Literary Ruralism (Part L): Farming debates and farmer decision-making in Louise Erdrich's "The Mighty Red"

In a prior post about Louise Erdrich's The Mighty Red, I highlighted some excerpts about small-town life.  In this post, I'm going to feature some excerpts about farming decisions, in particular the debates about soil health and how to deal with weeds.  For those who read the first post, you may recall that the crop of choice in this area of North Dakota is sugar beets. 

I found the commentary on different types of farming--and on urban ignorance of farming--fascinating.  A few reminders about who's who:  Winnie is Gary's mother (see prior post).  We start with part of hte story of how Winnie's family lost their farm to the Geist family, into which Winnie married.

People in towns and cities had strange ideas about farming. People thought you just put a seed in the ground and it grew. Winnie Geist’s husband, Diz, called farming a war, but Winnie said it was a conflict. True, something was always trying to kill your crop, but there were ways and there were ways . . . she drifted off thinking of her parents’ ways. Driving to town over the summers, she had looked out to either side and seen that a field of sugar beets was going to be a good stand, that corn was growing unevenly, that soybeans had been planted too early or too late, that the sunflowers were outstanding. She knew who owned each field too, and so she was glad for or irritated by various families along the way. Now, driving toward the book club meeting, she let her mind relax. 

* * * 

While she was in high school, the government accelerated her family’s loan payments and blow after blow had landed. They’d lost their home, their farm, everything. Except one another, they kept saying, except us.

Sport Geist, father of Diz, had bought Winnie’s family farm from the bank for half of nothing. Her parents had sold their cattle at a loss, the equipment at an auction, moved out of their hand-built home into a rickety little white house in town. Her father had held her shoulders, looked into her face, said that as long as they worked, no job too menial, they’d hold their heads up. She held her head up. And anyway, in town people didn’t care. Most of the town kids had no idea what life on a farm was like. Losing a farm had no meaning for them. Winnie had kept her girlfriends and stayed Diz’s girlfriend, in spite of everything. She’d always loved Diz as much as she hated his father. Sport had mostly regarded his sons as free labor and rarely addressed them except to give an order. All through high school, Diz asked her to marry him. She said the best she could do was go to the local junior college and take bookkeeping so she could keep books for the farm. It was a kind of promise but she wouldn’t marry him until after Sport was dead and buried—in the earth he didn’t deserve to inhabit.  (pp. 84-85) 

This chapter is about Diz and his brother Gusty, both farmers.  The date is 2009.  

As boys they were husky. As men they are bulky. They loom like monoliths. They are chainsaw art. As Diz and Gusty lumbered across the yard, strong bulwark guts atop leg beams, they talked. Their thin exquisite lips barely moved. Their handsome wind-whipped faces were impassive in the shadow of billed caps. They had survived their father by sticking together. They never discussed the past. To speak about the way their father, Sport, had treated them, would be like grabbing an electric fence. 

The sun was fierce, the ground already kicking up heat. Their narrow blue eyes of Roman generals glinted as they entered their shadowy arsenal. Diz unlocked the back room of the tan and green metal pole barn, switching on the light, and the brothers frowned at the supply. Gusty lifted his hand and counted containers, which were kept in a chain-link enclosure with a padlock. 

Dual Magnum. Roundup. Warrant. Outlook.  Chloroacetamide. Betamix. Ethofumesate. UpBeet. Gramoxone. 

‘We should scout again. But I know what we’re gonna find,’ said Gusty. 

Diz switched off the light and they adjusted their hats before they walked into the field planted with his non-improved seeds. In that field the beets were past the emergent stages, the soil dry and powdery despite the recent flood and rain, and the sun was now relentless as hate. But worse than the glare of sunlight was the presence of the 2009 weed of the year, Chenopodium album, one of the most noxious and difficult to eradicate. 

‘Hot damn,’ said Diz. 

His shoulders sagged, and Gusty even took off his hat. They’d sprayed proactively, pre-emergence, using the big guns. But lambsquarters was back. Such a meek name, but their devil had a lot of names—goosefoot, pigweed, shitweed, baconweed, wild spinach. Cheerful shallow lobed leaves, silver undercoat winking in the sun. The men turned. Trundled or strode back toward the same outbuilding and the ninety-foot-boom self-propelled sprayer they had gone into deep debt to purchase. 

In some places, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing the sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious.   (pp. 220-221).

This is Kismet's interaction with her mother-in-law, Winnie, Gary's mom, about Kismet's desire to plant a small garden on their propert: 

Kismet started by raking the dirt in the yard smooth. The nice loamy soil that she’d clutched earlier on had disappeared. Scratching at field dirt, she broke up clumps of gray grit and spread the dust around. She was wearing lots of sunblock and a big straw cowboy hat. She would need more sunblock to live out on the land. And for later, she would need more beer to reward herself through the long evening and keep herself in a trance. 

‘Honey, that won’t work,’ said Winnie, coming up behind her. 

Kismet straightened up, holding the rake. 

‘What won’t work?’ 

‘That dirt.’ 

‘What do you mean? It’s dirt.’ 

‘It’s not real dirt. It’s that dirt.’ 

Winnie pointed out into the field. ‘This is sugar beet dirt. Don’t you see? To plant anything else we have to get a pile of real dirt.’ 

‘Dirt’s supposed to grow anything,’ said Kismet. 

‘Regular soil dirt, sure, but this is sugar beet dirt, like I said. Diz and Gusty get this fertilizer that helps the dirt work for the seed. The seed is fixed up so the beet won’t die when it’s sprayed for weeds. Also, bugs. See, it’s all a system they have with the companies.’ 

‘Okay.’ Kismet threw down the rake. 

‘My farm had a lot of real dirt,’ said Winnie vaguely. ‘When I was a kid, my mom had us spreading chicken shit on the garden.’ 

‘Let’s go in and make iced tea.’ 

‘It sounds ridiculous,’ Winnie continued. ‘But we can call up Prairie Lawn to get the dirt. I was going to make a garden someday. But you can do it. I’m going to the grocery so let’s make a big list.’  (pp. 228-229) 

Fast forward to Diz and Gusty in 2023.  This chapter is titled "Evolution." 

Diz said to Gusty, ‘Follow me.’ They drove out to the field that had been the first field where they had used the Roundup Ready sugar beet seeds. He’d never forgotten how after spraying that year, 2009, there just wasn’t a weed in sight, and how the weedless wonder continued until they’d lifted out the beets. Since then, they had rotated the beets every three years with barley. Every time they planted beets the seeds lost some magic. 

‘Remember?’ Diz asked. 

‘I do,’ said Gusty. 

They walked out to the rows. Here and there dead pigweed had nearly melted into the earth. But also, here and there something else was happening. Some of the dead plants were turning green again. A few were lifting their heads. Across the field, as the brothers turned their great bodies, faces keen, eyes implacable in the shade of their caps, hands cupped at their hips, Diz and Gusty saw the resurrection. Silhouetted against the white haze of August heat there were spears of Palmer amaranth. Just here and there. But those plants could mean a million next year. 

‘The goddamn stinkers just pretended to die,’ said Diz. ‘They were dead a week ago, I swear. But now it’s their Easter Sunday out there. Pardon my’—he choked a little on his words—‘irreverence,’ he mumbled. 

‘It’s just a fuckin’ dickens of an outrage,’ said Gusty. 

Diz grabbed his hat and threw it on the ground and stamped on it. ‘There. I feel better,’ he said. He reached down to pick it up. Gusty noticed how his hand shook. Diz dusted the hat off by slapping it on his thigh. He put the hat back on his head. Put his hands in his pockets to try and still them. 

‘If we could grow that monster,’ said Gusty, almost in admiration, ‘bombproof crop.’ 

‘Maybe,’ said Diz, as they walked back to the truck. ‘Soon as we figured out a market for it, yeah. I think it’s something like quinoa. Quinoa ain’t sugar. And there’s nothing on it like a price protection.’ 

‘Sure not. Soon as we tried to grow it, some bug would come along and clean it out anyway.’ 

‘I know,’ said Diz. ‘Nobody ever said farming was easy.’ 

‘It’s not for dummies,’ said Gusty. 

They laughed silently because they’d said exactly this a thousand times before. To outwit nature for even a few years, you had to be a brilliant SOB. 

‘I can see a lot of steps ahead and this weed is gonna win.’ Gusty plodded along, kicking at the half-living weeds. 

‘Ichor says it’s actually metabolizing the poison now. Just eating it. Whatever you throw at this thing, it can break it down. We’re gonna have to handpick. Pay a church group or a football team or hire a bunch of kids and migrant labor like back in the day.’ 

‘Darva’s book group,’ said Gusty. 

‘Oh. wouldn’t that be . . . didn’t Darva hoe beets when she was a kid?’ 

‘Didn’t everybody?’ 

‘What goes around . . .’ 

‘What does go around?’ 

‘Weeds.’ 

‘Believe it.’

That night Diz lay awake staring into the bedroom gloom, Winnie softly burbling and snorting beside him. He saw himself running the thresher on one of those bright cool fall days and the obedient crop was falling into the rolling blades and the amaranth seeds were hissing onto the conveyer belt and down into the bed of a giant grain truck. He and Gusty were slapping their hands together, the way they did that time they’d temporarily beat the weeds. He was talking to Gary at the screen of a computer and they were looking at drone footage of the Red River Valley covered with amaranth. Field to field, that was all there was. His arm was big, a smooth honey bear arm, but he had the sudden childish sense of how tiny their farm was on its plot of earth, and on that plot a house, and in that house a bed with two people on it no bigger than gnats. He felt the weight of all he couldn’t control, tiny little human that he was, working and striving, without really knowing how big it all might be.  (pp. 362-64) 

There is more on weed control in the next chapter, Evolution 2024. 

Look at this,’ said Winnie. She pulled up an issue of Agweek on the computer. The magazine featured a firm of young fellows from the Northwest, based in Fargo now, who’d programmed their robots to recognize weeds and leave crop plants alone. There was a video of the robots plucking weeds out early on at the sugar beet two leaf stage. Winnie called Gary over. Grace came too, her wan crooked little face round now, her eyes bright, cheeks apple red and shiny. 

‘We should hire these guys,’ Gary said to Grace. 

‘Probably an arm and a leg,’ said Diz from his chair. 

He had a special weighted coffee cup because his tremor was getting worse. 

‘I bet you get a good deal for being one of the first,’ said Winnie. ‘And you’ll cut down, maybe cut out, dicamba or whatever.’ 

‘Why not call Ichor?’ said Grace. ‘He must know.’ 

‘Weed resistance,’ said Ichor. ‘Give it a try.’ 

Diz and Gusty talked about the pigweed resurrection and decided why not. 

A few weeks later, they invited people over. Eric held hands tightly with Orelia DeSouza, whom he’d met in college, and Bill and Bonnie stood together with their arms crossed, grinning. Spiral pulled up honking. Ichor brought a pan of bumble bars. Everyone stood at the end of the field watching the robot van pull into the yard. Two thin young men with an urban vibe shook hands all around, then rolled up the back of the van and attached a ramp. Three smallish contraptions came rolling out. The technicians tapped information into their laptops, then guided the robotic weeders onto the first field, ninety acres of beets. There was something appealing about the mechanisms as they trundled along, something earnest, sturdy, slightly comical. The watchers nodded, laughed, broke out in soft applause. (pp. 365-366). 

Here's the last part of the bit about different types of farming:  

Although he got farmers to use them all the time, Ichor didn’t like crop protection chemicals, the ’cides—fungicides, molluscicides, insecticides, rodenticides, bactericides, larvicides, and, most of all, herbicides. The world needed food, but farmers couldn’t keep going this way, ratcheting up the kill strength, adding layers of product. No chemical could be precise and there was no way to really quantify the overall effect. Nobody could adequately factor in the big picture, which was really big, being all of creation. Sometimes he woke at 3 a.m., sweating, having absorbed, say, a new study about the link between the herbicide paraquat and Parkinson’s disease. Glyphosate and depression. Insecticides and schizophrenia. The plunge in insect life was disturbing. The velocity of loss was exponential. He kept going by hoping better things than more chemicals were coming along. He saw no way for things to end well unless they changed course. Most farmers knew this or were becoming aware of it or even agreed, but nobody liked anyone not trying to survive off farming to tell them what to do. 

There were other ways to manage the most pernicious weeds around. In fact there were some methods that made him happy. Take for instance the nemesis of pastures—leafy spurge—a plant to reckon with, sinking roots down fifteen feet and spreading top root systems too, shooting seeds out over twenty feet. The spurge had been considered almost ineradicable, it had taken over whole pastures, crowded out the good forage, killed cows and horses. Poisons had to be applied and reapplied, to only modest effect. Then Ichor started hearing about how leafy spurge beetles went to town on the spurge. Season by season you could see those yellow pastures turn green. 

A while ago, Ichor had been to a barbecue hosted by another weed control officer, Ron Manson Jr. There he ate famously well and took home a cooler of those beetles. Now Ichor was turning those caramel-colored beetles loose regularly on all the pastures in his county, and beyond, too. The beetles went wild eating the stuff they were named for, and better yet, multiplied and sent their larvae down to eat the roots. Every year Ron, and now Ichor too, express-mailed tens of thousands of beetles to farmers and ranchers with infested ranges. The rancher would open the cooler of leafy spurge beetles, release them out onto his problem, and bugs would start eating the problem. After a few years the bugs would be so numerous that Ichor would drive over to shake them off the plants into his tarps. The pasture he was going to was even restoring a section of the river it sloped down to meet. One thing he especially liked about the beetles was that they controlled the weeds but never quite ate all of the spurge, never ate themselves entirely out of existence. They weren’t like people. They respected their existential limits.  (pp. 341-342).

Here's Gary (son of Winnie and Diz) talking to Ichor, the farmer from the passage above who is committed to sustainable practices, about his thinking on how farming should be done.  The first quote is from young Gary, the second from Ichor.

‘Used to be my mom’s pasture.’ 

‘I know.’ 

‘She talks about how farming’s going off a cliff; she wants to farm like her dad and mom farmed, more like Eric’s dad and mom.’ 

‘What’s your dad think?’ 

‘He won’t say it to her, but I know he thinks it’s bullshit. It won’t work at the scale we’re farming.’ 

‘What do you think?’ asked Ichor. ‘Me? Nobody asks.’ Gary cleared his throat. ‘But I read stuff. They’re both right. First, I’d get out of beets, over time because we have a contract. I’d plant nitrogen-fixing crops, plowing them back in, using less fertilizer. I wouldn’t go full-on organic, not for a while, but for every problem that comes at us I’d look for a solution that gets us further along, like toward a goal of getting certified. I think the fastest-growing market’s in organics, so I want to get in there. I haven’t told anybody.’

 It took a second for Ichor to ask, ‘Why not?’ 

‘Obviously,’ Gary said, ‘I’m a dumb jock.’ (pp. 347-348). 

What follows is Diz ruminating about farming with fellow farmer and brother, Gusty:

‘Nobody ever said farming was easy.’ 

‘It’s not for dummies,’ said Gusty. 

They laughed silently because they’d said exactly this a thousand times before. To outwit nature for even a few years, you had to be a brilliant SOB. 

‘I can see a lot of steps ahead and this weed is gonna win.’ Gusty plodded along, kicking at the half-living weeds. 

‘Ichor says it’s actually metabolizing the poison now. Just eating it. Whatever you throw at this thing, it can break it down. We’re gonna have to handpick. Pay a church group or a football team or hire a bunch of kids and migrant labor like back in the day.’ 

‘Darva’s book group,’ said Gusty. 

‘Oh. wouldn’t that be . . . didn’t Darva hoe beets when she was a kid?’ 

‘Didn’t everybody?’ 

‘What goes around . . .’ 

What does go around?’ 

‘Weeds.’ 

‘Believe it.’  (p. 363). 

Literary Ruralism (Part XLIX): Rural life in "The Mighty Red" by Louise Erdrich

I've very much enjoyed Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Mighty Red (2024), set in the farming exurbs near Fargo, North Dakota, along the Red River.  I'm going to share some excerpts here that reflect on small-town life.  The protagonist is Kismet Poe, a high school senior when the story begins in 2008.  Her mother is Crystal, a Native American.   

Early in the novel, Kismet marries Gary, the somewhat hapless scion of a local sugar beet farming empire. She does this even though she is in love with another young man, the brilliant high-school drop out, Hugo.  Also looming over the novel, Gary has an ominous secret that gets revealed close to the novel's end.  Along the way, we get some vignettes that provide incisive commentary on small-town life.  Indeed, the entire novel is about a community entirely involved in each others' business. 

Also of note are Erdrich's ruminations on farming and different ways of being in relation to the natural world.  I'll save most of those for a separate post.  

In this opening scene, Gary and Kismet are out driving.

However, within a mile or two, Gary’s question whether she was bored made the silence complicated and exposed the fact that she actually was bored, very bored, and being consciously bored reminded her of what her cynical best friend, Stockton, had said—how boredom was a part of small-town life that you had to get drunk to accept. She wasn’t drunk now. She wasn’t drunk very often. She did think that if she spent much time with Gary, though, she’d have to have a bottle handy.  (p. 13) 

Kismet wanted to forestall Gary from sharing his thoughts. He might get solemn and talk about his farming ideas or his philosophy, which was that you should do what your mother told you to do. Kismet had met Gary’s mother and she questioned that. Gary believed that radio frequencies could carry disease. He started many sentences by declaring ‘There are two kinds of people . . .’ He didn’t believe in God but said he could get behind the idea that aliens had manufactured the skein of life. He also talked about, say, the Ten Commandments, and would wonder whether ‘Thou shalt not kill’ applied to deer. He loved deer. He cried when he saw a dead one. He also cried when he saw a living one. This was a thing about Gary that really got to Kismet. He didn’t hunt. His father and uncle tried to take him out hunting. He refused. He loved animals, not only deer, but every animal. Still, she didn’t appreciate it when he said that she reminded him of a deer in winter with her dark brown eyes and matching hair. Deer were lovely creatures but they were prey animals. 

College will get me out of here, thought Kismet, and a tiny rush of fear made her want to sleep. She pushed her seat back. The sun was beaming through the windshield and it was autumn sun, the mellow light of early afternoon. She fell into a dreamy nap as Gary meditated aloud about whether dinosaur bones were real or had been placed there by a super-intelligent race of ancient humans, or by aliens. ‘Aliens again,’ she murmured. 

‘Damn straight,’ said Gary in a heroic voice. 

‘You know the bones are real,’ said Kismet. 

‘Probably,’ said Gary. ‘Here’s the turnoff to that place. Remember Blosnik? He was a hands-on man. There’s two kinds—’ 

‘I know,’ said Kismet. ‘Your mom and dad . . .’ ‘

Yeah, Winnie and Diz.’  

He liked calling them by their first names. 

‘They always say there are two kinds of people, hands-on and hands-off. They really liked how Blosnik took our class out to dig fossils—’  (p. 13-14)

This scene from one of Gary's days at high school, when he is upset about something a teacher has said to him about Gary's still unrevealed secret:      

He knew that Kismet had social studies during third period. He paused outside her classroom. Instantly, his breath slowed and his heart calmed. There was something mysterious and magical about Kismet and dating her helped Gary feel sane. He suspected it was her Indian, oops, Native American, blood—though he never mentioned it again after the first time. Gary was awed by her effect on him, but for most of the years he’d gone to school with her she just seemed weird.  (p. 24) 

On Kismet and her relationship with her mother, especially when Kismet went through a goth phase: 

Like all mothers and daughters, both Kismet and Crystal went through Kismet’s phases. Before she took a job and cleaned up her act, Kismet was a goth, a dollar-store goth, but wasn’t that the point? One bleary night she self-dyed her shiny hair a harsh lusterless blue-black, set off her narrow eyes with thick black lines, and brushed her eyelids with gradations of purple and maroon. Crystal didn’t react when Kismet came downstairs the next morning and went to school. So she upped the ante. Tried to be secretive about her stick and poke tattoos. Kismet and Martin had memorized some of their namesake Edgar Allan’s work. Crystal caught a glimpse of the word nevermore on Kismet’s shoulder blade and a raven that came out looking like a pigeon. She pretended not to notice. In truth, she was depressed about it for weeks. Kismet’s clothes were from rummage sales or Thrifty Life, all black of course. Some she shredded artfully, others were ripped or worn thin already. Kismet was sent home for the slashes beneath her butt that went too high and showed violet panties. She was sent home again for sneaking out of the house wearing a T-shirt printed with fake breasts including nipples—she’d found the T-shirt in a garbage can. 

‘Stop wearing garbage!’ Crystal yelled at her. She was on a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. schedule and had been roused from crucial sleep by the call from the principal.

‘All we can afford is garbage,’ Kismet said.

This stung and Crystal teared up. Kismet got all hangdog and mumbled she was sorry. (p. 25) 

What follows next speaks to the community and lack-of-anonymity themes.  It has Winne, Gary's mom, arriving at book club--a book club in which it seems every other woman in the novel--and perhaps in their town--is a member:    

[Winnie] turned into Bev’s drive. She cut the engine, but her hands were stuck to the wheel. The others lived in Tabor and saw one another all of the time. She had gone to school with Bev, though, and stayed friends with her. Bev had been a Pavlecky before she’d married Ichor. Bev would stick up for her. Still, Winnie Geist sat outside in her car. She’d arrived early to the book club and had to gather her courage before facing the women who would walk into Bev’s house. This was only the second meeting she’d made it to since the accident, and at the first meeting she hadn’t said a word. So she needed to see who was coming before she entered.

Many women she knew from church would be at the book club meeting. She knew that some actually prayed for her and her family. But on dark days Winnie believed that some prayed against her. She found it hard to bear the sting of their eyes when they’d watch her enter a room, and it was even more difficult to open her mouth and speak. (p. 84-85) 

Here's a scene following Kismet and Gary's wedding, which takes place shortly after Kismet's father and Crystal's long-time partner, Martin, runs off with the local Catholic parish's building fund, also leaving Crystal's home mortgaged without her knowledge.  That gives rise to the need for a lawyer, a very unusual event for folks of such modest means in rural-ish North Dakota: 

Kismet raised the skinny glass to her lips and the gentle bubbles grazed her nose. She took her first-ever sip of champagne. The ghost of a taste, an emotion in her mouth, unreadable. She drank again to try and understand. But it was too fleeting. Then she got it and smiled. An ephemeral blip. She drank until the champagne stopped thought, stopped taste, stopped emotion. People whirled, talking in her face. People watched from the sides of the room. They were talking about her, talking about her father, trying to corner Crystal, who eluded them all. 

After a brutal set of photos, Kismet’s mother squeezed her arm and said that she had to leave. Early. 

‘Are you going to see a lawyer?’ said Kismet. 

‘Oh, honey, yes,’ said Crystal. 

They wrapped each other in a silent hug with eyes squeezed shut. Getting a lawyer? It had never happened to them. It was as apocalyptic as Kismet getting married. They hugged harder, trying not to cry. Everybody looked away. (pp. 126-127) 

What follows is a scene from very near the end of the book, where the women's book group gathers again, this time to discuss Cormac McCarthy's The Road. 

There followed a pleasurable babble containing many theories: nuclear winter, the Rapture, aliens, the flu, ozone holes, this thing about the climate, which split members off in subarguments, China conquers us, Russia conquers us, or maybe . . . Tania White waited patiently so that her theory was the last. She stood up and with a smile of satisfaction unrolled a chart of the Yellowstone volcano, the probable epicenter of destruction, as well as the outlying circles of poisonous gas and falling ash. 

‘So we have here the super-volcano. You see the red circle? Kill zone. Right here, this is us. In the pink zone. We’re in the primary ash zone. The secondary ash zone is this peach circle from Lake Superior over to California, taking in the Texas Panhandle. If this volcano erupted, and I guess it’s overdue, we get covered in volcano ash. It would be another ice age. Everything in the Upper Midwest would die—just like in the book—only a few random apples left—just like in the book,’ said Tania. She paused for maximum effect and tag-teamed Tory, who rose and spoke. ‘This is why we wanted to bring it to the club. This book is a very realistic look at the aftermath of the Yellowstone super-volcano.’ 

‘I’ve read where an asteroid is more likely to hit,’ said Mary Sotovine. 

‘You guys are way off the mark,’ said Winnie, pointing out the window, at the fields. ‘Look. There’s your answer.’ 

The women leaned sideways or forward to stare out the picture window and saw that, as usual, the wind was sending up curls of earth dust and dust devils were crisscrossing the fields. ‘I don’t get it,’ said Tory. 

Across the horizon a band of gray dust wavered. The sun would go down in a bloody stew. Every night was like the end of the world. It was gorgeous! ‘What is going to happen?’ said Mrs. Flossom, excitedly. ‘What can we expect?’ Jeniver went over to the table and opened another bottle of white and one of red. Even Karleen had a few sips. 

‘Don’t you see?’ said Winnie. ‘Every time you look out the window there’s dust rising up.

That’s dirt. We are losing our dirt. No dirt, no food.’ ‘Okay,’ said Karleen, eyes glittering. ‘Round that out for us.’ ‘No dirt, no food, no life. General starvation. My parents’ fields were surrounded by shelterbelts and they left stubble in their fields the way Pavlecky does now. They planted cover crops, but . . . sorry . . . I did some historic reading before Diz and I went to Russia years ago and it curdled my bones. When Stalin made the little farms into humungous collective farms . . .’ ‘

Like the sugar beet collective?’ someone asked. 

‘That’s a voluntary collective and a functional one,’ said Winnie, with a hint of scorn. ‘In Russia it was total and complete retooling where the Soviets kicked out . . . well, starved and murdered, all the landowners and farmers who were growing the wheat and turnips and food crops. Then they tried to organize giant farms, but nobody knew how to farm because most of the farmers-in-charge were dead! It was like when Stalin killed the doctors in Moscow, then he dies because there’s nobody to save him!’

‘Let’s get back to—’ Bev started. 

Winnie blew right past her. ‘Anyway, let’s say present practices continue in our case. No dirt. Nothing to eat.’ 

‘Except people,’ said Jeniver with a stern, conclusive nod all around, as if they were on The Road or on a lifeboat, ready to draw lots. Karleen shrank back. Jeniver’s brown hair, held on top of her head by a small golden sword, flashed in the bloody sunset light. 

‘Correct,’ said Winnie, though Jeniver had stolen her punch line. Winnie nodded her head and looked down into her fuchsia lap. ‘Starving, that’s a bad way to go. You don’t just fade out. Extremely painful, and the cravings! One of the worst . . .’ 

‘Not as bad as—’ Mary Sotovine began like a pitcher winding up. 

‘Let’s not go there,’ Darva cut in. 

Once Mary and Darva began competing over worst-case ways to perish, the book club usually spiraled into ghoulish hysteria. Mary’s glowing round face flattened in disappointment. 

‘How about getting pickled?’ Jeniver wondered. 

The other women looked at Jeniver and she held out her empty wineglass. 

‘Oh, pickled!’ The general mood shifted. 

‘Wasn’t that last line of the book really beautiful?’ said Tiny Johnson, and the book discussion was soon complete, except that suddenly Bev stood up. 

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘While we’ve been talking about the end of the world like we’re looking forward to it, I’ve been thinking how the world as we know, used to know, it really is ending. I thought of what the world was like even when I was a kid, how it was more . . . it was more full.’ 

‘Last call,’ said Tiny. ‘I’m bringing out the ice cream.’ 

‘Don’t you remember?’ Bev went on. ‘How there used to be meadowlarks?’ She looked around. ‘C’mon, when’s the last time you heard a meadowlark? You know, our state bird. When I was growing up they were everywhere, in all the ditches, as soon as you got to the edge of town they started. Am I right?’ 

‘She’s right,’ said Mary Sotovine. ‘I’m older, so ten years before Bev remembers, they were in the ditches, as soon as you got to the edge of town. You’d hear them all the time.’ 

‘She’s right,’ said Winnie. ‘There used to be flocks of those cedar birds, cedar waxwings, and bluebirds, even. And bugs, which they ate. Grasshoppers. Mayflies when you went out to the lakes. Now you don’t even see grasshoppers. And there’s only a mayfly or two. It’s the pesticides.’ 

All of the women suddenly began to talk. 

‘Do you notice how you look at the grille of your car and there’s no bugs? No bugs hit your windshield? And moths. How they used to swirl in the streetlamps?’ 

‘They did. Like snow.’ 

‘And how when it rained the frogs came out and they were everywhere and the grass was thick with frogs?’ ‘Toads. You could always go out and pick up a toad.’ 

‘Now it’s surprising. A toad! It’s special!’ 

‘And there were nighthawks, lots of nighthawks swerving around, after the mosquitoes. And bats everywhere and how we used to scream if they dived at us. And flocks of pigeons on the grain elevators.’

‘What does it mean that prairie falcons are living in town?’ asked Stockton. 

Everyone fell silent. 

‘It means there’s less to eat in the country,’ said Winnie. 

Kismet waved her hand. Winnie recognized her with a nod and called out, ‘Kismet has something to say!’ 

Kismet looked at her mother and said, ‘I don’t think this book is about the end of the world. That’s just the setting, to show what happens between people in extreme situations. The end is about consolation. The father goes to the end of the earth for his son, then dies, satisfied. I mean, it’s a really sentimental book. McCarthy’s not afraid of that. And it’s a brutal adventure book—exciting when they find the food cache, and then there’s that cannibal army.’ 

Jeniver stood up and spoke with urgency. ‘This book is about what’s most important. You know, this kind of love between a parent and a child.’ 

Crystal put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, and Kismet leaned on her mother. Winnie saw that Kismet would leave. She thought of Gary and started to cry, wondering how she could possibly save him. All of a sudden she had a thought that dried her tears right up. She’d searched for a way to thank Gary’s angel. Well, Kismet was his angel. Oh no! Oh yes! Again she wept. Bev thought about how Hugo had escaped that terrifying pre-apocalyptic landscape [the Bakken oil fields of western North Dakota], and she also started to cry. ...  Mary Sotovine was moved to tears at the thought of the days when she’d see bluebirds in a strip of grassland, now planted in soybeans.  (pp. 328-332). 

New Hampshire (once again) tries to restrict student voting (Part III): The "problem" of student voting

This is Part III in my look at New Hampshire's history of attempting to disenfranchise college student voters. For Part I, which provides essential background information, please click here. You may read Part II here.

"Student Voting Rights Present Challenge for College Communities" 

This headline from the February 23, 2001, edition of The Valley News might appear preposterous at first glance. Imagine if this headline were written about any other community. Most people would be up in arms or at the very least confused. After all, the ability to influence the politics of your local community is a bedrock element of American democracy. Why are students any different? That question has driven years of policymaking and dialogue in New Hampshire. 

If there is one meta narrative of conservative New Hampshire politics over the last half-century, it's the feverish pursuit to figure out how students are different. The courts settling the question of student eligibility to vote did not stop people from trying to impede access to the ballot and it did not stop some people from perceiving students as "outsiders" who are trying to change the culture of their college towns. As an April 17, 2002, article in The Valley News noted, Republicans said that students should not be allowed to vote because their "votes can affect local elections."  Again, is that not the point of democracy? 

The narrative was clear, despite students spending money in local communities, they were not a part of that community. Again, a preposterous claim. How can you live somewhere for four years and not be a member of that community? 

The $10 Residency Tax: A Financial Barrier to the Ballot

In the early 1990s, several towns, including Hanover, home to Dartmouth College, had a $10 “residency tax.” In my research, I couldn't find it when it actually began. Though technically framed as a general municipal tax, it functioned as a de facto poll tax, falling heavily on college students who attempted to vote in local elections.

The issue came to a head during the 1992 election, when Dartmouth students were among those threatened with being denied the right to vote unless they paid the $10 fee.

Legal advocates, students, and civil liberties groups pointed out the obvious: this was a modern poll tax, applied in a way that discouraged transient, often younger voters who might lean progressive.

Public pressure mounted and by 1993, the Hanover Selectboard voted to abolish the $10 tax. But the damage had been done. The episode reinforced the idea that students, even when legally eligible to vote, were second-class citizens in the eyes of some local officials.

Students as “Outsiders”

The cultural narrative didn’t end with the repeal. It evolved. As an April 17, 2002 article in The Valley News recounted, some Republican leaders continued to argue that college students shouldn’t be allowed to vote because their “votes can affect local elections.”

Again, isn’t that the point?

This recurring claim that students shouldn’t vote because they might change outcomes underscores the deeper issue: students were (and often still are) seen as outsiders, regardless of how long they live, work, or participate in local life. Even students who spend four years in a community, longer than many military deployments or job assignments, are treated as though their presence is fleeting and their political preferences invalid.

It’s a paradox that continues to shape policy: students contribute economically, socially, and even civically, but they are often excluded from the political sphere because of who they are, not where they live.

From Cultural Resistance to Policy Pushback

The battles of the early 2000s reflected this tension. In towns like Durham and Keene, officials raised concerns about “student blocs” skewing town meetings or dominating turnout in close elections. In Hanover, Dartmouth students increasingly participated in local races, even running for office, prompting new calls to review voter rolls or tighten eligibility standards.

These efforts rarely resulted in legislation at the time, but they shaped the political discourse. They planted seeds for later laws that would impose document-heavy voter ID requirements, burdensome domicile definitions, and financial consequences for registering to vote in one’s college town. 

The rhetorical groundwork was already laid, if students are different, and if their votes “threaten” the balance of local politics, then the state has a vested interest in managing their access to the ballot.

The Voter ID Fight: 2011 and the “Feelings” Comment

By the early 2010s, efforts to discourage student voting had become more formalized. In 2012, the Republican-led legislature passed a voter ID law, overcoming Governor John Lynch's veto, requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Though framed as a measure to prevent fraud, the real intent behind the law became clear when House Speaker William O’Brien infamously said in a public forum that college students “just vote their feelings,” and that they "don't have life experience and they just vote their feelings and they’re taking away the townspeople’s vote.” That statement, widely reported at the time, was more than a gaffe, it revealed the underlying sentiment that student voters were not just inconvenient, but illegitimate.

I was a college student in New Hampshire when this debate was on-going. It started after the New Hampshire Republicans took control of the state legislature in the 2010 elections. Governor Lynch was the lone Democrat with any kind of real power in New Hampshire, and he was left to fight a tidal wave of bad Republican ideas.

For me, this was personal. 

I was interning for Governor Lynch on the day of the 2010 midterm elections. It was a somber feeling in the office, and we knew that change was on the horizon. I did not however expect to be told by New Hampshire Republican state leaders, many of whom I had met throughout the course of my internship, that people like me were not welcome to participate in New Hampshire's political discourse.

Despite interning in state government and participating in multiple political campaigns, my level of civic participation was not deemed, by some, to be enough to be allowed to participate in New Hampshire's state governance. 

Overcoming Governor Lynch's veto did require a student-friendly compromise: College IDs issued by college and universities in New Hampshire would be accepted. This concession kept the bill alive, but it didn’t undo the chilling effect the law had already created. These efforts sent a clear message: you are not welcome at the ballot box.

The Slow Burn of Suppression

Even without new laws on the books, the cultural resistance to student voting has a chilling effect. When voters are repeatedly told they don’t belong when they face extra questions at the polls, or hear that their ballots might be challenged, or are warned that they could owe fees or taxes — some will walk away.

That’s the real power of these policies. They do not need to block all student voters to be effective. They just need to discourage enough of them.

Look Ahead! 

• In Part IV, we’ll see how these cultural attitudes were codified into law during the Sununu administration.

• In Part V, we’ll examine how these policies continue to evolve, including 2025 legislation targeting student ID usage, and how young people are organizing to protect and expand their rights. 

Planned Parenthood closes five California clinics, two of them rural(ish)

This story in the San Francisco Chronicle by Sara DiNatale reports that recent budget cuts in the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" have led to the closure of five Planned Parenthood health care centers in California, including two in places that are rural by some measure, Gilroy (Santa Clara County) and Madera (Madera County).  Other closures were in South San Fancisco, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz.  

Mar Monte is the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the United States.  As DiNatale reports, "The GOP-led federal spending bill that Trump signed into law earlier this month eliminated federal Medicaid funding for any type of medical care to organizations that perform abortions."  

National and regional media have paid a great deal of attention to the consequences Trump's budget cuts will have for rural health care.   

Getting to the bottom of the rural health "slush fund"

When the U.S. Senate passed Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" a few weeks ago, considerable attention was paid to the sweetheart deal the administration had made with Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.  Initially skeptical and critical of the bill because of the impact it would have on rural Alaska (read more here), Murkowski eventually signed on to support the act after the Trump administration made concession to Alaska, including a $50 billion program for rural health.  

On Marketplace (American Public Media), Sarah Jane Tribble of Kaiser Health News breaks down how this so-called "slush fund" would work.  Here are some key excerpts about the so-called Rural Health Transformation Program: 

The Rural Health Transformation Program calls for federal regulators to hand states $10 billion a year for five years starting in fiscal year 2026.

But the “devil’s in the details in terms of implementing,” said Sarah Hohman, director of government affairs at the National Association of Rural Health Clinics.

“An investment of this amount and this style into rural — hopefully it goes to rural — is the type of investment that we and other advocates have been working on for a long time,” said Hohman, whose organization represents 5,600 rural health clinics.

People who live in the nation’s rural expanses have more chronic disease, die younger, and make less money. Those compounding factors have financially pummeled rural health infrastructure, triggering hospital closures and widespread discontinuation of critical health services like obstetrics and mental health care.

Nearly 1 in 4 people in rural America use Medicaid, the state and federal program for low-income and disabled people. So, as Senate Republicans heatedly debated Medicaid spending reductions, lawmakers added the $50 billion program to quell opposition. But health advocates and researchers doubt it will be enough to offset expected cuts in federal funding.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, which has one of the largest percentages of rural residents in the nation, led the push to pass the budget bill. His website touts support for strengthening access to care in rural areas. But his office declined to respond on the record to questions about the rural health program included in the bill.

The story also notes Tribble's efforts to get comments from Senator Susan Collins of Maine, another state with a significant rural population.  Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, having voted for the "big beautiful bill" is pushing for a reversal of its cuts to Medicaid and an increase in the "rural program," which presumably refers to the $50 billion fund. 

From the think tank, libertarian sector, Tribble gives us this note of skepticism: 

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., said the money was set aside because of politics and not necessarily for rural patients.

Here is a further quote from Cannon:   

As long as it’s a government slush fund where politics decides where the money goes, then there’s going to be a mismatch between where those funds go and what it is consumers need.

I can't help wonder by what factors and with what algorithm Cannon determines "mismatch." 

Here's a full report from KFF on the so-called rural health slush fund.  

Cutbacks to public media likely to hurt rural communities the most

The disporportionate impact that federal funding cuts to public media will have on rural communities has been a theme of several publications in recent weeks, all in the run up Congress' vote to do just that--take back $1.1 billion previously allocated in support of public media.  

The first item I want to highlight is this July 11, 2025 episode of The Daily (New York Times audio), "Is Congress about to Kill this Local Radio Station?"  It discusses the likely impact of the proposed cuts on a public radio station, KFSK, in Petersburg, Alaska, population 3,000, in the southeast part of the state.  Jessica Cheung of The Daily sets up the interview with KFSK Station Manager Tom Abbott:    

Small rural stations, like KFSK, rely on federal funding to exist. And in a town like Petersburg, that is conservative, a town that voted for Trump by almost two to one in the last election, people are grappling with the Republican Party that is now trying to defund an important resource within the community — a radio station that a lot of people love. So I wanted to talk to Tom about what that’s been like, what’s at stake, and just what a station like KFSK offers people.

They start with a discussion of the place, including its beauty, economy, wildlife, and remoteness. 

Tom Abbott:  We also don’t have any chain stores here. Everything is mom and pop. Even though if you go to the post office, you’ll see a lot of Amazon boxes coming across the counter, because on occasion, there are things that can’t be found here, just because it’s a small market and it’s a small community. And that’s what brings us back around. radio. That’s why there’s only public radio here.

Jessica Cheung:  And if you turn the dial in Petersburg, can you hear any other radio station out there?

Tom Abbott:  Yeah, you can catch 88.5, which is the Lutheran Church.

Jessica Cheung:  And that’s it?

Tom Abbott:  Yeah, they broadcast for the shut ins that can’t make it to their service on Sunday. And that’s the only other service that’s on the FM dial. And there’s nothing on the AM dial.

What follows in the interview is a description of a service that reminds me of the "party line" feature on the local radio station I listened to while growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks.  On KFSK, it is called Tradio.  Here's an excerpt: 

Tom Abbott:  Where the caller calls in to the radio station. We put them on the air. And they either make an announcement about an event coming up. Maybe they’re having a garage sale on Saturday.

Archived Recording:  And we have tons of stuff — chairs, dozens of hand tools, fishing poles, sporting goods. There’s books and movies. And you name it, we got it.

Tom Abbott:  Well, this week, we’ve got a lot of fishing poles. Or this week, we’ve got a lot of baby clothes, something, whatever it may be.

Archived Recording:  Yes, good morning. This is Earl. I got a 2012 Nissan red vehicle with low mileage.

As Cheung expresses it, 

This is basically Facebook Marketplace on the radio.

At some point, Abbott starts talking about how the station ceased live broadcasts of some meetings during the pandemic because what some residents were saying at the meetings constituted misinformation, as locals stated their opinions about public health measures.

Cheung then turns to the likely effect of the proposed federal budget cuts on KFSK. 

Tom Abbott:  Our service would be drastically altered. The CPB funding that we receive is 30 percent of our budget. As public radio does, we rely on membership donations. And that is our largest single source. Our second largest single source funding is CPB funds.

Jessica Cheung:  And without that 30 percent you get from the federal government, what are you contemplating?

Tom Abbott:  As far as the expenses go, personnel expenses are 65 percent of our budget.

Jessica Cheung:  And how many personnel do you have on staff right now?

Tom Abbott:  Five, and there’s two high school kids that help us out when we’re doing live broadcasts in the evenings. And going forward, I foresee KFSK eliminating all staff except for two. And both of those I would like to see it remain two reporters. If you were to go down to one reporter, you’re on an endless cycle of burnout.

Jessica Cheung:  And is it my understanding that with 30 percent cut, you could still survive? Or is taking KFSK off the air an option you’re contemplating?

Tom Abbott:  I don’t think you’d ever have to go off the air, because the infrastructure is here, the antenna is here. But it wouldn’t be locally run anymore. It just couldn’t be. 

Right now, we have 27 individual public radio stations in the state of Alaska. I think that’s going to go down to two, maybe three if this rescission goes through. It’s not going to happen immediately, but it’s going to go that route. And that’s what’s under threat here.

Then Abbott discusses how some NPR reporting has been received by locals. There's a lot here, and I'm just going to include a very brief excerpt:

Tom Abbott:  [W]hat we have control over is local. I have no control over the editorial content of NPR. I have no control over that whatsoever.

In fact, I have, myself, as a station manager, contacted them many times over the years with complaints. I think there are certain subject matters that are covered heavily that are not necessarily representative. They’re certainly not representative of the audience that I serve.

Jessica Cheung:  Is there a specific story that you’re thinking about, maybe one that you wrote to NPR about?

Tom Abbott:  I don’t know. What comes to mind is the propensity for the LGBTQ+ stories. I don’t believe that the percentage of the stories that that subject matter has is equivalent to certainly the service area that I have. And I’m not saying that people are not caring about others. I’m not saying that at all.

I get the editorial decision on it. It’s under threat. But I’m just saying, what is pertinent in your personal life? And I think this holds for Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, wherever you are. Small town, rural areas, to me, it sounds like the editorial decisions are being made for the audiences that are in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, the big metro areas.

And on occasion, there is a great story that NPR does that covers small-town America or relates to small-town America plenty of times. I’m not saying that they totally have a blind eye towards it. I just think the target audience that NPR has is metro areas.

Jessica Cheung:  And what would you rather hear get coverage by NPR?

Tom Abbott:  Well, what’s the effect of the tariffs on the farmers of America, the seafood industry of America? That would really resonate here locally.

Following on this excellent and very comprehensive podcast focused on KFSK in Alaska, the New York Times editorial board published on July 16, "This is Why America Needs Public Media." Here, I'm just going to excerpt the part that mentions rural places, as well as an acknowledgement that NPR's programming (as distinct from local programming) may not reflect "the citizenry that is subsidizing them": 

When the private sector doesn’t provide an important service, the government often steps in. That is why the framers established the U.S. Postal Service; they believed no one else would deliver the mail to the entire country. Many places in America, especially in rural communities, would not have a library without public funding. Police departments, the military, Medicare, Social Security and public education offer other examples.

* * *

Republicans complain, not always wrongly, that public media reflects left-leaning assumptions and biases. And they can fairly tell NPR and PBS to do a better job of reflecting the citizenry that is subsidizing them.

* * *  

We are reminded of the excesses of the “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” movements on the other side of the ideological spectrum. They adopted a fatalistic view of vital government services, suggesting that their imperfections justified their elimination. They were wrong, and so are the conservatives who want to defund public media.

* * *

Public media, like every other major institution, is imperfect. But it improves the lives of millions of Americans, and it strengthens American interests. 

I earlier commented on NPR's political bias here.  To be clear, I completely trust NPR's reporting on factual matters, such as whether the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.  It was not.  I simply think that the entity's editorial slant is often far enough to the left of middle America to fuel distrust by many--as suggested by some of the patrons of KFSK.

Finally, today, NPR's Frank Langfitt reported from Dunmore, West Virginia, under the headline, "Cuts to public media will smash budgets of some local radio stations."  I'll just include some key excerpts here:  

[S]ome of those hardest hit by Congress' decision last week to clawback $1.1 billion in federal funds are small radio operations that provide local news and information to rural communities.

One is Allegheny Mountain Radio, a cooperative of three stations which cover Pocahontas County, West Virginia as well as Bath and Highland counties in Virginia. Allegheny Mountain is not an NPR member station, but it does run NPR's daily newscast, a quick run down of top stories.

* * * 

Allegheny Mountain's mix of programming includes local news and information as well as gospel, country and blues shows. A recent episode of the Noon Hour Magazine reported on a $5,000 signing bonus to attract new teachers and how the energy demands from data centers could eventually affect this remote region where people sometimes have to drive 60 miles to reach the nearest shopping center.

Allegheny Mountain relies on funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for up to 65 percent of its annual budget of about half a million dollars. Smith says his stations do have financial reserves, but the hole in their budget could become existential.

Langfitt quotes station's general manager:

There is only so long that you can continue to exist when you are operating in the red. ... At some point that well runs dry.

One bottom line, this quoting the NYT editorial:

[T]he “national” part of NPR (or National Public Radio, as it used to call itself) that chafes conservatives may well be just fine without federal funds.   

It is local stations, trying to provide local programming, that will suffer most from these cuts, along with their listeners.  

One other detail worth noting on the Congressional vote to claw back the public media funding:  Senator Mike Rounds (R) of South Dakota had previously indicated that he would oppose the cuts but decided to support the package after "top Trump administration officials" said they would steer unspent funds 'to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption' for next year."  Yet, Loris Taylor of Native Public Media commented: 

There is currently no clear path for redirecting these funds to tribal broadcasters without significant legislative and administrative changes.

Are rural residents incapable of understanding government's role in health care availability?

I don't know the answer to that question, but that is a conclusion suggested by two stories in the mainstream media today.  An alternative conclusion from what these stories present is that rural residents--at least some (or most?) of them--don't trust what they see as liberal messaging about how Medicaid and hospital finances work.  That is, many Republicans and other Trump supporters assume that progressives will misconstrue the impacts of, e.g., "the big beautiful bill" on healthcare and other services those voters value. 

First, Hannah Knowles reports from Curtis, Nebraska, for the Washington Post under the headline, "A clinic blames its closing on Trump’s Medicaid cuts. Patients don’t buy it."  That headline sums up the gist of the story--and the reason why Medicaid cuts won't have the political impact on rural Trump voters that Democrats are hoping for.  

Community Hospital, the nonprofit that runs the clinic known as the Curtis Medical Center and a couple of other facilities in the region, plunged into the center of that national story when it announced on July 2 — one day before the bill’s passage — that a confluence of factors had made its Curtis outpost unsustainable. It cited years-long financial challenges, inflation and “anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid,” the public health insurance program for lower-income and disabled Americans.

* * *  

The clinic has been here longer than many people in town can remember, and people are struggling to make sense of the shutdown. The changes coming for Medicaid are complicated, and some won’t take effect for years, which makes the timing even harder for residents to understand.

Many know that Trump’s bill will impose work requirements for Medicaid recipients, which seems reasonable to them, and some think — inaccurately — that the legislation was designed to end Medicaid coverage for undocumented immigrants.

* * * 

Community Hospital was already losing money, and officials said they are trying to make sure they remain financially viable for the 30,000 people they serve throughout their facilities. But the timing of their decision to announce the Curtis closure has stoked suspicions in the town, leaving some residents convinced their health provider was using the president as a scapegoat.

Here are key--and colorful--quotes from two different Curtis residents: 

“Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” April Roberts said, as she oversaw lunch at the Curtis Area Senior Center.

* * *

Arriving for lunch, retired Navy veteran Jim Christensen said he’d read an op-ed that “tried to blame everything on Trump.”

“Horse feathers,” he said, dismissing the idea.

Much more detailed re the consequences of the Medicaid cuts for rural hospitals is this episode of the New York Times "The Daily" headlined, "One Rural Doctor on the Real Costs of Medicaid Changes."  Natalie Kitroeff interviews that doctor, Shannon Dowler.  The story is a very detailed one of how North Carolina eventually came to expand Medicaid, providing health care to many folks who otherwise would not have had access to it.  Many rural characters--you could say stereotypes--are depicted in this story--most of them, I am assuming based on the western North Carolina locale, are white.  

It's only at the end of the lengthy interview when you get to the reasons, according to Dr. Dowler, that residents don't or won't blame Trump for their likely loss of health care under the "Big Beautiful Bill."  Here's the exchange between Kitroeff and Dr. Dowler: 

Kitroeff:  Do you think that your patients, for example, will blame the lawmakers who voted for this bill?

Dowler:   No.

Kitroeff:  Why not?

Dowler:  There’s just not enough of a direct correlation to people’s health care needs in the moment and what happened in DC 12 months before, 18 months before.

Kitroeff:  So you think there is a chance that the folks who voted for the people who voted for the bill that leads to them potentially losing coverage will not be seeing that those people are really responsible.

Dowler:  No. I had a patient come in the day after the election. And he said, it’s about time. We’ve got to get government out of health care. Well, ironically, he has Medicare. And he just

Kitroeff:  Wow,

Dowler:  ...doesn’t get it. And so this is not uncommon. This is a super complex system of health care. I was at Medicaid for five years. Every day, I learned something new around how Medicaid worked. It’s very, very complex. I’m not surprised that patients don’t understand all of this.

Kitroeff:  I’m wondering if you think they will blame anyone for the loss in care. And if so, who would get the blame?

 Dowler:  It’s hard to know. I think people often would get mad at the hospitals because the hospitals weren’t providing them some service that they felt they were due, not understanding how complex the system of health care is. So I just don’t think based on what I saw before, I don’t think the lawmakers are the ones that are necessarily going to bear the brunt of this, especially with the timeline where they have this stuff rolling out after the midterm elections.

This all reminds me of some of the reasons folks gave for not taking the Covid vaccine back in 2021, even as they came close to dying from the disease.  Many nevertheless said that if they survived the disease, they still would not be vaccinated.  

That which sets rural search-and-rescue apart from the urban counterpart

The New York Times reports today from Kerrville, Texas, more than a week after last week's tragic flood.  This story pays attention to how the search and rescue along the Guadalupe River in the "hill country" is different from these processes when they occur in urban areas.  Christopher Maag and Edgar Sandoval write: 

The search for human remains is focused on an area of Texas that is unlike many of the places where recovery professionals are accustomed to looking, several experts said. Most major search operations in recent years have happened in large urban areas hit by hurricanes, said Mr. Koester and Scott Hammond, a professor in the Department of Management at Utah State University who studies search-and-rescue teams.

In the flood plain of Central Texas, by comparison, searchers are dealing with a relatively high number of people who are missing and presumed dead, spread across an expanse of mostly narrow, rural territory, spanning more than a hundred miles of shallow valleys along the river.

* * *

The destructive power arrived with little notice, in a relatively constrained river valley where there are few homes or other buildings to serve as likely search targets. The recovery efforts are therefore focused on the massive piles of debris.

That will continue to make the search especially slow, dangerous, painstaking and long.

Also reflecting this theme, NPR's report this morning observed that the "search area has an enormous footprint." 

Here is a quote in the NYT story from 38-year-old Kerrville resident, Amy Vanlandingham, who has been helping with the search.  Her comment suggests the nature of rural community and lack of anonymity, which fosters a certain solidarity:

It’s overwhelming to see so many people come and help in the search. This is our town. I do it so I can sleep.

Other posts about the Guadalupe River floods are here and here.   

Small-town government run amok (Part XIII): Is Kerr County partly to blame for the high death toll at Camp Mystic?

I've already written this week about the catastrophic flooding in Kerr County, Texas.  What I am going to highlight in this post is recent reporting from the New York Times on the 2019 decision by Kerr County to let Camp Mystic build additional structures--including cabins for campers--in places that were at risk of  flooding.  (This is on top of the county's decision not to invest in a warning system, which is discussed in my prior post).

Why would the county do that when, as one expert suggested, the proposal to construct more buildings was a good time to re-evaluate the risk level associated with the existing structures?  Perhaps what the journalists are suggesting here is Kerr County officials simply trusted the camp as a long-time landowner and patron of the county.  Perhaps what is being suggested is the turning of a blind eye.  I wonder what sort of property taxes and other types of revenues Mystic and the otter camps provided to the county? 

Here's an excerpt from the NYT story: 

In 2019, Camp Mystic...underwent a substantial expansion. Camp owners received approval from local authorities to build a new group of cabins over the hillside to the south, in an area known as Cypress Lake. But even there, flood maps show, some of the new cabins were in areas at risk of flooding.

* * *  

At the same time, Kerr County officials were considering how to manage floodway areas, including those at Camp Mystic.

The county said that floodways were to be considered “an extremely hazardous area due to the velocity of floodwaters which carry debris, potential projectiles and erosion potential.” It adopted rules in 2020 to limit new construction or substantial alterations in floodways to ensure that structures could better survive flood events, and that these buildings would not result in raising floodwater levels in other parts of the river.

This NYTimes piece gives a sense of the local lore around the Eastlands, who owned and ran Camp Mystic.  This New York Times podcast, The Daily, also gives a sense of the beloved status of the camp and its long-time owners; the title says it all, "A Love Letter to Camp Mystic."   

Postscript:  Here is a July 12, 2025 NYT story that suggests FEMA over-rode Kerr County on the designation of parts of Camp Mystic as a flood zone.  An excerpt from Mike Baker's reporting follows: 

In the years before floodwaters killed more than two dozen people at Camp Mystic in Texas, regulators approved a series of appeals that removed many of the camp’s buildings from official federal flood zones, records show.

Flood maps developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2011 had placed much of the camp within a 100-year flood zone, an area considered to be at high risk of flooding. Camp Mystic successfully challenged those designations, which would limit renovation projects and require flood insurance, citing elevation calculations of a series of buildings that allowed them to be exempted from the federal restrictions.

Sarah Pralle, an associate professor at Syracuse University who has researched federal flood mapping, said she found the exemptions granted to Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp on the Guadalupe River near Hunt, to be “perplexing.” Some of the buildings were still very close to expected flood elevations, she said.

“I think it’s extremely troubling that it’s a camp for children,” Ms. Pralle said. “You’d think you want to be extra cautious — that you’d go beyond the minimum of what’s required for flood protection.”

Here is the Washington Post reporting similar conclusions on the role of FEMA.  

Here is the WSJ reporting on what happened at Camp Mystic, cabin by cabin.   You'll see here featured some aspects of the impulse to secrecy regarding arguable failures of a revered Texas institution.  

This excellent episode of New York Times "The Daily" on July 15, 2025, asks if the floods had to be as deadly as they were.  It includes some attention to the rural context. 

My Rural Travelogue (Part XLII): Promoting local food, including wild edibles, in Japan

Ad for ice cream at a Teshikaga (Hokkaido) ramen house
features a photo of the farm family (4 children!) who produce the milk--
and, of course, one of the cows.

During my recent trip to Japan, I noticed a lot of promotion and advertising that played up the origin of food--usually its local origin. In this photo-dense post, I'm going to feature some of what I saw.  (All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025) 

I first noticed the attention to local food in Kanazawa, on the west coast of Honshu, where the breakfast place mats at our Hyatt Centric hotel noted local milk products and featured the label, "Kanazawa Local Style" (lower left quadrant).  It mentioned local eggs and some other local produce.  

Breakfast placemat Hyatt Centric Kanazawa

Then, in Osaka, which is known as the food capital of the country, the cafe in a private library touted dairy products from Hokkaido, the northernmost island.  When I asked why an establishment in the southern part of the main island, Honshu, was promoting products from the north, I was told that Hokkaido has more space than Honshu--it's less crowded--and thus most of the nation's milk and dairy products are produced there.  Hokkaido seems to be associated with farm-fresh food, especially dairy.

Live chickens outside a restaurant in Osaka; 
now that's local food

The next week, I visited northern Hokkaido and saw for myself many dairy farms.  Near Kushiro and the surrounding marshlands, which are habitat for the iconic Japanese Cranes as well as dairy cows, the two species often share space.  I also saw in that region greenhouses where strawberries were grown.

To the northwest of the Kushiro area, closer to Shire and en route to Shiretoko National Park, I was driven past fields of yams and sugar beets.  My driver pointed out a sugar beet processing facility.  

Crops near Memanbetsu airport, northeastern Hokkaido. 

Then, between Shiretoko and Memanbetsu, I saw apple and cherry orchards.  A wild fox crossed my taxi's path very near there, just a few miles from the Memanbetsu airport.  This seems noteworthy because I'd not seen a fox in the far more wild and remote Shiretoko National Park. 

Fried sweet potato balls are associated with Bihoro Pass, above Lake Kussharo, and are sold at the roadside station there.  I can attest to their deliciousness, but also their greasiness.  

Raised beds for student gardening at a primary school in Wakato, on the shores of Lake Kussharo.

This woman is preparing bracken, a wild, fern-like plant, outside a restaurant at Lake Akan. I noticed a significant focus on wild edibles, including fiddle-head fern, at restaurants in Japan, especially when outside major cities. I had wild edibles as part of tempura meals in Takayama and on Hokkaido. My Hokkaido guide and drivers also pointed out to me places (some at relatively high elevation) where wild edibles were growing. Collecting these foods seemed almost a hobby, especially among older residents, as my Hokkaido guide and drivers were.

Below is a Japanese Crane across the road from the cattle pictured in the lower photo.  These were taken  near Tsurui village, in northeastern Hokkaido.  I found that the iconic cranes frequently occupied the same habitat as cattle in the region's marshes.  In fact, a barely visible crane is behind the cattle in the lower photo.  The third photo below is of a Sapporo Co-op delivery truck in the small town of Utoro, at the entrance to Shiretoko National Park. Sapporo is the largest city and seat of Hokkaido Prefecture, which is co-terminus with the Island of Hokkaido.  The co-op sells food and daily essentials, e.g., detergent, toiletries.

I enjoyed a lovely lunch at Heart 'n Tree guest house and restaurant in Tsurui Village, Hokkaido, where I was served this varied and colorful appetizer plate (above).  I also had a delicious soup curry with shrimp.  Pizza and a pork stew were among the other entrees on offer.  Among the items you can get for breakfast is "fresh squeezed milk."  

I also took a cheese-making class at Heart 'n Tree, where I made string cheese with the owner, Sachiko.  

Photos above from Heart 'n Tree, Tsurui, Hokkaido, Japan. 

The Heart 'n Tree website says it is "a supporter of dairy farmers" and that its "menu lets you enjoy fully the deliciousness of milk and vegetables."  

Here is a placard promoting local dairy products, with Holstein cow stylized art, at a hotel buffet in Utoro, near entrance to Shiretoko National Park.

These Okhotsk Bean Factory products were for sale in Utoro, near Shiretoko National Park, Hokkaido.  (This area is adjacent to the Sea of Okhotsk). I saw the storage tower for this company near the Memanbetsu Airport when I was leaving the region. 

My prior post about my May 2025 trip to Japan is here.