showing the green of emergent new growth. I uncharacteristically had enough sense to slow down to about 20 mph, enjoy the scene and decompress a bit.
It’s that time of year dominated by new life. Birds are incubating eggs or feeding hatchlings. So far we’ve not seen any of this year’s fawns. The sheep farm we often pass has fields still full of lambs, including one or two little black sheep. (I felt right at home.) A number of the farm fields look like they’re full of carryover yellow rape plants. Swaths of bright yellow blossoms brightened the fields but the distribution was uneven enough that it didn’t look like intentional planting from this year.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of forest bathing. I’m learning that a very leisurely, low speed, drive through the country is a helpful alternative. Soon, very soon I hope, we’ll be practicing a different variation on forest bathing as we wade a local trout stream. But first, it’s time to empty this season’s first bucket of kitchen scraps into the compost tumblr. Have a wonderful holiday weekend and remember to honor those who gave their all in service to US.
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
As I hope you know, April is National Poetry Month. I do not now, and were I to live forever would never, have enough time to discover and read even just the poetry I want to. I’ve learned I need to read lots of poetry to discover good to great poetry that matches, or expands, my taste, and often then I reread my better discoveries. Meanwhile, it seems as though more and more poets keep writing more and more poems and publishing poetry collections. There’s no way to keep up and I haven’t yet found a way to further limit my foci.
Just this morning I found mention of the works of Gary Lark in Getting By. Then I learned that a review of another of his volumes, Daybreak on the Water, includes favorable comparisons with Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and with “John Prine, Ted Kooser, Edgar Lee Masters.” I have a feeling my stack of unread books may remain so for awhile as others cut to the head of the line stack.
Of all the fragmentations currently occurring among US, I am most troubled by the growing urban-rural divide. Back in the early 20th century, Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology (1915) was published. “The aim of the poems is to demystify rural and small town American life.” [wikipedia] More recently, actually, a century after Spoon River, Hick Poetics joined the club. [“There is no other assemblage of rural voices this broad; there is no other collection so fully exploring and celebrating Nowhere, USA.”] Much of what might be considered nature or eco poetry occurs in rural settings, although I have, and have read, an anthology of Urban Nature, Poems about Wildlife in the City. Urban and rural lives have much in common and depend on each other. Perhaps someone could remind our major political parties they are to serve the common good?
All of this has me wondering about the possibilities of using poetry and poems to help bridge our urban-rural divide, sort of like a “compare and contrast” using poems. First, I suppose, is the challenge of getting more people to read poetry and then we need to address the conundrums posed in today’s poem by insisting all answers include an option for “both, and.” Can we protect what we share as we fight about what divides US?
Directions: For each pair of sentences, circle the letter, a or b, that best expresses your viewpoint. Make a selection from each pair. Do not omit any items.
1.a) The body and the material things of the world are the key to any
knowledge we can possess.
b) Knowledge is only possible by means of the mind or psyche.
2.a) My life is largely controlled by luck and chance.
b) I can determine the basic course of my life.
3.a) Nature is indifferent to human needs.
b) Nature has some purpose, even if obscure.
4.a) I can understand the world to a sufficient extent.
b) The world is basically baffling.
5.a) Love is the greatest happiness.
b) Love is illusory and its pleasures transient.
6.a) Political and social action can improve the state of the world.
b) Political and social action are fundamentally futile.
7.a) I cannot fully express my most private feelings.
b) I have no feelings I cannot fully express.
8.a) Virtue is its own reward.
b) Virtue is not a matter of rewards.
9.a) It is possible to tell if someone is trustworthy.
b) People turn on you in unpredictable ways.
10.a) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in a rural area.
b) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in an urban area.
11.a) Economic and social inequality is the greatest social evil.
b) Totalitarianism is the greatest social evil.
12.a) Overall, technology has been beneficial to human beings.
b) Overall, technology has been harmful to human beings.
13.a) Work is the potential source of the greatest human fulfillment.
b) Liberation from work should be the goal of any movement for
social improvement.
14.a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perception of
reality.
b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only
consciousness and not events.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Friday of the coming week is April Fool’s Day. There is no truth to the rumor that it was named after those who believe this time of year in the North Country is actually Spring. Our current windchill is 20℉. Tonight’s actual low temperature should be around 17 ℉. There is some good news, though. This is the week when overnight temperatures are supposed to bottom out at 32 ℉. The longer it takes for Spring to actually arrive, the more we’ll appreciate it when it does, right? The midweek snow forecast no longer includes local accumulations. So that’s hopeful. Please don’t remind us of these observations when we’re complaining about heat and humidity come July and August.
Do you remember that there’s a Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK? It’s scheduled to open this May 10. It will join the Woody Guthrie Center as a major attraction. I had lost track of the Dylan Center’s development and stumbled across it this morning as I was looking online for information about some of Joy Harjo’s work. Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the US, the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center, and lives in Tulsa. Her book, An American Sunrise, is the NEA Big Read next month. All-in-all, that’s enough good and interesting news to limit my complaining about our unseasonable weather. I’ve just finished rereading Sunrise and have found the online version of Harjo’s Poet Laureate project, Living Nations, Living Words. Before Harjo, Tracy K. Smith’s project was American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities. I believe I’ve found something to do instead of “doom scrolling” on social media, at least until the weather warms and I can spend time outside without concerns about spring frostbite.
In the midst of the first full day of spring in the northern hemisphere in 2022, local skies are overcast. We may, or may not, reach or exceed 60℉ today. [Update: we didn’t.] Snow is in the forecast for Wednesday. Pretty typical for North Country springtime.
Last night the air rang with the call of a sandhill crane as s/he flew over the house at dusk. More and more Canada geese are arriving in anticipation of open water. Muskrat mounds for nesting are being claimed. A few swans are also somewhere in the neighborhood. Snow cover is about 80%%-90% gone from open areas, less so in the shaded woods.
mushrooms: like voters, kept in the dark and covered in manure
This evening we’re planning to attend a meeting of Township residents asking questions about the merger with the City of Stacy proposed by the township board at the annual meeting earlier this month. Since much of what we’ve read leads us to believe that many township residents don’t know what such a merger may mean, or even that it’s been proposed, it should be interesting.
Much of the eastern portions of the township are separated from the City of Stacy by an expanse of Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. How could it every be cost effective for the city to provide municipal services such as water and sewer to those residing on the eastern edge of the WMA? The township already has a joint fire department with the city. The entire concept doesn’t seem to be well thought out. There’s a related series of questions regarding whether the county’s southern portion will actually be a growth area if gas reaches $6 or $7 a gallon before electric vehicles have largely replaced the current vehicle fleet.
Stay tuned for further developments, but, if you ever want to feel like you’re not living in a democracy, where your vote is not worth much, buy property in a township that’s considering the board knows best what’s good for the residents and will tell them when it’s ready.
You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee
Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.
You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
