On the intersection of medical and legal need in rural Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Examiner reports today from Polk County, Wisconsin, population 44,205, in far northwestern Wisconsin.  There. a nonprofit law firm, ABC for Health, which is based in far away Madison, the state capital, helps people get healthcare access.  Here's an excerpt from the story: 

The effects on healthcare access when legal services aren‘t available is the topic of an article published this month by Michele Statz and Paula Termuhlen, professors at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Medical School. The research in the article is largely based on rural areas in Northern Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin.

The article, “Rural Legal Deserts Are a Critical Health Determinant” states that the most common type of legal problem for poor rural residents is healthcare access. What is not as obvious is that not having access to lawyers and legal services ultimately harms the health of people in these communities.

“It doesn’t take much to think about how if you don’t have housing security or you’re experiencing intimate partner violence and you don’t have access to legal representation, those physical and mental health needs are exacerbated,” Statz tells the Wisconsin Examiner.

But increasingly, there are fewer lawyers practicing in rural areas and even fewer that have the expertise and partnerships to navigate the health needs of the community. Often civil lawyers in these places focus on family or housing law, and ABC for Rural Health is in just one of the state’s 72 counties.

A quote from the article follows: 

Despite meaningful attention to social and structural determinants of health — many of which are intrinsically legal — and to physician–attorney collaboration, there has so far been little, if any, formal recognition of this unique rural disparity among public health researchers.  This is surprising, given that the same U.S. regions experiencing hospital closures and physician shortages, often characterized as rural health care deserts, are largely also classified as rural legal deserts.

And then the Examiner story continues: 

There’s a strong body of research on medical-legal partnerships, and a body of research on the justice gap in rural areas, Statz says. The problem, she says, is that the research too often focuses on just urban areas or just the criminal-legal system — when civil law needs in rural areas are desperately lacking.

Here's a direct quote from Statz who is, as the story notes, a Wisconsin native:

There’s a pretty strong literature on medical-legal partnerships; the problem is they focus almost exclusively on urban contexts. One thing that has been phenomenally frustrating to me is that overwhelmingly … access to healthcare or issues involving health insurance or medical benefits, [are] identified as the top legal needs among rural community members.

Literary Ruralism (Part XXVII): Ibram Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist

I've been reading How to be an Anti-Racist  (2019) this summer as part of a book group offered by my son's school, and I've learned a lot and been impressed by the book.  It has nothing to do with rurality, but I can't resist mentioning that I appreciate that Kendi defines his terms, a practice all too uncommon these days when discussing the very divisive issue of racism and what, specifically, what constitutes racism.  You can agree or disagree with his definitions, but at least he gives them to you.

But to get to the reason I'm posting this on Legal Ruralism, Kendi begins the book's penultimate chapter by talking about time he spent in SUNY Oneonta--State University of New York in Oneonta, as a dissertation fellow.  He was coming from Temple University in Philadelphia, having studied undergrad at Florida A & M.  He grew up in New York and suburban Virginia, near DC. 

Kendi writes:

Caridad was probably the one who ushered me to the lecture at SUNY Oneonta, our state college in the town of Oneonta, in upstate New York.  Forgive me for calling Oneonta a town.  Rural White people from surrounding areas labeled Oneonta "the city." 

At Oneonta, Whiteness surrounded me like clouds from a plane's window, which didn't mean I found no White colleagues who were genial and caring.  But it was Caridad, and all her Puerto Rican feminism and antiracism, who took me by the arm when I arrived as a dissertation fellow in 2008 and brought me closer when I stayed in 2009.  

The first paragraph reminds me that, in defining rural, it often comes down to the old cliche, "it's all relative."   The second reminds me how often we conflate rurality with whiteness, which may be close to accurate regarding Oneonta.  The Census Bureau reports that the population of Oneonta is 86% white (82% white alone, not Hispanic) and 4.6% black, 3.1% Asian and 8.1% Hispanic or Latino. 

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXXVIII): update on my hometown

Screenshot from New York Times 7:12 am (PST) August 28, 2020

A month ago, I wrote about a coronavirus outbreak in the nursing home in Newton County, Arkansas, where I grew up. That story indicated a severe outbreak--very high incidence per capita--but/and centered at the county nursing home, which is owned by the county, an unusual arrangement.  Since then, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on August 1 a follow up to its initial story: 

The nursing home accounts for 85% of all virus cases in the county, based on numbers released Friday by the Arkansas Department of Health. 

The Newton County Nursing Home is the only such facility in the county, which has a population of 8,330. 

A worker at the nursing home tested positive March 31, according to the Health Department, but that employee was sent home and the virus was kept at bay until last week, when the first patient tested positive. 

By July 24, the Health Department said, there were 50-60 positive cases at the nursing home, but exact numbers didn’t show up in the department’s “nursing homes and congregate settings” list until Thursday — 50 positive patients and 27 positive health care workers. However, two of those workers have recovered. 

[Rachel] Bunch [executive director of the Arkansas Health Care Association] said the number 50 for patients includes three people who had been living at the nursing home but died at hospitals.

Bunch's statement is a little confusing since the story doesn't specify the number of COVID-19 deaths at the nursing home, just other data points, e.g., 50-60 positive cases.  Also, Bunch says she doesn't now how many folks in the nursing home are symptomatic, nor how the "virus got in." 

Here's what the state's long-term care facility map and chart looks like currently

Screenshot from Arkansasonline.com 7:20 am (PST) August 28, 2020
Newton County is the county, three east of Oklahoma,
second south from Missouri, with the large dot indicating number of cases
in long-term care facilities.  

This chart shows 59 positive residents, 30 positive staff members, but no "resident deaths" at the Newton County nursing home.  This is in spite of that August 1 story from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette which alluded to three deaths, albeit occurring at a hospital after the patient was moved from the nursing home.  That story also includes this paragraph deeper in the report:

Late Friday [July 31], the Health Department updated its online coronavirus count to show 91 total positive cases in Newton County. Nineteen people had recovered and three died. That means 85% of the county’s total positive virus cases can be traced to the nursing home.

Were the three deaths nursing home deaths, I wondered?  It isn't clear from the story.

The chart above is also inconsistent with what I see reported in the Newton County Times.  The August 19, 2020 issue of that local paper shows two nursing home deaths in the obituaries section, Iva Jean Berry, 88, and Christine Robie, age 85.  The obituary for the former says she died at the Newton County Nursing Home on August 12, 2020, and the one for the latter says she died the day before, August 11, 2020, also at the Newton County Nursing Home in Jasper.  Meanwhile, the August 12, 2020, issue of the Newton County Times reports that 84-year-old Alice Tenison and 63-year-old Dale Rocole, died at the Newton County Nursing Home.  Both died on August 5, 2020.  The August 26, 2020 issue arrived today, and it reports no nursing home deaths. 

With all of these deaths, one can't help wonder if deaths were due to COVID, as has been reported in national media given the higher volume of deaths (than usual) in 2020.  Plus, nothing in the obituaries indicates cause of death, which is typical of obituaries in this newspaper, even if the cause of death is traumatic, like a car accident.  So, these four early August nursing home deaths may well be--are likely to be--COVID caused.  One thing I do find odd--especially if these are COVID deaths and therefore of patients known to have tested positive for COVID--is that the nursing home residents had not been transferred to area hospitals for treatment.  Why did they die at the nursing home, assuming that fact was reported accurately in the obituaries?

The August 19, 2020 issue of the Newton County Times also mentions on the cover page the death of a physician, 84-year-old Roy Lee, who lived in Newton County but worked in Boone County and southern Missouri.  This story is explicit about the cause of death:  COVID-19.  I'm not sure why the distinction unless his family wanted it that way.  Also, I guess because he is a physician--an important figure in the community?--his death runs as a front-page story, with a separate obituary for him also on the front page.  Or maybe it is the fact he died of COVID that caused the editor to run this as a front page story.  The story quotes

At the other end of the age spectrum, Arkansas has sent its public school students back to school.  Here's what the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported yesterday, on that front:

Yesterday, the Health Department released a report showing that 1,126 public school students and 356 employees at the schools had tested positive for the coronavirus since June 15.

Among students and employees, 411 of the infections remained active as of Thursday, meaning the person had not yet recovered.

At his briefing, Hutchinson presented a lower set of statewide school numbers that included only cases from districts with five or more active cases.

He said that “seems like a very modest number” relative to the state’s 480,000 public school students.

“Why it’s important for us to have this starting point, and that’s really what I’m most interested in, is that this is a number really before school activity has started,” Hutchinson said.

“If there was an infection, the students would have got that outside of the school activities to be a statistic right now, and so we’ll be able to measure from that two weeks from now, three weeks, four weeks from now, and I expect that number to go up, but we’ll see.”

Several weeks ago, the governor announced that the state would use a $10 million CARES Act grant to provide hot spots and other means of digital access for Arkansas's public school students. 

What liability is at stake when a county sheriff deputizes citizens, who then get badly hurt?

That's the question the Sacramento Bee story asked two years ago here, and today the California Supreme Court finally made a decision in the case.  Here's an excerpt from Ryan Sabalow's story today:

Nine years ago, a rural California sheriff’s corporal called Jim and Norma Gund and asked them to check on their neighbor, who had called 911 and hung up. When the Gunds arrived, a murderer armed with a Taser and hunting knife attacked the couple and almost killed them. 

Did the Gunds become de facto deputies when they agreed to help Cpl. Ron Whitman, or were they just being good neighbors? 

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office in a case that sought to answer whether people who volunteer to help law enforcement should be entitled to sue for damages if they get hurt, or if they’re merely eligible for workers’ compensation as employees.

“We conclude the Gunds were indeed engaged in ‘active law enforcement service,’” the Supreme Court wrote Thursday. “When the Gunds provided the requested assistance, they delivered an active response to the 911 call of a local resident pleading for help. A response of this kind unquestionably falls within the scope of a police officer’s law enforcement duties.” 

The sheriff’s attorneys argued the Gunds were volunteers and only entitled to workers’ compensation for their injuries.

This part of Sabalow's story sketches the remote context in which these events took place:

The Gunds’ story, which raises troubling questions about the lack of law enforcement in the vast rural reaches of California, began March 13, 2011, in the remote former timber town of Kettenpom, about 250 miles north of San Francisco.

The California Supreme Court decision uses the word rural only twice, both when referring to the Amicus Brief of the Rural County Representatives of California (who filed with California League of Cities on behalf of defendants/respondent, Trinity County.  One of those mentions is in the text of the opinion and another is in the listing of attorneys and briefs.     

Here's the salient excerpt with the word "rural" highlighted:

We have good reasons to embrace, in this context, a more capacious understanding of what “law enforcement service” means. For reasons detailed below, we conclude that the term “active law enforcement service” — as used in section 3366 — falls short of encompassing every conceivable function a peace officer can perform. But neither is it quite so narrow that we are compelled to hold it only applies to the arrest and detention of criminals, or the direct suppression of crime. We conclude that “active law enforcement service” includes a peace officer’s duties directly concerned with functions such as enforcing laws, investigating and preventing crime, and protecting the public. Whatever the outer limits of the term, “active law enforcement” certainly includes the arrest and detention of criminals, as well as — given the range of reasons that ordinarily trigger emergency calls to police — responses to emergency calls for unspecified assistance, such as Kristine’s 911 call for help. (See, e.g., Livingston, Police Discretion and the Quality of Life in Public Places: Courts, Communities, and the New Policing (1997) 97 Colum. L.Rev. 551, 559 [investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those committing serious crimes is “straightforward” police intervention]; see also id. at p. 567 [the modern “ ‘crime-fighting’ ” strategy of policing includes rapid response to 911 calls for service].)  

Consider at the outset the structure of section 3366. It applies when an individual is injured while engaged in active law enforcement service, either on command or voluntarily at the request of a peace officer. Government Code section 26604 indicates that sheriffs “shall command the aid” of inhabitants as they think necessary to execute their duties. This authority for calling forth citizens to aid in law enforcement is the posse comitatus power. (Kopel, The Posse Comitatus and the Office of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned to the Aid of Law Enforcement (2015) 104 J.Crim. L. & Criminology 761, 769– 806.) The posse comitatus power predates the nation’s founding and has a complicated history. (Id. at pp. 792–793.) At the federal level, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 contained posse comitatus provisions enabling federal law enforcement officers to compel northerners to assist in the capture of enslaved people who had escaped bondage. (Id. at pp. 798–800.) After the Civil War, the power was used in reverse to enforce civil rights legislation in the Reconstruction south. (Id. at pp. 800–801.) But the more familiar use of the posse comitatus power was the western frontier version: where a sheriff summoned the posse to pursue an escaped outlaw or confront a violent gang. (Id. at p. 802.) During this era, preservation of the peace did not fall exclusively to peace officers. (Pressel, The Western Peace Officer (1972) pp. 30–31.) On the frontier, preserving the peace was public duty. (Ibid.) Amicus curiae Rural County Representatives of California explains that unlike with the large, organized police forces for urban centers, peace officers in remote areas — like Trinity County — still rely on community members to assist in ensuring community safety.

That last line has me querying:  Is this sort of rural or frontier "policing" the original "community policing" we hear so much about today?

This case also reminds me of my 2014 book chapter:  The Rural Lawscape:  Space Tames Law Tames Space.  There I argue that law enforcement agencies struggle to adequately police  remote and sparsely populated places.  That is the sense in which "space" tames or resists the authority of law/the state.

Rural poverty and disability as peril in the California wildfires

The Los Angeles Times today ran a feature story about the three civilians (by that I means not fire fighters or PG & E employees) killed in the LNU Complex Fire spanning Solano, Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties as fires have raged there for the past 8 days.  This is the fire that's been declared the second largest in California history.

The dateline for this story is Lake Berryessa, but that is not even a Census Designated Place.  It is just a lake.  The lake is, however, surrounded by some settlements, not all even Census Designated Places, including Spanish Flat, one of the communities hardest hit by the recent wildfire.  That is where this iconic photo was taken, and here's an excerpt from the New York Times description of what happened to the folks who live there:

Much of the lakefront community of retirees and young families who commute to landscaping, winery and service jobs in wealthier corners of Napa County had been reduced to a thicket of tangled steel and ash.

In any event, the LA Times story by Anita Chabria (formerly of the Sacramento Bee) features, compassionately, these rural fire victims, their precautions and their demise.  (They are also named but described in much less detail in the New York Times coverage.)  What I also see here, though, is a depiction of rural vulnerability intersecting with other vulnerabilities:  disability, low-income, elderly, spatial isolation.  Here's an excerpt from Chabria's story:

Normally, there is no cellphone signal in these parched hills that form the basin for Lake Berryessa, a reservoir that runs 15 miles across Napa County’s Vaca Mountains. But that evening, [70-year old Mary Hintemeyer] was able to reach her oldest child, Robert McNeal, who lives 13 miles away in the closest town, Winters. He told her to get out. 

As they spoke, she turned back toward the mobile home where she lived with her disabled boyfriend, Leo McDermott, and his son, Thomas. Behind it, on the ridge that loomed above her, she saw smoke — another fire coming out of nearby Wragg Canyon, which she thought had been contained. 

“She said, ‘Oh my God, it’s coming over the other side toward me,’” said McNeal, remembering his last conversation with his mother. “‘I have to go.’”

Among other things, this story is a reminder that places thought of as rich in the national imaginary--Napa Valley, for example--are also home to low-income folks, sometimes eking out a living in their own little slice of the American dream.   Hintemeyer had worked the customer service desk at the Vallejo Times Herald, but also cleaning homes.  Belly dancing was a hobby.  Her 71-year-old boyfriend, Leo McDermott, was wheelchair bound.

As for many rural residents in California, there was no effective system to warn them of the wildfire danger.  These are also the themes from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires in, among other places, Mendocino, Butte, and Sonoma counties. 

Catching up on bad news for rural Americans about the 2020 Census

The New York Times published this today, which reminded me of this story about 10 days ago out of USA Today, headlined "2020 census 'emergency' threatens to leave out communities of color and rural Americans."  Marco della Cava reports, and here are two excerpts that implicate both rural places and people of color: 

Texas stands out: A majority of its counties show fewer than 50% of residents self-reporting their census information. Edwards County, by the Rio Grande, is at just 14.8%. Other undercounted areas include almost all of New Mexico; California's Central Valley; the southern half of Georgia; and the largely Native American Four Corners region where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet.

* * *  

[Howard] Fienberg [co-director of the Census Project, the nation's largest census advocacy group] notes that a big undercount is likely to affect rural areas that already face limited commercial and federal resources, places such as Big Horn County, Montana, where 82% of the population of 13,000 is uncounted by the 2020 census, or Rich County, Utah, where 88% of 1,800 have yet to respond.

Today's New York Times story also mentioned Big Horn County as an illustration of what is going wrong with this year's Census.  Again, that report conflates rurality with the American Indian count.

But rural whites will be undercounted, too.  This story that came out in my hometown newspaper, the Newton County Times, today, "Residents report difficulty responding to Census" by Staff Reports (which in this case means some was picked up from Census Bureau press releases).  My home county is nearly all white, and the current response rate there is just 31.1%, while the response rate in the county seat is 40%.  Here's the story: 

Jasper and Newton County residents are reporting difficulty filing their information for the 2020 US Census, said Jasper Mayor Jan Larson during Thursday's city council meeting.

Larson wants residents to participate in the census because population data is important for the city to be considered favorably for state and federal grants. People want to help and fill in their census forms, she said, but they say their information is not being received and recorded. 

Council Member Michael Thomas agreed, saying he filled out census forms three times, the first two times were done online, but they did not register with the Census Bureau, he said. The third time he filled out the questionnaire presented by a census canvasser, but he still doesn't know if the information was saved on the bureau's reporting system.

Council Member Todd Parker said he went online to fill out the census form, but he had trouble getting the computer program to accept his city street address. He had to modify the address in order for the information to be accepted.

Others point to the county's 911 addressing system as the problem.

Larson said that about 40% of the city has taken the census.

A press release received by the Newton County Times earlier this week states that census takers in Newton County are following up with households that have not yet responded to the 2020 Census.

The current self-response rate in Newton County is 31.1%. The Census Bureau will need to visit the remaining addresses to collect responses in person.

Households can still respond now by completing and mailing back the paper questionnaire they received, by responding online at 2020census.gov, or by phone at 844-330-2020. Households can also respond online or by phone in one of 13 languages and find assistance in many more. Those that respond will not need to be visited to obtain their census response.

What Households Can Expect

The Census Bureau will provide face masks to census takers and requires that census takers wear a mask while conducting their work. They will follow CDC and local public health guidelines when they visit. Census takers must complete a virtual COVID-19 training on social distancing protocols and other health and safety guidance before beginning their work in neighborhoods. 

Census takers are hired from local communities. All census takers speak English, and many are bilingual. If a census taker does not speak the householder’s language, the household may request a return visit from a census taker who does. Census takers will also have materials on hand to help identify the household’s language.

If no one is home when the census taker visits, the census taker will leave a notice of their visit with information about how to respond online, by phone or by mail. People are encouraged to cooperate with census takers and ensure that everyone who was living in their household as of April 1, 2020, is counted.

How to Identify Census Takers

Census takers can be easily identified by a valid government ID badge with their photograph, a U.S. Department of Commerce watermark, and an expiration date on the badge. To confirm a census taker’s identity, the public may contact their regional census center to speak with a Census Bureau representative.

About the 2020 Census 

The U.S. Constitution mandates a census of the population every 10 years. The goal of the 2020 Census is to count everyone who lives in the United States on April 1, 2020 (Census Day). Census statistics are used to determine the number of seats each state holds in the U.S. House of Representatives and informs how billions of dollars in federal funds will be allocated by state, local and federal lawmakers annually for the next 10 years.

This all reminds me that my mom told me back in March when she completed and returned her  Census Form.  Being home from work early in the pandemic gave her time to do so.  That's about when my household here in California also returned ours. 

How student debt contributes to the rural lawyer shortage

The Daily Journal, a trade publication covering the legal profession, reported a few weeks ago on the link between high law student debt in California and the rural lawyer shortage here in the Golden State.  You can read the story here.

My favorite parts are journalist Henrik Nilsson's interviews with a rural practitioner and a UCLA law student interested in rural practice.  Here's the excerpt about the former, Darryl E. Young, who practices in Merced:

As tuition prices have gone up, the cost of living is much lower, especially in rural counties.  So salaries are usually lower as well.  It's very difficult for attorneys starting in a rural area because they have a lot of debt. And your potential income is usually a lot lower.  

And then there is a quote from a long-established attorney in Kings County, the state's most acute legal desert.  Michael Dias says

We've not had any problem getting qualified individuals come and practice here in King's County.  ...  In our practice, we don't see a lawyer shortage.  

Easy to say for the guy who is fat and happy off the limited practice in Kings County, which is lucrative for him, presumably representing rich ranchers.  You see that everywhere:  the message that the existing rural lawyers are doing fine.  No time for or acknowledgement of the people who can't afford them or who are not being served by them.

Nilsson also tracked down a UCLA law student, Christopher Galeano, who is interested in practicing in a rural part of LA County, in the Palmdale/Lancaster area.

Many students often say they want to first pay off their debt and then go and do the work they want to do.  So essentially, they say "Let me go get this high-paying job and pay all this debt that I owe, and then I'll go do that work."  I have gone through that experience as well.  I've taken on some debt to go to law school, and I didn't get that awesome financial aid package or scholarship that pays my whole tuition or something like that. ...  UCLA and other schools in the UC system are publicly funded.  Those dollars are also tax dollars from rural communities, and they do come from folks who need legal services one way or another.   

It's an important perspective that Galeano offers.

Oh, and don't miss the quote from me (including my honest opinion that law school--especially in California--is way to expensive and the contrasting/responsive quote from Dean Jennifer Mnookin of UCLA Law states, among other things,"I think there's a perception that larger metropolitan areas may offer more career mobility down the line."  I want to focus on "perception."  I mean, Mnookin is probably right not only re perception, but reality.  But shouldn't we be resisting both and re-defining success?  Isn't that an appropriate and key role for legal educators in this age of burgeoning inequality?

Coronavirus in rural America (LXXXVII): Back to school in Trinity County, California

Counseling Office at Trinity High School, Weaverville
July 2018 (c) Lisa R. Pruitt

Hailey Branson-Potts reports for the Los Angeles Times from Weaverville, California, population 3,600, where schools have reopened.  The headline is catchy, "In a rural California town, schools try something extraordinary and risky: Classrooms with children."  Here's an excerpt:

Coffee Creek Elementary School, well north of Weaverville
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

While the vast majority of California students are starting the academic year online, something extraordinary happened in this public school district in rural Northern California: Students sat in classrooms.

Skateboarding teenager, Weaverville
July (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

With the region’s low case count, school administrators and teachers said they are confident they can reopen safely and quickly adjust if infections emerge. If the district is successful, it could be a preview for other California schools, including in Los Angeles County, as infections begin to decline. 

Trinity County Office of Education, Weaverville
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

The start of in-person instruction in the Trinity Alps Unified School District felt both surreal and comfortingly routine, an act of desperate, fragile hope five months after the COVID-19 pandemic closed campuses across the Golden State.
But this is a story not only about the opening of a rural school district--in sharp contrast to urban ones--it is also about so many of the concerns we've heard expressed since children got sent home in March.  Another excerpt follows:

After schools closed in March, many isolated students here battled apathy and anxiety, witnessed increased drug and alcohol abuse by their parents, and fought more with their stressed-out families, the county noted in its school reopening plan. As in other rural areas, the district struggled to teach far-flung students who have less access to the internet and bad cellphone service and who rely on schools to feed them. 

“There’s a lot of despair,” said Sheree Beans, the school nurse for the Trinity County Office of Education who helped write the schools’ reopening plan. “I feel like COVID took away hope, and that lack of hope, it spans generations.”

College pennants hanging in Trinity County Office of Education
including Oregon State, Utah, Stanford, San Diego State
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

What a poignant quote, and one that reflects my own experiences growing up amidst rural poverty that is entrenched and intergenerational.

Some data points about Trinity County:

• population is 82% white
• poverty rate (before the pandemic) was 22%
• officially, nearly 2/3 of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, though administrators suspect the percentage who qualify is actually higher

Weaverville Junior High School
Title I funds go to schools based
on student socioeconomic need
(c) Lisa R Pruitt 2018

Branson-Potts' story, accompanied by Kent Nishimura's photographs, cover not only the county seat, but also at least one outlying elementary school, at Burnt Ranch, population 291, in the northwestern part of the county. I drove through a community of a similar size, Coffee Creek, as I headed north on State Highway 3, toward Siskiyou County (see Coffee Creek Elementary photo, above).

Weaverville, California
Dollar General Stores are fixtures in the rural U.S.
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Another terrific detail in this story regards the long bus rides some students endure.  One high school student who lives near Willow Creek, more than 50 miles from Weaverville, had gotten up at 5:30 am so his mom could get him to the farthest point the school bus goes, at 6:47 am.  The bus would arrive at Trinity High School after 8 am.

Other Legal Ruralism posts featuring Trinity County news and photos, several touching on rural poverty and related issues, are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The western edge of Weaverville, Highway 299
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

I'll just say, as I've said before, the primary reason I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times (digital edition), at a rate now of about $25/month (more than I pay for any other digital subscription), is that they dedicate significant resources to covering rural far northern California. This piece is exhibit A, though I've blogged about many others in recent years.  

This office is right next to the Trinity County Sheriff's Office;
in fact, they may be in the same structure.  A sign says the building was built in 1981.
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Literary Ruralism (Part XXVI): The Tsar of Love and Techno

This post is going to seem to some folks like a stretch as far as rural goes.  However, a passage from Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015) struck me as rural in the sense of reminding me of rural attachment to place, even as the place declines and opportunity is lost. 

The "place" in Marra's book is a Siberian town north of the Arctic circle, Kirovsk, where nickel was mined and, as a consequence, pollution has been rife and its effects have accumulated over the years.  Yet, after several generations there, the descendants of those shipped there because they were disloyal to Stalin (or perceived to be), people are reluctant to leave.  Marra writes via the voice of a 30-something woman whose grandparents were exiled to Kirovsk by Stalin: 

The layoffs began shortly after the first war in Chechnya ended.  Automated machines mined nickel with greater efficiency than our husbands.  Pensions vanished in the fluctuations of foreign stock exchanges.  Even those who kept their jobs struggled.  With the collapsing ruble, the payments of wages and pensions delayed for months, no one could afford the imported products that replaced familiar Soviet brands.  We considered moving to a milder climate but couldn't manage relocation costs.  Besides, our children were the fourth generation to call the Arctic home.  This meant something even if we didn't know quite what. 

Los Angeles Times features rural volunteer fire department in story about northern California wildfires

The report out of Ben Lomond, population 6,234 but unincorporated, in Santa Cruz County, California, is by Susanne Rust for the Los Angeles Times.  An excerpt follows:

On Friday night, the tired, equipment-strapped crew of Ben Lomond’s volunteer firefighting team was briefed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in the mountain town fire station’s airy and unfinished kitchen. 

A collection of lightning-sparked fires had merged into one blaze that was raging in the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west. 

The firefighters were told that Cal Fire’s models suggested in the next 48 to 72 hours, the fire would move into Boulder Creek’s downtown. If the crews were unable to stop the fire there, Cal Fire would pull its reinforcements and allow the fire to funnel down the valley — through Brookdale, Ben Lomond and Felton — toward Route 17, the high-speed mountain highway that connects San Jose and Santa Cruz. 

It was dispiriting news. But local firefighters planned to wage a stand to save the communities, even without the backup.

Rust's story features a couple of quotes from these volunteer firefighters, whose day jobs are fighting fires professionally or working as first responders for urban fire departments in the Bay Area.  This quote is from Todd Ellis, captain of Ben Lomond's volunteer fire district: 

This is my home. These are our neighbors. There’s no way I wouldn’t be here fighting.

Rust also quotes Carl Kustin, a volunteer with the Boulder Creek Fire District:  

We don’t do this for money. We do this because we love our neighbors. We love our crews. And for us, there’s nothing more inspiring than helping others and using everything we have to support people and communities.

Another LA Times story discussing the Ben Lomond fire is here.  Prior posts that feature volunteer fire departments, among others, are here and here. 

Multiple stories on impact of USPS slow down on rural America

These stories have been popping up for several days now, and I'm going to work through in the order in which they appeared or, if several appeared on the same day, the order in which they came to my attention.  Three of the four stories feature the death of baby chicks, shipped by mail and dying because of delivery delays.

The first is by the Portland Press-Herald (Maine), dateline New Sharon, population 1407, with the headline, "Chicks shipped by mail are arriving dead, costing Maine farmers thousands of dollars."  Here's the lede:

Last week Pauline Henderson was shocked when she picked up a shipment of what was supposed to be 800 live chicks from her post office in New Sharon. 

Henderson, who owns and operates Pine Tree Poultry, a family farm and chicken meat processing facility that specializes in chicken pot pies, said all 800 chicks sent from a hatchery in Pennsylvania were dead.

“We’ve never had a problem like this before,” said Henderson, who has been running her farm for five years and regularly receives shipments of live birds. 

“Usually they arrive every three weeks like clockwork,” she said Wednesday. “And out of 100 birds you may have one or two that die in shipping.” 

The second story is by the Los Angeles Times, and it isn't especially rural focused.  The headline is "‘Like Armageddon’: Rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities amid cutbacks," and the dateline is Tehachapi, population 14,414, in the Inland Empire.  Laura Nelson and Maya Lau report.  Here's an excerpt that touches on the rural implications of goings on at the U.S.P.S., which I've already written about here last week:

Processing plants serve more than 1,000 California post offices, some of which deliver to far-flung, rural addresses that could be faced with high delivery costs if serviced by private mail carriers.

* * *  

The delays were particularly tragic for live animals, including baby chickens and crickets, that are transported through the U.S. Postal Service. Usually, mail handlers say, they can hear the birds peeping and rustling around in their boxes. 

This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing. 

Workers sometimes see shipments of crickets jumping around inside their packaging, said Eddie Cowan, a mail handler and the president of a local chapter of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Now, he said, “you can see in the packages those crickets are dead.”

Jack Healy's story for the New York Times on August 21, 2020, also featured baby chicks.   This story is also out of Maine, this time the coastal town of Thomaston, population 2,781.  An excerpt follows:

Rhiannon Hampson thought she would hear a cacophony of cheeping when she went to her post office in coastal Maine to fetch a delivery of newly hatched chicks. But the cardboard boxes addressed to her poultry farm were silent. 

“We could hear a few, very faint peeps,” Ms. Hampson said. “Out of 500, there were maybe 25 alive. They were staggering. It was terrible.” 

This is what happens when the mail suddenly becomes unreliable in rural towns and stretches of countryside where there are scant FedEx or UPS deliveries, and where people rely on the post office as an irreplaceable hub of commerce and connection.

The final story does not feature baby chicks.  But it does feature rural small businesses.   This story is by NPR's Kirk Siegler and is out of Wisconsin.  He includes a quote from Lois Davis, a senior policy researcher at Rand Corporation: 

More for many folks who live in rural areas, their only daily contact may be the mail carrier. 

A further excerpt follows: 

A recent study [Davis] led at the California-based security think tank showed that the Postal Service ranks high in terms of federal institutions that the public has trust in. In an era when, generally, faith in institutions seems to be eroding, this doesn't go unnoticed.

* * *

"If our mail isn't right, what other connections are we going to lose?" says Rich Judge, an organizer with the newly formed left-leaning group Rural America 2020. 

His group is fighting everything from the recent tariffs facing farmers to threatened shutdowns of post offices and routes in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 

Judge runs a small communications business from his home in rural Sauk County, Wis., where, he says, small businesses and family dairy farmers are getting squeezed, working longer hours while also seeing their profits and savings decline. 

"You're telling people who already have to work harder than they did 20 years ago, 'By the way, we're going to impede your progress even more by hamstringing the Postal Service,' " Judge says.

You'll find many posts about post offices--and photographs of rural ones--here on Legal Ruralism.  Just type "post office" into the search bar.