The extinction of mermaids

Photo Credit: UNxArtPartner Create COP25 Haenyeo 2019

Emerald sequins bathed in refracting light. Lavender velvet crushed beneath loose limbs. Shimmering turquoise dappled with the tacky remnants of a cherry ice pop. These were the qualities that sketched the lines of one of my most treasured childhood possessions: a swimsuit, inspired by the 1989 film, "The Little Mermaid." 

In a plastic pool in late 90s, Castro Valley, California, I would spend hours baking under the gaze of an overzealous sun, grieving the mythos of creatures that existed only in daydreams. However, nearly six thousand miles away, on the Island of Jeju, mermaids were very much a reality. 

Photo Credit: UNxArtPartner Create COP25 Haenyeo 2019

The sea women

Evidence of female free divers, or haenyeos (Korean:해녀), first appears in literature dating to the 17th Century. What began as a solely male-dominated field soon shifted into one of the quintessential representations of semi-matriarchal family structure in Asia. To become a haenyeo, women must join a fishing village cooperative, requiring the agreement of other members. Diving rights are often passed on from elderly haenyeo to their daughters and daughters-in-law. 

Diving barehanded, clad in simple cotton mulsojungi, without oxygen tanks or other technological adornments, these women routinely plunge their bodies into the gelid waters off the southernmost coast of the Korean peninsula. For seven hours a day, 90 days a year, haenyeo dive up to 20 meters below the surface to harvest marine resources, including abalone, other mollusks, octopi, sea urchin, seaweed, turban shells, and other shellfish for their families and the community. According to Kim Hoo-ran of The Korean Herald, the spirit of the haenyeo is communal, "The women seek equitable distribution of their harvest, giving away part of their catch to a diver who has a poor catch. Such favors are always returned by the recipient."

As Dr. Miyoung Kim of Ewha Women's University notes, the lifestyle is not without its dangers:

These divers are [also] exposed to decompression sickness because they perform breath-hold dives, and these dives can cause neurological problems, such as muscle weakness and dysthesia, as well as other symptoms, such as vertigo, dizziness, and nausea. In addition, increases in intraocular pressure while diving damage the optic nerves and lead to headaches. Among this group, 83.5% take analgesics and antihistamines during work to prevent the headaches and earaches that occur due to diving, and they often take more than the recommended doses; thus, drug overdose is a serious problem. 

Photo Credit: Blog Duam 

Translating the currents

The adversities, however, are paired with marvels. According to a new study in Cell Reports, generations of diving has literally altered the genetics of divers and their children, passing down a series of psychological adaptations allowing them to dive more safely. Dr. Melissa Lardo and her team observed that:

Haenyeo's heart rates drop[ped] about 50 percent more during simulated dives compared with other groups, which helps them hold their breath longer by limiting oxygen that the body needs and reducing the work the heart needs and reducing the work the heart needs to do...This blood pressure genetic variant can protect the haenyeo as they dive while pregnant-typically, pregnant haenyeo will dive up until the day they give birth, says Ilardo. Researchers suggest this lower blood pressure genetic variant could protect against complications like preeclampsia, a health risk for pregnant women that can be exacerbated by diving. 

Centuries of diving has not only changed the anatomy of these women's bodies; it has embedded in them, what Dr. Samantha Chisolm Hatfield calls Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). 

TEK "specifically relates to the environment in a given traditional homeland of Indigenous groups and/or Usual and Accustomed areas. This may include but is not limited to: botany knowledge, medicinal application (collection and/or administration), hunting, fishing, gathering, processing of materials(s), caretaking such as burning, coppicing, thinning, astronomy, phenology, time, ecological markers, species markers, weather, and climate knowledge."

In a paper published in the Journal of Marine Island Cultures, Hatfield and Dr. Sung-Hee Kong interviewed haenyeo and concluded that they have highly developed environmental acuity, a unique ability to read environments and document information on environmental changes. This is particularly vital as the collection of resources has steadily declined, and sustainability efforts are necessary to mitigate the ravages of climate change. 

Photo Credit: Bernard Gagnon

The ebbing tide 

After thousands of years, the mermaids of Jeju face extinction. According to Katie Hunt of CNN Science "The practice is dying out. Young women are no longer continuing this matrilineal tradition; the current group of haenyeo divers, with an average age of around 70 years years may represent the last generation." The recalibrated values of a modern Korea are looking increasingly incompatible with this practice, threatening to erase the women of Jeju and their stewardship of the peninsula's marine ecology. 

Without haenyeo governance, author Taeyoung Kim expresses concerns that the combination of non-traditional extraction methods and capitalism-driven development will irreparably damage rural Jeju:

“Rapid economic progress [has] led to the exploitation of working class, women, and rural areas to reinforce the progress of national economic development. This action was justified as a means for "nation building", which led to severe repercussions to the natural habitat in Jeju marine ecosystem…External capital inflow extracted profits by expropriating Jeju people's land, resources and communal assets, which is a common mechanism used by traditional colonial extractive industries.”

Photo Credit: Peter Chanovec

A coruscation of hope

However, as in all fairy tales, the hope of happy ending remains. In 2016, the haenyeo were included on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage and just this month, haenyeo was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, which many hope will raise awareness for this vanishing way of life. Furthermore, although the population continues to dwindle, younger generations are beginning to answer the haenyeo's siren song. Together, these factors may protect the last of the mermaids. 

Japan erects--overnight--a 3-D printed train station for a rural community

Kiuko Notoya recently reported in the New York Times about the overnight construction of a train station in rural western Japan.  The components were 3-D printed elsewhere.  According to the West Japan Railway Company that serves this place, Hatsushima (near Arida, in Wakayama prefecture) building a station the old-fashioned way would have cost twice as much and taken more than two months.  The station is served by one train line, which runs between one and three times per hour; it serves about 530 riders each day. The new train station, which looks more like a shed or a shelter, was erected between the time the last train ran at 11:57 pm one evening and the first train train the next morning at 5:45 am.  The 100 square foot building is described as "a minimalistic, white building, featuring designs that include a mandarin orange and a scabbardfish, specialties of Arida."

Notoya writes:  

In the six hours between the departure of the night’s last train and the arrival of the morning’s first one, workers in rural Japan built an entirely new train station. It will replace a significantly bigger wooden structure that has served commuters in this remote community for over 75 years.

* * * 

As Japan’s population ages and its work force shrinks, the maintenance of railway infrastructure, including outdated station buildings, is a growing issue for railway operators. Rural stations with dwindling numbers of users have posed a particular challenge. 

The NYT story, which includes several short videos of the production process for the train station parts and the building's erection, is worth a read in its entirety.   

US DOJ announces Access to Justice Prize to close "Rural Justice Gap"

This is from the Department of Justice press release.  

The Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice today announced the launch of the Access to Justice Prize, a year-long prize competition that aims to foster innovative solutions to address critical gaps in access to justice across the United States. The inaugural competition will focus on access to justice gaps faced by rural communities across the country, aiming to advance general public awareness about rural access to justice gaps; prompt and support the development of new and innovative solutions; and promote the replication and expansion of strategies that work.

“Through our engagement with courts, justice practitioners, legal aid providers, academic institutions and other organizations across the country, we’ve heard loud and clear that solutions to close the rural justice gap must begin with rural communities themselves,” said Director Rachel Rossi of the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice. “Through the Access to Justice Prize competition, we further this approach, empowering those who best know the barriers their communities face to drive the effective solutions that will ensure access to justice for all, regardless of geography.”

Nationwide access to justice barriers are often exacerbated for rural Americans, especially when unique circumstances like long travel times, limited internet access or lack of attorneys are too often overlooked. A 2022 study by the Legal Services Corporation revealed that 77% of low-income rural households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the previous year, with 94% receiving inadequate or no legal help. Additionally, rural criminal justice systems are strained by part-time judges, contract defense counsel and lacking prosecutorial resources. Studies demonstrate that recruitment and retention challenges are increasing for criminal justice careers in rural areas, including for public defenders, prosecutors and law enforcement. And rural courts face rising caseloads, delay, uneven workloads among judges and lack of resources.

The 2025 Access to Justice Prize aims to inspire and support innovative ideas that address these challenges by engaging those closest to the issues — rural courts, practitioners and organizations. Eligible participants are encouraged to submit proposals for any solutions that expand access to justice, including, for example, solutions to:

• Expanding access to legal representation, legal assistance, or legal information 
• Utilizing alternatives to counsel or other innovative legal assistance models

Breaking down barriers to accessing legal systems, including barriers disproportionately faced by rural Americans, like lack of proximity to a courthouse, ability to travel or access to broadband

Simplifying legal processes, systems, forms, or language

Reducing disparities among those navigating, or impacted by, legal systems

Reducing the need for interaction with civil and criminal legal systems or developing efficient alternatives to justice processes

Reducing any harmful effects of legal systems

Accessing and utilizing technology to expedite and promote efficiency within courts and legal systems

Advancing cost-saving strategies

Expanding language access, utilizing written, spoken, and sign languages, as well as auxiliary communication aids and services

Expanding access for people with disabilities

Expanding access for specific rural populations, such as Tribal communities, low-income communities, communities of color, or other historically underserved communities

Identifying and establishing innovative cross-sector, cross-agency, or otherwise unique partnerships to expand access to legal systems

Reducing financial or economic barriers to accessing legal systems or economic conditions imposed on those impacted by legal systems

Improving legal or other supports for victims and/or survivors

Expanding access to legal systems by taking court/legal processes or assistance to communities, outside of the courtroom

Expanding access to basic and collateral needs for those in rural communities who interact with legal systems, including, for example, housing, food, employment, etc.

Promoting efficiency of systems or processes through customer or user experience strategies

More information and additional examples can be found here. 

The competition will run on a one-year cycle, starting in January 2025, and will feature two judging phases:Finalist Selection: Up to five finalists will receive $5,000 each and then refine their proposals over a six-month phase in preparation to compete for the grand prize.

Grand Prize Selection: Finalists will present their solutions at an Access to Justice Showcase, where judges will select the grand prize winner to receive $50,000.

Below is the timeline for the year-long Access to Justice Prize competition cycle:

• Jan. 7: Submissions open
• March 31: Submission deadline
• April 30: Finalists announced
• May 1 – Oct. 31: Refinement Phase
• Early December 2025: Grand Prize Showcase and winner announcement.  

My Rural Travelogue (Part XL): Esmeralda County, Nevada

Esmeralda County Seal on county vehicle behind courthouse in Goldfield
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

I got interested in Esmeralda County, Nevada (population 729) last month after reading Eli Saslow's piece in the New York Times about how conspiracy theories regarding elections have taken over there, threatening the recall of a Republican county clerk in this remote corner of The Silver State where the population density is 1 person per five square miles.  Here is an excerpt from the story, which centers on Cindy Elgan, the County Clerk, a Republican, who some residents wanted to recall once they became suspicious of her handling of the 2020 election results:  

They falsely claimed the election was stolen by voting software designed in Venezuela, or by election machines made in China. They accused George Soros of manipulating Nevada’s voter rolls. They blamed “undercover activists” for stealing ballots out of machines with hot dog tongs. They blamed the Dominion voting machines that the county had been using without incident for two decades, saying they could be hacked with a ballpoint pen to “flip the vote and swing an entire election in five minutes.” They demanded a future in which every vote in Esmeralda County was cast on paper and then counted by hand.

And when Elgan continued to stand up at each meeting to dispute and disprove those accusations by citing election laws and facts, they began to blame her, too — the most unlikely scapegoat of all. She had served as the clerk without controversy for two decades as an elected Republican, and she flew a flag at her own home that read: “Trump 2024 — Take America Back.” But lately some local Republicans had begun referring to her as “Luciferinda” or as the “clerk of the deep state cabal.” They accused her of being paid off by Dominion and skimming votes away from Trump, and even though their allegations came with no evidence, they wanted her recalled from office before the next presidential election in November.

* * *  

[Elgan] took the recall petition back into her office, and over the next several days she continued to flip through the pages in disbelief. She counted at least 130 signatures, which at first glance appeared to be enough to force a recall election if the signatures and corresponding addresses proved legitimate. 

You'll have to read the rest of the story to find out what happened with the petition. 

A place of business, apparently, in Goldfield

So, when I drove through a few different parts of Esmeralda County a few weeks after Saslow's story appeared, the place was definitely on my radar screen.  I stopped--even amidst 100 F temperatures--to  take lots of photos.  

Esmeralda County Courthouse, Goldfield, NV
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

One of many flyers on front door of the courthouse
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Back of Esmeralda County Courthouse, presumably jail
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

A church across from the county courthouse, Goldfield
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Esmeralda County Transit 
(c) Lisa R Pruitt 2024

Public School Gymnasium, Goldfield
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Yesterday, The Daily, the NYTimes podcast, featured Saslow's story as its Sunday read, so it seemed the time was right to publish my photos of Esmeralda County and Goldfield, the tiny county seat where the vast majority of residents live in what looks like an outsider to a time warp, or maybe a twilight zone.  

Surprise:  an electric car charger at the Visitor Information Center, Goldfield
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Aging and population loss in small-town Pennsylvania

That's the topic of Tim Crane's story in the Washington Post last weekend, "'Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss."  Here's an excerpt from the report, dateline Sheffield, Pennsylvania, a census-designated place with a population of 1,123: 

Across rural Pennsylvania, there is a deepening sense of fear about the future as population loss accelerates. The sharp decline has put the state at the forefront of a national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture.

America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.

According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic. But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where.

Art Cullen on how Trump came between him and his long-time, small-town friend

Cullen is the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot, and his column in today's New York Times is titled, "We were friends for years. Trump tore us apart."  Cullen leads with some background on his relationship with a group of men in his home-town, men he's known since Little League and often fished and played pool with.  Here's the part where things start to go wrong, amidst politics and the pandemic--and the politics of the pandemic. 

One of my old friends, or shall I say acquaintances, recently said on Facebook that I lacked integrity after I posted an editorial from our newspaper complaining about Mr. Trump’s contempt for the democratic process and rule of law.

* * * 

You would think we could see around our differences. We can’t. We’ve been programmed by nonstop propaganda, especially those of us in Iowa besieged by presidential campaigns and the wedge issues they drill home. Instead of trying to hash things out, I just quit trying. My bad. I got tired.

Small-town hacks learn who their friends are. We publish uncomfortable facts of public interest and opinions that often go against the grain. Businesses stop advertising because you wrote about their lawsuit. That I get. It’s a hazard of the occupation that I regret every day. You pledge to do better even when you have done nothing wrong.

The ad hominem attacks have become the norm, especially since Mr. Trump took center stage and refuses to exit. We went from Iowa Nice to Iowa Nasty. We’re stuck there whether Mr. Trump leaves or hangs around. That’s my lament.

* * * 

I know where I live. Northwest Iowa is a frozen slice of Texas, one of the most conservative places in the country. I guess I am what you call woke because I don’t think immigrants are the problem; I think income — lack of it — is the problem. All this talk about bathroom bills and book bans is one giant distraction from how global corporations have stolen our franchise. I am not the enemy of the people, dude — we were in Cub Scouts together.

Nostalgia for China's rural past, now manifest in miniature

Vivan Wang reported in the New York Times yesterday under the headline, "Recreating a Bygone China, One Miniature Home at a Time."  The young man featured in this story is Shen Peng, who had recently taken his grandmother to the site of the house where she and her husband had once lived.  The house in northern China had been demolished by the Chinese government for redevelopment.  Here was Mr. Shen's response to his mother's grief over the home she and her husband had at one time: 

For more than six months, he labored in secret after his day job as a hairdresser. Finally, Mr. Shen, now 31, presented his grandmother with a surprise — a handcrafted 1:20 scale replica of her old home.

There was the wire clothesline in the courtyard, draped with a blue blanket cut into the size of a postage stamp. There was the rickety bicycle, outside a shed constructed with foam boards and plaster. Mr. Shen had even traveled to the site of the old house to better recreate the fragment of brick wall that still remained.

The project led him into a small but growing community of artists in China filling an increasingly urgent demand: miniature replicas of homes that have been demolished, remodeled or otherwise swept away by China’s modernization.

Over the past 40 years, China has transformed from one of the world’s poorest countries into its second-largest economy. The share of city residents has tripled, and vast numbers of Chinese have seen the structures of their childhoods disappear, often through government redevelopment campaigns.

Here's a quote from Mr. Shen:

Nobody would actually want to live in these houses again. Once people have gotten used to nice things, they can’t handle these shabby one... the pace of life now is too fast. Just because you live in a high-rise doesn’t mean you’re happy.

Mr. Li is another artist who makes the miniatures: 

About half of Mr. Li’s clients are in their 30s; the rest are older. Most, like himself, were carried by China’s economic boom from the countryside to the cities, finding education and jobs that allowed them to afford nostalgia. Mr. Li’s miniatures cost between $1,400 and $7,000, in a city where the average disposable income for urban residents is about $8,000 per year. He has made about 80 in all.

Younger viewers on social media can find the urge to document these old houses confusing. Some comment disbelievingly on how run-down the houses look. Even some of Mr. Li’s assistants, many of whom are recent art school graduates, said they had little familiarity with the countryside.

Other posts about China's rural past are here and here.   

Census Bureau reports rural residents more likely to experience disability

The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week on rural-urban differences in disability.  Here is the introductory material:   

Where people live may impact their ability to access health care services and for those with disabilities or who require specialized care that entails more frequent attention and medical visits, location can play an even more significant role.

It is important to understand how regional and urban/rural differences in disability contribute to the unique challenge of addressing health disparities in the United States. Identifying where people with disabilities are concentrated can help inform where there may be shortages of specialized providers or limited transportation options.

Examining disability rates across geography reveals notable differences between urban and rural areas, and regions.

In 2021, nearly 42.5 million people (13%) among the civilian noninstitutionalized population in the United States had a disability, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates.

And here are the key findings re: rural-urban difference:

In 2021, the U.S. population was primarily urban, with 80.2% living in urban areas; 12.6% of them reported a disability in 2021.

Rural residents — less than 20% of the U.S. population — were more likely (14.7%) than their urban counterparts to experience disability.

Rural communities may be more geographically isolated and typically have more limited transportation and access to clinics and hospitals than urban areas. As a result, coordination of care for those with disabilities may be more difficult for rural residents due to these geographic and transportation barriers.

And here is what the report had to say about regional differences: 

In 2021, the South had the nation’s highest rates of disability (13.8%), followed by the Midwest (13.1%), the Northeast (12.3%), and the West (12.1%) (Figure 2).

Regional disability rates may differ for a variety of reasons. For example, disability is often associated with age, so regions that contain states with a higher proportion of the population age 65 and over may be more likely to report higher rates of disability.

Many states in the South are part of what is known as the Stroke Belt, defined by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute as a cluster of states (including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) that have a higher incidence of stroke than the rest of the country.

Rural school closures accelerate in South Korea

Max Kim reported in yesterday's Los Angeles Times under the headline, "In South Korea, a struggle to fill classroom seats."  An excerpt follows: 

In the last 10 years, the number of elementary school-age students in the county has fallen from 2,687 to 1,832. Nearly every one of the 16 elementary schools in the county has lost students over this period, some by the hundreds.

* * *

The decline of rural schools in South Korea began with the country’s rapid industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, when farming and fishing villages saw a mass exodus of young workers to Seoul and other big cities.

The story focuses on what is happening in Cherowon County, on the border with North Korea:

Cheorwon County has one of the highest rates of population flight, as young people leave in search of jobs, better education opportunities or greater access to services such as medical care and public transportation. Officials recently classified it as an “extinction risk.”

Due to its proximity to the Korean demilitarized zone, the county is heavily fortified, and military personnel and their families make up around 60% of the population. In recent years, however, even the military has been moving out.

Since 2018, when the total population was around 47,000, the county has lost about 1,000 people a year.

At a senior center across from Dochang Elementary, a group of grandmothers whose children and grandchildren have all long since left said they worried that closing the school would drain the community of what little vitality remained.

“When else would we see children?” said Ha Su-ja, 79. “I like to listen to the sounds of them playing when the school holds sports day.”

Nationwide, the number of elementary schools in rural areas has dropped from around 5,200 in 1982 to roughly 4,000 today.

Schools, along with hospitals and other public institutions, have overwhelmingly amassed in cities, seeding the very demographic emergency the country now faces. More than half the population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area, where the high cost of living — including education — has discouraged people from having children.

As a result, South Korean women now give birth to just 0.78 children on average, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain the current population.

The story closes with this quote from Lee Eun-Sook, principal of the tiny Dochang Elementary school:  

I want the children to be proud that they are from Cheorwon, no matter how small it is. I want the fact that they graduated from Dochang to give them that one extra spoonful of confidence.

As a rural kid myself, I appreciate that sentiment.  

New Zealand study finds rural elderly face "latent precarity"

 This piece, titled "Rurality and latent precarity: Growing older in a small rural New Zealand town" was recently published by the Journal of Rural Studies.  The abstract follows: 

Behind rural lives lurk several forms of latent precarity that are unique to rural dwellers and rural contexts. Latent precarities may never become actualised or experienced, and the expression of latent precarity can be mitigated by both individual and community resources. For older rural dwellers, the latent precarities associated with rural life intersect with those associated with ageing and when experienced or actualised, can impact on an individual's ability to successfully ‘age in place’ within their rural community. We interviewed adults across the lifespan who lived in a small rural southern New Zealand community, and this article explores the latent precarities of rurality and ageing that they identified. If community assets dwindle or become unavailable, and health capabilities decline, latent precarities may multiply, or become actual/experienced precarities. The experience of ageing well in rural places can be improved and older adults better supported through the identification of, and attention to, forms of latent precarity within these rural places.

The authors are Chrystal Jaye, Judith McHugh, Fiona Doolan-Noble, and Lincoln C. Wood. 

On the economic devastation wrought by legalized cannabis in rural California

Alexei Koseff reported this week for CalMatters on the economic devastation wrought by legalized cannabis in the so-called Emerald Triangle region, which was long economically dependent on illicit cannabis. The dateline for Koseff's story is Hayfork, California, population 2,324, a wide spot in the road in Trinity County, one of the state's least densely populated places. (Hayfork loomed large in this post a few days ago, about Trinity County school administrators traveling to Washington, DC to seek federal funding for K-12 education under the Secure Rural Schools law). Here's an excerpt from the CalMatters story:

Workers who spent their whole lives in the cannabis industry are suddenly looking around for new careers that may not be there. Store clerks, gas station attendants and restaurant servers who relied on their patronage now find themselves with reduced hours, meager tips or out of a job altogether.

A sense of despair and heartbreak has taken hold in many communities. People whisper about friends who are thinking about divorce or who killed themselves because they could not handle the financial devastation. And the pain is compounded by a feeling that their suffering has been all but invisible, overlooked by most Californians and dismissed by government officials who have never made good on the promises of legalization.

* * * 

For decades before California legalized recreational cannabis in 2016, this rural region of about 245,000 people was the base of weed cultivation for the entire country. The effects of the price crash, which has been particularly acute in the past two years, can be felt throughout the three counties, both within the industry and far outside of it.

Cultivators who can barely make ends meet are laying off employees, slashing expenses or shutting down their farms. That means money isn’t flowing into local businesses, nonprofits are getting fewer generous cash donations in brown paper bags, and local governments are collecting less in sales and property taxes.

* * * 

Some imagine that growing tourism can be the salvation, or attracting new residents with remote jobs and a desire to live way off the grid, or perhaps a logging revival driven by the urgent need to thin out California’s wildfire-prone forests. Others hope that a cannabis turnaround might still be possible.

But for a small, isolated town such as Hayfork — population: 2,300; high school student body: 88; empty sawmills: two — the answers are not obvious. The fear that the community could ultimately wither away is real.

* * *

Then came Proposition 64, the ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that finally legalized recreational cannabis use and commercial sales in the state, though they remain illegal under federal law. Proponents including Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched it as both a social justice measure and a boon for tax revenues.

But the “green rush” that resulted has arguably harmed the Emerald Triangle more than it helped.

New farmers, sometimes licensed and often not, streamed in, flooding the market with cannabis. A cap on the size of farms intended to give small growers a head start was abandoned in the final state regulations, opening the door to competing cultivation hubs in other regions of California with looser restrictions. And with most local jurisdictions still closed to dispensaries, the legal market has been unable to absorb the glut, resulting in plunging prices and a vicious cycle in which farmers grow even more weed to make up for it.

* * * 

There have been nascent efforts at the state Capitol to help small cannabis growers. Newsom and legislators agreed last year to eliminate a cultivation tax after farmers from the Emerald Triangle lobbied aggressively for relief. But the intervention is far from enough to ensure their future in a turbulent cannabis market.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of “suffocating rules.” He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an “antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure” that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products.

“These are solutions that will help stabilize the market and lift up family farmers for generations to come,” McGuire said. “The state needs to have a backbone to get it done.”

Don't miss the rest of this important story about rural far northern California. 

Wildfire in the west is pricing people out of housing markets, including rural ones

The Washington Post reported last week out of Santa Rosa, California, population 175,000 and not rural, about how wildfire in the West is destroying housing that can't be re-built for the same cost, thus aggravating the state's housing crunch, which has implications for rural places, too.  Scott Wilson reports under the headline, "Gentrification by Fire."  Here are some key paragraphs:  

The concerns arise everywhere, although much of the discussion centers on the areas where Siemering and many other builders are working now, known as the Wildland-Urban Interface. The zone skims the rural, oak-and-manzanita-edged limits of many built-out California cities. (Planners created an acronym, WUI, which slipped into the local vernacular as “woo-ee,” often used in everyday conversation.)

In rebuilding in fire-prone areas, new construction materials, “defensible” minimalist buffers around homes, and other sometimes-expensive new measures have been required, bumping up the costs to homeowners.

For the first time, the state announced last fall that it would begin requiring insurance companies to discount the premiums of homeowners who take such steps. But whether the discounts will be enough to make neighborhoods affordable is doubtful.

According to U.S. Census figures, Sonoma County’s population was 500,000 in 2015, two years before Tubbs tore through its largest city and surrounding land. Today 15,000 fewer people live in Sonoma — a result, at least in part, of a post-fire exodus. Many who left were the underinsured and the elderly, according to city and county officials here.

Rural America growing after a decade of population loss

Ken Johnson, University of New Hampshire demographer, has published a policy brief with UNH's Carsey School of Public Policy.  Here's the summary: 

Recent research suggests that the turbulent economic, social, and epidemiological conditions of recent years altered traditional demographic trends in non-metropolitan America. Between 2010 and 2020, nonmetropolitan (rural) America lost population for the first time in history because more people left rural areas than moved to them and because the excess of births over deaths dwindled. Yet, the latest Census Bureau population estimates document renewed population gains in nonmetropolitan America between April 2020 and July 2021. In fact, the rural population gain exceeded that in metropolitan areas, something that is rare in American history (Figure 1). This recent nonmetropolitan population increase occurred because a substantial net migration gain offset the growing excess of deaths over births fostered by COVID-19. In contrast, recent metropolitan population gains were smaller because of less natural increase and smaller net migration gains than between 2010 and 2020. Most of the recent nonmetropolitan population increase accrued to high amenity recreational and retirement areas because net migration gains to these counties accelerated early in the pandemic. Elsewhere in rural America, many areas continued to lose population, but a sizable number of counties had population increases because modest migration gains offset deaths from COVID-19. In many counties with histories of population loss, only sustained net migration gains can provide the demographic lifeline these communities need to stave off depopulation. Whether these nonmetropolitan migration gains will continue in this turbulent era remains to be seen.

This policy brief is based on an article by Johnson in the journal Rural Sociology.  

On an expensive effort to save an aging Italian village

Jason Horowitz reported for the New York Times reported a few days ago under the headline, "An Italian Village Hit the Jackpot. Will That Save or Destroy It?"  An excerpt follows:  

This year, Livemmo beat out dozens of other villages in the Lombardy region for a share of about €200 billion in Covid recovery funds set aside for Italy by the European Union. Italy has one of the oldest populations in Europe, and the combination of its paltry birthrate and the increased longevity of its booming population of older people has created an economic and existential crisis that has vexed successive governments.

* * * 

To make up for the loss of its lone doctor, who is retiring at the end of the month, it has also proposed telemedicine bracelets that monitor the vitals of the village’s aging residents (€183,000). It has budgeted incentives to draw more families, businesses and “creative start-ups in the sector of contemporary art, with particular focus on the theme of wood” (€1.46 million).

“It’s a unique, once-in-a-lifetime and unimaginable opportunity,” said Giovanmaria Flocchini, the mayor of the town that includes the village of Livemmo. He considered the village part of a critical experiment for Italy, but also for aging societies across Europe, to prove that an influx of cash can save towns — and all of their cultural heritage and history — from depopulation and abandonment. “I feel doubly responsible,” he said. “If it fails for us, it fails for everybody.”

* * *

The deeper challenge, though, may be that a significant, and senescing, portion of the population does not want the money in the first place.

“There is not a lot of enthusiasm in one part of the population,” the mayor said, adding, “You can’t change the minds of 80-year-olds.”

Or some 70-year-olds.

“My fear is that the whole town will be changed. We’ll be invaded by people we don’t know,” Graziella Scuri, 73, an owner of one of Livemmo’s five restaurants, said as she spooned out homemade casoncelli pasta doused in butter. She added that a defining character trait of the hard-working, and often isolated locals was “we’re a little closed.”

The Washington Post ran this story by Chico Harlan in October titled, "Italy has 334 Most Beautiful Villages.  Can Their Beauty Survive?"   Here's an excerpt: 

At this point I’ve been to dozens of hill towns across Italy, including 20 on the Most Beautiful List, and often I get the impression that their residents are the last courageous holdouts, fighting for something that is already half gone.

No matter how small the village, they host festivals and summer concerts that go late into the night. They offer daily gatherings for cards and aperitivi at the central piazza.

But there are also so many abandoned homes — the result of more than a century of rural depopulation. Who wouldn’t want to live in a storybook medieval town on a hill? But also: How many of us actually could?

This is from journalist Harlan's visit to the village of Abbateggio, in the Abruzzo region:   

With excitement, another Abbateggio man, Giacinto De Thomasis, took me on a tour through the oldest part of the village, cutting this way and that, through little passageways he said he knew from playing hide-and-seek as a child. We came to a narrow stairwell that sliced between two homes, and at the end of the stairs there was nothing but a drop-off and a green panorama — the end of town. De Thomasis pointed out the fortified exterior of the village.

“This area,” he said, “used to be a castle.”

But whatever it used to be, the houses on either side of the stairwell were now in disrepair. Same with a home across the street, its old wooden door swung half-open, decades of rubble inside. Up and down the street hung For Sale signs, and even the properties that looked tidy from the outside, De Thomasis said, were nothing more than “shells.”

“No water. No electricity. Unlivable,” he said.

He knew because he’d been looking to buy. And he’d been looking to buy because he hadn’t lived in Abbateggio for decades — having been effectively forced out, at age 19, by a dearth of available jobs.

Another story about rural population loss and rural aging in Europe, this one out of Spain, is here.  

Literary Ruralism (Part XXXIII): More excerpts from Groundskeeping, by Lee Cole

Earlier this month, I shared an excerpt from Lee Cole's new novel--his first--called Groundskeeping, and in this post I want to share a few more excerpts that capture aspects of rural Kentucky.    

Here's one where the protagonist, Owen, an aspiring writer, takes his Bosnian Muslim girlfriend, Alma, on a day trip outside Louisville.  They wind up at a flea market in rural Kentucky.  The "Tony" referenced here is Owen's writing instructor:

Tony always said that there were no two-dimensional characters in the real world, that everyone had depth, and that if you were going to write about someplace rural not to make it into a minstrel show. Don’t dress all your backwoods characters in camo and have them chewing tobacco, he’d said. This was easy for him to say, as someone who had not come from a rural place.

 

But looking around, many of the people were wearing camo, and they were dipping Skoal and spitting the brown juice into Mountain Dew bottles. I’m sure they had their depths and their private sorrows, but at the moment, they were staring at us and making us uncomfortable, and I didn’t much care about their depths. 

I took Alma’s hand in mine and squeezed it. She squeezed back—two quick pumps—and we entered the shade of the tents. After a few minutes of browsing and touching the little knickknacks, she seemed less nervous. There were antique Barbies and sock monkeys, broken radios, ashtrays of hobnail milk glass and mushroom casserole dishes. There were Styrofoam heads with wigs, dime-store romance novels, wicker baskets, and dreamcatchers. We came to a stall of old farming tools.

 

I picked up a tomahawk knife, used for cutting burley-leaf tobacco. Though rusted, the blade’s edge was still sharp against my thumb. I explained to her what it was. You could still see the ingrained tobacco gum in the scarred hickory handle. My grandfather’s got a few like it, I said.

 

How do you use it? she said.

 

I’m not sure.

 

It’s to cut the stalk, said the old man running the stall. He looked to be about the same age as Pop and wore bib overalls. He sat in a lawn chair with a bottle of Dr Pepper between his legs and a table fan blowing directly on his face. Lemme see, he said, standing unsteadily and motioning for the tomahawk. I gave it over and he demonstrated how it would be used, whacking the invisible base of a tobacco plant.

(pp. 134-35, Kindle edition)

Here's another vignette, this one from Owen taking Alma to a Cracker Barrel restaurant: 

We hadn’t eaten supper, and when I saw a sign for a Cracker Barrel, I suggested we stop. She told me she’d never been to one.

 

No way, I said.

 

Yes way.

 

I can’t believe that in twenty-six years of life, you’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel.

 

We. Were. Muslim. Immigrants, she said, punctuating each word. Why would we go to a Cracker Barrel?

 

I wheeled into the lot, which was mostly vacant. I knew this would be the case, since most of Cracker Barrel’s patrons were over the age of sixty, and therefore took their supper around 5 p.m., or thereabouts—if not earlier. It was nearly 7 p.m.

 

As we crossed the parking lot to the entrance, past the hedges and the wilted mums and the rocking chairs looped together with bicycle chain locks, I told her I’d been to Cracker Barrel more times than I could count, that it was the only restaurant my parents went to when I was growing up. Very rarely, on birthdays or special occasions, we went to Olive Garden. Otherwise, it was Cracker Barrel.

 

 So you liked this place when you were kid? she said, when we’d been seated.

 

No, I hated it, I said. I still kind of hate it, though the hatred is mixed with nostalgia. I drew over the little peg game from where it was nestled between the flickering oil lamp and the bottle of peppers in vinegar. Alma cast her eyes about curiously. The dining floor was sparsely seated. A table of boisterous bikers sat in the back in their leather chaps and flame-printed do-rags. 

Three  or four elderly couples were seated in our section, waiting for their food. A fire crackled in the fieldstone hearth, and the woodsmoked air was mingled with the aromas of coffee and bacon and maple syrup. All was warm and quiet. Even the hiss and clatter of the kitchen was hardly audible.

 

What did your parents like about it? she asked.

 

After mulling over the question, I explained that Cracker Barrel was cheap, and they were working-class people without a lot of money who nonetheless wanted the experience of a family outing. They loved the food and the décor not because they had bad taste, but because it was familiar to them. They’d grown up on actual farms, milking actual cows, and pulling the suckers from actual tobacco. They’d eaten stewed apples and turnip greens and ham hock, and the tools on the walls had been the tools their fathers used, in a time that was not, at least in Kentucky, some distant yesteryear. It was recent and vivid, and the ache of its passing away therefore still present, like a phantom limb. So, even though it was commodified nostalgia, used to sell gimmicky bullshit to octogenarians, I could understand why they liked it.

 

Apparently, some of the locations were segregating customers by race, she said, scrolling through an article on her phone.

 

Really? 

Really. There was a big lawsuit.

 

It didn’t surprise me. There had always been undertones of racial animus, implied by the old-timey, those-were-the-days décor—scythes and harrows and pickaxes, fastened haphazardly to the latticework walls as if ready to be taken up by a mob. It was suddenly depressing to be there, as it had been when I was a teenager. Nostalgia was

 

always a lie, I decided. It always covered something up.

 

This place is pretty wild, Alma admitted, studying the black-and-white portrait of an unsmiling couple that hung above our table. Where do they get all this shit?

 

Believe it or not, they’re all real antiques, I said. There’s a big warehouse where they store and organize them all in Lebanon, Tennessee. It’s like two hours from my hometown.

 

Maybe we could go one day, she said. It’d be good material for an essay.

 

For you or for me?

 

Our waitress walked up before she could answer, a woman just shy of too skinny with fake eyelashes and a neck tattoo of a rose peeking from her collar. Cracker Barrel waitresses tended to be either matronly older women with their netted gray hair in a bun or youngish women like this, whose heavy makeup made it impossible to tell if they were twenty-two or thirty-six and who smelled faintly of smoke from their last cigarette break. Trailer-park pretty, as Rando would say. The kind of woman that belongs on the “before” side of a “Before and After Meth” poster. It was mean-spirited, but I knew what he meant. This waitress, whose name, lucida, was stitched on the front of her brown apron below two gold stars, fit Rando’s description to a T. She had the look of someone on the precipice of ruin.

 

Y’all wanna get some drinks started or are you ready to order? she said.

 

Ummm, Alma said, blinking dazedly at the menu. Honestly, I haven’t even had a chance to look yet. I was still taking in the ambience. Oh—okay, hon, said Lucida, a hint of worry in her voice, as if she realized we would not be easy customers. Well, take it all in, she said. I’ll be back in a few minutes with waters.

 

Lucida walked away and I watched Alma’s eyes scan the menu.

 

She looked distraught.

 

What should I get? she said.

 

What kind of country food do you like?

 

I don’t really like country food. 

I laughed. Well, you’ve come to the wrong place.

 

You brought me here! she whispered, eyes popping with faux anger. I didn’t ask for this!

 

The stakes are low.

 

I don’t want to disappoint Lucida, she said, and almost immediately after, Lucida reappeared and set down our waters.

 

We ready? she said.

 

You go first, Alma said.

 

I ordered catfish.

(pp. 182-84 Kindle edition).