Speaking of travel in the rural Pacific NW, don't miss this

William Yardley is retracing in the New York Times the routes of travel guides from the 1930s. The guides were written under the auspices of the Federal Writers Project, a WPA project during the Great Depression. In short, they were written in large part to give the writers, among them Zora Neale Hurstonk, Eudora Welty, and Saul Bellow.

Yardley's headline, "Places Captured in Time, but Not Frozen There," reminds us that, in spite of rurality's strong associations with stasis and tradition, rural places change, too. Among the places featured is Winthrop, Washington, which was where "the hard surfacing ends" when the Washington guide was written. But the place evolved quickly once a paved road over Washington Pass was completed in 1972. Yardley writes, quoting initially from the early travel guide.

“On weekdays and special occasions, these trading centers take on the appearance of pioneer towns, with hitching rails, haphazard sidewalks and crude plumbing,” the Washington State guide said of Winthrop and other towns in the Methow Valley. It went on to describe “riders on horseback, buckboards and buggies, and men with tanned faces and alert eyes in chaps and spurs, or blue jeans and Stetsons.”

Seven decades later, Winthrop is just a quick trip across the North Cascades Highway — an escape for Seattleites seeking the dry light, a reprieve from the gray and wet they know best. Car-roof racks carry mountain bikes, kayaks or cross-country skis, depending on the time of year. Twenty-somethings slouch in for espresso. Middle-aged couples browse bookstores.

“The sun shines over here,” said Dave Sandoz, the building official for Winthrop and its neighbor Twisp. “That’s the big thing. That makes people happy.”

And I guess that is one thing that hasn't changed on the the Eastern side of the Cascades.

My Rural Travelogue (Part III): Southern Oregon

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2008

Oregon is a rural state by many measures and definitions, and we experienced two of its rural regions during our recent vacation. The first was in south central Oregon, around Crater Lake, in the Cascades and down the Umpqua River Valley to I-5 at Roseburg. The second was down the Oregon coast, from Lincoln City south to the California border. As I suggested in my last post, the area around Crater Lake is remarkably undeveloped. We drove to the park via Klamath Falls, a small city of about 20,000, passing through very few small towns. One small town en route was Fort Klamath, where I stopped at the U.S. Post office to dispatch some postcards. There we saw a few motels and campgrounds, presumably to accommodate Crater Lake’s overflow visitors. On the whole, there’s very little commercial activity there, and it’s not even a CDP on the U.S. Census Bureau’s website.

North of Crater Lake Park, we opted to drive down Hwy 138, also known as the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway. (Bend, in the high desert, is about 120 miles northeast of the Park). Highway 138 winds through mostly federal lands, primarily Umpqua National Forest, but it is also dotted with Oregon State Parks, and we stopped at several as we descended to I-5. The first was at Watson Falls which, at 274 feet, is the fourth highest in Oregon (bottom photo). A well-constructed trail leads almost all the way to the top (less than a mile), and features several nice vista points along the way. Once at the top, you get a similar experience to that at Vernal Falls in Yosemite – a lot of spray! Farther along Hwy 138, we stopped at Fall River Falls, an 85-foot tiered waterfall, and lastly at Deadline Falls, which is hardly a falls at all but where salmon can sometimes be seen jumping up stream.

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2008

Down this 80 mile stretch of Hwy 138, we saw extremely little commercial development. There were just three towns. Glide, the self-proclaimed gateway to Crater Lake, was by far the largest, with a population of 1,690 and offering a few motels, diners, and markets. This gorgeous area made it easy to see that Oregon is, indeed, a largely rural state – and we never even ventured farther east, into the much less sparsely populated regions.

The Oregon coast, by contrast, is quite developed. Ok, it is not developed in the way the coast of Hawai’i is developed, but apart from the areas kept au naturel by the Oregon state park system, there’s a pretty steady stream of hotels and motels lining the coast, at least in the central part of the state. Farther south, the coast is a bit more rugged, the development more limited to towns like Port Orford (photo top), Gold Beach (where the Rogue River meets the Pacific), and Brookings. All the way down 101, we enjoyed the steady stream of bridges over the rivers flowing into the Pacific; their art deco motifs made me think they must have been built in the same era, perhaps the 1930s.

Several of Oregon’s small coastal communities are micropolitan, but most are considerably smaller. Those in the former category include Coos Bay at about 15,000 and Newport at just under 10,000. Bandon and Brookings are smaller, with populations of 2,800 and 5,500 respectively.

As we drove through the stream of smallish cities and towns along the coast, we noticed very few chain enterprises. The grocery stores were independents or members of small, local chains. We didn’t see a Home Depot or Lowe's until we got into California, at Crescent City. Instead, a number of small, independent lumber yards and building supply stores are suppling these areas. About the only chain establishment that we saw regularly in small towns along the coast was Dairy Queen, which seems to be the fast-food hold out in towns too small or ill-located (i.e., not on an interstate highway) for McDonald’s to go.

We also saw indications that rural Oregonians defy the rural alignment with Hillary -- either that, or they've already made their peace with Obama being the nominee. (Of course, Obama carried Oregon in the primary, and he attracted a lot of rural voters then; he is also leading McCain in the polls now). In short, we saw several Obama signs --mostly the really large ones-- during our travels, but only two smallish ones for Ron Paul. We didn't see any McCain signs in the parts of rural Oregon we traveled, but maybe we just overlooked them.

The Shame of Postville, Iowa

That is the headline for an editorial in tomorrow's New York Times about the unfair treatment of the hundreds of undocumented migrants arrested in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa in May. I wrote about the raid in Postville, which has a population of 2,273, just after it happened.

The editorial draws from an essay written by Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language interpreter who witnessed the court proceedings in which the workers were brought into court, 10-by-10, to face criminal charges following the raid.

Here's an excerpt from the Times piece, with quotes from Camayd-Freixas' essay:

He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No mention is made of the venue in the New York Times editorial, but the essay indicates that it was an outpost of the federal district court in Iowa. That is, for purposes of the first appearances of those detained in the raid, the federal district court had set up operations in the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, about 75 miles from Postville.

The essay also provides more information about the court-appointed lawyers. According to Camayd-Freixas, all were criminal lawyers, but not immigration lawyers. The implication is that there is little overlap between the two fields of expertise, at least not in Iowa. (While Iowa has had a significant immigrant population for a couple of decades, but I don't know what this means about the availability of expert assistance with immigration laws throughout the state).

Reading this editorial and the essay that inspired it got me to thinking about how "justice" is meted out in rural locales versus urban ones, including the availability of expert legal services for "have-nots" such as the undocumented workers in Postville. As I read more about the Postville raid and the subsequent legal processing of those arrested, I found myself wanting to know more about how this initial appearance system -- which the editorial suggests was novel--came to be used in Iowa. Could it have been stopped with more expert legal assistance for the accused? Can the apparent harm done be reversed through some sort of appeals? Can it be prevented in the future? Would it have happened in California or Arizona, where perhaps more court-appointed lawyers are familiar with immigration laws?

This reminded me of another story about legal systems possibly running amok in out-of-the-way places, where they may be less accountable to the public. The ACLU apparently stepped in earlier this month to represent some of those arrested at the recent Rainbow Family gathering in western Wyoming. Does it take "big-city" lawyers (in this case the ACLU's Cheyenne office) to fight injustice, in this case allegedly carried out at the hands of both forest service and local officers on US Forest Service lands?

And what difference does it make that, in both of these instances, the alleged injustice was at the hands of federal authorities, not truly (or at least not entirely) local ones?

Obama sees America, but very little of the mid-South and rural places generally

The New York Times today reports on Obama's travels, on all of the new places he's seeing and marveling at. It also features an interactive map showing where he's been. While the photo accompanying the story shows him in Butte, Montana, (photo top by Jae C. Hong for the AP), a rural place by many measures, the places noted in the story, including in quotes from Obama, are mostly urban -- like New Orleans and Pittsburgh. In fairness, he also speaks glowingly of Texas, which features both rural and urban in the extreme. However, in the photo slide show accompanying the story, all of the rural places visited are in Iowa and New Hampshire -- where all of the candidates blanketed all of those states. One photo (other than those from NH and Iowa) struck me as looking like a rural place (outside Iowa and NH)-- the one from Brownsville, Texas. With a population of almost 140,000, however, Brownsville is urban by virtually any measure.

A quick glance at the map charting Obama's travels shows not a single visit to Arkansas (perhaps that is the Hillary factor and will change before the general election) or Oklahoma. He's been nowhere in Louisiana except New Orleans, in only one spot in Kansas (Lawrence, perhaps?), and only in urban Missouri. He's not spent much time in Alabama or Mississippi, and then only in more populous places. His visits to Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky also have been only to cities. Ditto regarding lots of other states outside the South that have significant rural populations. For example, he hasn't visited North Dakota except apparently Fargo (though I heard on NPR yesterday that he is spending money on television advertising there) or Nebraska except (I gather from the map) Omaha. In Utah, he has only be in Salt Lake City, in Idaho, only Boise, in Washington, only Seattle, and in New York only greater New York City. I could go on.

In short, Obama is still missing out on most of rural America. So, he may be getting an eyeful that is new to him, but there is a great deal about how rural Americans -- about 20% of the populace -- live and work that he's not seeing. While I understand any campaign's draw to the economies of scale represented by visiting cities, Obama and his team should remedy this oversight (or neglect?). He should do this not only for strategic reasons -- to appear interested in rural people and concerns and therefore to have a better chance of garnering the rural vote -- but also so that Obama's education about the country he wishes to govern will be a little more complete.

The latest in living and eating locally, a new form of rural-urban cooperation

Here's the New York Times story under the headline, "Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms," dateline Campton Township, Illinois. Featured is Erehwon Farms, about 35 miles from Chicago. Shareholders in the farm have open access to the land and are guaranteed a percentage of the season's harvest. While they are not required to work the fields, many do.

Here's an excerpt from Susan Saulny's story:

Part of a loose but growing network mostly mobilized on the Internet, Erehwon is participating in what is known as community-supported agriculture. About 150 people have bought shares in Erehwon — in essence, hiring personal farmers and turning the old notion of sharecropping on its head.

* * *

“I think people are becoming more local-minded, and this fits right into that,” said Nichole D. Nazelrod, program coordinator at the Fulton Center for Sustainable Living at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa., a national clearinghouse for community-supported farms. “People are seeing ways to come together and work together to make this successful.”

While fewer than a hundred such farms were in operation two decades ago, they now number about 1,500 nationwide. These farms seem a constructive and non-exploitative way in which rural and urban are coming together.

Postscript: As of Thursday morning, July 10, this story had a new headline, "Cutting Out the Middlemen, Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms," and was among the top-10 most emailed stories in the NYT.

My Rural Travelogue (Part II): Lassen National Park, California

Since I moved out West almost a decade ago and started visiting National Parks, I've noticed that the areas around them often remain remarkably undeveloped, in spite of the number of visitors who pass through to reach the parks. This also seems unusual because accommodation in many parks is so limited; you’d think some reasonably nice lodging would be available to accommodate the overflow, as well as off-season traffic. This is true, for example, at Capitol Reef in Utah and Death Valley in Southern California. (Moab, Utah, which is very close to Arches and not so far from Canyonlands, is an exception, but the development there is also fueled by other outdoor pursuits, like mountain biking.) I guess that such tourism infrastructure isn’t economically feasible in these remote, not-quite-resort places – otherwise, someone would have taken up the opportunity.

This lack of development was certainly evident when we visited Lassen Volcanic National Park a few days ago. Leaving our home in Sacramento, we headed north on I-5 through the ag-oriented Great Valley, through Yolo, Colusa, Glenn and Tehama Counties before leaving the freeway at Red Bluff and heading about 40 miles up Highway 36 toward Mineral, population 143, near the southwest entrance of the park. We ascended a winding road and enjoyed many changes in the terrain and vegetation en route to Mineral. (As with our journey back to I-5 on Hwy 44, we encountered a remarkable amount of truck traffic -- could it be serving communities like Quincy and Chester -- or the prison-industrial complex at Susanville?) We had called the Lassen Mineral Lodge at about 6pm to let them know that we wouldn’t arrive until around 8. They warned us that everything would be closed so be sure to eat before we got there. It turned out that “everything” in Mineral is a 3-building complex (top photo) of general store, motel/lodge, and restaurant, apparently all owned by the same family. (OK, I am exaggerating a bit; we also saw a coin laundry a quarter of a mile away, and a competing gas station across the street that was for sale, but you get the idea).

When we called, the folks at the lodge said they’d leave room 49 open for us if they were already gone for the night. Room 49, at one end of a strip of about ten lined up motor lodge fashion, was spartan, but clean. Stenciled images of bears, elk and evergreen trees made a decorative border around the white walls. The room's only amenity was a checker board; no TV (no problem!). About half the rooms were occupied on that final night in June. I suppose they were all, like us, en route to Lassen.

As we’d been told the night before, “everything” opened at 8 am, and we were finally able to get some coffee and picnic supplies at the general store.

We were soon off to the park, the least visited according to a story in Sunset magazine’s July issue. It’s a fantastic park, though. Our pre-schooler came along (reluctantly) for the 2.5 mile round trip hike to Bumpass Hell, which features mud pots, fumaroles and other geothermic activity. It’s like a diminutive, really tiny Yellowstone. We also enjoyed Summit Lake and the interpretive trail at the so-called Devastated Area, that which was hit by the lava flow from the 1915 eruption.

Leaving the park at the northwest exit, we descended on a remarkably straight, evergreen-lined Hwy 44 toward Shingletown. While you don’t see many houses along the road, you do see lots of roads, all well marked with signs naming them, winding back into the forest. Sometimes we caught glimpses of what seemed to be a housing development through the dense curtain of trees. While the Census Bureau shows Shingletown, a Census Designated Place, with a population of 2,222, that must count folks outside its apparent commercial district – like those living down these roads off Hwy 44.

Our destination that night was a very different style of rural accommodation, Weston House, a bed and breakfast. (lower right photo). As far as I could tell, there were no other accommodations in the area – the closest might have been in Redding, about 40 miles away. Of course, Weston House could also be easily missed since it’s not on the main drag of Hwy 44; it is a coupla’ miles outside town on Shingletown Ridge Road. We’d initially found it on the internet.

Weston House might be called posh or faux rural, though it isn’t actually that posh and it’s not trying to be rural. But it is in a rural locale, and it does take nice advantage of its stunning views over the valley below, where a cinder cone looms and where one occasionally catches a glimpse of a wild mustang in a nearby preserve. Plus, the establishment is posh as rural goes; it’s posh in comparison to, say, the Mineral Lodge. Perhaps, then, it isn’t surprising that it isn’t run by a “local.” The owner is a woman who moved up to Northern California a few decades ago from Monterey. The rooms and suites, some in separate buildings but all overlooking the valley, are nicely decorated and have amenities such as fireplaces, TVs, refrigerators, microwaves -- and lavender soap. The owner serves a great gourmet breakfast with lots of whole grains and fruit. She even ground some coffee beans so I could make my own early morning brew in our upstairs suite.

So, in terms of tourism infrastructure, Weston House offered quite a contrast to what we saw ‘round Shingletown and the greater Lassen National Park region, including what we experienced in Mineral. To be clear, both were enjoyable – just very different.

Next we were on to Crater Lake National Park in south central Oregon where, again, the dearth of commercial activity in a 50-mile radius of the park was striking.

Fighting Fires in Rural California

The tragic fires in California have been burning for a coupla' weeks now, and many of us in The Golden State have experienced at least minor consequences, e.g., bad air, from them. While wildfires in the West are often associated with rural places and exurbia, we do occasionally hear of evacuations from cities, such as that from the Goleta/Santa Barbara area a few days ago.

This morning 's New York Times gives us a different angle on fires in the rural West. It is the tale of the volunteer fire departments in tiny Elk and Comptche struggling to stave off fires in hard-hit Mendocino County, California with very little government assistance. (Both Elk and Comptche are wide spots in the road that don't even merit entries on U.S. Census Bureau website, but are noted on wikipedia, which lists Elk's population as 208).

Here's an excerpt from Carol Pogash's story:

When he spotted a small fire two weeks ago atop a steep hill outside this blocklong town, Charlie Acker, 57, the president of the local school board and a volunteer firefighter, jumped inside his stubby red 1965 fire truck and, with a skid and a prayer, drove up the nearly vertical incline to check out the situation.

Knowing that every other volunteer firefighter in this community of 100 residents was battling a larger blaze nearby, he used his cellphone to call his wife. She roused a crew of young kayakers who cater to tourists in this picturesque old logging town at the edge of the Pacific, some 140 miles north of San Francisco, and joined Mr. Acker on the line.

CalFire, the state fire agency, had promised to send a helicopter, but it ultimately was sent instead "to a higher rent district." When Acker sought more firefighters, he got 13 state prison inmates.

Pogash's story plays up not only the resourcefulness of these volunteers, but also the sense of community -- or gemeinschaft --associated with rural places. Pogash notes the contributions of local stations that let fire engines run tabs for gasoline; restaurants, caterers, and a market that provided free meals for firefighters; a hardware store that donated supplies; and landscapers that carried away brush at no charge. Locals donated more than $4,000 in cash to the effort, and many also participated in the effort in a hands-on way, with rakes and shovels.

Pogash writes:

Residents expressed both pride and shock that they mostly had to fend for themselves. “This community of rugged individualists pulling together is part of the reason we love where we live,” said Deborah Cahn, who with her family owns Navarro Vineyards. “But isn’t this what government is supposed to do?”

Now there's a rarity--at least in rural mythology: a rural resident invoking the need and desire for government assistance. Perhaps as owner of an upmarket winery, Cahn is not what I call a "traditional" rural resident. She may be a relative newcomer who does not share the anti-government attitudes typically associated with rurality. Indeed, it is possible that there are so few traditional rural folks in pockets of California, particularly these so close to the coast, that self-reliance is not so great a value there. Nevertheless, residents of Elk and Comptche certainly showed they could be self-reliant in a way that served not only their individual interests, but those of the entire community.

Lawlessness in rural New Mexico--at least with regard to cockfighting

This story in Sunday's New York Times discusses the persistence of cock-fighting in New Mexico, even after the state became the 49th to ban the activity in 2007. The feature illustrates the difficulty in effectively enforcing a law when law enforcement support for the ban is lukewarm and when their resources are limited. Other challenges are posed by the rural locales where the cockfighting takes place, as well as the weak penalties associated with the New Mexico ban.

Here's a short excerpt from Adam Ellick's story, which has a dateline of Chaparral, population 6,100, on the border with Mexico:

After two weeks of preparation, 150 officers, backed up by a helicopter, slipped into this sleepy desert town. Their focus was not illegal immigration or drug smuggling, but a less pressing crime: cockfighting.

But when they raided what was billed as the Christmas Cockfighting Derby in December expecting to find 300 cockfighters, they found fewer than a dozen people. The cockfighters had been tipped off, the police said, and the officers issued tickets for four misdemeanors before seizing 12 shrieking roosters.

The story also features this rich quote from a rooster breeder:

“A gamecock shows me what an American should be like . . . . You defend to the death.”

Here's the closing vignette:

For 16 years, Richard and Louisa Lopez operated a 310-seat cockfighting arena at their farm in Luis Lopez, N.M. The $30,000 they earned annually from the operation helped subsidize their farm expenses, and send their children to college. Last month, they used the arena for their family reunion and a baby shower.

“We don’t have money to buy diesel sometimes,” Mr. Lopez said. “And this is the place that kept my farm going.”

New Mexico courts in January dismissed a suit by the New Mexico Gamefowl Association claiming economic devastation. An animal control investigator was similarly unsympathetic to to the Lopezes and others like them, stating: "You need to go find a job at Wal-Mart.” Guess that sorta' sums up the economic situation in rural New Mexico.

A Rural Fourth of July in Coastal Louisiana

This is a great little story about Holly Beach, Louisiana, a coastal community destroyed by Hurricane Rita a few years ago. The area is now facing development pressures, giving rise to a now familiar conflict between old and new in rural America, especially where "resort" areas are at issue.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the Shaila Dawan story:

For decades Holly Beach has been known as a poor man’s resort town. Before Hurricane Rita struck three years ago, it was a collection of fishing camps — primitive cabins — crowded together on 25-by-50-foot lots sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes and bayous of Cameron Parish, in southwest Louisiana. Though Cameron Parish has 1,313 square miles of land and is one of Louisiana’s largest, it has but one stop light.

Still, thousands of families flocked here every Fourth of July, planting campers and tents on the beach, or renting the camps for less than $100 a night.

And here is a closing comment from resident Lee Stelly, who previously owned and rented out 13 of the "camps." He now lives in a posh, newly built home on stilts, and rents out two trailers. He comments on the proposed development of apartments and hotels at Holly Beach:

“I’m a seventh-grade dropout,” was Mr. Stelly’s warning to one developer from outside the state. “But I can tell you one thing, it’s not going to work.”

Now that is an authentic comment if I ever I heard one -- the sort of thing I can imagine hearing from the mouth of many of the rural Southerners I know. There's a certain confidence -- and pride -- in what they know, and in their attachment to and "ownership" of their homes, their place.

Fake drug enforcement officer fools small Missouri town

A story in the NYT tells of a drug enforcement officer who showed up in Gerald, Missouri, population 1,171, where methamphetamine production and use had been a problem for years. The officer conducted searches and made arrests, and it appeared that the drug scourge was coming under control. Problem was, as the headline for Monica Davey's story suggests, the officer wasn't an officer at all. Here's an excerpt from "Drug Arrests Were Real, the Badge Was Fake."

Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

* * *

How did Mr. Jakob wander into town and apparently leave the mayor, the aldermen and pretty much everyone else he met thinking that he was a federal agent delivered from Washington to help barrel into peoples’ homes and clean up Gerald’s drug problem? And why would anyone — receiving no pay and with no known connection to little Gerald, 70 miles from St. Louis and not even a county seat — want to carry off such a time-consuming ruse in the first place?

* * *

In addition to having a badge and a car that seemed to scream law enforcement, Mr. Jakob offered federal drug enforcement help, Mr. Schulte said. (Local officials thought the offer must have somehow grown out of their recent application for a federal grant for radio equipment.)

What a legal mess! Surely evidence gathered during Jakob's arrests cannot be used to support charges? However, the apparent complicity of local law enforcement officers does complicate things somewhat.

Another segment of the story highlights the lack of anonymity that marks rural communities, in particular its consequences for residents that Jakob wrongfully arrested. One such person is Mike Withington, a 49-year-old concrete finisher whom Jakob made a show of arresting, but against whom charges were never brought.

But the mortification of that day, Mr. Withington said, has kept him largely indoors and led him to consider moving. Since the search, residents have tossed garbage and crumpled boxes of Sudafed (which has an ingredient that can be used to make methamphetamine) on his lawn, he said, and he no longer shops in town, instead driving miles to neighboring towns.

“Everybody is staring at me,” he said. “People assume you’re guilty when things like this happen.”

This, of course, raises yet more legal issues, such as defamation. It makes me think that damage to reputation might be more easily proved in rural and small-town contexts such as this.

So much news about guns and the right to have them, but all in the context of cities

"Gun culture" comes up in a fair amount of the academic literature I read regarding crime in the rural United States. Some criminologists attribute certain aspects of rural crime and the particular difficulties facing rural law enforcement officers to widespread gun ownership by rural folks. Weisheit, Falcone and Wells acknowledge it in their book, Crime and Policing in Rural and Small Town America (2d ed. 2006). Neil Websdale also writes of the significance of Kentucky's gun culture to the phenomenon of rural domestic violence in his book, Rural Woman Battering and the Justice System.

With that fresh in my mind, it's been a bit odd to be so focused on cities in relation to guns in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller last week. The New York Times and NPR quickly followed up on the decision with stories about how gun laws in other cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, were likely to be challenged soon. Richard Daley and Gavin Newsom, mayors of those cities, criticized Heller and defended their cities' laws.

So, where's that long-time association between the rural in all of this talk about guns and the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that individuals have the right to possess them? After all, isn't it mostly on pick up trucks in rural states that you see the bumper sticker, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands"?

The reason this isn't a rural story is that rural state and local governments rarely impose gun restrictions. It would be political suicide to do so there. In short, there's nothing to litigate, no 2d Amendment dispute, in rural America. For now, Heller is irrelevant there, at least as a practical matter.