Coronavirus in rural America (Part XV): the meatpacking plants

I've written a great deal about the U.S meatpacking industry over the years--including the terrible working conditions and underpaid workers, many of them immigrants and/or people of color.  Now, Miriam Jordan and Caitlin Dickerson report from Camilla, Georgia, population 5,360, about what is happening to workers in a Tyson's poultry plant in the coronavirus era.   Here's an excerpt that sums up the situation while neglecting the compelling personal story out of Camilla, which is very close to the much-reported on outbreak in nearby Albany, Georgia:

The coronavirus pandemic has reached the processing plants where workers typically stand elbow-to-elbow to do the low-wage work of cutting, deboning and packing the chicken and beef that Americans savor. Some plants have offered financial incentives to keep them on the job, but the virus’s swift spread is causing illness and forcing plants to close.

* * * 

At the Tyson plant in Camilla, the company offered its 2,100 workers a $500 bonus if they worked in April, May and June without missing a day.

Jordan and Dickerson also mention plants and workers with coronavirus in South Dakota, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Colorado, all hubs of meat- and poultry-processing.  Now, some of the plants are starting to close.

Postscript:  Extraordinary New York Times story out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on April 15, 2020, by Caitlin Dickerson and Miriam Jordan.  As of that date, 640 cases were linked to the Smithfield pork factory there. Here's a subsequent post focusing on South Dakota and another subsequent one focusing on cattle production.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XIV): Idaho

Two coronavirus stories out of Idaho reveal different ends of that state's socioeconomic and political continuum--from Sandpoint in the panhandle to SunValley in the east central part of the state, a prime example of rural gentrification.

The first story is by Mike Baker for the New York Times and is headlined, "A ‘Liberty’ Rebellion in Idaho Threatens to Undermine Coronavirus Orders."  The subhead is "Even some public officials have challenged social-distancing requirements, calling them assaults on the Constitution. One group wants to gather up to 1,000 people for Easter."  This story features the state's libertarian streak and is predictably consistent with the politics of the panhandle region in particular.  Turns out Ammon Bundy, from neighboring Nevada and a ringleader of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge seizure from a few years ago, is associated with the "rebellion."

The second story is by The New Yorker, and its headline is "Why an Idaho Ski Destination Has One of the Highest COVID-19 Infection Rates in the Nation."  Michael Ames writes of a super-spreading event that began in Sun Valley, where some 700 members of the "Black Summit of the National Brotherhood of Skiers (N.B.S.), the largest African-American ski and snowboard association in the world" gathered in early March.  They came from across the United States, and some from as far away as Europe for their 47th annual "mountain meet up."  By the following week, 126 members had symptoms of coronavirus, and several have since died. 

Interestingly, President Trump twice invoked Idaho as a success story in March.  Ames describes Trump's comments, suggesting that the state's wide open spaces made it impervious to coronavirus: 

“Parts of our country are very lightly affected. Very small numbers,” Trump said, on March 24th. “You look at Nebraska, you look at Idaho, you look at Iowa, you look at many—I could name many countries that are handling it very, very well and that are not affected to the same extent, or, frankly, not even nearly to the extent of New York.” Five days later, Trump ticked off the same triumvirate of “countries.” “I said, ‘How about Nebraska? How about Idaho? How about Iowa?’ And you know what? Those people are so great—the whole Midwest,” he said, missing Idaho on the map by a thousand miles or so.

Meanwhile, also from the Rockies, I love how Montana is using fish and fishing equipment as reference points for the six-feet social distancing recommendation.  Here's the Fox news account of the distinctly Montanan public service announcement which some are calling "fishtancing.":

Montana may be the third-lowest state in terms of population density in the U.S., but it hasn't stopped its Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department from coming up with unique ways to recommend social distancing to its residents amid the coronavirus outbreak. 

The department has converted the recommended six-feet social distancing rule -- intended to limit the spread of COVID-19 -- into social "fishtancing" -- expressing the gap in terms of the lengths of several varieties of fish. 

For example, the recommended gap equals “4 trout,” “2 shovelnose sturgeon,” “1 paddlefish” or “1 fishing rod” measurements, according to a Twitter post by the government agency.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XIII): Big NYT feature

This feature story just went live a few hours ago.  It tracks the spread of coronavirus in the rural United States, with the focus at the country level.  The interactive maps and timelines are cool.  But this story by Jack Healy, Sabrina Tavernise, Robert Gebeloff, and Weiyi Cai, is not just data driven.  There's lots of texture, too, including quotes from folks living in rural areas and information about the stress on rural hospitals.

Here's a quote about states that have not yet issued "stay home" or "shelter in place" orders, all of  which are popularly thought of as rural--and all of which have Republican governors.

With 42 states now urging people to stay at home, the last holdouts are the Republican governors of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has suggested that the stricter measures violated personal liberties, and she said her state’s rural character made it better positioned to handle the outbreak.

“South Dakota is not New York City,” Ms. Noem said at a news conference last week. 

But many rural doctors, leaders and health experts worry that is exactly where their communities are heading, and that they will have fewer hospital beds, ventilators and nurses to handle the onslaught.

Also from the national media comes this op-ed is from the Washington Post a few days ago, with a foreboding headline for what lies in store for rural America, "The covid-19 crisis is going to get much worse when it hits rural areas."

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XII): Rural economies

This post will highlight two recent stories about the impact coronavirus is having on rural economies.  I'll lead with this by April Simpson for Stateline, which was co-published by Daily Yonder.  Simpson observes that the impact of the pandemic is going to vary from rural place to rural place, largely depending on the basis and diversity of a given rural economy.  I'm reminded of the old adage popular among rural sociologists: If you've seen one rural place, you've seen one rural place. 

The states least affected by the huge spike in unemployment claims are largely rural. They include West Virginia, Arkansas and Georgia. In part, that’s because those states have taken less dramatic steps to slow the spread of the virus. Among them, only West Virginia issued a stay-at-home order before the end of March. 

Nevertheless, “the industries that have been hard hit are just not as prevalent in rural areas,” said Ernie Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He cited the relative lack of retail and hospitality businesses in Corn Belt states. 

Economists rank regions as economically vulnerable to coronavirus fallout based on demographic and economic factors, including their number of COVID-19 cases, connection to international travelers, reliance on tourism, population density and reliance on global trade, according to a Moody’s Analytics analysis.

Simpson focuses on Utah as a sort of case study for variations within a state with many sparsely populated counties:

Utah, for example, is a net exporter of energy, so low oil prices have delivered an extra hit to workers in those industries. 

In addition, 10% of Utah’s jobs are in leisure and hospitality. And in the rural areas outside of a narrow string of cities and towns along a mountain range toward the north central part of the state, the reliance on those jobs is even greater. 

“Those rural economies aren’t as diverse as some of the more urbanized places, so the impact we’re expecting might actually be even more concentrated,” said Juliette Tennert, director of economic and public policy research at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. 

But the economy in Utah doesn’t revolve around tourism like it does in Nevada and Hawaii. Tourism also isn’t an outsized employer in rural counties such as Cache and Box Elder to the northwest and Juab in central Utah, which are among the places Moody’s Analytics considers less vulnerable. 

Manufacturing is among the largest industries in Cache and Box Elder, although each has other anchors, such as Utah State University in Cache County. Juab has agriculture that feeds local demand.

The New York Times on Sunday ran a big business section feature about the impact of the coronavirus on rural economies.  The focus of Patricia Cohen's story is eastern Oregon, from the southern part bordering Nevada, up to Wallowa County, bordering Washington.  Several of folks Cohen interviews  are farmers and ranchers, but she also talks to a musician, a leather craftsman, and a man who owns a hotel and restaurant in Joseph, Oregon, population 1,081, where the summer tourist season--quickly approaching--is a short one.  All of these folks are accustomed to remote living and a great deal of time alone or with just their families.

Some are thinking about future economic survival strategies.  For example, one couple, the Casads, grow organic potatoes:

Their biggest customer, Deschutes Brewery in Bend, closed two weeks ago and laid off more than 300 workers. The Casads, fortunately, have so far been shielded from the worst economic effects. They produced about 50 tons of Kennebec potatoes last year — perfect for french fries — and sold out of them in February, before the epidemic hit. 

“We’re doubling down this year” on the amount they’re planting, Ms. Havstad Casad said. They’ve just begun to seed and plant squash, and won’t be harvesting Kennebecs until the fall.

* * *  

And they are thinking about redirecting some of their sales to local grocery stores and organic distributors in case restaurants are slow to recover.

Some of the places featured in the story are Steens Mountain Wilderness, Eagle Cap Wilderness, and Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in North America.  Other population clusters mentioned--in addition to Joseph--are Enterprise, population 1,940, Madras, population 6,000, and Canyon City, population 703.

Coronavirus consequences in rural communities (Part XI): the media

As a ruralist, I found myself annoyed a few weeks ago when the New York Times ran this story about how small newspapers are hurting for ad dollars as a consequence of businesses shuttering to comply with self-quarantine and "shelter in place" orders.  My annoyance stemmed from the story's metrocentric focus, mostly on alternative weeklies in places like St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Chattanooga.

I thus found Erik Wemple's piece in the Washington Post more appropriate.  Wemple writes about the Storm Lake Times, in Buena Vista County, Iowa.  The paper, which the headline characterizes as "storied," is certainly that--not least because its editor, Art Cullen, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing a few years ago.  Here's the lede for Wemple's story:

Buena Vista County, Iowa, has yet to log a positive coronavirus case. The media economy associated with the pandemic, however, has arrived. “Advertising has disappeared, so we will lose money in March and it was tough enough before this,” says 62-year-old Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly community newspaper covering Buena Vista and parts of neighboring counties in the northwestern corner of Iowa. 

* * *  

Pulitzers reward fine work; they don’t change business models. Even before the coronavirus hit the Storm Lake Times, the newspaper was fighting the same impoverishing forces that have gutted local news outlets across the country. Ads on Facebook and Google, noted Cullen in an interview last year, had gobbled up a good bit of his revenue. “Small-town businesses discovered Facebook or Google and there goes that 20-buck ad you were living on,” he said. “And we live on $20 ads. That’s how we make a living — the scraps that fall off the table.”

By the way, the paper has a GoFundMe page.  I donated.

If this is what's happening to the Storm Lake Times, imagine how other rural and small town newspapers are faring as advertising revenue slumps.  Some earlier posts about contemporary struggles of that sector of the media market are here and here.  This background is from April Simpson for Pew's Stateline last fall.

According to a recent story from the Associated Press, more than 2100 cities and towns have lost a paper in the past decade and a half.  That recent AP story mentions of rural Nevada, where Battle Born Media "is scaling back or ceasing publication of six rural weekly newspapers."  Here's a story by the Las Vegas, Nevada newspaper about that turn of events.  The AP story also discusses what's happening at the Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Massachusetts, population 43,000, but/and part of the greater Boston metro area.  That paper has just a dozen newsroom employees left, as falling ad revenue has forced it to lay off the political reporter, as well as various business-side staff.  Here's a story out of Montana about the rural newspaper crisis, this one by the Billings Gazette.

I'm looking at the latest issue of my hometown newspaper, the Newton County Times, dated April 1, 2020. Ads do not seem sharply down over past weeks, but shelter-in-place instructions are relatively new to Arkansas.  Also, much of the advertising seems to be placed by non-local businesses, such as those selling steel buildings, walk-in showers, and dental insurance.  There are also, predictably, ads for the only pharmacy in town, a monument (tombstone) company, the local internet provider--oh, and some senior living facilities in neighboring counties.  Sadly, the demand for those products is staying constant, if not rising.  There's an ad for a local tow truck operator and one for an autobody shop. Then there are the classifieds--and the ads encouraging people to place classifieds, including in the larger daily paper in the neighboring county, which is published by the same company as the Newton County Times. 

Also, it's good for the Newton County Times that it published an advertising heavy supplement the prior week, when it was touting Newton County as a tourism destination--somewhat ironically, as I recently wrote about here.

Postscript:  From the Brookings Institute on April 8, 2020.  From Clara Hendrickson's report:

Amid the public health crisis, many communities across the U.S. suffer from a lack of local reporting. Of the 2,485 U.S. counties that reported COVID-19 cases as of April 6th, 50% are news deserts (home to only one local newspaper or none at all). Fifty-seven percent of counties that have reported cases of COVID-19 lack a daily newspaper and 37% saw local newspapers disappear between 2004 and 2019. It is impossible to know what will not be told in the communities that have seen local newspapers disappear in recent years, but undoubtedly, important stories will go uncovered as the coronavirus spreads across the country.

Postscript:  From New Mexico Senator Tom Udall's Twitter account on the afternoon on April 8, 2020, re distress amongst New Mexico's media and his proposal for federal assistance to help alleviate it:

Coronavirus in rural America (Part X): Mono County, California

I have already devoted a couple of posts to California's response to the coronavirus, including this post here which addresses a few aspects of what is happening in the Eastern Sierras, in particular Mono County, population 14,202.   Now, I am happy to report that a collaboration of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the New York Times is going to bring reporting out of all 58 counties of the Golden State.  The New York Times leads today with this story by Annie Berman.  Here's the lede:

For most of the year, about 8,000 people live in Mammoth Lakes, a resort town 7,881 feet high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. At peak ski season, the population triples, a fact normally welcomed by civic leaders. 

But not now. Not when surrounding Mono County has the highest rate of coronavirus infection in the state. Not when the county’s lone hospital has just 17 beds. Not when transferring a patient to another hospital means a special medical evacuation flight at a cost of up to $50,000, and when even this option can be delayed by frequent blizzard conditions. And when the town’s thin air only makes respiratory ailments worse.

The story is well worth a read in its entirety because it reveals so much about rural California, at least a certain variety of the Golden State's rural reaches.  The photos are terrific, too, not to mention the quotes from Dr. Thomas Boo, the county's public health officer, including this one:

I’m absolutely terrified.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part IX): Wilderness and other consumptions of the rural

Cover of spring tourism supplement to Newton County Times, dated March 25, 2020.
This cover is now obsolete as the businesses in Newton County, Arkansas, relying on
tourism dollars are shutting down because of closure of the 
Buffalo National River in the face of
the coronavirus crisis and need to self-quarantine/shelter in place. 

A topic that crops up with increasing frequency in rural scholarship is the phenomenon of "consuming the rural." That is, one thing urban folks value about rural places is the opportunity to visit them, to be tourists there, to be consumers of rurality.  Sometimes what urban dwellers value is small-town charm, cute shops, nice restaurants, and such in places like the Hudson Valley or Long Island, if you're a New Yorker.  In the region of northern California where I now live, this might mean a trip to the Sierra-Nevada foothills to one of many "preserved" gold rush towns like Nevada City or Sutter Creek (these are actually post-Gold Rush in some sense, I guess, because they tend feature Victorian architecture).  Wine tasting is also a popular activity in these California locales, as in many other rural places in regions around the country.  I've written about some of those places here, and I've written a few blog posts in the coronavirus era about urban residents rushing to these places to escape the fast spread of coronavirus, sometimes associated with urban density.

But something else urban dwellers value--as do many of their rural counterparts--is wilderness, which some conflate with rurality.  Indeed, "wilderness" is a tag or label I added to this blog not long after I started Legal Ruralism in 2007.  I theorized wilderness in relation to rurality here.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic takes me back to that topic, not least because of the impact it is having on my own home county, Newton County, Arkansas, which I have written about frequently here.  You'll get a sense of the place by reading posts at the link above, including here, here and here.  Bottom line:  it's a place with 8000 residents, most of them low-income.  It's a persistent poverty county, meaning it has had a high poverty rate since records of poverty began to be measured in the 1960s.

In the last two to three decades, however, Newton County's economy has become increasingly dependent on ecotourism, specifically that associated with the Buffalo National River, the first national park in the United States, whose headwaters lie in the county.

And therein lies the coronavirus "rub," if you will:  What happens (or should happen) in a place like Newton County when coronavirus is striking more populous places?  Well, apparently, a number of folks (relatively speaking) from around the country thought Newton County would be a good place to hide out, which eventually led full-time/year-round residents to protest--at least on FaceBook.  Here is the coverage by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Bill Bowden:

The largest Buffalo National River resort has closed for a month because of overcrowding in the national park. 

"People aren't respecting the social distancing," said Austin Albers, co-owner of the Buffalo Outdoor Center in Ponca. "People are flooding the area in droves and honestly freaking out the local community." 

* * *

Albers said there have been hundreds of cars parked at some trail heads, and the license plates indicate they've come from all over the country. 

The story quotes Arkansas Representative Keith Slape (R-Compton): 

It's not your typical tourists. They are from Nevada, New York and New Jersey. Looking for a place to hide out until it blows through. Locals can't get groceries for tourists buying it up. They are also concerned that the virus may be brought in to them.

Interesting re groceries.  My mother in Newton County has had better access than I to hand sanitizer and yeast--both products in short supply in California for several weeks.  So, I'm not sure about the purported shortages in Newton County.  Also interesting re: New York, New Jersey and Nevada license plates.  I can't recall ever seeing license plates from ANY of these places in Newton County, which isn't to call into question Slape's veracity--but if it is happening now, it's relatively novel.  Mostly, Newton County and the Buffalo National River are regional destinations.  Also FYI, Slape was the Newton County Sheriff until a few years ago, so he knows it well and, in fact, lives relatively close to Ponca, near the river's headwaters.

Another issue, of course, is the local economy.  Establishments like the Ozark Cafe, a real institution on the town square in the county seat, Jasper,  remained open until earlier this week, though only for takeout.  Of course, the cafe's owners need the income, just like the canoe concessionaires and rental cabin folks do, but the fact that such establishments are open makes the county more likely to draw visitors, while also providing a service and income to locals.

The Buffalo Outdoor Center is of course more squarely serving visitors.  Albers, the co-owner quoted above, explained what his business was doing in light of coronavirus:

Albers said he took no new canoe rentals last week, and only provided canoes to people who had made reservations earlier or were staying in the resort's 27 cabins or 14 recreational vehicle spaces. 

Albers said the Buffalo Outdoor Center store will close Wednesday and remain closed until May. 

"We've shut down the canoe rentals, shuttles for the river operations," he said Monday.
Albers is taking no new cabin reservations for April, but cabins will be available to people who made reservations earlier. 

"We're allowing people who have current reservations to keep those reservations," he said. 

They can check in remotely, go to their cabin, self quarantine or go for a hike, he said.  

Albers said overcrowding became an issue over the weekend. 

"We're trying to be proactive in the community and also protect our employees and the guests, but the guests aren't protecting themselves," said Albers. "What has happened has scared our employees."

Here's a follow up story from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and here is coverage from the Harrison Daily Times, owned by the same media company that owns the Newton County Times.  A quote attributed to the National Park Service follows:

This emergency closure is for the maintenance of public health and safety and is in direct response to guidance from state and federal health officials.  The health and safety of our visitors, employees, volunteers, communities, and partners is our number one priority.

The Harrison Daily Times story continues:

BNR were from out of state. Those visitors could be coming from “hot spots” for the virus outbreak across the country. 

In addition, the governor said some people were congregating in large groups against an Arkansas Health Department directive that people should avoid social gatherings with more than 10 people present. 

So, [Governor] Hutchinson said he was recommending to the Department of the Interior that the BNR be closed until the crisis subsides.

The National Park Service (NPS) said it is working service-wide with federal, state and local authorities to closely monitor the COVID-19 pandemic and will lift the closure as soon as possible. 

Let me put what has happened in Newton County in context by referring to what is happening nationally.  The Washington Post reported earlier this week that seven National Park Service employees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus as many national parks have remained open and folks have flocked there in recent weeks. Here's an excerpt from that story, leading with a quote from Stephanie Roulett, a spokesman for the National Park Service:

The NPS is working with our contractors and concessionaires to track reported cases of their employees as well.  

The Washington Post story by Darryl Fears, Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni continues:

Last week, the superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, said an employee tested positive. It was closed March 24. At Grand Canyon National Park, which drew large crowds over the weekend, a resident in the park’s housing complex on the South Rim tested positive.

Roulett said no Park Service employee at Grand Canyon has been diagnosed with covid-19. Officials in Coconino County, which includes the park, have asked it to be shut down.

Note the theme re the Grand Canyon that is similar to what happened in my home county:  local folks and local officials pressing the national entity (Department of Interior/National Park Service)  for the shut down.

Also, here's a breaking LA Times story by Kurtis Lee about more recent closures of national parks in the southwest--and consequences of same, including the struggles of travelers to get back to their homes in light of various travel restrictions. 

Anne Helen Petersen wrote this piece for Buzzfeed under the provocative headline, "This Pandemic is Not Your Vacation." An excerpt follows:

Wealth is not the cause of every concentrated outbreak dotting the United States. But it’s the common denominator of so much of its spread outside of major urban areas. It’s the reason why so many of the coronavirus hot spots in the Mountain West — Sun Valley, Idaho; Gunnison County, Colorado; Summit County, Utah; Gallatin County, Montana — overlap with winter playgrounds for the wealthy. The virus travels via people, and the people who travel the most, both domestically and internationally, are rich people.

In Idaho’s Blaine County, home to Sun Valley, more than half of the residential properties are second homes or rental properties, and more than 30,000 people fly into the regional airport during ski season alone. As of March 31, 187 people in the county of 22,000 have tested positive, including local emergency room physician Brent Russell. Two people have died. The town’s small hospital has two ICU beds and a single ventilator.

Petersen quotes what Dr. Russell told the Idaho Statesman:

People come here from all over the world. Especially this time of year. When I’m in the ER, I get people from New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Seattle. Every week there’s people from those places. Most likely someone from an urban area or multiple people from urban areas came here and they just set it off.

Here's an NPR story on some local government entities' decision to shut down short-term rentals.  Here is an example of that out of Whitefish, Montana in the Flathead Valley.  Here's a Forbes piece on the wealthy fleeing to vacation homes, which are often in rural areas.  Here's a story from Vox re: how coronavirus is likely to hit rural areas later--and also harder, the latter due to a lack of healthcare resources.

I must admit that, when it became clear that my family's spring break trip to Europe (starting April 4) would be canceled, our first thought was to swing through national parks in the West and Southwest to salvage the opportunity for family travel time together.  That said, we gave up that notion less than 48 hours after we conceived it.  That was a good three weeks ago, which is apparently much earlier than some folks gave up.

Lastly, while this is not about the wilderness end of the rural-urban continuum, it is another story of rural gentrification and the consequences in the age of coronavirus, this one for Europe.  So many more similar stories I could link to, so little time.  In any event, here's to wilderness--and our ability to safely consume it, with appropriate respect to locals--again soon.

Post script from April 13, 2020, Los Angeles Times:  "Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park: ‘The bear population has quadrupled’"  This story features extraordinary photos.

New York State Bar Association today adopts rural access recommendations

Coverage on New York State Bar Association's website is here, by Christian Nolan.  The lede for that story follows:    

The report and recommendations of the Task Force on Rural Justice, which includes loan repayment reforms, tuition assistance programs, relaxing residency requirements for public positions and raising hourly rates for assigned counsel, was adopted by NYSBA’s House of Delegates at its meeting April 4. 

“Research suggests that nearly 75% of current rural lawyers will retire over the next three decades with few to no new attorneys ready to replace them,” said NYSBA President Hank Greenberg. “This disturbing trend would only further worsen the existing access-to-justice gap faced by our rural communities. 

“NYSBA is deeply committed to ensuring that all New Yorkers, including rural residents, have sufficient access to justice and we are confident that the task force’s recommendations will provide the reforms necessary to stem the tide of this growing crisis,” Greenberg concluded.

You can read the full report of the Task Force on Rural Justice here.

Congrats to my friend, Taier Perlman, of Legal Services of Hudson Valley (formerly Rural Law Initiative Albany Law School), who co-authored this Task Force report with her colleague Judge Stan Pritzker. 

In Memoriam of Bill Withers, singer-songwriter and coal-miner's son

Many obituaries and tributes to the great Bill Withers are available online, but I'm going to quote from just one, this NPR story by Anastasia Tsioulcas, because it highlights his rural and working-class roots:

The son of a West Virginia coal miner, William Harrison Withers, Jr. was born July 4, 1938. He grew up with a stutter and was one of 13 children in his family. Only six survived infancy. 

He was the first man in his family not to go into the mines, and he couldn't wait to get away from the place where he grew up, as he told NPR's Morning Edition in 2015.
Withers' father died when he was just 13. Soon, another tragedy struck the family. "My social idol was my older brother," Withers told NPR. "He got hurt in the coal mines — he got crushed by a coal cart — so, he wasn't able to work in there anymore." Withers' brother became a mailman, and he saw a way out of the mines for himself, too. 

Withers joined the Navy after graduating from high school in 1956. After a nine-year stint, he moved first to San Jose, Calif. and, a couple of years later, to Los Angeles. For a while, he was a milkman, and then worked in a factory making airplane parts. In the evenings, he would sit in as a singer at small clubs around the city. Between shifts, he learned how to play the guitar and began writing his own songs, which he began shopping around to labels.

I also love this quote from Withers:

I don't think I've done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.

Slab Fork, West Virginia, for the record, has a population of 202.  This attention to Withers' roots is a reminder that Black people live in Appalachia, too. 

Withers' music career, which ended in 1985, lasted less than two decades.  He told NPR in 2015:

I wasn't socialized as a musician. It wasn't the only way I knew how to live.

On Census Day: Renewed debate on how/where to count the incarcerated in rural prisons

Kurtis Lee and Sandhya Kambhampati report for the Los Angeles Times from Canon City, Colorado, population 16,400, under the headline, "Should the census count black and Latino inmates in rural prisons as area residents?"  This is a perennial debate being raised again now because it is Census Day.  Here's an excerpt from the LA Times story:

After the tally is completed, states will use the numbers to redraw legislative and congressional districts, a once-per-decade procedure with broad implications for whether communities of color have an equitable opportunity at electing candidates who represent their interests and will fight for their concerns. And, in turn, the outcome of redistricting has a ripple effect on what programs — housing, education, healthcare — are funded over the next 10 years.

* * * 

The U.S. Census Bureau counts inmates as residents of the counties where they’re imprisoned — a practice that officials say is meant to provide the most accurate and fair way of capturing a moment-in-time count. Still, in recent years, a wave of states have passed laws requiring post-count adjustments during legislative redistricting to avoid what critics refer to as prison gerrymandering. 

Advocates contend that regions where prisons are located — often rural, predominantly white areas — have unfairly inflated their numbers, and thus their political clout, by being able to count inmates such as Marquantte, who is black. Many of the inmates are Latino or black men from more densely populated areas. 

Lee and Kambhampati quote Professor Justin Levitt of Loyola LA Law School:

Counting people who are incarcerated where they have been imprisoned leads to a big distortion. The people incarcerated in a prison facility are often vastly demographically and socioeconomically different from the profile of local residents, with vastly different needs.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part VIII): Indian Country

The Los Angeles Times reported from the Navajo nation a few days ago under the headline "No running water. No electricity. On Navajo Nation, coronavirus creates worry and confusion as cases surge."  Kurtis Lee writes from Cameron, Arizona, population 885:

Lisa Robbins runs the generator attached to her family’s mobile home for just a few hours most mornings. With no electricity, it provides heat in this rural high-desert stretch of the Navajo Nation where overnight temperatures often linger in the low 30s this time of year. 

Robbins first started hearing the whispers earlier this month — the fever, that sickness, something called coronavirus — but most people in this town of about 900 didn’t seem too worried. It was far off, neighbors told her, a world away in the big cities. 

So, Robbins, who rarely has access to the internet or TV news, continued with her daily routine, which includes helping her mother, who sometimes suffers from side effects of a surgery years ago to remove a cancerous stomach tumor.

Then came the bang on her door and a stark warning from local leaders. 

“They told us to stay inside … don’t come out because people could die,” Robbins said one evening last week. “It hit us so fast, no one knows what to do.”

The story tells of the likely spread of the virus from an evangelical church rally in Chilchinbeto, Arizona on March 7.  The Navajo Nation reported its first coronavirus case on the reservation on March 17, but within a few days the number jumped to 115.

The Navajo nation includes 175,000 residents spread over an area larger than West Virginia and served by just four inpatient hospitals.

Postscript:  Here is a hard-hitting NPR story on the coronavirus' impact on the Navajo Nation. Note the focus on water.  Forty percent of the Navajo reservation doesn't have running water, which means hand-washing is a luxury for them.