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. 

The changing Chinese attitude towards the rural

I was born in Shanghai at the turn of the century in Zhongshan Park, rooted in the heart of the city. In the 1930s, my grandfather watched as the roots of the first international port in China shot off into a burgeoning international hub. Following WW2, my father watched factories churn out concrete and asphalt onto the packed dirt and cobblestone streets of the city as the rapid industrialization of China choked out any surviving remnants of Imperial China.

 

    Old Shanghai Circa 1960s

By the time I was born, modern Shanghai had been presented to the world, a true “global” city by the metrics of the size of its economy, China’s New York and London wrapped into one neon package. In the twenty years since, it has only grown, the bright skylines on both sides of the Huangpu River, Puxi and Pudong, divided in appearance only by the living memory and history of Pudong’s more humble origins.

View landing into Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Oct 2025

  The Bund, Shanghai, Oct 2025

In the day of my father, the city was the desired end goal, the only location where the rapidly industrializing China could be experienced by the formerly agrarian subsistence farmers who had always comprised the bulk of China's populace. The city was where any enterprising person could get rich, the gateway to the unimaginable international world. A hukou (a little more about that in this prior post and the Economist) in the city was the most desirable to be able to get the exclusive social services reserved for the residents of the city.

And yet, core to the Maoist goal of uplifting the “pure” agrarian proletariat was the belief that the city cultivated undesirable pro-bourgeois sentiments, and thus, from the 1950s to the 1970s, urban youths were all sent to countryside (a collection of photos detailing the Back to the Countryside Movement collected by the University of Dartmouth here). The thinking was that the hard work of rural life would leave them firm believers of social equality, while also fostering the toughness that only farming and ranching builds (Read more here).

Until the Back to the Countryside movement ended in the 1980s, the idea to stay in the rural communes was unthinkable, the whole experience a memory in the same type of biting poverty that they had lived through during the revolution. In many respects, the rural people were the same people as the impoverished peasantry that had long suffered. In some parts of China today, any reference to the mountains still carries the old reference to the impoverished villages that remain in those areas (a la hillbillies). The food of such areas remains directly translated as “dirt food” or peasant food.

Today, however, a growing counterculture has emerged, two generations after the boom. Rising costs in the city make finding a job, buying an apartment and starting a family prohibitively expensive for graduates of even the most elite universities. Rising youth unemployment (near 20%)  reveals the worst job market China has ever seen (A slight improvement in this new 2026 quarter by South China Morning Post). Even in the context of urban opportunities, the struggle and competition itself can be overwhelming even for those who grew up with it.

Growing numbers of Chinese youths seek to escape to the rural, rather than continue in the race of urban life. This trend continues even with the now easier process for the obtaining of a hukou, and the friendlier sentiments inviting these new exurban residents to new cities. 

The Economist points out that:

It had taken just two generations for a Chinese family to pass from pre-industrial agrarianism to post-material urban malaise

In this, the Chinese and the Americans are now more similar than different. As China’s growth slows as America's did in the 1980s, and the glow of the urban lights burns more than it inspires, with it will come the nostalgia for what is gone. When the struggles of rural poverty are removed, only the admittedly beautiful view remains.

  My Mom's hometown, now a highway, circa 2010s

Another NY Times take on rural culture, in relation to Trump and MAGA

Today's New York Times Opinions podcast features a conversation about "The Aesthetic that Explains American Identity Now."  The alternative headline is "MAGA and the Country Aesthetic."  Here's the NYT's overview description of the episode: 

Rural aesthetics are in, from cowboy boots to country albums by pop stars to pastoral idealism peddled by influencers. The New York Times Opinion editor Meher Ahmad speaks to the columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom and the contributor Emily Keegin about what these cultural touch points mean for our politics and society at large.

Before including some key quotes, I'll just observe that I think the commentator's argument is overstated.  Here are some excerpts:  

Ahmad: Both Tressie and Emily are keen observers of the cultural zeitgeist, and in their own spheres they’ve been noticing an ongoing mainstreaming of all things country and rural. Think shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Hunting Wives”. Pop stars like Beyoncé and Sabrina Carpenter produce country songs as part of their repertoire. And tradwife influencers like Hannah Neeleman, popularly known on social media as Ballerina Farm, has now more than 10 million followers.

* * *

McMillan Cottom: There’s a show where a farmer takes a wife ... But you can even get into shows that aren’t as character driven, where the rurality is actually a character. So then you’ve got shows where there are alligator hunters in Louisiana, a show called “Swamp People.”

* * * 

Keegin: Yes. I think we’ve had a very long romance with rural aesthetics in this country.  (emphasis added)

And after the second Trump win, what I noticed was there was a big cowboy trend that took off. Denim is big. Western culture is big. “S.N.L.” this season had a musical act in a hayloft. Realtree coming in and dominating the sweatshirt world.

Ok, honest confession, I had to look up "Reatree."  Had no idea what that was.  I had heard of a realty company with a similar name selling rural properties.  As best I can tell, the two are not related. 

Keegin: Well, OK. Where would you have seen it? You would have seen the pattern on the merch of Chappell Roan. She has a hat that says “Midwest Princess.” And Midwest Princess, I think, is part of this trend, as well. That was picked up by the Harris Walz campaign. If you recall they also had a Camo hat.

* * * 

McMillan Cottom: When we’re talking about being romantic for rural life, we’re really talking about an imaginary place. This isn’t really the rural life that actual people who live in rural America tend to be familiar with. These are signifiers that are maybe less about a physical place, a geography.  (emphasis added)

I would say the divide is between nostalgia and today’s politics. It manifests in many different ways. But when you say something like “Make America Great,” that’s a backward-looking vision. That is not about the future — although it’s trying to own the idea of what the future should look like. It is really calling to a nostalgia for an imagined American past where all families were “traditional” and all women were real women and home life looked this way.

* * *

Keegin: We look at how culture changed through the Clinton years and what was on TV. And when the rural revolt happened in 1994, we had a narrative around that about a shift in a rising conservative culture in this country — which was absolutely true. Narratives are based in truth. And our television shows followed that. 

* * *  

McMillan Cottom: [K]eeping in mind that when we talk about Donald Trump being a sort of a quintessential New York urban figure, that may be true in his biography, but we’re not talking about real places when we talk about urban versus rural.

And when you appeal to rural, you are always, always, calling up the idea of urban. These two things exist at the same time. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is: I would say that what Donald Trump does — the way he enters into the rural imagination: He does it through Southernness.

* * *

I think that what Donald Trump does is he becomes associated with rural life because of how often he has appealed to Southernness, when he, of course, raises the specter of racism or raises the specter of genteel womanhood — all of those things that the South is kind of known for.

They came in the figure of Donald Trump and his rhetoric, so we keep this big treasure chest — a repertoire of ideas in the South. And when somebody wants to call them up, they can go and open the toy chest, and there it is. You can pull out the Confederate flag, and you can pull out songs of the South or whatever it is.

And suddenly, people’s imagination is in the South. Well, once you are in the South, in the imagination, you are just a — if you’ll forgive me — you are just a hayride away from rural America.

And so those two things, I think, are happening simultaneously with Donald Trump. Appealing to nostalgia will always have political power, especially when people are very anxious and afraid, which is what I would argue people are — for many, many reasons. And that’s why I think Donald Trump reads as rural to some people.

Although I’d pay money to see Donald Trump in actual rural America, for what it’s worth.

* * *

Keegin: You know, Donald Trump shows the seams. You see where the makeup ends on his face. It’s very clear that his hair is done by himself, and you see the grease in it. There’s a photo of him where you see that he holds his tie together with tape.

I think when we boil down what a rural aesthetic is, regardless of who is engaging with it, it is about the human hand and showing what humans create — versus the urban aesthetic, which is based in machines and in technology. We think about our urban centers: That is where we produce a lot of our culture, but they’re also the center of our governments and our financial centers.

All of the aesthetics that we associate with urban life come from those occupations, which are about the mind over the body. This is not where you are toiling and making things with the human hand and with your physical self. And that is the schism. When I look at Trump, I think: Yes, there are a lot of things about him that are very rural — because he’s not slick.

Then there's more in this podcast about the "Renaissance of country music" and what it suggests about this political moment.  I'll leave that to you readers to assess.  Some of the illustration of what these NYTimes folks label "rural"--especially matters related to cowboys and Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone"--seem to me more specifically about the imaginary associated with the "wild west" and with patriarchy.   In the latter regard, I was reminded of Kristen Kobes Du Mez' Jesus and John Wayne, a book I highly recommend.  

On using localism to help save rural America

This is from Jeffrey Tyler Syck on Persuasion's Substack on Tuesday, Nov. 25, "Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America."  Syck, an assistant professor of politics at the University of Pikeville, in eastern Kentucky, frames his argument in relation to J.D. Vance's embrace of nationalism and his concomitant neglect of the local:  

The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole—they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation.

But [J.D.] Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.

The proof surrounds me every day in my native Central Appalachia. As a child, most local businesses in my neighborhood seemed to identify first and foremost with East Kentucky. Many bore names like “commonwealth insurance” or “mountain music.” Though people in the region were patriotic, the primary emotional attachment was regional and not national.

Yet since Vance—and MAGA more broadly—have encouraged a strong dose of nationalism in red states, this has changed. Now when I cruise down the highway I am greeted by “Patriot RV” or “American Laundry and Cleaners.” This is a subtle but telling shift.

* * *

Champions of rural America must reject reactionary nationalist attempts to rewind the clock back to the 1950s. They need a totally new solution to rural malaise—one that combines the localism of the past with the values of the open society that will likely dominate the coming century. This is not an easy task; it asks us to combine two things that have not historically gone well together. Yet it is the only real hope for rural America.

How might it come about?

The first step is for government and civil society to rejuvenate local cultural institutions. For instance, in my native Eastern Kentucky we should work hard to make local newspapers a strong cultural force again. We should restore historical buildings and landscapes, beautifying cheap utilitarian constructions so that they fit with the vernacular culture, and preserve local environments. We should refurbish the folksy brick buildings native to this region, tearing down or renovating eyesores, and conserving the stunning Appalachian Mountains that are the physical home of my people. Perhaps most importantly, we should invest in local art, music, and culture. This could mean cultivating a serious appreciation for bluegrass music, Appalachian literature, and local history. Learning to appreciate the culture of one’s home is a guaranteed path to restoring a sense of purpose to the locality.

For more on "left-behind places" read this essay.  

When you wish upon a media conglomerate: Disney's depiction of rurality

While I don’t consider myself a “Disney adult,” my friends argue my Little Mermaid socks and Mickey Mouse bucket hat suggest otherwise. Regardless of my title, I admit I have fond memories visiting Disneyland with my family.

However, I know visiting Disneyland is a privilege. As a previous blog post discusses, the difference in average household income between metro and non metro areas has increased by nearly 30 percent since 2016. Given the rising costs of attending Disneyland or Disney World, families from metro areas are better situated to afford the trip.

Yet, Disney’s influence isn’t confined to physical theme parks. The company owns or has a stake in a plethora of companies including: ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, FX Networks, Hulu, Pixar, Marvel, 20th Century Studios, Lucasfilm, A&E Networks and Vice Media. This monopoly allows Disney to influence and control media narratives.

But, as discussed in a previous blog post, nearly 25 percent of rural Americans lack access to high speed broadband internet, a higher number compared to their urban and suburban counterparts. As such, those who can access media owned by Disney likely skew more urban and suburban.

Therefore, overall, Disney likely speaks to a largely suburban and urban audience, and thus can mold audiences’ perceptions of rurality.

The company, begun by Walt Disney, originally reflected the more small town, rural values of Walt’s childhood. Although born in Chicago, Walt spent years of his childhood on a farm in Marceline, Missouri, which today has a population of 2,123. As such, when Walt began The Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923, many films centered on Mickey Mouse in rural America. In fact, Walt Disney described Main Street, USA, which is how all visitors enter Disneyland, as a typical small town in the early 1900s. Indeed, the street was inspired by Walt’s time in Marceline.

But, as the world expanded and urbanized in the latter half of the 20th century, so too did Disney. Around the time Disneyland opened in 1955, 64 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas, compared to 83 percent of the population now. In line with the demographic change, Disney has created more movies and shows set in cities. And, audiences have responded favorably. Today, for example, two of the highest grossing cartoon Disney movies are Incredibles 2 and Inside Out 2: the former taking place across multiple large, fictionalized cities and the latter in San Francisco.

While less frequent, however, Disney has not stopped depicting rurality. Thus, it is important to consider how a primarily suburban and urban audience views and understands these depictions in the 21st century.

While not nearly as high grossing as Incredibles 2 or Inside Out 2, one of the more obvious displays of rurality is Disney Pixar’s Cars, the 2006 movie about anthropomorphic vehicles. In the film, Lightning McQueen, a race car, gets stranded in the rural town Radiator Springs. One of the protagonists of Cars is Tow Mater, described as a tow truck with buck teeth and a Southern accent with a hillbilly twang.

The inspiration for Tow Mater came from a real life man, Douglas “Mater” Keever, a construction superintendent living in Sherrills Ford, North Carolina. Cars director John Lasseter struck up a friendship with Keever at Lowe’s Speedway in 2001. He met him on what locals anointed “Redneck Hill,” the place hardcore fans camped out to watch races. When they first met, Keever introduced himself as:

Mater . . . tuh-mater, but without the tuh.

Lasseter faced a creative block during development of the movie, before remembering his interaction with Keever. He called him in the middle of the day, asking if the Cars team could use his name. Keever happily agreed, and even made a brief cameo in the movie. In fact, his exact introduction to Lasseter became Tow Mater’s introduction to Lightning McQueen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Keever stated:

You don’t know what Pixar has done for Mater. They’ve taken a poor old country boy and got him involved in something awesome . . . They paid me for my name, and for me to come out there and record my parts and stuff. They really looked after Mater. Paid for my mo-tel. They really bent over backwards.

While Disney paid Keever for contributions, we don’t know the exact amount. Thus, it’s hard to gauge whether Keever was fairly compensated for inspiring one of the most beloved characters in Cars, a movie that grossed over $240 million. Plus, Disney further capitalized on Cars’ popularity by building a real-life Radiator Springs for Disneyland.

Additionally, some label the character Tow Mater problematic, arguing he’s a stereotype of low class, rural white people. A Daily Yonder article entitled “Speak Your Piece: Hollywood’s Rural America is a Scary Place” opens with the simple question:

Why does Hollywood think rural America is either ridiculous or evil?

Tow Mater is no doubt ridiculous, and it's hard to know if urban and suburban audiences laugh at him or with him. Or, if Cars successfully conveys deeper themes about rural communities. But, perhaps the most weight should be given to the fact that the rural man who inspired Cars likes the movie. Additionally, Cars tells a story about two strangers from different backgrounds who form a strong friendship, a beneficial message for a primarily suburban and urban audience.

Whether Disney’s more modern approach to rurality necessitates celebration, criticism, or a mix of both, is a tricky question. I don’t have a clear answer. But, even as a potential Disney adult, one thing is clear to me. With great power comes great responsibility. Given Disney’s immense power, we should ask tough questions to ensure the company provides positive representations of marginalized communities.

On rurality as a double-edged sword: David McCormick, Republican Senate candidate, presents himself as "rural"

The New York Times published this story last week (before the Pennsylvania primary) under the headline, "This G.O.P. Senate Candidate Says He Grew Up on a Family Farm. Not Exactly."  Here's the lede: 

David McCormick’s origin story goes something like this: He grew up in rural Pennsylvania, southwest of Scranton. He baled hay, trimmed Christmas trees and otherwise worked on his family’s farm. And from those humble beginnings, he rose to achieve the American dream.

“I spent most of my life in Pennsylvania, growing up in Bloomsburg on my family’s farm,” Mr. McCormick, now a Republican candidate for Senate, told Pittsburgh Quarterly in 2022.

“I’ve truly lived the American dream,” he wrote in a fund-raising appeal in October. “My life’s journey — from growing up on a farm in Bloomsburg, to graduating from West Point and serving in the 82nd Airborne Division, growing a business in Pittsburgh, and serving at the highest levels of government — reflects that.”

In January, speaking at the Pennsylvania farm show, McCormick said: 

I grew up on a family farm from the time I was a kid.

The journalists reporting this story, however, who have conducted interviews, reviewed public records and news coverage, "suggest he has given a misleading impression about key aspects of his background."   

McCormick has also described his parents at school teachers. In fact, his father was president of Bloomsburg University, and he grew up mostly in the house provided by the University.  

All of the reminds me the recent assertion by Paul Waldman and Tom Schaller of what they claim is an unwritten rule that the media are hands off rural folks--that they are a group you can't criticize.  I don't agree with that (and have written lots in support of the contrary proposition).  That said, it's interesting that politicians like McCormick are (still) trying to present themselves as "regular Joe's" by saying they grew up rural and/or on a farm.  (Recall that George W. Bush was widely identified as incorporating a similar strategy).  

California's Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta in the national news this week

Earlier this week, an episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, featured Solano County, California's rural reaches, including an area referred to as the Delta and specifically the town called RioVista.  The podcast is about Silicon Valley investors buying up land to build a new city, an enterprise now called California Forever.  I first wrote about the land purchases here and a student wrote this post a few weeks later.  

A day after that episode of The Daily, Here and Now, the syndicated news program by WBUR in Boston, featured a story about how Bay Area (California) artists and makers are moving to the same Delta region, where they find more affordable housing and a surprisingly welcoming community of locals.  

The Daily podcast is mostly an interview with NYT journalist Connor Doughterty, who broke the story about who was behind the land purchases in rural Solano County.  The reason I want to feature this podcast is to showcase the descriptions of rural people and their lifestyle, including their attachment to place, though that has little to do with what is suggested by the story's headline, "The Billionaires' Secret Plan to Solve California's Housing Crisis."  Here are some examples of what drew me to share the podcast, beginning with this description of the place the billionaires have been buying up: 

[I]magine you’re in San Francisco and you drive north further up into the Bay Area into an area called Solano County. And then you go way east and you end up in this very rural corner of the Bay Area that not a lot of people know about. And it’s over here, in this rural corner of Solano County, where our story takes place.

And it’s these open sort of rolling landscape of yellow hills with almost nothing on it. The largest structures there are wind turbines. And a lot of the families out there are farmers. They farm sheep, feed crops, and cows. And many of the people out there have been there since the 1860s.

This is a place where families stay in the same place for generations and pass the farms down several times. This is a place where not a lot changes, but then, in 2017, something very unusual starts to happen. A company called Flannery Associates, which nobody in the area has ever heard of, starts buying land.

And they buy more the next year, the year after that, the year after that, more and more and more and more, until pretty quickly they’re the biggest landowner in the entire county.  So all these neighbors are at supermarkets, they’re at church, they’re at schools. I mean, this is a place where everyone knows everyone.

They’re all on community boards together. They all talk to each other all the time. They all sort of simultaneously get these offers for their land.

Then there's this: 

[Dougherty:] So they not only want everyone’s farm, they start offering people these incredibly sweetheart deals, which say, OK, well, I’m going to buy your land, but you can stay there for the next decade or two, depending on how old they are. And for all that time, you can collect all the income from this land.

They don’t even want the income of the land. So one thing everyone realizes pretty quickly is, these people are not interested in farming.

Michael Barbaro [host] [LAUGHS]: Because if they wanted to farm, they would kick the farmers off the land they had just bought.

Dougherty:  Or they would want to make money from farming.

Barbaro:  Right.

Dougherty:  They don’t care about the price that reflects the income and they don’t even care about collecting the income. So they very obviously have a plan that has nothing to do with farming. And so the question is, what’s the plan? And who are these people?

The next step is to see if they can pass a local ballot initiative to get approval for California Forever: 

Solano County has a rule that says you can’t build in the rural areas, and that’s because they want to preserve these farms just as they’ve been for generations. So at the start of this year, California Forever filed a proposed ballot initiative that would undo that and pave the way for them to eventually build this city.

California Forever CEO Jan Sramek is now holding town hall meetings to try to convince voters to support the land use change.  Along Interstate 80 from Vallejo to Dixon, both cities in Solano County, one now sees California Forever billboards touting the jobs that will come with the new endeavor--and the annual salaries (in the six figures) associated with those jobs.  

And here's a November, 2023, story by KCRA out of Sacramento touting the first tour of the land Flannery Associates bought.  The report mentions the new community would "include open space, agriculture, solar farms, and habitat conservation." 

Here's another terrific quote from the January story by Doughterty, more appropriately headlined, "The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted":

The truth was that Mr. Sramek wanted to build a city from the ground up, in an agricultural region whose defining feature was how little it had changed.  (emphasis mine)

While the podcast headline suggests that the Silicon Valley billionaires were motivated to help solve the state's housing crisis, I don't think that is accurate.  The plan really comes down to profit--one could even say greed.  The investors would not have gambled, otherwise, on getting the necessary local approval, by referendum, before they are able to begin to execute their plan.  

The images Dougherty shares of the agricultural areas of the California Delta compare and contrast in interesting ways with those in the Jon Kalish story that ran on WBUR's "Here and Now" (initially for KQED in January).  Kalish talks more about the Delta town of Isleton, leading with this: 

The small communities tucked into the San Joaquin River Delta are full of contradictions. Located northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area, much of the area is populated by farmers growing crops like wheat, alfalfa and rice. But, visitors might also stumble upon a circus performed on board a huge boat made to look like an island, a community of free spirits living out of tiny homes plopped down in an RV park, even a woman walking a goose on a leash down the street in town. Needless to say, it can be a quirky place.

Once primarily known for farming, Delta communities are changing as people priced out of the Bay Area discover this relatively close region that still offers land and freedom. It has become particularly attractive to artists and other creatives looking to live in a place where they’re free to create without the pressures of city regulators and rising rents. 

“The big question was, ‘Do I stay in the Bay Area, which is getting unsustainably expensive?’” said Michelle Burke, who used to be involved in running American Steel, a sprawling West Oakland artist collective. “My friends are being displaced. They’re losing their workspaces, their art spaces, their homes. It was just unsustainable.”

In Isleton, where Burke relocated, she’s got enough room on her property for six shipping containers to store materials and DIY projects. She’s one of many who have found the Delta to be a refreshing change.

* * *

While the newcomers are visible because of their aesthetic and creative projects, it’s not like people are flooding into these rural communities, he said. In fact, according to Wells, the population numbers have largely stayed the same for a hundred years. Still, some locals distrust the new people.

“The farmers that I talk to are more concerned about that than anybody else,” Wells said. “I think everybody else enjoys some controlled growth. The farmers are concerned because they have farm equipment, and they claim people are coming and stealing crap out of their farmyards.”

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.

Literary Ruralism (Part XLII): The Injustice of Place

I've read several books about the impact of place on who gets ahead in life--and who does not.  I assign excerpts of many of these, for example, Sheryll Cashin's Place Not Race, to students in my seminar courses, Law and Rural Livelihoods and The First-Gen Experience in Scholarly and Popular Literature.  The famous economist Raj Chetty has also focused on zipcode as destiny.  

So I was particularly interested to see coverage in the Daily Yonder (a news source oriented to rural issues) of a new book by a famous sociologist who studies poverty and inequality, Kathryn Edin, and colleagues Timothy Nelson and Luke Shaefer:  The Injustice of Place:  Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.  Here are some excerpts from early in the book that mention rural places specifically.  Indeed, what follows are the book's opening paragraphs:   

IT IS HARD TO SAY exactly when we first noticed the pattern. Just before we hit the outskirts of a Cotton Belt town, the fields would give way to a string of gleaming white antebellum homes with large lawns, old-growth trees, and grand entrances framed by columns reaching two or three stories high. Merging onto the majestic arterial boulevards leading into town, we would see more imposing homes presiding over meticulously manicured grounds. 

In Sparta, a rural hamlet near Augusta, Georgia, it appears as though someone has invested millions to restore an elegant Greek Revival home. New windows and shutters gleam. Yet just across the street lies a dilapidated shack, one room deep, with a sagging roof. Over in Demopolis, Alabama, sits the venerable Gaineswood, a massive structure known for its elaborate interior suites, including domed ceilings, remarkable decorative arts, and original antebellum furnishings. Left out of the photos on Gaineswood’s website and tourist brochures are the aging wood cottages in varying states of disrepair, the tumbledown trailers, and the sagging modular houses that flank the historic home.  (page 1) 

The scholars undertook in this book to study poor places, whereas they had previously studied poor people.  They also decided to study health in addition to income.  Here's more on their methodology:

To assess the level of disadvantage in a community, such as a county or a city, we combined traditional income-based measures with other markers, including health. Especially in the United States, health outcomes vary tremendously by race, ethnicity, and income. In 2008, life expectancy for highly educated white males was eighty years, but only sixty-six for low-educated Black men, whose average life span resembled numbers seen in Pakistan and Mongolia. In 2011, the infant mortality rate for Black mothers in the United States was comparable to that in Grenada and just a bit better than that in Tonga. The rate for non-Hispanic whites was much closer to that in Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of new research was showing that a person’s health is shaped more by their context—their income, family circumstances, and community characteristics, for example—than by their genetic profiles or the medical care they receive. 

Ultimately, as the scope of our study of place-based disadvantage grew, we chose to incorporate two well-measured health outcomes, one that captured conditions at the start of life and the other at the end. In a particular community, what were a baby’s chances of being born with low birth weight, which is closely associated with infant mortality and other threats to children’s health? In that community, how long could the average person expect to live? 

We also recognized the importance of measuring whether disadvantage in a particular place persisted for children growing up there. Especially in the American context, it is almost an article of faith that kids should have the opportunity to do better than their parents. Recently, a team of economists employed confidential IRS data to create a measure of intergenerational mobility (the chance that children born low-income could rise up the economic ladder) for every city and county in the nation. These researchers used tax records to follow children born in the 1980s through adulthood to see where they stood on the income ladder compared to their parents. It was already understood that there were big differences in intergenerational mobility by parental income, ethnicity, and race, but the most stunning revelation of this new research was how much variation there was by place. In some communities, a child born into poverty would probably stay low-income as an adult. Yet in others, they had a much better chance of reaching the middle class. It seemed clear to us that to measure the depth of disadvantage in a community, it would be important to include the rate of mobility from one generation to the next. (pp. 3-4) 

This follows several pages later--and reveals a rural surprise to the authors:  

Immediately, we could see from the rankings that the geographical pattern was stark. The first surprise—especially for three professors who had spent our careers studying urban poverty—was that the “most disadvantaged” places on our index were mostly rural. There is considerable poverty in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. But in our apples-to-apples comparison, none of those cities ranked even among the 600 most disadvantaged places in the nation. For the most part, the only cities and urban counties to find themselves among the most disadvantaged were a relatively small number of industrial municipalities in the Northeast and Midwest, such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Rochester. 

Among the rural counties at the top of the list, what we found didn’t fit what most people think of as “rural.” While some of these were majority-white, many, indeed most, were communities of Black and Hispanic Americans. We could see, too, that many places with large Native American populations ranked among the most disadvantaged in the nation (19 of the top 200). Beyond these, though, not one community in the western part of the United States registered among the “most disadvantaged” (those in the top fifth). While some might say we ought to have considered the impact of the high cost of living on poverty—those costs are higher in some places—there are trade-offs. Although people pay more for housing in those places, there are at the same time structural advantages in those areas of the country, such as good health care systems, a more generous safety net, public transportation, and higher-quality schools. This, we think, is why some high-cost big cities like San Francisco and Seattle fall further down our index than expected. We also found that those living in the 200 most disadvantaged places on our index were just as prone to have major difficulties paying for housing as those in America’s 500 largest cities. 

Apart from predominantly Native American communities, the places that our index identified as “most disadvantaged” most often are found in three regions—Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states. (pp. 5-6) 

* * * 

Across rural America, monuments, celebrations, and museums are markers of local pride. Indeed, Crystal City has vigorously defended its claim to the title “Spinach Capital of the World” against upstart Alma, Arkansas—also a former spinach mecca that has erected multiple statues of Popeye. Yet in South Texas, the vast Cotton Belt, central Appalachia, and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, these symbols celebrate a past that is fraught, to say the least. They commemorate the very industries that, for a century or more, spelled misery and hardship for thousands, if not millions, while profiting only a few. They memorialize the intensive resource extraction and resulting human exploitation that made these places America’s internal colonies. 

How did the identities of these communities become so bound to the economic legacies of the past? (p. 21) 

And, skipping to much later in the book, this is especially intersting regarding the diploma divide and how higher education is increasingly seen as a culprit: 

Most often, emerging leaders trying to set a new course have the odds stacked against them—as was the case with Cornejo’s coalition and later with the slate of La Raza candidates who came into office in South Texas in the early 1970s. People at every level are hoping for their failure: when they stumble, it is all the easier to blame the community for its own problems. Universities could certainly play a role in helping to equip local leaders with the tools needed to succeed, perhaps through a model like the USDA’s community- and university-based Cooperative Extension System. Recently, one community leader told us that while his state’s flagship university is not beloved in most rural towns, the extension service is immensely popular because it provides knowledge and resources the community values. Using university extension programs as a conduit for equipping local leaders might help higher ed prove its worth in many far-flung communities. (p. 237) 

Altogether, the book uses the word "rural" 67 times, many of which are in footnotes/end notes.  Here's a WHYY segment on the book.    

Edin's prior books did not pay particular attention to rural poverty or other rural issues.  She is perhaps most famous for Promises I Can Keep:  Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (2005) (with Maria Kefalas); Doing the Best I Can:  Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013) (also with Nelson) and $2.00 a Day:  Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015) (also with Shaefer). 

Cross-posted to FirstGenCourse Blog.  

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.   

Small-town America, a country music video, and racism

Justin Jones is one of the members of the Tennessee state legislature who was controversially expelled from that body for alleged failure to comply with decorum norms when he stood up for victims of mass shootings earlier this year.  Jones tweeted a few days ago, "Don't let the same politicians tell you that a racist song is about supporting 'small towns' while they allow rural hospitals to close without Medicaid expansion, defund public education in rural counties, and keep small-town folks trapped in poverty with starvation wages."

The sentiment about politicians standing up for "small town" values while undermining them and the wellbeing of rural folks generally was one I was on board with.  That sentiment is reflected in many posts to this blog.  But I had no idea what song lyrics Jones was speaking of--and who was standing up for the song and for small towns.

I went looking for more and found this from the Republican speaker of the Tennessee House, "@CMT [Country Music Television] caved to the radical left.  Mainstream media call songs about 'killing police' powerful, exposing-voices that speak the truth, but @jason_aldean speaks his truth--the media can't handle it, so they attempt to silence him and the #1 iTunes downloaded country song." 

I still didn't know what song was being referenced until I heard this NPR segment on Thursday evening about Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town."  Here's the lede:  

Country Music Television (CMT) says it will no longer air the music video "Try That In a Small Town" by Jason Aldean after critics of the video said it contained lyrics that glorified gun violence and conveyed traditionally racist ideas.

A CMT spokesperson confirmed the move to NPR on Thursday, but offered no comment on the reasoning.

Since the video's release on Friday, it's emerged as a familiar kind of political litmus test, with interpretations of its message often falling along voting divides.

* * *

In a statement released alongside the video, Aldean said the song represents an "unspoken rule" for those raised in small towns: "We all have each other's backs and we look out for each other."

* * * 

But much of the criticism around the video has less to do with these clips than its setting: The Maury County Courthouse building in Columbia, Tenn., which serves as an American-flag-draped backdrop for Aldean and his band.

The landmark was the site of race riots in 1946 as well as a 1927 lynching.

* * * 

Threats to outsiders (and the implication those outsiders are from cities) are present throughout the song's lyrics, which begin with a list of crimes that might happen in urban settings ("Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk / carjack an old lady at a red light") then crescendo into the titular chorus:

Well, try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road / Around here we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won't take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don't.

Aldean ups the vigilante ante by bridging the second chorus with a reference to gun rights, singing:

I've got a gun that my granddad gave me / they say one day they're gonna round up. / Well that s*** might fly in the city / good luck / Try that in a small town.

A journalist who writes about country music for The Tennessean was interviewed for the NPR segment that aired Thursday evening, and he suggested that CMT's removal of the video shows a newfound sensitivity to racial issues within the country music community.   

You can watch the video here.  

What is absolutely undisputed is that the song pits rural against urban, suggesting that the former is more virtuous.  There's an openly nostalgic bit at the end of the video where the singing stops and a video vignette about farmers dropping work on their own crops to help a neighbor in more urgent need.  One of the presumptively rural residents comments on the practice, "it's what this community stands for ... if you need some help, you'll get it."  There's also an image of a farm tractor with a golden glow, in contrast to the images of urban violence that dominate the early portions of the video.  

I was struck in listening to the lyrics of Aldean's "Try that in a Small Town" that the sentiments echo Merle Haggard's "Okie form Muskogee," released in 1969.  

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don't take our trips on LSD
We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street
We like livin' right, and bein' free

We don't make a party out of lovin'
We like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do 

I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all

"Okie from Muskogee," of course, was released back before every reference to urban was presumptively raced Black or brown and every reference to rural or small town was heard as an obvious and irrefutable association with whiteness.  

You'll find lots of posts on this blog about the pitting of rural against urban in this era of polarization.  Here's just one of them.  

Here is a Washington Post analysis of the music video, and here is a very thoughtful essay about it in the Daily Yonder.  

Postscript:  New York Times conservative columnist David French published "Try Tolerance in a Small Town" on July 27, 2023.  He calls out small-tow racism based on his own experiences and that of his family's in Columbia, Tennessee, where the Aldean video was shot.  

Literary Ruralism (Part XXXVIII): Jason Mott's Hell of a Book

Jason Mott's Hell of a Book is just that--in more ways than one.  I'm not surprised it won the National Book Award (2021).  

The most striking thing about the book, most readers would agree, is its insights into race in America, with particular attention to police violence against Black men. 

But another striking thing--at least to me as a ruralist who grew up in a tiny town in the American South--is the role of the small town in the story.  Indeed, more precisely, it is the role that growing up in a small town, Bolton, North Carolina (population 691), plays in the narrative.  Bolton, by the way, is not only the hometown of the novel's protagonist--the narrator telling the story in first person--Bolton is also the hometown of author Jason Mott.  Thus, Mott comes by his insights honestly.  

The book's opening vignette is set in a farm house, but the reader has no idea that this is of any significance until relatively late in the book, when the protagonist reveals his own small-town roots.  The author/protagonist returns there, which gives him an opportunity to comment on the impact of growing up in such a place.  Here are some representative excerpts, all from his return to visit his hometown after he becomes a famous author.  In the first, the narrator is entering Bolton with his agent, Sharon.  This excerpt at least hints at the attachment to place associated with rural America, as well as the major role played by religion:   

[Sharon] scans the small town as we pass. Coming through, we cross paths with nine churches over the course of the town. “Why does a town this small have so many churches?” Sharon asks.

“Because God needs the little people more than he needs anyone,” I say. There’s a knot in my stomach the size of Texas all of a sudden. I haven’t been back to Bolton in years, and with good reason. It’s a town with tendrils. And as soon as those tendrils get into your skin, you can never get rid of them. You can never get away. The truth of the matter is that I’d managed to get out of Bolton only because I snuck away under cover of darkness and something akin to invisibility. I never really fit into this town when I was a kid. I was always too much of something for the other kids I grew up with. I was too much of a bookworm. Too nerdy. Too weird. Too clumsy. Too skinny. Too black of skin. Too white of temperament. I never liked hunting and fishing enough. I never liked fighting or chasing girls enough. I never liked God or hated the devil enough. I never grew things in the garden. I didn’t eat okra and butterbeans. I couldn’t stand dumplings.

My family did the best they could to not make me feel like the freak that I always was. My cousins, God bless ’em, they loved me like I was one of their own even though I’d argue that I didn’t really belong to anyone. Especially after the emergence of my condition [elsewhere revealed as an overactive imagination that causes the narrator not to be able to distinguish between reality and the imaginary].

I can’t say exactly when it began, but I can definitely say that it’s linked to this small town of Bolton and my childhood. From what I remember, I’ve always been living in a different world. My therapist says that can’t be the case, not for the type of condition I’ve got. She swears that what I’ve got comes about only after a person has gone through some sort of trauma. And, typically, when you talk about this type of trauma, it’s got to be something beyond the scope of school bullying and general low self-esteem—both of which I had no shortage of in my youth.

My therapist and I have been through more than a few loops about what might have caused my imagination and persistent daydreaming to work the way it does.

“Can you think of any event that might have occurred?” she asks, over and over again, for the past five years since I’ve started seeing her.

“No,” I reply. “I had a pretty normal childhood. I grew up in a small town that nobody’s heard of in the ass end of North Carolina. Well, now that I think of it, maybe you could count that as a trauma.” (pp. 221-23)

This, too, is quite negative about small-town America, in particular small towns in the American South and how they treat Black folks:

Nestled in the sweaty armpit of Carolina swampland, surrounded by gum trees, and pines, and cedars, and oak, and wild grapevines, the town of Bolton is the land that time forgot. Go back far enough into the town history, and there used to be a railroad stop and a sawmill here. And that was at its pinnacle, somewhere around sixty years ago or so. Back then, the town had a population of maybe around three thousand people.

The main exports of Bolton are lumber and Black manual labor. The wood comes from the forests and swampland—all of which are owned by the local paper mill—and the labor comes from the town’s seven-hundred-odd residents. I wish that I could tell you that something more than those two chief exports comes out of Bolton, but there’s nothing else. Bolton isn’t a town that gives, but neither is it a town that takes. It’s the type of place that keeps to itself. It’s self-sustaining, the way the past always is. And though it changes a little now and again, the way an old piece of metal seems to change colors over the years as some thin patina comes along and begins to grow over it, at its core the town is the same that it has always been. And that’s how the people like it.  (pp. 220-21)

The next excerpt reminds me of the nostalgia associated with rural folks:

“There’s a field like that not far from my house too. Looks almost the exact same. My daddy said that it was where they used to grow cotton a long time ago. My daddy was always talking about the way things used to be back before I was born.”

“That a fact?”

“Yeah. It was like that was all he wanted to talk about. He used to have these books he would read to me on the weekend. These encyclopedias about Black people.” (p. 227)

Then there's this--also about religion--a familiar phenomenon for those who've grown up rural: 

Bolton Town Hall also doubles as a church because there is no separation of church and state in southern Black towns. God is everywhere, especially in the law. At least, He’s supposed to be. But I can tell by the tone and timbre of the people inside the walls of this small, ruined church that they’re beginning to believe less and less in the ability of God to come along and do the right thing in their lives. (p. 242)

This scene reveals both positive and negative associations with rurality in relation to the power and pain of memory: 

And one thing I always forgot is just how much I love the quiet of small towns and the long roads that seem to lead nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. Only a fistful of buildings to speak of. Houses that pop up like memories along the side of pavement and gravel sometimes. It’s a hell of a splendor.

But maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t remember everything the right way. I know what happened to my old man. But the old lady . . . something tells me not to think about that. It’s like the thought of having lost them both is too much to fit in my head so it chooses not to know either way. But there’s a catch to convincing yourself that you don’t know a thing: yeah, it keeps your life on track, but for the thing or person you’re choosing not to see or know, you’re taking away their whole entirety. And ain’t that something to do to a person? To a group of people? Ain’t willful ignorance a hell of a thing?

Being back here in my hometown, I think I can feel that box opening . . . and it terrifies me.  (pp. 253-54)

And then there's this, which shows Mott really knows a thing or two about the practicalities of living in rural America: 

“I wonder if there’s internet out here,” Sharon asks, eyeing the house suspiciously. “How in God’s name do people live like this? It’s barbaric.”

I can’t help but smirk. (p. 226).  

In any event, while the book is not primarily about rurality and the small-town phenomenon, Mott does show off his home-grown observations of rural culture and rural realities--as well as how urbanites (Sharon, the literary agent, is the quintessential city dweller of the northeastern variety) view them.  

Reader responses to Paul Krugman's "rural rage" column

From New York Times readers in response to the January 27, 2023 column by Paul Krugman, which I wrote about here:

Mr. Krugman’s piece on rural resentment illustrates, in its inadvertent condescension, the very reasons rural people resent big-city elites.

Mr. Krugman details the reasons rural complaints about big government are wrong, noting, for example, that much more federal assistance and more investment funds go to many rural areas than come in through taxes. This misses the deeper issue: Human beings need to be needed, to feel that the work they do matters to the larger community.

For decades now the jobs that help men to feel they are contributing something essential, such as coal mining, manufacturing and farming, have been disappearing. We’ve created an economy that cuts off access to meaningful work, and then told people we’ll “help them” with welfare. Who wouldn’t resent that?

Carol Frances Johnston
Indianapolis

To the Editor:

In my town of approximately 5,000 people, there are at least five farms. Those federal farm subsidies go mostly to corporate farms, leaving family farms the crumbs. Who helps young people who want to farm to buy farmland? Who helps farmers construct decent housing for their migrant workers? Who helps food producers convert to organic farming or to crops that pay them more? 

What if the government reopened the rural hospitals that were closed and subsidized them, staffing them with nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives who know when to send their patients to doctors and when to treat them on-site?

What if it helped locals revitalize Main Street, set up food co-ops when the only supermarket leaves town, and replace the only bank when it closes?

These projects will turn rural residents’ negative opinions of “the government” around.

Andi Weiss Bartczak
Gardiner, N.Y.

To the Editor:

When my kids graduated from a rural high school in upstate New York in the mid 1980s, every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.

Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment. While they are proud of their children’s achievement, their children and grandchildren now live far away. The kids may have picked up more liberal social values and no longer attend church.

Thus, the resentment toward “elites” in a rural area may be less that they feel disrespected, but that the elites have taken their family away. Economic issues are secondary.

William Hussey
New York

To the Editor:

As a product of rural Ohio and a current San Franciscan, I disagree with Paul Krugman’s argument about the disrespect rural Americans feel. It is not a simple manner of which side makes fun of the other.

White rural Americans have felt they have been progressively losing the culture war on the battlefield of our cultural institutions (entertainment, media, education, politics) since at least the 1960s.

These institutions have been used to change or advance views on various issues — race, gender and sexuality, political correctness, to name a few — and this has been seen as an affront to a deeply held identity rooted in faith and family traditions. This affront is where the rage comes from.

Seth Andrzejewski
San Francisco

The Daily Yonder published this response to Krugman, by Claire Carlson. 

Might the State of California subsidize flagging rural law enforcement? and a deep dive on other issues implicated by the rural law enforcement staffing shortage

Tehama County Jail
September 2021
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2021

I wrote about this topic last month based on this Los Angeles Times story out of Tehama County, California.  Now, CalMatters is expanding on the reasons for the shortage.  Nigel Duara's deeply reported story also discusses the possibility--which I assume is a very slim one--that the State of California might subsidize counties like Tehama that are unable to hire sufficient deputies to afford daytime patrols.  Here's an excerpt on the big picture, with a nod to rural self-sufficiency: 

This is a county where people are expected to take care of themselves, and in the last month, Tehama County itself has been operating without its own guardrail: Outgoing Sheriff Dave Hencratt said last month that deputies would no longer patrol during the day.

Next, here's a terrific excerpt on how the shortage--which has attracted attention from tabloids as far away as London and New York--has landed locally:  

On a recent December morning, lots of people’s faces hung low and heavy as the clouds.

The sheriff frowned when he met a reporter at midday on the edge of his property, dressed in barn clothes, declining to comment. The county administrator frowned because the sheriff’s abrupt decision threw his office into chaos. The tavern owner frowned because he works 23 miles outside of town and hasn’t seen a patrol car in weeks. The elected leaders, the motel owners, the rural residents left to their own devices — everyone, it seems, in this stretch of land between national forests, is unhappy with the circumstances, and they each have a different idea for how to solve it.

There's lots of colorful language from the retiring sheriff about how his department loses officers to neighboring agencies, like the Redding Police Department in neighboring Shasta County:  

The state, meanwhile, isn’t making it any easier to hire police officers — particularly those who leave larger departments with shoddy disciplinary or criminal records and find employment at smaller organizations. New laws have raised the minimum hiring age of law enforcement officers to 21 and require the community college system to create a “modern policing” degree program by 2025, laying the groundwork for a statewide officer education minimum.

In Tehama County, tensions had been building for months, if not years. Hencratt told the Red Bluff Daily News in February that other law enforcement departments were treating his office like a “supermarket of employees.”

“When (the) Redding Police Department says, ‘You know what chief, we’re down officers,’ ‘Well go down to Tehama County, go down the officer aisle and pick some,’ and that’s what they do. They’re cherry picking our people,” Hencratt told the newspaper.

Tehama County usually makes its hires from newly graduated applicants, said Tehama County Administrator Gabriel Hydrick. Since the county pays so poorly — about 22% below market rate, according to a county-commissioned compensation study from August — the new recruits don’t stay long. The police department in the county seat of Red Bluff pays better, and law enforcement in the nearby city of Redding and surrounding Shasta County both offer higher salaries and hiring bonuses of several thousand dollars.

Since 2012, the Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training, or POST, has certified on average about 3,200 officers each year. A basic certificate means that the applicant passed both the POST academy and a field training program, then completed a probationary period at the agency that employs them. The entire process takes about two years.

In 2022, however, the agency issued just 2,424 basic certificates as of Dec. 13, the lowest number of basic certificates issued since 2013, and well below the 10-year high of 4,530 issued in 2020.

“I would agree that it’s harder to be a police officer now than (in years past),” said Hydrick, the county administrator. “There’s a lot of disincentives to being an officer. The culture isn’t behind you anymore. We have more laws about policing and being a police officer than other states.”

But Hydrick also blames the working attitudes of the new generation making up the youngest ranks of law enforcement — or, in this case, not making up that new generation.

“We can keep throwing money at it, but if there’s a generation that’s not willing to work or apply for jobs, the money’s not going to fix that,” Hydrick said. “The younger generation wants to be gamers and YouTubers; maybe they cobble an income together from being an Uber driver.

“We’re not seeing people want to become professionals anymore.”

And here's more on the question whether too much state regulation is the problem--or at least part of it.  

One of the architects of California’s push for tougher regulations on police and policing is Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat and chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee. He said he doesn’t see a conflict between police hiring problems and the state’s stronger hand in hiring officers and the practice of policing.

“It’s almost like, if you’re saying the regulations are too stringent, you’re saying we can’t get people who are not racist, who do not want to brutalize people of color,” Jones-Sawyer said. “We’re not the ones making police officers look bad. It’s the bad police officers who are discouraging the good ones from applying.”

But Sawyer-Jones said it may be time to consider having the state send money to the smallest departments, like the one in Tehama County, to make sure they can afford to pay competitive rates.

“We probably do need to look at subsidizing smaller police departments so they can level the playing field,” he said.

* * * 

Police departments nationwide are calling for more officers, but in the smallest offices covering the largest geographic areas, the situation is more dire. In Shasta County, north of Tehama County, the sheriff’s office closed one level of the jail and blamed a lack of deputies. Sacramento has had a police officer shortage since the Great Recession 15 years ago, and in Los Angeles, the police department has no staffing problem, and is instead requesting more helicopters.

It’s not like policing pays badly in California — sometimes the opposite. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a Beverly Hills assistant police chief earned $716,284 in total compensation in 2021, making him the highest-paid municipal employee in the state. But Tehama County is no Beverly Hills: The entire county drew less than one-half the revenue that Beverly Hills did in the 2020-21 fiscal year, the latest year for which numbers were available

One recruiter who works with police departments said that law enforcement has been slow to change its recruiting practices, and that’s reflected in the smaller number of people joining the profession.

“This isn’t 1997,” said Epic Recruiting CEO Sam Blonder. “You’re not going to get 1,000 people signing up for the (policing exam).”

The issue isn’t just pay, Blonder said, citing research showing that the newest generation of recruits looks for work-life balance ahead of pure compensation. But policing’s issues also extend to intransigence among the old guard. His work to recruit new officers, Blonder said, is as much about convincing police brass to do the recruiting.

“Among command staff there’s this attitude that I shouldn’t have to do this,” Blonder said. “Ask 150 high school kids who wants to be a police officer — you won’t get one that will raise their hand. It’s not for me to say why that’s happened, but sometimes an industry needs a shakeup like that.”

That shakeup is happening in real time in Tehama County.

“People have expressed to me fear and concern based on the lack of the daytime sheriff’s office patrol,” said Tehama County District Attorney Matt Rogers. “Simply put, if they pick up the phone and dial 911, is someone going to come?”

Any Tehama County officials wishing for tax hikes to generate more county revenue watched those hopes fizzle in March 2020, when voters rejected the county’s 1-cent sales tax increase. And it didn’t just fail, it was crushed, 84% to 16%.

Tehama County is also setting aside money for about 30 vacant sheriff’s office jobs, eight of them for deputies and 13 for deputies in the county jail. Hydrick, the county administrator, said the sheriff’s hope was to eventually fill those positions and restore the sheriff’s office to its 2017 size of approximately 84 deputies.

But in the meantime, all of those vacant positions “encumber,” or put a hold on, the salaries those positions would be paid. That, Hydrick said, amounts to about $3 million each year in unused money by the sheriff’s office, which then reverts to the county’s general fund.

In place of the absent deputies will be the California Highway Patrol, which has 14 officers for the 15-county region that encompasses Tehama County.

“Since Nov. 20, the CHP has received numerous requests for assistance (from residents) to calls in Tehama County that don’t include their usual duties,” California Highway Patrol spokesperson John Crouch said in an email.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, whose county borders Tehama and whose office pays more, said background checks are as much an obstacle to making new hires as the recruiting process is.

“It’s a challenge to find people you would want to entrust with the authority to carry firearms,” said Honea, who is also president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association.

Honea said his office tries to focus on retaining the people they already have by offering free gym memberships and yoga classes.

For some longtime residents like Tehama County Supervisor Bill Moule, the end of daytime patrols is a return to the county’s past.

“I moved to this county in 1978, and the first question I asked was, ‘What kind of service do you have in the rural areas?’” Moule said. “The sheriff was kinda this big guy, been sheriff a long time. He looked at me and said, ‘Son, get yourself a shotgun and a dog.’

“It’s no different today than it was in 1978.”

Grateful to be able to quote liberally from this CalMatters story, since this is a non-profit news website offering Creative Commons licensing.