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  31. <title>45 Degrees North: The Ice Storm Election</title>
  32. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-the-ice-storm-election/2025/04/25/</link>
  33. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-the-ice-storm-election/2025/04/25/#respond</comments>
  35. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Donna Kallner]]></dc:creator>
  36. <pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  37. <category><![CDATA[Rural Voters & Elections]]></category>
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  40. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C427&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1151&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1125&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C439&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  41. <p>April 1, 2025 (no joke) was the spring election in Wisconsin for non-partisan offices. You may have heard about our judicial race for a 10-year-term on the state supreme court. It made the national news and set records for both campaign spending and voter turnout.&#160; What you may not have heard about is the ice [&#8230;]</p>
  42. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-the-ice-storm-election/2025/04/25/">45 Degrees North: The Ice Storm Election</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  43. ]]></description>
  44. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C427&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1151&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1125&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C439&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20250401_074506420_HDR-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>April 1, 2025 (no joke) was the spring election in Wisconsin for non-partisan offices. You may have heard about our judicial race for a 10-year-term on the state supreme court. It made the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk-trump-8fe006c7f8fa40b663eccd6751bada98">national news</a> and <a href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/04/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-record-spending-turnout-democrat-republican/">set records</a> for both campaign spending and voter turnout.&nbsp;</p><p>What you may <em>not</em> have heard about is the ice storm that hit northern parts of the state a few days earlier, causing extended power outages and uncertainty about restoration as icy branches kept coming down on power lines. As March went out like a lion, the question I kept getting from friends and neighbors was: <em>Will there still be an election on Tuesday?&nbsp;</em></p><p>Rest assured, there are systems and protocols in place to help election officials meet challenges like this. Most of us will never see them in action. I happened to have a front row seat to some of it this time.&nbsp;</p><p>So here’s my story about rural northern Wisconsin’s Ice Storm Election of 2025.</p><p><strong>The Storm.</strong> On Saturday, March 29, the day of the storm, I had planned to review training materials from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Our Chief Inspector couldn’t work this election because she was on the ballot. The same was true for another one of our poll workers. And our Town Clerk, who administers elections for this municipality, was also on the ballot so she could be available to answer questions, but not working in the polling place.&nbsp;</p><p>That left three of us from the election board to work the polls, with me serving as Chief Inspector for the first time. I had completed the training, but wanted a refresher before Election Day. So that Saturday, I reviewed the Chief Inspector Election Day curriculum, and planned to review the baseline Chief Inspector materials on Sunday.&nbsp;</p><p>But overnight, the weather got worse. On Sunday morning, our volunteer fire department went into storm response mode. My husband and I are both volunteers. He went to work on one of the crews clearing a lane of travel on town roads and marking downed power lines with traffic cones. I went to work with the crew at the Town Hall, recording who was doing what and where. I took my election manual along to review if there was time. There wasn&#8217;t.</p><p><strong>The Hall. </strong>The Town Hall is adjacent to our fire station, which is very small. For trainings and large incidents, we use the Hall. But election materials, including the ballot tabulator, had been set up there for the required public test of voting equipment the week before the election. The fire chief called the Town Clerk for authorization for me to move the machine and other materials out of the Hall and into her office, which we could secure. That let us use the Hall for Incident Command, gave us access to the Hall’s kitchen to feed volunteer responders, and allowed us to open the hall to our community.</p><p><strong>The Generator.</strong> Just last year, the Town Board approved the installation of a backup generator. So for the first time during an extended outage, we had power in the Hall, Clerk&#8217;s office, and fire station. We posted on Facebook the hours the Hall would be open to anyone who needed to warm up, charge devices, or fill containers with water.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>The School.</strong> Our K-12 school also has a standby generator, a commons area that can be closed off from classrooms for a warming shelter, and not just toilets but also showers available. The school also opened to the community that Sunday.</p><p><strong>Meanwhile at home…</strong> By late afternoon on Sunday, roads were passable, although trees were still coming down. Bill and I got home in time to see what damage there was at our place, worry about a tree leaning at the end of our driveway, eat, play Scrabble by the light of hurricane lamps, and fall into bed. We fully expected power to still be out the following day. So the fire department’s plan for Monday was to conduct welfare checks at addresses of vulnerable members of the community, who could be getting pretty cold by then.</p><p><strong>Welfare checks.</strong> On Monday morning, fire department volunteers gathered to organize. Our Town Clerk needed to move things back into the Hall for the Election on Tuesday. So we worked out of the fire station, where we have just enough outlets to plug in a laptop, printer, a radio charger, and a crock pot of hot dogs.&nbsp;</p><p>The municipal Clerk for the Village of White Lake got the message that we were organizing to do welfare checks and showed up to help. While other teams spread out to check on folks in the 155 square miles of our service area that surround the Village, she spent the morning with a fire department volunteer checking on a long list of elders who live in that two-square-mile area.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Change of Venue.</strong> By late morning on Monday, it was unknown whether power restoration would happen before the polls opened on Tuesday. With branches still coming down, it seemed likely that additional outages could occur after restoration. With our generator, the Town of Wolf River could operate a polling place. But halls for the Village and for the adjacent Town of Evergreen did not have generators. So it was decided to move those polling places to the school.&nbsp;</p><p>I was busy with fire department stuff that afternoon, but heard bits of conversation about what it takes to move polling places in an emergency situation: Questions for the County Clerk on a continuity of operations plan in compliance with <a href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/5/I/25/3">Wisconsin statutes</a>. Coordination with the school district. Notifications to the Wisconsin Elections Commission so the MyVote.wi.gov polling place listings could be updated. Postings about the change of location to all the places where municipalities put public meeting notices. Social media posts. Notifications to poll workers. Communicating a plan and needs to the school’s custodial staff. Setting up two separate polling areas for the two municipalities in the school commons. Coordination with the county Sheriff for a police escort for the transfer of voting equipment and materials from the original venues to the newly designated polling stations. Because there are chain of custody requirements for things like ballots and poll books.</p><p><strong>Election Security.</strong> When voters are busy cutting their way through debris to clear their own driveways or bugging out to areas that didn&#8217;t lose power, they don&#8217;t see all the effort that goes into an emergency relocation of a polling place. But let me tell you, rural municipal clerks and county clerks and poll workers take election security seriously – whether the sun is shining or ice-laden branches are falling all around them. I don&#8217;t know when most of them had time to worry about whether the contents of their home freezers would still be good when the power came back on. I sure didn&#8217;t until after the election.</p><p><strong>Disaster funds. </strong>Meanwhile, back at the fire station in a municipality that <em>didn&#8217;t </em>have a change of venue for voting, there were questions about whether our Town would qualify for Wisconsin Disaster Fund reimbursement. That was for others to address. But I was on the team logging response activities, and we were being advised that additional information would be needed. A <em>lot</em> more detailed information.&nbsp;</p><p>I&#8217;m still not clear on how much of that is absolutely required (umm, geo-tagged photos and GPS coordinates for every tree removed from a road? Mileage notes assigned to each separate incident? Is <em>every</em> tree a <em>separate</em> incident?). It&#8217;s a lot more work to recreate detailed records after the fact than to record the necessary information as you go along. We learned that applying for FEMA reimbursement after <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-lessons-learned-from-disaster-response/2021/02/25/">a derecho hit our area</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>But state Disaster Assessment forms are not part of our Incident Command documents kit. And frankly, they are not designed for use by rural volunteer fire departments working in horrible conditions to reopen roads as quickly as possible for emergency responders, utility crews, and elders and people with newborn infants leaving their homes in search of motels with power. They certainly aren&#8217;t designed for a tired volunteer with a headache from breathing spilled chainsaw fuel.</p><p><strong>Tick tock.</strong> There were also concerns about the exact window of time in which initial damage reports must be compiled if we hoped to qualify for disaster funds. Communities that qualify must incur expenses in an amount that exceeds a threshold based upon population. The first guesstimate I heard sounded like we would clear that threshold, but the only way to know would be to add up how many people had worked how many hours doing what so far. And <em>then </em>it would land back on the Town Clerk&#8217;s desk for further action. All of that with polls set to open in just a few hours.&nbsp;</p><p>I heard the next morning that we would not be pursuing disaster funds. And that was a relief to me. With my inexperience as a Chief Inspector leading a skeleton crew of poll workers and the expectation of heavy voter turnout, I selfishly appreciated knowing one thing with a looming deadline was off the Clerk&#8217;s desk.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Election Day. </strong>At sunrise, the tree leaning over the end of our driveway was still standing, and I didn&#8217;t have to call someone to pick me up and get me to the polls on time. Voter turnout was excellent, and the three of us working the polls stayed busy. Surprisingly, we had just a few voters discombobulated by changes in polling places. One voter thought his usual venue had changed and he could vote in ours (it hadn&#8217;t and he couldn&#8217;t). Another couple went to the school first after hearing that our polling place had moved (we hadn&#8217;t, they sent the voters to us).&nbsp;</p><p>The usual things happened that required notation as incidents on the Inspector’s Statement. For example, some people voted for too many candidates in the school board and Town supervisor races. When that happens, they get an error signal when they feed the ballot into the tabulator. We have a procedure for spoiling that ballot and issuing a replacement. It has to be documented, and spoiled ballots secured.</p><p>We had some unexpected things that happened, too. There was a fender bender in the parking lot, and the driver came back to the polling place to find the owner of the vehicle he hit. The long lag screws that had held the frame for voting booth #2 securely into the studs for 20 years pulled out while a voter was marking his ballot. The fire department was paged as a firefighter was entering the voting booth. Before he could ask, I told him he had to cast his ballot before responding: His voter number had been recorded in the poll book and the ballot issued. Ballots may not be taken out of the polling area, and securing an issued ballot while the voter responds to “vehicle submerged in water, occupant out” is not in the election day manual.</p><p><strong>Ballots.</strong> With high turnout for a spring election, by early evening we were counting the remaining blank ballots and feeling mildly concerned about running short. Clerks use historical voter turnout numbers when ordering ballots. Municipalities have to pay for them, and we don&#8217;t want to pay for stuff that won&#8217;t be needed. How could they anticipate that $100 million in campaign spending would contribute to record turnout? Plus, Wisconsin allows same-day registration at the polls, and those numbers are hard to predict. And voters are allowed up to three chances if they overvote or otherwise spoil a ballot and have to request a replacement. So, placing a ballot order is not an exact science.&nbsp;</p><p>We didn&#8217;t run out this time, thank goodness, but were prepared anyway. Our ballots are printed on special paper with a weight and contrast readable by the optical scanner in the tabulator. Last November in the general election, we did run short. We had to xerox additional ballots. Those had to be cast separately then hand counted at the end of the night. A hand count is always performed by at least two people. If our hand-count tallies don&#8217;t match, we count again. It&#8217;s more work and more stress that no one wants at the end of a long day. But there&#8217;s a procedure for it because stuff happens.</p><p><strong>Open Meeting. </strong>At the end of the night, even with a tabulator there is counting to do. The number of actual ballots in the tabulator’s ballot container must match the number of voters recorded in the poll books. Ballots cast and spoiled ballots are sealed into a secure container with a serial number that&#8217;s recorded. There&#8217;s a lot of paperwork. Normally, the Chief Inspector could chip away at that paperwork throughout the day. The Clerk came to my rescue when it became apparent that I was behind. With her help and the kind understanding and support of the other poll workers, we checked off all the boxes, prepared copies of poll books and results tapes to go to the county and two school boards, conducted the canvass of votes for offices in our own Town government, called in results to the county clerk, and secured materials that would be delivered to the county for the canvass that would certify the statewide races. All of those activities that happen after the polls close are considered an open meeting. Voters are welcome to observe the process. It&#8217;s reassuring to see all the checks and balances.</p><p><strong>After Election Day. </strong>Snow flurries were just starting again as I drove home that night. By morning, the roads were nasty. Nevertheless, our Town Clerk delivered election materials to the county clerk and two school districts – one of which is mostly in an adjacent county and has only a handful of voters who live in this municipality. They were still without power. She put on about 150 miles, a good part of it creeping along behind a snowplow.&nbsp;</p><p>When $100 million dollars is spent on the campaign for what&#8217;s supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial office, it&#8217;s hard not to be cynical about, well, just about everything. But there&#8217;s nothing like a peek behind the scenes at the hard-working, dedicated people who serve rural communities to restore some faith in our system of democracy. You may only see your municipal clerk when you&#8217;re paying your property tax bill or getting a dog license. But trust me – they are busy meeting unrealistic expectations with limited time and insufficient resources every day – even when the sky is falling.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-the-ice-storm-election/2025/04/25/">45 Degrees North: The Ice Storm Election</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  45. ]]></content:encoded>
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  51. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227679</post-id> </item>
  52. <item>
  53. <title>Preserving Cherokee Language Ten Books at a Time</title>
  54. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/preserving-cherokee-language-ten-books-at-a-time/2025/04/25/</link>
  55. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/preserving-cherokee-language-ten-books-at-a-time/2025/04/25/#respond</comments>
  57. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anya Petrone Slepyan]]></dc:creator>
  58. <pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  59. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  60. <category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
  61. <category><![CDATA[Indigenous Affairs]]></category>
  62. <category><![CDATA[Rural Life]]></category>
  63. <category><![CDATA[Living Traditions]]></category>
  64. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=228111</guid>
  65.  
  66. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="575" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?w=1597&amp;ssl=1 1597w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=760%2C426&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1296%2C727&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=768%2C431&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1536%2C862&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C673&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=780%2C438&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=400%2C224&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=706%2C396&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  67. <p>At the entrance to the New Kituwah Academy in Cherokee, North Carolina, a big red sign reads ‘English Stops Here.’ The school, which teaches preschool through the sixth grade, is a Cherokee language immersion program.&#160; Classes, lunch, and after-school activities are conducted primarily in Cherokee, and the school’s books, maps, and diagrams are full of [&#8230;]</p>
  68. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/preserving-cherokee-language-ten-books-at-a-time/2025/04/25/">Preserving Cherokee Language Ten Books at a Time</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  69. ]]></description>
  70. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="575" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?w=1597&amp;ssl=1 1597w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=760%2C426&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1296%2C727&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=768%2C431&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1536%2C862&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C673&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=780%2C438&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=400%2C224&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?resize=706%2C396&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1.-Hartwell-and-book-1-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C575&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-drop-cap">At the entrance to the New Kituwah Academy in Cherokee, North Carolina, a big red sign reads ‘English Stops Here.’ The school, which teaches preschool through the sixth grade, is a Cherokee language immersion program.&nbsp; Classes, lunch, and after-school activities are conducted primarily in Cherokee, and the school’s books, maps, and diagrams are full of the 85 symbols that make up the Cherokee <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syllabary">syllabary</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>Among other resources, teachers and students have access to copies of a half dozen hand-printed picture books designed and created by students at Western Carolina University (WCU). The books cover a range of topics, from Cherokee myths and legends to the riparian habitats of western North Carolina.&nbsp;</p><p>The partnership with WCU was initiated by Dr. Hartwell Francis, the curriculum developer for the New Kituwah Academy and an honorary member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.&nbsp;</p><p>“One of the things you realize when you start working with a language of a small population is that there are often no materials, or very few materials. And the materials aren’t very pretty,” Francis said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.&nbsp;</p><p>So Francis approached Tatiana Potts, printmaking and book arts professor at Western Carolina University. Potts, who is from Slovakia and grew up speaking multiple languages, embraced the project immediately. She sees it as an opportunity for her students to not only learn new printmaking skills, but also to build cross-cultural connections with a community only twenty miles down the road.&nbsp;</p><p>“The university is placed on former Cherokee land,” Potts told the Daily Yonder. “So I wanted that acknowledgement. Not just before every performance we do, but to make a real connection and learn about their culture.”</p><figure class="wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  71. <iframe title="Preserving Cherokee Language Ten Books at a Time" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jnrhX2sewNc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  72. </div></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Guarding Treasure</strong></h3><p class="has-drop-cap">The New Kituwah Academy was created in 2005 as a measure to combat the loss of the Cherokee language.&nbsp;</p><p>“You can think of it as guarding treasure,” Francis said. “A language is a community’s greatest cultural creation, and it has all their wisdom packed into it in different ways.”</p><p>Though the Cherokee language has been spoken for thousands of years, it was considered critically endangered by the beginning of the 21st century. This was no accident – policies requiring Native American children to attend <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/">boarding schools</a> through the mid-1900s were intended to force assimilation and weaken Indigenous cultural ties. Requiring that students speak English and punishing them for any use of their native language drastically reduced the number of Cherokee speakers in the community.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="439" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=780%2C439&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228113" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=780%2C439&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2.-New-Kituwah-sign-1-1296x729.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The New Kituwah Academy is a Cherokee language immersion program, created to revitalize the language by teaching a new generation of speakers. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan/The Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p class="has-drop-cap">“There was a shift about 65 years ago, where people born before that grew up speaking Cherokee language, and people after that didn’t,” Francis said. “And so by 2005, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians realized their language was gravely endangered, with only adults over traditional childbearing age as speakers.”&nbsp;</p><p>For the last 20 years, the <a href="https://ebcikpep.com/">Kituwah Preservation and Education Program </a>has been revitalizing the Cherokee language by teaching it to new generations. The New Kituwah Academy teaches students from preschool through 6th grade, with the goal that students leave the school speaking the Cherokee language at an intermediate level.&nbsp;</p><p>Access to Cherokee-language learning materials is critical for the school’s immersion program. But such materials are not widely available, which has forced Francis and the school’s teachers to get creative. The solution – making their own materials – is one that is common among Indigenous language programs, according to Francis.&nbsp;</p><p>“In Native American language programs, you see people making their own materials. And it has to be that way to a certain extent because they are recreating their cultures after devastating loss.”&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="535" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=780%2C535&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228114" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?w=1251&amp;ssl=1 1251w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=760%2C521&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=768%2C527&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C823&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C702&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=780%2C535&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=400%2C274&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?resize=706%2C484&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/3.-tatiana-prints-1.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Tatiana Potts is a professor of printmaking and book arts at Western Carolina University. In addition to screen printing techniques, she says the collaboration with Cherokee language learners helps her students build cross-cultural connections and understanding. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan/The Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p class="has-drop-cap">To make the books, Potts and her students meet with Francis and a program of adult Cherokee language learners, who decide the book topic and write the text in Cherokee syllabary each semester. The students submit sketches, which are critiqued by the Cherokee learners from a cultural perspective.&nbsp;</p><p>“Did they draw this creature in a Cherokee way? Does this resonate with the Cherokee culture? The students really take [the critiques] to heart. They appreciate the criticism and come back with much better work,” Francis said.&nbsp;</p><p>Potts said the project allows her printmaking students to engage in cultural research, and helps them be more analytical about their own worldviews.</p><p>“It makes them aware of ‘this is how I take things in, this is what I think is standard,’” Potts said. “And I see how that process changes when they do research, and how much they gain from that.”&nbsp;</p><p>Once the art is approved, the students screen print ten copies of their sketches, each with a minimum of four color layers. Finally, Potts and a select group of students glue and bind those pages into ten limited-edition books.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="439" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=780%2C439&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228116" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=780%2C439&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4.-museum-1-1296x729.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Potts and her students aim to make prints that reflect and celebrate the Cherokee community. The subject and text of the books are decided by a group of adult Cherokee language learners. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan/The Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p class="has-drop-cap">At the school, the books are used to support a range of subjects, from science and art to social studies. Because the books are hand-made with New Kituwah Cherokee learners in mind, the elementary-age students have a unique chance to see themselves and their community represented in their school materials.&nbsp;</p><p>For example, one book focused on the architecture of the Cherokee community includes important institutions like the school, museum, post office, and local favorites like the restaurant Granny’s Kitchen and Santa’s Land Fun Park and Zoo.&nbsp;</p><p>“We can build connections [with the Cherokee community] through creating these images, and by making it beneficial for children and helping them be excited to maintain this language,” Potts said.&nbsp;</p><p>The project also sparks imagination and creativity among the elementary-aged students who use the books as class materials, Francis said. For example, seeing a college student’s rendition of the U’lag’û, a house-sized yellow jacket from Cherokee mythology, could prompt a third grader to respond with their own drawing.&nbsp;</p><p>“If you have a picture you can say, well that’s a nice giant hornet, but that’s not the kind of giant hornet I was thinking of,” said Francis. “And so these pictures will inspire [the kids] to artistic creation in the same way from their own cultural base.”&nbsp;</p><p>The books’ contents, as well as the language they are written in, support the critical mission of the New Kituwah Academy.</p><p>“There’s a cultural need to preserve the Cherokee language, and keep the poetry alive, the literature alive,” Francis said. “And to keep the interactions that happen in Cherokee language alive.”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group has-white-color has-dark-gray-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-5574e2e9863dd9627a539869e5365b18"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
  73.  
  74. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:40%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="780" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227984" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=760%2C760&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1296%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1536%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=2048%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=800%2C800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=600%2C600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=2000%2C2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=780%2C780&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=706%2C706&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /></figure></div>
  75.  
  76. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:60%"><p>This article is part of the <strong>Living Traditions</strong> project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia.</p>
  77.  
  78. <div class="wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-100"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-white-color has-primary-variation-background-color has-text-color has-background wp-element-button" href="https://dailyyonder.com/living-traditions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read More Living Traditions</a></div></div></div></div></div></div><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/preserving-cherokee-language-ten-books-at-a-time/2025/04/25/">Preserving Cherokee Language Ten Books at a Time</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  79. ]]></content:encoded>
  81. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/preserving-cherokee-language-ten-books-at-a-time/2025/04/25/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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  85. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">228111</post-id> </item>
  86. <item>
  87. <title>Tom Bethell, 1939-2025: Journalist, Advocate, Mentor</title>
  88. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/tom-bethell-1939-2025-journalist-advocate-mentor/2025/04/24/</link>
  89. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/tom-bethell-1939-2025-journalist-advocate-mentor/2025/04/24/#respond</comments>
  91. <dc:creator><![CDATA[The Mountain Eagle]]></dc:creator>
  92. <pubDate>Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:41:33 +0000</pubDate>
  93. <category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
  94. <category><![CDATA[Obituaries]]></category>
  95. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  96. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=228194</guid>
  97.  
  98. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="663" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?fit=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?w=1632&amp;ssl=1 1632w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=760%2C492&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1296%2C839&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=768%2C497&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1536%2C994&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1200%2C776&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=780%2C505&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=400%2C259&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=706%2C457&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?fit=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  99. <p>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Journalist and social-justice advocate Tom Bethell died April 10 at the age of 86.&#160; This article is from The Mountain Eagle, the famed weekly newspaper published in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Bethell contributed writing, editing, and encouragement to the Eagle and its staff for more than half a century. This piece was written and compiled [&#8230;]</p>
  100. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/tom-bethell-1939-2025-journalist-advocate-mentor/2025/04/24/">Tom Bethell, 1939-2025: Journalist, Advocate, Mentor</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  101. ]]></description>
  102. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="663" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?fit=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?w=1632&amp;ssl=1 1632w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=760%2C492&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1296%2C839&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=768%2C497&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1536%2C994&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1200%2C776&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=780%2C505&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=400%2C259&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?resize=706%2C457&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tom-beth-typewriter.jpg?fit=1024%2C663&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Journalist and social-justice advocate Tom Bethell died April 10 at the age of 86.&nbsp; This article is from </em><a href="https://www.themountaineagle.com/"><em>The Mountain Eagle</em></a><em>, the famed weekly newspaper published in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Bethell contributed writing, editing, and encouragement to the Eagle and its staff for more than half a century. This piece was written and compiled by some of the friends Bethell helped along the way.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>When the <a href="https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/238">Scotia coalmine</a> in Letcher County, Kentucky, exploded twice in March of 1976, <em>Mountain Eagle</em> reporters spread out to interview miners, recovery workers and others, gathering facts and chasing down rumors. Fortunately for them (and readers everywhere), Tom Bethell, then research director for the United Mine Workers, had dropped everything and was standing by in Whitesburg to turn their raw material into a seamless, compelling narrative.</p><p>Pecking away on a typewriter with only one finger at a speed that shamed the best touch typist, Bethell, who died peacefully on April 10 in Washington, D.C., at the age of 86, shaped stories in that week’s <em>Eagle</em> that gave a complete account of the disaster and all the mistakes that led to it.&nbsp;</p><p>Tom Bethell was no stranger to the <em>Eagle</em> or coal miners. A contributor to <em>The Mountain Eagle</em> for six decades, he dedicated his extraordinary investigative, writing, photographic, and analytic skills to demand justice for coal miners and Appalachia.</p><p>“Tom was a prince of a man, a saint in the too small world of advocacy journalism on behalf of those who carry an unequal share of our nation&#8217;s burdens,” said longtime <em>Eagle</em> contributor Jim Branscome.&nbsp; “Tom&#8217;s persistence in demanding justice for coal miners and the mountains has few equals. Coal miners and the cause of mine safety never had a better friend.”</p><p>Thomas N. Bethell was born on February 8, 1939, in Beverly, Massachusetts. The youngest of three siblings, he attended but did not graduate from Harvard University, possibly expelled (the story goes) for dropping a typewriter from three stories to see if it would bounce.&nbsp;</p><p>In 1962, he began a series of editing jobs, the first of which, for Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, took him to Whitesburg; a year later, he began to write for the <em>Eagle</em>, beginning his long and powerful advocacy for Appalachia and its people.&nbsp;</p><p>In 1967, Bethell became Information Officer for Appalachian Volunteers (AVs), a federally funded anti-poverty program. Unlike many “poverty warriors” who came to the mountains with their own pre-conceptions and agendas, Bethell would listen and learn, said Sue Ella Kobak, a Pike County native whom Bethell befriended in the 1960s. “He was so much more aware of who he was within Appalachia, why he was there, and the limits placed on him in that place.”</p><p>Mike Clark, whom Bethell hired as an AV shortly after the two met on a Knott County strip mine in 1967, quickly learned that Bethell was a fast study – and driver. “Tom had a unique ability to put interviewees at ease while talking about death and injury in the mines,” Clark said. “As a journalist dealing with hard reality, such as mine disasters, black lung, and the bleakness of poverty, greed and murder, he never lost his capacity to find hope in ordinary people. He was the finest journalist I ever had the pleasure of working with and he taught me enormously how to use ordinary words to tell complicated stories with clarity, passion and accuracy.”</p><p>For all his serious work, Bethell never lost his great sense of humor, sharp wit, and zest for life. “He traveled across the mountains in a succession of small fast cars that he drove at high speed, often challenging coal trucks on narrow, potted roads,” Clark said. “He loved classical and rock music and had an ability to make up and sing songs at full volume while rocking at high speed.”&nbsp;</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Filling the Eagle Nest</strong></h3><p>Bethell and Clark resigned from the AVs to protest that organization’s firing of draft resister Joe Mulloy. At Bethell’s urging, Clark went to work with the <em>Eagle</em>, whose publishers, Tom and Pat Gish, were the go-to sources for information, inspiration, and couches to sleep on for countless people from and interested in central Appalachia.&nbsp;</p><p>Bethell became the Gishes’ lifelong friend and partner, often finding reporters for their always screaming but struggling weekly. Phil Primack was one of many recruited by Tom into the Eagle Aid Society.</p><p>“I had visited eastern Kentucky while still in college near Boston,” said Primack. “In 1969, I was steered to Tom Bethell, who at the time was helping to launch the weekly <em>Boston Phoenix</em>. He in turn steered me to Tom and Pat. Instead of accepting job offers from some big daily papers, I went to work for the <em>Eagle</em> in 1970. I thank Tom Bethell for keeping me off a much more boring career ladder.”</p><p>Another Bethell recruit to <em>The Eagle </em>was Lauran Emerson, whom Bethell had literally rescued in October 1968, after she was badly hurt in a motorcycle accident. “Tom answered an emergency call from his friend Bill Wells and set out for the mortuary/clinic in Paintsville, Kentucky, where I had been delivered after the wreck,” said Emerson. “Tom raced his old VW station wagon over the mountains, and they loaded me into it and we headed for the hospital in Huntington, West Virginia. I remember nothing of that trip, but Tom never forgot the police escort that met us at the state line and sped him to the hospital. For once, the cops were leading him instead of chasing him.”&nbsp;</p><p>It was the beginning of another lifelong connection. “First Tom saved my life, then a few years later he introduced me to a whole new one when he asked me to take a detour on a trip west to &#8216;help out for a few days&#8217; at a little newspaper in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The days became years, and the Gish family became family forever. <em>The Mountain Eagle</em> taught me what real journalism was.”</p><p>Writing for the <em>Eagle</em> meant covering mine disasters, strip mine destruction, and other heavy topics. Bethell was always available to not only help synthesize and navigate such difficult issues, but “to lift the mood in the newsroom” every time he visited, said Sallie Bright, who worked for the paper in 1972. “Tom teased everyone, cracked jokes, and generally created an atmosphere of fun. And yet he was very serious about his mission to keep the coal companies in check and to champion the residents of the coalfields.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="515" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=780%2C515&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228200" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=1296%2C856&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=760%2C502&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=768%2C507&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=1200%2C793&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=1024%2C677&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=780%2C515&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=400%2C264&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?resize=706%2C466&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power.jpg?w=1400&amp;ssl=1 1400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/truth-to-power-1296x856.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Tom Bethell (right) is seen in this photo taken a short time before longtime Mountain Eagle editor and publisher Tom Gish died after four decades of fighting heart disease. Gish was never happier — or surprised — than on the evening when Bethell arrived in Whitesburg with this plaque praising him for his decades of speaking truth to power. Many of the individuals who thought of the idea for the honor and financed its production are responsible for the compilation of memories of Bethell that appear on this page. (Mountain Eagle photo)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Typewriter Power</strong></h3><p>Bethell pursued that mission with a steady stream of always insightful, always perfectly written pieces in the <em>Eagle</em> and beyond.&nbsp; “Conspiracy in Coal,” which appeared in&nbsp;<em>The Washington Monthly</em> in March 1969, exposed collusion between the United Mine Workers and Consolidation Coal Company, the owner of the Mountaineer No. 9 mine in Mannington, West Virginia, which blew up on November 20, 1968, killing 78 men. Bethell was driven by his outrage at the response to the disaster by then-UMW President Tony Boyle, who called Consol “one of the better companies to work with.”</p><p>Another Bethell article, “The Pittston Mentality,” drew a straight line from the man-made Buffalo Creek flood in 1972 in West Virginia, which killed 125 people and destroyed 4,000 homes, to the New York City board room of the Pittston Coal Company, whose decisions he showed to be directly responsible for the disaster.</p><div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="400" height="1296" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/coal-patrol.jpg?resize=400%2C1296&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228202" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/coal-patrol.jpg?resize=400%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/coal-patrol.jpg?resize=316%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 316w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/coal-patrol.jpg?w=473&amp;ssl=1 473w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/coal-patrol-400x1296.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></figure></div><p>In 1970, Bethell created Appalachia Information, becoming a one-man operation doing Herculean work, writing about “coal-related developments in labor, industry and government” in <em>Coal Patrol</em>, his monthly newsletter.&nbsp;</p><p>“C<em>oal Patrol </em>took Washington’s twisted political tales and stripped out the nonsense to get to the heart of the matter,” said Davitt McAteer, who has long worked to improve safety and health, especially for miners, including as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Tom’s book, <em>The Hurricane Creek Massacre</em>, about the 1970 coal mine explosion near Hyden, Kentucky, was described by Ben Franklin of the <em>New York Times</em> as ‘one of the best pieces of angry journalism I’ve ever read.’”</p><p>In 1980, Bethell developed The Miners Manual to help miners understand their protections under the law. “He turned convoluted federal rules and regulations into logical, simple, easily understood passages,” said McAteer. “Tom had an exceptional ability to make complex topics easily understood by everyone.”</p><p>Longtime <em>Eagle</em> contributor Bill Bishop recalled how Bethell made himself available when Jim Garland, who was a miner, organizer and folk singer during the Bloody Harlan County union wars of the early 1930s, was trying to get his memoir published by the University of Kentucky Press. “Editors wanted an introduction that would put Garland’s story in context,” Bishop said.&nbsp;“Again, it was Tom to the rescue. Using his knowledge of union history and the Kentucky coalfields, Tom wrote the perfect essay – and Garland’s story,&nbsp;<em>Welcome the Traveler Ho</em>me, was published.”</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Keeping Alive the New Deal</strong></h3><p>Bethell’s journalistic advocacy and skills weren’t limited to coal.</p><p>In the late 1980s, as policymakers debated ways to engage young Americans in public service, he played a quiet but crucial role in reviving an old idea: a national youth conservation corps. Bethell, then an editor at <em>The Washington Monthly</em>, made the case for that revival in a 1988 article titled &#8220;The Conservation Corps: A New Beginning?&#8221; Drawing inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt&#8217;s Civilian Conservation Corps, he argued that a new version could tackle youth unemployment while restoring parks, forests, and public lands.</p><p>His piece caught the attention of congressional policymakers, who worked with Bethell to draft legislation supporting a youth service initiative. Their efforts contributed to the National and Community Service Act of 1990, which expanded federal support for conservation jobs and later influenced programs like AmeriCorps. His advocacy, rooted in New Deal-era ideals, helped lay the groundwork for what would become the modern Youth Conservation Corps, a program that continues to employ thousands of young people in environmental stewardship today.</p><p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t about nostalgia for the New Deal,&#8221; Bethell once said. &#8220;It was about what still worked.&#8221;</p><p>Similarly, Bethell’s work on Social Security stands as a testament to his unwavering commitment to protecting and strengthening one of America’s most vital social programs. As a close collaborator of Robert M. Ball, the former Social Security commissioner and one of the program’s principal architects, Bethell played a key role in shaping the discourse around its solvency and fairness. His work, which included co-authoring several influential reports and serving as a senior fellow at the <a href="https://www.nasi.org/">National Academy of Social Insurance</a>, emphasized maintaining the program’s integrity while addressing modern challenges.</p><p>Through his thoughtful analysis and principled stance, Bethell left an enduring legacy in the fight to preserve Social Security as a cornerstone of economic security for generations to come, an especially urgent challenge today.</p><p>Tom Bethell leaves behind his wife, Katharine Joyner Bethell, stepdaughter Lydia Joyner, stepson Thomas McAvity III, and step-grandson Simon McAvity. He also leaves two older siblings in Massachusetts and Vermont.</p><p>In his final column for <em>Coal Patrol</em>, Bethell wrote a tribute to Ward Sinclair of the <em>Louisville</em> <em>Courier-Journal</em>, a friend of both Bethell and Appalachia. “It&#8217;s time to confess in public that I have stolen shamelessly from Ward&#8217;s files and stories over the past couple of years, getting away with it only because he is the most self-effacing of reporters and, fortunately, the finest of friends,” Bethell wrote.</p><p>Self-effacing and finest of friends. Amen, brother.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/tom-bethell-1939-2025-journalist-advocate-mentor/2025/04/24/">Tom Bethell, 1939-2025: Journalist, Advocate, Mentor</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  105. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/tom-bethell-1939-2025-journalist-advocate-mentor/2025/04/24/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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  109. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">228194</post-id> </item>
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  111. <title>Introducing &#8216;Twang&#8217;: Telling The Story of Country Music Like it is</title>
  112. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/twang-podcast-rural-remix-country-music-origins-evolution-telling-it-like-it-is/2025/04/24/</link>
  113. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/twang-podcast-rural-remix-country-music-origins-evolution-telling-it-like-it-is/2025/04/24/#respond</comments>
  115. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Lane Wendell Fischer]]></dc:creator>
  116. <pubDate>Thu, 24 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  117. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  118. <category><![CDATA[The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy]]></category>
  119. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=228169</guid>
  120.  
  121. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="569" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C422&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C720&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C427&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C854&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1138&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C667&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1111&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C433&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C222&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C392&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  122. <p>In a new podcast from Rural Remix, reporter Lane Wendell Fischer explores country music's origins and evolution from the 1927 Bristol Sessions to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter.</p>
  123. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/twang-podcast-rural-remix-country-music-origins-evolution-telling-it-like-it-is/2025/04/24/">Introducing &#8216;Twang&#8217;: Telling The Story of Country Music Like it is</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  124. ]]></description>
  125. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="569" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C422&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C720&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C427&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C854&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1138&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C667&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1111&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C433&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C222&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C392&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Twang_Banner-3-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C569&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p style="font-size:14px"><em>Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in&nbsp;The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can</em> <a href="#signup"><em>join the mailing list at the bottom of this article</em></a><em>&nbsp;to receive future editions in your inbox</em>.</p><p>I grew up listening to country music radio.</p><p>Music was the background to many childhood memories. George Jones crooned in the kitchen while my mom fixed supper. The Chicks harmonized in my dad’s old pickup as we drove through pastures checking cows.</p><p>Those songs told stories, sometimes about people like my family who lived out in the country. The sound of a slow-strummed guitar seemed to know the swaying of cottonwood branches like I did. A fast-moving fiddle understood what it felt like to barrel down an open dirt road.</p><p>But what I didn’t hear back then was the whole truth about country music. The radio didn’t teach me about Black musicians in the South whose fusion of string band rhythm and lyrical blues set the country genre into motion, or about Mexican vaqueros whose ballads shaped the swinging western sound.&nbsp;</p><p>The songs I grew up with on country radio counted for something, but not everything. They carry the sound, but forget the soil it rose from. They hum with history, but forget the hands that first struck the chord.</p><p>Whose voices were left out of the story? What did they have to say? We set out to find some answers in “Twang.”&nbsp;</p><p><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/podcasts/rural-remix/twang/">“Twang”</a> is a new podcast from the Daily Yonder that untangles the buried and beautiful roots of country music — one of the oldest, and perhaps most deeply misunderstood, genres of American music.</p><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  126. <iframe title="Spotify Embed: Twang, Ep 1: Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" style="border-radius: 12px" width="100%" height="152" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/47waGixHy1pvqye4zQEGmu?si=RPGHaCvtToCSFJyduw8m1w&#038;utm_source=oembed"></iframe>
  127. </div></figure><p>Each episode peels back a layer of history to reveal the genre’s full origin story: one shaped by hardship, migration, resistance, and hope. We follow the sounds and the people who made them, whether or not the Nashville machine ever claimed them.</p><p>This podcast is born from two places. One is love. A deep love for the way country music values place and people. For the poetry buried in both plain and riddled lyrics. For the way musicians can reveal tiny universal truths when they stay true to themselves.</p><p>The other is frustration. Frustration at how the industry has herded that love down a narrow chute, walled off by race, gender, sexuality, and class. Frustration that for so long, so many of us didn’t know the full story. That many still don’t. That many of the stories passed down, like so much of American history, were incomplete by design.</p><div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><p>So in our first episode, we begin at the beginning. We talk about the days before country music was commercialized. When struggling folks from all backgrounds traded licks and lyrics across porches and juke joints. Before record labels came along to slice music into marketable categories: “race records” for Black folks and “hillbilly records” for white folks, even if the sounds were almost indistinguishable.</p>
  128.  
  129. <p>We talk about the instruments, too. The banjo, yes, with its African ancestry. The fiddle, a European transplant reinterpreted over and over again.</p>
  130.  
  131. <p>These aren’t footnotes. This isn’t an addendum. This <em>is</em> country music. It always has been.</p></div>
  132.  
  133. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="453" height="604" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?resize=453%2C604&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-228188" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?w=453&amp;ssl=1 453w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?resize=450%2C600&amp;ssl=1 450w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?resize=300%2C400&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?resize=150%2C200&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?resize=400%2C533&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/458170126_10224779147178126_4900427126421655657_n.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 453px) 100vw, 453px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">&#8216;Twang&#8217; host Lane Wendell Fischer dressed as Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, Halloween circa 2009. (Photo courtesy of Lane Wendell Fischer)</figcaption></figure></div></div><p>As the season unfolds, you’ll hear from guests and guides who know that music is never just music. It’s memory. It’s power. It’s politics. We’ll talk about land, labor, queerness, and race. About cowboy myths and protest ballads. About how country music, at its best, tells the truth — even if only a few people are listening.</p><p>We’re not here to tell the whole story and burn country music down. We couldn’t if we wanted to. We’re here to widen our own frames. To ask: Who was always part of this story, even if they got written out of it? And what happens when we listen differently.</p><div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><p>Because the truth is, country music has never been just what the radio says it is. It’s been the bruised beauty of a life lived close to the land and to each other. It’s been Black. It’s been female. It’s been queer. It’s been border-crossed and dirt-covered and sung into the dark by people who weren’t invited to tell their stories, but showed up anyway.</p>
  134.  
  135. <p>“Twang” isn’t about rewriting history. It’s about telling the story of country music like it is.</p></div>
  136.  
  137. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  138. <iframe title="Spotify Embed: Twang, Ep 1: Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" style="border-radius: 12px" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/1NVFbGcwrXNrurDkOSWGTP?utm_source=oembed"></iframe>
  139. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Listen to the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1NVFbGcwrXNrurDkOSWGTP">companion playlist on Spotify</a>. </figcaption></figure></div></div><p><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/podcasts/rural-remix/twang/">Episode one is out now</a>, along with a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1NVFbGcwrXNrurDkOSWGTP">companion playlist</a> featuring some of the songs and artists we highlight (and more). I hope you’ll listen — not just to the music, but to the lives behind that trademark twang.</p><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group is-style-default has-light-gray-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
  140.  
  141. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:25%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#good-bad-elegy"><img data-recalc-dims="1" height="984" width="780" decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-elegy-1027x1296.png?resize=780%2C984&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-86113"/></a></figure></div>
  142.  
  143. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:75%"><p>This article first appeared in&nbsp;<strong>The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy</strong>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, recommendations, retrospectives, and more. <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#good-bad-elegy">Join the mailing list</a> today to have future editions delivered straight to your inbox.</p></div></div>
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  174.  
  175. <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div></div></div><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/twang-podcast-rural-remix-country-music-origins-evolution-telling-it-like-it-is/2025/04/24/">Introducing &#8216;Twang&#8217;: Telling The Story of Country Music Like it is</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  176. ]]></content:encoded>
  178. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/twang-podcast-rural-remix-country-music-origins-evolution-telling-it-like-it-is/2025/04/24/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  179. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  182. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">228169</post-id> </item>
  183. <item>
  184. <title>Commentary: Rural Americans Need the Trump Administration to Provide an Additional Path to Fight Obesity</title>
  185. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-americans-need-the-trump-administration-to-provide-an-additional-path-to-fight-obesity/2025/04/24/</link>
  186. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-americans-need-the-trump-administration-to-provide-an-additional-path-to-fight-obesity/2025/04/24/#respond</comments>
  188. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Debera Gau]]></dc:creator>
  189. <pubDate>Thu, 24 Apr 2025 09:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
  190. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  191. <category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
  192. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227318</guid>
  193.  
  194. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="682" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  195. <p>I spent over seven hours in the car driving one way to my most recent doctor’s appointment. For many Americans, this may be shocking, but for those of us who live in rural areas, it’s a way of life. Far too often, rural Americans have been left behind by our healthcare system. This is especially [&#8230;]</p>
  196. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-americans-need-the-trump-administration-to-provide-an-additional-path-to-fight-obesity/2025/04/24/">Commentary: Rural Americans Need the Trump Administration to Provide an Additional Path to Fight Obesity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  197. ]]></description>
  198. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="682" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094802070037-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>I spent over seven hours in the car driving one way to my most recent doctor’s appointment. For many Americans, this may be shocking, but for those of us who live in rural areas, it’s a way of life. </p><p>Far too often, rural Americans have been left behind by our healthcare system. This is especially true for those of us living with obesity, which affects many Americans in rural regions of the country. As the Trump administration sets out to make America healthier again, I ask that they keep communities like mine top of mind. There are policy opportunities on the table that would expand access to medications to treat obesity — a win for patients in rural America and a win for the President’s health agenda.</p><p>Obesity is a complex disease, caused by many factors, that affects millions of my fellow Americans. But its effects on those outside of our country’s large cities and coasts deserve a deeper look. In almost half of the states,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0912-adult-obesity.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more than one in three</a>&nbsp;adults has obesity, an increase from 2013. </p><p>The states with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data-and-statistics/adult-obesity-prevalence-maps.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">highest prevalence</a>, 40% or more, are Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia. When you look at these states and others on the list, you may notice a theme – many have large rural populations. In fact, the prevalence of obesity among rural Americans is&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8290986/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">six times</a>&nbsp;higher. Less than one in five Americans lives in these areas, but we face a larger share of the disease burden.</p><p>I have felt this impact firsthand through my own experience with obesity. I was officially diagnosed with the disease in 2001 and went through behavior therapy, medication, and bariatric surgery to manage my condition. Each step in this process was made more challenging simply because of my zip code. There were no specialists trained in treating obesity in my small Minnesota town. I would have to travel several hours to get the care I needed, and even then, it was often from a visiting physician. My local healthcare provider and specialists used different electronic medical record systems, putting the burden on me to keep my healthcare on track. So many others who are managing obesity share my experience and have faced persistent barriers to effective care. Even where access to specialists isn’t a challenge, outdated policies put effective treatment options out of reach for patients who need and deserve them.</p><p>While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving the rural healthcare obesity crisis, we do have options on our path forward. We must improve physician retention in rural areas so that communities can build strong, long-term relationships with their provider. Patients and providers alike need the right technology to communicate with each other and other health systems.</p><p>Another critical path forward rests with the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS). </p><p>Earlier this month, the Trump administration did not move forward with a <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/10/2024-27939/medicare-and-medicaid-programs-contract-year-2026-policy-and-technical-changes-to-the-medicare" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">federal rule</a> that would expand access to safe and effective treatments for obesity, which currently are difficult for millions of Medicare and Medicaid patients to access because of bureaucratic policy constraints. Despite this decision, a spokesperson <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2025/04/07/dems-advocates-challenge-trumps-hhs-move-00276034">shared</a> that CMS may consider obesity medications in the future after further review. By providing coverage for obesity medications, the Trump administration can take a major step in preventing and treating obesity, which is also linked to heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer. This action would not only significantly impact people’s lives, but would also affect the bottom line of our healthcare system.</p><p>Obesity costs the U.S. healthcare system almost&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/php/about/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$173 billion</a>&nbsp;per year today.&nbsp;</p><p>I love the community that comes out of living in rural America, but it presents a host of challenges for those managing obesity. I encourage the Trump administration to stand up for rural Americans by ensuring that we can access safe and effective treatments. Any step we can take to expand access for rural Americans is a win and a move in the right direction.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>Debera Gau is a member of the Obesity Action Coalition National Board of Directors.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-americans-need-the-trump-administration-to-provide-an-additional-path-to-fight-obesity/2025/04/24/">Commentary: Rural Americans Need the Trump Administration to Provide an Additional Path to Fight Obesity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  199. ]]></content:encoded>
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  202. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  205. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227318</post-id> </item>
  206. <item>
  207. <title>Amid Ongoing Threats to Local Food Systems, Alaska Native and Rural Alaskan Leaders Imagine Alternatives</title>
  208. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/amid-ongoing-threats-to-local-food-systems-alaska-native-and-rural-alaskan-leaders-imagine-alternatives/2025/04/23/</link>
  209. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/amid-ongoing-threats-to-local-food-systems-alaska-native-and-rural-alaskan-leaders-imagine-alternatives/2025/04/23/#respond</comments>
  211. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Peter Heckendorn]]></dc:creator>
  212. <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  213. <category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
  214. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227733</guid>
  215.  
  216. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  217. <p>Investing in the Soil In running the Metlakatla Indian Community S&#8217;ndooyntgm Galts&#8217;ap Community Garden, Gatgyeda Haayk has developed a particular relationship to soil. “People misunderstand soil,” she explained.&#160; Alongside permafrost, extreme climate, and a short growing season, poor soil is often cited as a reason why gardens will not grow in Alaska. “A lot of [&#8230;]</p>
  218. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/amid-ongoing-threats-to-local-food-systems-alaska-native-and-rural-alaskan-leaders-imagine-alternatives/2025/04/23/">Amid Ongoing Threats to Local Food Systems, Alaska Native and Rural Alaskan Leaders Imagine Alternatives</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  219. ]]></description>
  220. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lead-art-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Investing in the Soil</strong></h3><p class="has-drop-cap">In running the Metlakatla Indian Community S&#8217;ndooyntgm Galts&#8217;ap Community Garden, Gatgyeda Haayk has developed a particular relationship to soil. “People misunderstand soil,” she explained.&nbsp;</p><p>Alongside permafrost, extreme climate, and a short growing season, poor soil is often cited as a reason why gardens will not grow in Alaska. “A lot of people think you could just throw something in the ground where it&#8217;s not that easy because our soil is so acidic,” Haayk said.</p><p>However, Haayk’s garden thrives. Watermelons and pumpkins, green onions, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, corn – Haayk grows a mix of Southeast Alaska staples and new plants.</p><p>The key is the dirt – investing in healthy soil can be a decades-long process. “The time and the effort and the love and all the energy – the soil that I have now, I built that soil,” Haayk said.</p><p>The investment is worth it to Haayk, because she believes community gardens help solve a basic challenge facing rural Alaskans: putting food on the table.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227734" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-1-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In this Sept. 23, 2011 photo, Kathryn and Greg Kalal load German Butterball potatoes into a trailer behind their four-wheeler at their farm in Trapper Creek, Alaska. Among the thousands of colorful potatoes _ from yellow German Butterballs to Magic Mollys with flesh so purple it&#8217;s nearly black _ is a half-row of red potatoes that University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers believe could become a popular and profitable niche product in a state not known for its agriculture. (AP Photo/Dan Joling)</figcaption></figure><p>Alaska’s rural retail grocery system is extremely costly to maintain, leading to unparalleled logistics challenges and <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/rural-alaska-grocery-store-prices-viral">famously expensive cheese</a>. This is one reason the <a href="https://www.uaf.edu/ces/districts/tribes/files/pdfs/Food-Security-and-Sovereignty-in-Alaska-Native-Communities.pdf">main source</a> of food in rural Alaska is <a href="https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/subsistence#:~:text=Subsistence%20is%20defined%20by%20federal,nonedible%20by%2Dproducts%20of%20fish">subsistence</a> and personal use gathering. However, climate change, state and federal policy, and commercialization have disrupted longstanding practices of living off the land.&nbsp;</p><p>As both retail and non-retail food systems come under stress, rural Alaskans are all the more willing to try new (and old) ways of obtaining food that align with their values, their budgets and their tastes.&nbsp;</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Small Planes and Fragile Supply Chains</strong></h3><p class="has-drop-cap">More than <a href="https://dot.alaska.gov/stwdav/">80% of Alaska communities</a> are not connected to a central road network year round. These towns and villages are spread out over a tract of land two and a half times the size of Texas at the absolute periphery of the United States. Maintaining grocery stores is often impossible.</p><p>Additionally, Alaska is largely dependent on food from out of state. Mike Jones, an economist who studies rural food systems at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told the Daily Yonder in an interview that the food supply chain to remote Alaska is perhaps the most complex in the nation.&nbsp;</p><p>Imported food reaches Alaska by plane or, mostly, by boat to the Port of Alaska. From there in-state suppliers rely on a “hub and spokes model” to get the food out to regional depots where it is then shuttled on to individual communities. “It is not so much planes, trains and automobiles as it is planes, barges and snowmobiles,” Jones said.</p><p>Each link in the supply chain raises costs for the end consumer and raises the likelihood of something going wrong in transit.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227735" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1025&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1366&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1334&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP23111800718813-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Shelves are well-stocked at the Chugiak-Eagle River Food Pantry inside a Presbyterian church in Eagle River, Alaska, on Friday, April 21, 2023. Food banks and pantries across Alaska are seeing increased usage, including after thousands of Alaskans didn&#8217;t receive their food stamp benefits for months. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)</figcaption></figure><p>Jones pointed to Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) outages as an example of how one small pain point can affect remote Alaska’s entire food system. AWOS weather stations collect data on Alaska’s extreme weather conditions. Alaska has <a href="https://www.alaskaasp.com/media/1761/aviation_weather_reporting_in_alaska_optimized.pdf">about 140 AWOS stations</a>, (a station-density far below the lower 48). When a station goes down, it inhibits a pilot’s ability to track weather conditions and FAA guidelines prohibit a commercial pilot from flying in an area for which they don’t have that weather data.</p><p>Outages ground planes and forsake food to hangars that usually lack sufficient cold storage capacity. In September of 2024, there were <a href="https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/e14014a78d6f4fb29a91c8e4fe25d22c/page/Page?views=September-2024">55 unscheduled outages</a>. That means a lot of rotting food. “Combine this with other issues like runway plowing, maintenance, labor constraints … you get major backlogs” Jones said. This jacks up the price of produce in rural Alaska, where average household income in some areas is as low as <a href="https://live.laborstats.alaska.gov/sites/default/files/trends/may23art2.pdf">$36,753</a>.</p><p>“That’s how you end up paying $11 for a gallon of milk,” said Bruce Botelho, former Attorney General of Alaska who was part of the effort to oppose the recent Kroger Albertsons merger. “Rural Alaska is a tiny market spread across vast geography … it is very difficult to establish competitive prices and availability,” Botelho told the Daily Yonder.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Traditional Foodways</strong></h3><p class="has-drop-cap">Eva Burk is Dena&#8217; Athabascan. Growing up, her family lived on a fish camp on the Tanana River about 50 miles south of Fairbanks. Large portions of her diet and her family’s livelihood came from the trapline. “My dad was born before Alaska had statehood… He was born a free man, him and his family could choose when and where and how much to fish and hunt and trap,” Burk said.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227736" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2.jpg?w=2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/photo-2-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">FILE &#8211; In this Nov. 8, 2005 file photo, Inuit hunter Karlin Itchoak coils the rope of a subsistence net after pulling in a beluga whale as the sun sets at Cape Nome near Nome, Alaska. The environment is changing and the Inuit, who consider themselves a part of it, want measures taken to protect their culture. (AP Photo/Laurent Dick, File)</figcaption></figure><p>Burk was born 10 years after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) passed in Congress, a time when Alaska Native people were still “getting adjusted to capitalism … adjusting to owning land and getting engaged in the cash economy,” Burk said. ANCSA, and subsequent state and federal action, brought huge disruptions to day-to-day life for many Alaska Native people.</p><p>Burk has spent her career tracing the ongoing effects of these changes on Alaska Native food systems. Burk studies rural community development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and serves on advisory panels for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, The Federal Subsistence Board, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/techpap/tp284.pdf">2004 report</a> found that subsistence accounted for 29-69% of caloric intake in off-road communities. Personal use gathering and hunting has become more expensive as <a href="https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2022/05/18/fuel-in-the-alaska-village-of-noatak-was-16-a-gallon-the-costs-are-more-than-just-money/">inflation drives up supply costs</a> (like fuel and equipment) and regulation drives up permit costs. Climate change and commercial overuse have jeopardized key subsistence resources. Fisheries that have sustained Alaska native communities for millennia <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/funding-financial-services/fishery-resource-disaster-determinations#numbers-72---54">are in crisis</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>“We’ve been shut down from subsistence fishing for five years now,” said Burk, explaining that salmon depopulation sets off a series of cascading consequences for the subsistence system. Less salmon means increased predation of caribou calves and moose, both species traditionally vital to subsistence lifestyles. Loss of access to land and subsistence resources has forced Alaska Native communities to alter the food they eat. <a href="https://www.uaf.edu/ces/districts/tribes/files/pdfs/Food-Security-and-Sovereignty-in-Alaska-Native-Communities.pdf">A University of Alaska Fairbanks report </a>cites growing consumption of processed foods as a reason for higher instances of diabetes, childhood dental cavities, and colorectal cancer.&nbsp;</p><p>Perhaps the most insidious threat is cultural loss. Burk worries that the next generation won’t have access to the methods of fishing, trapping, and hunting that her people have prized as part of a fundamental connection to nature. “Everything is spiraling out of control,” Burk said.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Continuing a History of Adaptation</strong></h3><p class="has-drop-cap">The challenges are steep, but Gatgyeda Haayk noted that for the thousands of years people have lived in Alaska, they have overcome intense obstacles to forage, gather, and hunt food in some of the world&#8217;s most extreme environments. That history is not stagnant, but adaptive. Haayk said that when Tsimshian people migrated to New Metlakatla from British Columbia, they brought plants of value to them and helped them grow in their new environment. “Even though we aren&#8217;t, what they say, “traditional farmers,” we have also had our ways of cultivating the land,” Haayk said.</p><p>According to Burk, the work to adapt and maintain Alaska Native food sovereignty for 2025 and beyond happens at three levels: systems, community, and individual.</p><p>Much of Burk’s focus is on systems change. Her “four buckets” of work are “water stewardship, food sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and community wellness.” This means that one day she is in a North Pacific Fishery Advisory Panel meeting, trying to reduce bycatch (the incidental catch of unintended species) and the next day she is working to secure financing for a <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-agriculture-at-first-locals-protested-alaskas-land-sale-now-theyre-reclaiming-it/">community buy-back project</a> to build a small farm in Nenana. “Many of us have to wear a lot of hats in this work … but that’s what it takes to have Indigenous voices represented in the decision-making spaces,” she said.</p><p>At the community level, Heidi Rader, Director of the Alaska Tribes Extension program out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, works to teach practices that enhance rural food security and Alaska Native food sovereignty. Spreading knowledge means meeting people; via an Alaska <a href="https://itgrowsinalaska.community.uaf.edu/">gardening blog</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhig9cMh_kI&amp;list=PLaq6r5nsLDdfGTX5DsZEEdg90iJCo_z5a&amp;index=5">youtube videos</a> about stewarding wild blueberries, or workshops on how to can salmon.&nbsp;</p><p>Finally, Gatgyeda Haayk helps individuals adopt the practice of gardening. Because gardening is not widespread in rural Alaska, getting started can be daunting. Locals may not know what grows in their area. Haayk has tried to create a space where gardeners can learn from each other. Experimentation has led to new discoveries, like how to grow healthy pumpkins in a short season. It has also led to the recovery of lost growing practices.</p><p>Cultivating “Indian potatoes” in Metlakatla was once widespread, but Haayk was only able to find one family still growing them. That family gifted Haayk six potato starters. “Two years ago, I was able to grow over 100 pounds of potatoes,” Haayk said. She gave half of her harvest to the elders. “For them to have that connection to a piece of our heritage that was kind of lost. And then to see more and more community members want to grow that potato and be connected to it. It&#8217;s eating a part of our history.”&nbsp;</p><p>Economic analysts sometimes doubt whether these sorts of solutions can scale to a level that fills the massive gaps of Alaska’s rural food system. However, to many food security advocates, solutions that only consider how to produce the cheapest calories miss the point.&nbsp;</p><p>“I lost my daughter in 2006, I had always wanted to do a healing garden for her,” Haayk said. Haayk had spent years building up the community garden in Metlakatla in her daughter’s memory, when Covid-19 hit. The pandemic threatened to cut off the one food supply barge Metlakatla, an island community, relies on for basic goods and produce. Haayk’s garden became a community resource and people who had never gardened before started planting in her plots.</p><p>Food <a href="https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/04/12/alaska-native-children-youth-and-family-well-being-depends-on-our-rights-to-practice-subsistence/#:~:text=Subsistence%20acts%20as%20cultural%20medicine,natural%20world%2C%204)%20fostering%20social">intertwines</a> economic, cultural, health, spiritual values. That means when a food-system suffers, it can have deep, corrosive effects. To combat this, Burk emphasizes leaning on cultural strengths. “Sharing in the bounty and having <a href="https://www.newsminer.com/potlatch-celebrations-differ-in-each-region-of-alaska/article_69705e2e-ea7e-11e3-be92-001a4bcf6878.html">potlatch</a> [an Indigenous gift-giving feast], which is our culture. That’s how we get by and survive,” Burk said.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/amid-ongoing-threats-to-local-food-systems-alaska-native-and-rural-alaskan-leaders-imagine-alternatives/2025/04/23/">Amid Ongoing Threats to Local Food Systems, Alaska Native and Rural Alaskan Leaders Imagine Alternatives</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  221. ]]></content:encoded>
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  224. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  227. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227733</post-id> </item>
  228. <item>
  229. <title>Commentary: Rural America Needs Investment, Not Abandonment</title>
  230. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/2025/04/23/</link>
  231. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/2025/04/23/#respond</comments>
  233. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tim Davis / Friends of the Owyhee]]></dc:creator>
  234. <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  235. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  236. <category><![CDATA[Government & Policy]]></category>
  237. <category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
  238. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=228076</guid>
  239.  
  240. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-21-at-11.06.36%E2%80%AFAM.png?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  241. <p>Buried in the latest budget reconciliation discussions in Congress is a dangerous idea that should alarm every rural community in the West: selling off public lands to raise federal revenue. Let’s be clear, this isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s a fire sale of our shared heritage. And it would be devastating for places like Malheur County, [&#8230;]</p>
  242. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/2025/04/23/">Commentary: Rural America Needs Investment, Not Abandonment</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  243. ]]></description>
  244. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-21-at-11.06.36%E2%80%AFAM.png?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>Buried in the latest budget reconciliation <a href="https://www.outdooralliance.org/blog/2025/4/8/public-land-sell-offs-back-on-the-table-in-budget-reconciliation">discussions</a> in Congress is a dangerous idea that should alarm every rural community in the West: selling off public lands to raise federal revenue.</p><p>Let’s be clear, this isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s a fire sale of our shared heritage. And it would be devastating for places like Malheur County, Oregon; Grand County, Utah; Teton County, Wyoming; San Miguel County, Colorado; and Coconino County, Arizona—where public lands aren’t just a backdrop, they’re the backbone of the economy and the way of life.</p><p>From grazing and outfitting to hunting, fishing, and tourism, these lands sustain small businesses, support working families, and keep rural economies afloat. Selling them off may look like a line item on a spreadsheet in Washington, but on the ground, it means job losses, shuttered operations, and broken communities.</p><p>If Congress truly wants to support rural America, it can start by investing in the agencies that manage these lands, not liquidating the lands themselves.</p><p>Let me be clear: You can’t ask the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to do more with less. And yet, that’s exactly what Congress has been doing for years.</p><p>Right now, some of the loudest voices criticizing the BLM are the same ones voting to strip its funding. It’s a political double standard: criticize the agency for being slow or ineffective, then gut the very budget that allows it to function, and turn around and blame it again when things don’t get done.</p><p>The result? Public lands and the rural communities that depend on them are feeling the strain. Across the West, deteriorating roads, neglected infrastructure, and staff shortages are leaving public access routes impassable and economic opportunities squandered. Local businesses are losing revenue right when tourism and recreation seasons should be ramping up.</p><p>And it’s not because the BLM doesn’t care. It’s because they don’t have the staffing, the budget, or the flexibility to respond when and where they’re needed most.</p><p>This story repeats itself across the region. Many field offices are operating with half—or even less of the staff they need. Law enforcement is stretched so thin that response times are measured in hours, sometimes days. Wildlife biologists, recreation planners, and range specialists are working overtime, wearing multiple hats just to cover the basics.</p><p>What gets lost in Washington is that the BLM isn’t some faceless bureaucracy—it’s made up of real people. Most of them live in the very communities they serve. These are folks who know every rancher by name, who raise their families in the same towns, and who show up for volunteer projects and community events.</p><p>So when Congress cuts funding, it’s not just abstract numbers. It’s fewer people to maintain campgrounds, issue grazing permits, support outfitters, and help prevent wildfires. It’s not the agency that suffers, it’s rural America.</p><p>And now, to make matters worse, there’s talk of selling off public lands to pay the bills.</p><p>Ranchers who rely on grazing leases can’t afford to purchase land outright, and if those lands are privatized, they’ll be forced to pay significantly more or leave the range entirely. That’s a direct threat to multigenerational family operations.</p><p>And it doesn’t stop at agriculture. Public lands bring in hunters, anglers, campers, hikers—people who spend money in our towns, stay in our motels, eat in our diners, and book with local guides. If you cut off access to those lands, you cut off a lifeline to small-town economies that are already hanging on by a thread.</p><p>We’re not against smart, limited land management adjustments. There are already tools in place to address landlocked parcels or fringe acreage near urban development. But selling off large swaths of public land to cover budget shortfalls? That’s not policy, it’s surrender.</p><p>Public lands are one of the few things keeping rural economies resilient. Selling them off is not a solution. It’s a setback we simply can’t afford.</p><p>If Congress truly wants to help rural America, it starts with two things: fund the BLM like it matters, and keep our public lands public. If Congress continues to underfund the BLM and entertains a wholesale sell-off of public lands, it won’t just hurt rural America. It will kill it.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>Tim Davis is executive director of </em><a href="https://www.friendsoftheowyhee.org/"><em>Friends of the Owyhee.</em></a><em> a conservation group that focuses on the Owyhee high-desert region of southeastern Oregon, southwestern Idaho, and Northern Nevada. This column was also published in the </em><a href="https://www.malheurenterprise.com/2025/04/16/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/"><em>Malheur (Oregon) Enterprise</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/2025/04/23/">Commentary: Rural America Needs Investment, Not Abandonment</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  245. ]]></content:encoded>
  247. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-rural-america-needs-investment-not-abandonment/2025/04/23/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  248. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  251. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">228076</post-id> </item>
  252. <item>
  253. <title>America Is Not Immune to Fascism</title>
  254. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/america-is-not-immune-to-fascism/2025/04/23/</link>
  255. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/america-is-not-immune-to-fascism/2025/04/23/#comments</comments>
  257. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Claire Carlson]]></dc:creator>
  258. <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2025 09:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
  259. <category><![CDATA[Government & Policy]]></category>
  260. <category><![CDATA[Keep It Rural]]></category>
  261. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=228118</guid>
  262.  
  263. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  264. <p>Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. First he came for the Department of Agriculture, pausing grant payments and loans to small farmers and [&#8230;]</p>
  265. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/america-is-not-immune-to-fascism/2025/04/23/">America Is Not Immune to Fascism</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  266. ]]></description>
  267. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25108641156849-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in </em><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/keep-it-rural/"><em>Keep It Rural</em></a><em>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? </em><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/"><em>Join the mailing list</em></a><em> for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.</em><br></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p>First he came for the Department of Agriculture, pausing grant payments and loans to small farmers and canceling Forest Service contracts for prescribed burns. Then he took his hatchet to the National Park Service, firing park rangers who’d moved to new communities and ending seasonal jobs before they had a chance to start. Then he went for the kids, arguing the Department of Education is nothing more than a Big Government conspiracy to indoctrinate liberal ideologies into families. This list goes on and on.</p><p>Trump says these actions are in the name of eliminating government inefficiency and bureaucracy, but what he’s actually doing is stripping any safe holds we had as Americans to put food on our tables, access healthcare, or retire before we’re dead. Most abhorrent is what he’s doing to everyday people like Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was illegally deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador where the only way out, El Salvadorian officials <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-records-show-about-migrants-sent-to-salvadoran-prison-60-minutes-transcript/">say</a>, is in a coffin. The Trump administration <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf">admitted</a> the deportation was due to an “administrative error,” yet Trump’s Justice Department has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/abrego-garcia-trump-deportations-el-salvador.html">resisted</a> court orders to explain its plan to bring Abrego Garcia home.</p><p>These actions are not those of a normal U.S. presidency. These actions are, in fact, the exact opposite of how the Founding Fathers envisioned a U.S. presidency 250 years ago when they declared there would be no king<em>. </em>Yet here we are, with a president who dreams to be king.&nbsp;</p><p>Nothing I’m saying here hasn’t been said a thousand times elsewhere, yet it bears repeating: these are not normal times. These are the times historians warn us about, when society is buckling under the stress of a pandemic, economic crisis, changing technologies – it’s these times when dictators rise to power. That’s what happened in Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s, and now – perhaps – the United States in the 2020s.&nbsp;</p><p>Many Americans who’ve been around for a while have been able to keep the realities of a government’s descent into fascism at an arm’s length. We know, in theory, what it is like to have a dictator rise to power – all those World War II movies show us, but they only last two hours and change. We are a sheltered people, and it shows.&nbsp;</p><p>Right now could be the moment that directly precedes outright fascism. Right now is the time for institutions and corporations to resist Trump’s demands, while there are still courts offering an arena in which to fight against him. Harvard University is suing the Trump administration for threatening to cut their federal spending. Every single other large, powerful, rich institution and corporation should be doing exactly the same thing. As Timothy Snyder says in his book <em>On Tyranny</em>, do not obey in advance. Giving up power before you have to is a surefire way to be weakened when an authoritarian regime comes, making it that much harder to fight.&nbsp;</p><p>These are not normal times. Do not let anyone tell you that you are crazy for being worried about what is happening. Do not obey in advance. Remember to speak out while you still can. This has happened before, it can happen again, and America is not immune to fascism or authoritarianism.&nbsp;</p><p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>First They Came </strong></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>By Pastor Martin Niemöller</strong></p><p class="has-text-align-center">First they came for the Communists</p><p class="has-text-align-center">And I did not speak out</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Because I was not a Communist</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Then they came for the Socialists</p><p class="has-text-align-center">And I did not speak out</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Because I was not a Socialist</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Then they came for the trade unionists</p><p class="has-text-align-center">And I did not speak out</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Because I was not a trade unionist</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Then they came for the Jews</p><p class="has-text-align-center">And I did not speak out</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Because I was not a Jew</p><p class="has-text-align-center">Then they came for me</p><p class="has-text-align-center">And there was no one left</p><p class="has-text-align-center">To speak out for me</p><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/america-is-not-immune-to-fascism/2025/04/23/">America Is Not Immune to Fascism</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  268. ]]></content:encoded>
  270. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/america-is-not-immune-to-fascism/2025/04/23/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  271. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
  274. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">228118</post-id> </item>
  275. <item>
  276. <title>Commentary: If Democracy Collapses in America, It Won’t Be the First Time</title>
  277. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-if-democracy-collapeses-in-america-it-wont-be-the-first-time/2025/04/22/</link>
  278. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-if-democracy-collapeses-in-america-it-wont-be-the-first-time/2025/04/22/#comments</comments>
  280. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Christopher Chavis]]></dc:creator>
  281. <pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  282. <category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
  283. <category><![CDATA[Indigenous Affairs]]></category>
  284. <category><![CDATA[Rural Life]]></category>
  285. <category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
  286. <category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
  287. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227959</guid>
  288.  
  289. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="783" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C581&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C991&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C588&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1175&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1567&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C918&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1530&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C597&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C306&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C540&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  290. <p>Recent political events have sparked renewed discussion around American democracy and what it means to be an “American.” The mainstream media and academia have been studying every move of President Trump and trying to find parallels that explain our political moment, which has been dominated by the consolidation of executive power and the expansion of [&#8230;]</p>
  291. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-if-democracy-collapeses-in-america-it-wont-be-the-first-time/2025/04/22/">Commentary: If Democracy Collapses in America, It Won’t Be the First Time</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  292. ]]></description>
  293. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="783" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C581&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C991&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C588&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1175&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1567&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C918&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1530&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C597&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C306&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C540&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP470523030-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>Recent political events have sparked renewed discussion around American democracy and what it means to be an “American.” The mainstream media and academia have been studying every move of President Trump and trying to find parallels that explain our political moment, which has been dominated by the consolidation of executive power and the expansion of the police state to target certain groups of people.&nbsp;</p><p>It is concerning, however, that these conversations are excluding and inadvertently erasing the experiences of rural Black and Indigenous people of color in the United States, who still bear the scars of having experienced this kind of tyranny in their own backyards.&nbsp;</p><p>It has become common to draw comparisons to foreign historical figures like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, or contemporary leaders like Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. These foreign strongmen are often treated as blueprints for predicting the moment when American democracy might collapse, an effort to pinpoint the exact threshold at which tyranny takes hold.</p><p>If we are to protect and strengthen democracy now, we must stop treating its collapse as theoretical. It has happened here before. It is still happening. And those of us whose families carry the memory of resistance, survival, and loss have a critical role to play in reminding the country that democracy’s most important battleground has always been here at home.&nbsp;</p><h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Nothing New Under the Sun</strong></h4><p>Pundits frequently describe acts like detaining immigrants without due process as fundamentally “un-American,” a betrayal of the nation’s proclaimed values. They frame the idea of voting rights being stripped away as “unthinkable” in the United States.&nbsp;</p><p>But this framing is not only dangerously naïve, it whitewashes our history. In the rural South, we have already witnessed the fall of a diverse and multiracial democracy, replaced by Jim Crow regimes and enforced through state-sanctioned violence. The use of the police state to control and silence certain groups is not new, it’s woven into our national DNA.</p><p>And this history is not confined to the rural South. Every corner of this country lives in the shadow of the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the erasure of Native cultures. Yet, these histories, and the voices of those who lived and remember them, remain largely absent from today’s national conversation about democracy.</p><p>Saying “it can’t happen here” is dishonest because it has already happened here, and our communities are still struggling with the aftermath.&nbsp;</p><p>I have <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-a-history-of-sovereignty-ill-considered/2025/02/10/">written</a> before about the effects of colonization on the Lumbee Tribe, my Tribe, and how we had to flee to impassable swamps in order to evade the encroaching early American colonists. History is rife with examples of groups of Indigenous people either being relocated or outright murdered because Americans (and their colonial predecessors) saw Indigenous land as more valuable than Indigenous lives and cultures. In the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries, Indigenous children were taken from their homes and forced into government-funded boarding schools as a means of erasing Indigenous culture. Many of them never returned home and were buried in mass graves on the grounds of these schools.&nbsp;</p><p>The late 19<sup>th</sup> century also saw the backsliding of American democracy across the South. After the Civil War and the passage of the 13<sup>th</sup> and 14<sup>th</sup> Amendments, people of color in the South began to make actual political progress. In 1870, the Mississippi legislature elected Hiram Revels, of Black and Indigenous descent, to the United States Senate, making him the first Black person to serve in that body. Black people held elected office across the South, much to the chagrin of white supremacist politicians. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, Black progress in the South was almost entirely eliminated, and the flame of democracy was extinguished.&nbsp;</p><p>There are stories in every Southern state of how this came to be. I wrote a detailed <a href="https://legalruralism.blogspot.com/2024/02/democracy-lost-jim-crow-comes-to-rural.html">piece</a> in Legal Ruralism about how my home state of North Carolina went from a multiracial democracy with multiple competitive parties to a single-party ethnostate. The election of Daniel Russell to the North Carolina governor’s office in 1896 on a Republican/Populist fusion ticket was the flashpoint that pushed the white supremacists to move to dismantle democracy.&nbsp;</p><p>It is important to note here that the white supremacists did not openly state their intent to dismantle democracy. They appealed to the pro-democratic senses of the electorate. Mainstream media reports in North Carolina at the time said that white supremacy was necessary for democracy. In Robeson County, where I grew up, <em>The Robesonian</em> printed an article saying that white supremacy was the “child of necessity.” These media outlets, often the only news source that rural people had, hammered home the point that white supremacy was the only thing that could save democracy.&nbsp;</p><p>This rhetoric was extremely powerful. It led to a fracture in the Populist/Republican fusion as many white Populists were persuaded by the white supremacist ideology. South Carolina governor Ben Tillman even used his Red Shirt militia to intimidate voters, prompting a denied request by U.S. Senator Jeter Pritchard for the deployment of federal troops to North Carolina to ensure access to the ballot. In 1898, the Democrats, then the party of white supremacy, took control of the state legislature. Since the governor of North Carolina had no veto power at the time, this essentially led to them having unchecked power over the state government.&nbsp;</p><p>Just two days after the 1898 election, white supremacists forcibly overthrew the democratically elected black majority government in Wilmington, providing us with the only successful coup in American history. In 1900, white supremacists cemented their control of state government by using these same tactics to pass constitutional amendments that ushered in the era of Jim Crow and cemented the fall of North Carolina’s democracy. For the next 60-70 years, much of North Carolina existed as a single-party ethnostate where the interests of white voters dominated and a single party, the Democratic Party, dominated elected office.&nbsp;</p><p>Despite telling voters that they wanted to “save democracy,” the white supremacists ultimately destroyed it.&nbsp;</p><p>As you analyze the words of contemporary politicians, consider that this kind of false altruistic rhetoric is not uncommon throughout American history. When attempting to justify sending Indigenous children to boarding schools, Captain Richard Henry Pratt said in 1892 that his goal was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”&nbsp;</p><p>Just as in North Carolina, this rhetoric cloaked brutality in the language of salvation. It was not only a lie, it was a blueprint for systemic cultural and political erasure.</p><h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>From Words to Actions</strong></h4><p>This kind of rhetoric didn’t just pave the way for cultural erasure, it also justified physical violence. The language of salvation and necessity often masked brutality, giving cover to acts of terror that were meant to enforce racial hierarchies and suppress resistance.</p><p>For Black and Indigenous people, particularly in the rural South, public acts of violence served as brutal warnings against civic participation, economic independence, and perceived social mobility. Between the end of Reconstruction and the mid-20th century, thousands of Black Americans were lynched, often with the tacit approval, or direct involvement, of local law enforcement and local white citizenry. One famous case was the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, where an all-white jury acquitted the perpetrators, who later admitted to their crimes. These acts were not random, they were orchestrated to uphold white supremacy and dismantle the very idea of multiracial democracy.&nbsp;</p><p>This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities that befell black and Indigenous populations around the country. But these examples show the depravity of American history and the attempts by American politicians to suppress democracy and use violence to do so.&nbsp;</p><p>This also is not ancient history. There are people still alive today who attended segregated public schools, attended Indigenous boarding schools, knew people who were victims of political violence, or were victims themselves, and have a firsthand memory of these atrocities.&nbsp;</p><p>In 2019, I <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/speak-piece-recent-history-blackface/2019/03/01/">wrote</a> about how the remnants of the Jim Crow power structure and the violence it fuels still affect people where I grew up. These are not isolated incidents but are indicative of broad trends.&nbsp;</p><p>Even before Donald Trump, we were already beginning to see a new erosion of democracy. States around the country started passing restrictive voter ID laws that disproportionately affected people of color, the elderly, students, and rural voters, communities that often lacked access to the specific forms of identification deemed acceptable.&nbsp;</p><p>These laws were frequently justified under the guise of preventing voter fraud, despite there being little to no evidence that such fraud existed on any meaningful scale. In 2013, the Supreme Court’s decision in <em>Shelby County v. Holder</em> gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by eliminating the preclearance requirement for jurisdictions with histories of voter discrimination. Almost immediately, several Southern states including Texas, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina rushed to enforce laws that had previously been blocked or enact new laws that would have been blocked. These laws included a myriad of restrictions, including strict ID requirements, reductions in early voting, and polling place closures in minority neighborhoods.&nbsp;</p><p>The fall of democracy and use of state-sanctioned violence are not a distant threat or foreign concept, they are a lived reality for many communities in this country, especially rural Black and Indigenous communities. What’s most troubling is not just that this history is often forgotten, but that it is actively ignored by those shaping the dominant narratives of today’s political moment.&nbsp;</p><p>By failing to reckon with how democracy was already dismantled in places like North Carolina and how the American government (and its predecessor colonial powers) actively committed genocide against Indigenous people, we are missing crucial lessons about the present. The language may have changed, but the tactics, moral panic, false altruism, scapegoating, voter suppression, and violence remain eerily familiar.</p><p>The question is not whether it <em>can</em> happen. The question is whether we are finally ready to listen to those who know that it already did.&nbsp;</p><p class="has-text-align-center">***</p><p><em>Christopher Chavis grew up in rural Robeson County, North Carolina, and is a frequent writer and speaker on baseball history and rural access-to-justice issues. He is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.</em></p><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-if-democracy-collapeses-in-america-it-wont-be-the-first-time/2025/04/22/">Commentary: If Democracy Collapses in America, It Won’t Be the First Time</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  300. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227959</post-id> </item>
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  302. <title>In Rural Massachusetts, Patients and Physicians Weigh Trade-Offs of Concierge Medicine</title>
  303. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-massachusetts-patients-and-physicians-weigh-trade-offs-of-concierge-medicine/2025/04/22/</link>
  304. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-massachusetts-patients-and-physicians-weigh-trade-offs-of-concierge-medicine/2025/04/22/#respond</comments>
  306. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Karen Brown / New England Public Media]]></dc:creator>
  307. <pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  308. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  309. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  310. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227923</guid>
  311.  
  312. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  313. <p>This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Michele Andrews had been seeing her internist in Northampton, Massachusetts, a small city two hours west of Boston, for about 10 years. She was happy with the care, though she started to notice it was becoming harder to get an appointment. “You’d call and you’re talking [&#8230;]</p>
  314. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-massachusetts-patients-and-physicians-weigh-trade-offs-of-concierge-medicine/2025/04/22/">In Rural Massachusetts, Patients and Physicians Weigh Trade-Offs of Concierge Medicine</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  315. ]]></description>
  316. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rebecca-starr-photo-resized-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by </em><a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/concierge-medicine-direct-primary-care-doctor-shortage-rural-western-massachusetts/"><em>KFF Health News</em></a>.</p><p>Michele Andrews had been seeing her internist in Northampton, Massachusetts, a small city two hours west of Boston, for about 10 years. She was happy with the care, though she started to notice it was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166873700/whats-the-cure-for-americas-doctor-shortage">becoming harder</a> to get an appointment.</p><p>“You’d call and you’re talking about weeks to a month,” Andrews said.</p><p>That’s not surprising, as many workplace surveys show the supply of primary care doctors has fallen well below the demand, especially in rural areas such as western Massachusetts. But Andrews still wasn’t prepared for the letter that arrived last summer from her doctor, Christine Baker, at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pvimflorence.com/">Pioneer Valley Internal Medicine</a>.</p><p>“We are writing to inform you of an exciting change we will be making in our Internal Medicine Practice,” the letter read. “As of September 1st, 2024, we will be switching to Concierge Membership Practice.”</p><p>Concierge medicine is a business model in which a doctor charges patients a monthly or annual membership fee — even as the patients continue paying insurance premiums, copays, and deductibles. In exchange for the membership fee, doctors limit their number of patients.</p><p>Many physicians who’ve made the change said it resolved some of the pressures they faced in primary care, such as having too many patients to see in too short a time.</p><p>Andrews was floored when she got the letter. “The second paragraph tells me the yearly fee for joining will be $1,000 per year for existing patients. It’ll be $1,500 for new patients,” she said.</p><p>Although numbers are not tracked in any one place, the trade magazine Concierge Medicine Today estimates there are&nbsp;<a href="https://conciergemedicinetoday.net/for-the-media">7,000 to 22,000</a>&nbsp;concierge physicians in the U.S. Membership fees range from $1,000 to as high as $50,000 a year.</p><p>Critics say concierge medicine helps only patients who have extra money to spend on health care, while shrinking the supply of more traditional primary care practices in a community. It can particularly affect rural communities already experiencing a shortage of primary care options.</p><p>Andrews and her husband had three months to either join and pay the fee or leave the practice. They left.</p><p>“I’m insulted and I’m offended,” Andrews said. “I would never, never expect to have to pay more out of my pocket to get the kind of care that I should be getting with my insurance premiums.”</p><p>Baker, Andrews’ former physician, said fewer than half her patients opted to stay — shrinking her patient load from 1,700 to around 800, which she considers much more manageable. Baker said she had been feeling so stressed that she considered retiring.</p><p>“I knew some people would be very unhappy. I knew some would like it,” she said. “And a lot of people who didn’t sign up said, ‘I get why you’re doing it.’”</p><p>Patty Healey, another patient at Baker’s practice, said she didn’t consider leaving.</p><p>“I knew I had to pay,” Healey said. As a retired nurse, Healey knew about the shortages in primary care, and she was convinced that if she left, she’d have a very difficult time finding a new doctor. Healey was open to the idea that she might like the concierge model.</p><p>“It might be to my benefit, because maybe I’ll get earlier appointments and maybe I’ll be able to spend a longer period of time talking about my concerns,” she said.</p><p>This is the conundrum of concierge medicine, according to Michael Dill, director of workforce studies at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aamc.org/">Association of American Medical Colleges</a>. The quality of care may go up for those who can and do pay the fees, Dill said. “But that means fewer people have access,” he said. “So each time any physician makes that switch, it exacerbates the shortage.”</p><p><a></a><a></a><a href="https://www.aamc.org/news/press-releases/new-aamc-report-shows-continuing-projected-physician-shortage">His association estimates</a>&nbsp;the U.S. will face a shortage of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aamc.org/media/75236/download?attachment">20,200 to 40,400 primary care doctors</a>&nbsp;within the next decade.</p><p><a></a><a href="https://www.chiamass.gov/massachusetts-primary-care-dashboard/#May-2024">A state analysis</a>&nbsp;found that the percentage of residents in western Massachusetts who said they had a primary care provider was lower than in several other regions of the state.</p><p>Dill said the impact of concierge care is worse in rural areas, which often already experience physician shortages. “If even one or two make that switch, you’re going to feel it,” Dill said.</p><p>Rebecca Starr, an internist who specializes in geriatric care, recently started a concierge practice in Northampton.</p><p>For many years, she consulted for a medical group whose patients got only 15 minutes with a primary care doctor, “and that was hardly enough time to review medications, much less manage chronic conditions,” she said.</p><p>When Starr opened&nbsp;<a href="https://www.starrgeriatrics.com/">her own medical practice</a>, she wanted to offer longer appointments — but still bring in enough revenue to make the business work.</p><p>“I did feel a little torn,” Starr said. While it was her dream to offer high-quality care in a small practice, she said, “I have to do it in a way that I have to charge people, in addition to what insurance is paying for.”</p><p>Starr said her fee is $3,600 a year, and her patient load will be capped at 200, much lower than the 1,000 or even 2,000 patients that some doctors have. But she still hasn’t hit her limit.</p><p>“Certainly there’s some people that would love to join and can’t join because they have limited income,” Starr said.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227926" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/blue-canyon-resized-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Blue Canyon Primary Care offers “direct primary care” in Northampton, Massachusetts, for patients who pay $225 a month. Direct primary care is similar to concierge medicine but does not accept insurance. Patients must pay out-of-pocket and can seek reimbursement from their insurers afterward. (Photo by Karen Brown / New England Public Media)</figcaption></figure><p>Many doctors making the switch to concierge medicine say the membership model is the only way to have the kind of personal relationships with patients that attracted them to the profession in the first place.</p><p>“It’s a way to practice self-preservation in this field that is punishing patients and doctors alike,” said internal medicine physician Shayne Taylor, who recently opened&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bluecanyonprimarycare.com/services">a practice</a>&nbsp;offering “direct primary care” in Northampton. The direct primary care model is similar to concierge care in that it involves charging a recurring fee to patients, but&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aafp.org/dam/AAFP/documents/practice_management/direct-primary-care-2024-data-brief.pdf">direct care</a>&nbsp;bypasses insurance companies altogether.</p><p>Taylor’s patients, capped at 300, pay her $225 a month for basic primary care visits — and they must have health insurance to cover care such as X-rays and medications, which her practice does not provide. But Taylor doesn’t accept insurance for any of her services, which saves her administrative costs.</p><p>“We get a lot of pushback because people are saying, ‘Oh, this is elitist, and this is only going to be accessible to people that have money,’” Taylor said.</p><p>But she said the traditional primary care model doesn’t work. “We cannot spend so much time seeing so many patients and documenting in such a way to get an extra $17 from the insurance company.”</p><p>While much of the pushback on the membership model comes from patients and policy experts, some of the resistance comes from physicians.</p><p><a href="https://www.vmgma.com/greenfield">Paul Carlan</a>, a primary care doctor who runs&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vmgma.com/">Valley Medical Group</a>&nbsp;in western Massachusetts, said his practice is more stretched than ever. One reason is that the group’s clinics are absorbing some of the patients who have lost their doctor to concierge medicine.</p><p>“We all contribute through our tax dollars, which fund these training programs,” Carlan said.</p><p>“And so, to some degree, the folks who practice health care in our country are a public good,” Carlan said. “We should be worried when folks are making decisions about how to practice in ways that reduce their capacity to deliver that good back to the public.”</p><p>But Taylor, who has the direct primary care practice, said it’s not fair to demand that individual doctors take on the task of fixing a dysfunctional health care system.</p><p>“It’s either we do something like this,” Taylor said, “or we quit.”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>This article is from a partnership that includes </em><a href="https://www.nepm.org/"><em>New England Public Media</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://npr.org/shots"><em>NPR</em></a><em>, and KFF Health News.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-massachusetts-patients-and-physicians-weigh-trade-offs-of-concierge-medicine/2025/04/22/">In Rural Massachusetts, Patients and Physicians Weigh Trade-Offs of Concierge Medicine</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  317. ]]></content:encoded>
  319. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-massachusetts-patients-and-physicians-weigh-trade-offs-of-concierge-medicine/2025/04/22/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  320. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  323. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227923</post-id> </item>
  324. <item>
  325. <title>Migration to Rural America Resulted in Population Growth Last Year, Census Shows</title>
  326. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/migration-to-rural-america-resulted-in-population-growth-last-year-census-shows/2025/04/21/</link>
  327. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/migration-to-rural-america-resulted-in-population-growth-last-year-census-shows/2025/04/21/#respond</comments>
  329. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sarah Melotte]]></dc:creator>
  330. <pubDate>Mon, 21 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  331. <category><![CDATA[Rural Life]]></category>
  332. <category><![CDATA[Data]]></category>
  333. <category><![CDATA[Yonder Report]]></category>
  334. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227869</guid>
  335.  
  336. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="785" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?fit=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?w=1240&amp;ssl=1 1240w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=760%2C582&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=768%2C588&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=1200%2C919&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=780%2C598&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=400%2C306&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=706%2C541&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?fit=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  337. <p>Thousands of people moved to rural America last year, causing the fourth year of continual growth in rural areas, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of 2024 Census estimates.&#160; Nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties grew by 134,000 residents between 2023 and 2024, reversing a decade-long trend of population decline that happened between 2010 and 2020.&#160; Since [&#8230;]</p>
  338. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/migration-to-rural-america-resulted-in-population-growth-last-year-census-shows/2025/04/21/">Migration to Rural America Resulted in Population Growth Last Year, Census Shows</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  339. ]]></description>
  340. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="785" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?fit=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?w=1240&amp;ssl=1 1240w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=760%2C582&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=768%2C588&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=1200%2C919&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=780%2C598&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=400%2C306&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?resize=706%2C541&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/map_ledeart.png?fit=1024%2C785&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><iframe title="Net Migration in 2024" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-eVvAw" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eVvAw/3/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="456" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  341. </script><p>Thousands of people moved to rural America last year, causing the fourth year of continual growth in rural areas, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of 2024 Census estimates.&nbsp;</p><p>Nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties grew by 134,000 residents between 2023 and 2024, reversing a <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-population-over-past-decade-first-time-history#:~:text=Between%202010%20and%202020%2C%20the%20rural%20population%20declined%20by%20289%2C000,of%20221%2C000%20(0.5%20percent).">decade-long trend of population decline that happened between 2010 and 2020</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>Since 2020, in-migration has been the primary force behind rural population gain. If it wasn’t for people moving to rural America, nonmetro counties would have lost more than half a million residents over the past four years.</p><p>That’s because deaths have been outnumbering births in rural places, a phenomenon demographers refer to as natural decrease. (Natural increase, on the other hand, occurs when births outnumber deaths).</p><p>Between 2023 and 2024, rural America lost 104,600 residents to natural decrease. But because the number of people who moved to rural counties was greater than the number of people who left, rural America saw a net migration of 240,000 residents.</p><p>(Nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties in this analysis are the counties not on the list of metropolitan areas in the 2013 <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-metro-and-micro-statistical-areas.html">Office of Management and Budget</a> database.)</p><p>A similar trend occurred in smaller metropolitan areas. Metro counties with populations fewer than 250,000, referred to simply as small metros in the table below, lost just over 2,000 residents to natural decrease in 2024. These counties, however, also gained an additional 226,200 residents by people moving in.</p><iframe title="" aria-label="Table" id="datawrapper-chart-0mhnl" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/0mhnl/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="294" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  342.  
  343. </script><p>In medium-sized suburbs of cities with populations between 250,000 and 1 million, natural decrease resulted in a drop of 10,300 residents. But in-migration added 203,600 residents to those counties, resulting in a net gain of 193,100 residents in 2024.&nbsp;</p><p>But in the nation’s largest counties, population growth happened through a combination of both natural <em>increase</em> and in-migration. In the major metros with populations exceeding 1 million residents, both natural change and positive net migration resulted in a growth of almost 1 million residents. The suburbs of those cities gained about 1.2 million, primarily through migration.</p><p>In medium-sized metros, or cities with populations between 250,000 and 1 million, increases in migration and births resulted in a net gain of more than half a million more residents.&nbsp;</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">The South as Epicenter of Rural Growth</h3><p>In 2024, America gained population across every type of geography, from the nation’s largest cities to the countryside’s smallest towns. But that growth was more pronounced in some regions over others.</p><p>About two-thirds of the national rural population growth happened in the South, for example. Home to nearly 18 million rural residents in 2024, the South is the largest region in the United States in terms of population size, so it follows that the most drastic fluctuations in raw numbers happened there.</p><iframe title="Rural Population Change in 2024" aria-label="Table" id="datawrapper-chart-lQclb" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lQclb/3/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="370" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  344.  
  345. </script><p>Like the rest of rural America, population growth in the South was a direct result of people moving in. The South gained an additional 130,100 residents in 2024.&nbsp;</p><p>Simultaneously, these counties lost 41,800 residents through natural decrease. The resulting net change in population in the rural South was a growth of 88,200 people.&nbsp;</p><p>In terms of percent change, however, the largest growth last year happened in the Interior Northwest. Between 2023 and 2024, the Interior Northwest, which includes the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, grew by 12,000 residents, a 0.68% increase.&nbsp;</p><p>Population growth in the Interior Northwest happened because of a mix of natural increase and migration. In-migration accounted for an additional 10,000 residents, while natural change resulted in about 2,000 new residents.</p><p>The Mid Atlantic region, which includes states like Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland, among others, was the only region that saw rural population declines in 2024. But that decrease was relatively minor–about 3,100 residents, a 0.07% drop since 2023.&nbsp;</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/migration-to-rural-america-resulted-in-population-growth-last-year-census-shows/2025/04/21/">Migration to Rural America Resulted in Population Growth Last Year, Census Shows</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  346. ]]></content:encoded>
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  349. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  352. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227869</post-id> </item>
  353. <item>
  354. <title>Logging Doesn’t Prevent Wildfires, But Trump is Trying It Anyway</title>
  355. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-it-anyway/2025/04/21/</link>
  356. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-it-anyway/2025/04/21/#respond</comments>
  358. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist]]></dc:creator>
  359. <pubDate>Mon, 21 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  360. <category><![CDATA[Rural Life]]></category>
  361. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  362. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227874</guid>
  363.  
  364. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  365. <p>This story was originally published by Grist. In an emergency directive issued late last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her department’s plan to expand logging and timber production by 25 percent and, in the process, dismantle the half-century-old environmental review system that has blocked the federal government from finalizing major decisions [&#8230;]</p>
  366. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-it-anyway/2025/04/21/">Logging Doesn’t Prevent Wildfires, But Trump is Trying It Anyway</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  367. ]]></description>
  368. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AP25094692822089-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by <a href="https://grist.org/wildfires/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-anyway/">Grist</a></em>.</p><p>In an emergency directive issued late last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her department’s plan to expand logging and timber production by 25 percent and, in the process, dismantle the half-century-old environmental review system that has blocked the federal government from finalizing major decisions concerning national forest lands without public insight.&nbsp;</p><p>Under Rollins’ direction and following an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-expansion-of-american-timber-production/">earlier executive order</a> signed by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Forest Service would carry out the plan that designates 67 million acres of national forest lands as high or very high wildfire risk, classifies another 79 million acres as being in a state of declining forest health, and labels 34 million acres as at risk of wildfire, insects, and disease. All told, the declaration encompasses some 59 percent of Forest Service lands.&nbsp;</p><p>Rollins made no mention of the role climate change plays in escalating wildfire risk or intensity, or how warming contributes to spreading plant diseases and expanding invasive species ranges. Climate change, it seems, has also been overlooked in the development of the Trump administration’s proposed solution — to cut forests down.&nbsp;</p><p>“Healthy forests require work, and right now we’re facing a national forest emergency. We have an abundance of timber at high risk of wildfires in our national forests,” <a href="https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/04/04/secretary-rollins-announces-sweeping-reforms-protect-national-forests-and-boost-domestic-timber">said</a> Rollins in a press release. “I am proud to follow the bold leadership of President Trump by empowering forest managers to reduce constraints and minimize the risks of fire, insects, and disease so that we can strengthen the American timber industry and further enrich our forests with the resources they need to thrive.”&nbsp;</p><p>While it may seem intuitive that cutting down high-risk trees will lead to less organic material that could incinerate, environmentalists say the administration’s plans to increase timber outputs, simplify permitting, and do away with certain environmental review processes are likely to only escalate wildfire risk and contribute more to climate change.&nbsp;</p><p>Chopping down vast tracts of trees releases tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, exacerbating warming, which supercharges wildfire risk <a href="https://grist.org/wildfires/wildfire-2023-canada-greece-amazon-climate-change-fueled-last-years-extreme-wildfires-some-more-than-others/">and causes blazes to burn faster and hotter</a>. Though the climate science of timber management is complex, with techniques like prescribed burns <a href="https://grist.org/wildfires/wildfires-southeast-landowners-prescribed-burns/">considered widely effective</a> in mitigating blaze-prone areas, the administration’s aim to rapidly ramp up deregulated logging under the premise of lessening wildfire risk is poised to backfire, not least because of the <a href="https://grist.org/energy/logging-biomass-nature-conservancy/">carbon costs of cutting down forests</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>A <a href="https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/forest-health-fuels-emergency-lands.pdf">map</a> accompanying the memo from the Department of Agriculture, or USDA, indicates the stretches of forest that the agency has identified under the emergency designation. California, Colorado, Idaho, and Arizona appear to have the largest swaths of forest lands affected. Parts of the South, around the Great Lakes, and New England are also included. The USDA <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/environment/2025/04/05/usda-order-paves-way-for-clearing-of-federal-forests-including-michigan-lands/82907471007/">has not specified</a> how many acres will be impacted per state. </p><p>The agency’s emergency order and push to expand logging to mitigate wildfire risk, ineffective as it can be if done haphazardly, is not a new strategy, said Lisa Dale, a lecturer at Columbia University’s Climate School who has researched wildfire policy for decades. Similar declarations have been passed in multiple former administrations as a way to shortcut the <a href="https://headwaterseconomics.org/wp-content/uploads/HE_2023_Missing-the-Mark-Wildfire.pdf">time-consuming and onerous review processes</a> under the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. What is new about this particular directive, however, is the USDA’s explicit intention to “<a href="https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/04/04/secretary-rollins-announces-sweeping-reforms-protect-national-forests-and-boost-domestic-timber">remove</a>” NEPA processes. Trump imposed multiple limitations on the rule in his first term, most of which the Biden administration later revoked. In his second term, the president has <a href="https://grist.org/regulation/trump-white-house-council-environmental-quality-nepa-permitting/">sought to unravel how the sweeping environmental legislation is implemented</a>, decentralizing how it has been governed and leaving it up to individual agencies to develop their own guidelines.&nbsp;</p><p>Dale said this rings “an alarm bell” as the proposed elimination of NEPA processes at the USDA would mean that, in theory, a logging company could come into a forest and extract timber without having to first evaluate the environmental impacts of its actions — like when timber production overtakes endangered species habitats.&nbsp;</p><p>“I’m a little skeptical about the premise of this memo,” said Dale, who has been a longtime proponent for streamlining NEPA. “The idea that we’re going to increase timber production by 25 percent and that that will be the equivalent of reducing wildfire risk? That’s the disconnect.”</p><p>As Dale noted, most of the really valuable timber is located only in a couple of states, in areas that are very difficult and expensive to access. Moreover, she said, “none of those types of timber sales have much of an impact at all on wildfire risk.”&nbsp;</p><p>The USDA declined to comment for the story, but a spokesperson sent Grist a <a href="https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/implementation-secretarial-memo-1078-006.pdf">public letter</a> issued by Chris French, the acting associate chief of the Forest Service. In the letter, French first directs all officers to “use innovative and efficient approaches” to meet the “minimum” requirements of NEPA, and later notes that the agency will soon release direction for “using emergency NEPA” to “streamline and simplify our permitting process.”</p><p>The agency’s emergency declaration comes even as it continues to cull federal funding for food and farm programs, and has attempted to substantially shrink the very workforce that manages forest health and wildfire management.&nbsp;</p><p>Anna Medema, Sierra Club’s associate director of legislative and administrative advocacy for forests and public lands, said that the move will benefit industrial logging operations and create a negative climate feedback loop. She called the decision “a boon for the logging industry and a disaster for our national forests.” Other advocacy organizations, like the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, have vowed to “<a href="https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2025/04/07/conservation-groups-decry-usda-calls-for-increased-logging/">use every legal tool at our disposal</a> to halt the Trump administration’s implementation of this order.”&nbsp;</p><p>Jack Algiere, director of agroecology at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a nonprofit farm and research center in New York, is holding out hope that agroforestry solutions will be included in how the Forest Service carries out the new <a href="https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/implementation-secretarial-memo-1078-006.pdf">emergency order</a>. “The thing with agriculture is that it’s working with living systems. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a forest or a vegetable field,” said Algiere, who flagged there is no mention of a long-term implementation in the memo. “Not all of these places are abandoned forests. Many of them already have management plans, and maybe this is going to disrupt that.”&nbsp;</p><p>Algiere also took note of how the language in the memorandum includes what he considers a lot of the “right words” — such as mentions of the Forest Service working toward land “stewardship” together with federally recognized tribes. And yet he can’t help but think about how, at the same time, the USDA is <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/our-people-are-hungry-usda-federal-food-aid-cuts/">freezing and cutting funding for food programs</a> and <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/usda-unfreezing-clean-energy-money-dei-climate/">scrubbing diversity, equity, and climate tenets</a> from applications.&nbsp;</p><p>“This could have been written in a lot of different ways,” he said. “Not unlike the rest of the USDA, there seems to be a little bit of both sides getting played out.”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-it-anyway/2025/04/21/">Logging Doesn’t Prevent Wildfires, But Trump is Trying It Anyway</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  375. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227874</post-id> </item>
  376. <item>
  377. <title>Missouri OATS Transit Offers Transit and Social Connection for Rural Residents </title>
  378. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/missouri-oats-transit-offers-transit-and-social-connection-for-rural-residents/2025/04/18/</link>
  379. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/missouri-oats-transit-offers-transit-and-social-connection-for-rural-residents/2025/04/18/#comments</comments>
  381. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kaitlyn McConnell]]></dc:creator>
  382. <pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  383. <category><![CDATA[Travel & Recreation]]></category>
  384. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227661</guid>
  385.  
  386. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  387. <p>The rolling rural Ozarks offers scenic beauty and a sense of solitude – great things, I bet most would agree, except when transportation is an issue.&#160; Without a vehicle, driver’s license, or strong network of family support, challenges can quickly arise for folks in rural areas – both in the Ozarks and elsewhere – about [&#8230;]</p>
  388. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/missouri-oats-transit-offers-transit-and-social-connection-for-rural-residents/2025/04/18/">Missouri OATS Transit Offers Transit and Social Connection for Rural Residents </a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  389. ]]></description>
  390. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-2-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>The rolling rural Ozarks offers scenic beauty and a sense of solitude – great things, I bet most would agree, except when transportation is an issue.&nbsp;</p><p>Without a vehicle, driver’s license, or strong network of family support, challenges can quickly arise for folks in rural areas – both in the Ozarks and elsewhere – about how they can accomplish basic tasks like grocery shopping and medical appointments, and care.&nbsp;</p><p>More than 50 years ago, a nonprofit called OATS Transit began<strong> </strong>to help with those challenges in Missouri. Today, it has grown into one of the nation’s largest and longest-running rural transportation providers, according to its leaders.&nbsp;</p><p>Anyone is able to reserve a ride via the transit system, which picks up people at their home and takes them directly to where they need to go for a subsidized rate. Low-cost fares are supplemented by grants, donations, and government funding.&nbsp;</p><p>The latter is currently an area of concern. Funding at the state level – often used to “match” federal dollars – has been identified for reduction in Missouri’s 2026 fiscal year. Other concerns on the federal level have OATS leaders keeping a careful eye on changes, particularly with Medicaid.&nbsp;</p><p>“I worry about our dialysis patients because many of them ride under the Medicaid transportation program,” said Dorothy Yeager, executive director of OATS Transit. “When you hear about the federal government looking at possibly reducing Medicaid funding, I hope that they recognize the value the Medicaid transportation program brings to rural areas. Because many of our dialysis patients ride under that program.”&nbsp;</p><p>In the case of someone going to dialysis, transportation can be the difference between life and death. But true for anyone, one could potentially lose independence, community, and autonomy without reliable means of travel.</p><p>It’s about more than “just” a ride.&nbsp;</p><div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="1170" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1.jpg?resize=780%2C1170&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227671" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=864%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 864w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=507%2C760&amp;ssl=1 507w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1365%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1365w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C1800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C3000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C1170&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C600&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C1059&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?w=1707&amp;ssl=1 1707w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-scaled.jpg?w=1560&amp;ssl=1 1560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-3-1-864x1296.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Driver Sandy Schultz helps OATS passenger Lark Newell onto the van’s motorized lift. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure></div><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Understanding the Need</strong></h3><p>I’ve long seen the OATS-branded buses and vans traverse the rural Ozarks landscape as I make my own travels through the region. The nonprofit began in the early 1970s after a group of Missouri Volunteers attended a White House conference on aging in Washington, D.C.&nbsp;</p><p>When its first three buses rolled out in 1971, its focus was older adults, but many years ago the service opened to all: The original name Older Americans Transportation Service shifted to the current Operating Above the Standard. Folks still generally think it’s for older people.<strong> “</strong>We’re continually trying to get the word out that in rural Missouri, anyone of any age can ride the OATS bus,” Yeager said.</p><p>I myself jumped on the bus a while ago as I set out for a ride-along with Sandy Schultz, a cheerful driver-turned-trainer who has worked for OATS for years. As I prepared to write this column, I wanted to see firsthand how the system worked and to meet a few of the folks who utilized its services.&nbsp;</p><p>We rolled out at about 7:30 a.m. from Branson, the nationally known hub for glittery country music shows and family-friendly vacation activities. Our first stop was in a nearby village about ten miles away, a start that would ultimately take us through the rural countryside.&nbsp;</p><p>“It’s a rewarding job – very rewarding,” Schultz told me as we drove along. “And that makes all the difference for me – to see what you can do for people.”</p><p>Schultz said that a core part of OATS is door-to-door service. This means that the drivers know for sure that someone got inside OK. It also means that they can help carry items to – but not inside – the person’s home.&nbsp;</p><p>“We help them with their groceries. We can’t go into their house, but we can drop (the groceries) right inside the door – and a lot of elderly people appreciate that because they can’t carry their groceries,” Schultz said. “We do not accept tips, although they try to give you that. They’re always trying to do something, or make you cookies.” (They can accept the sweet treats, she said with a smile.)&nbsp;</p><p>Our first stop was at a small white house with a plethora of pots for plants and windchimes in a village called Merriam Woods. It’s where we picked up Sharon Jones, who, after settling into her seat, told me that she is legally blind. For about five years, she’s relied on OATS several days each week for transportation to places like the senior center. That’s where she’s headed on this sunny, chilly morning.</p><p>For her, it’s beyond the trips to the doctor and exercise class. It’s also the friendships, she said.</p><figure class="wp-block-image"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227663" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1366&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1334&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-1-scaled.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Charles Cutler and Sharon Jones ride the OATS bus in March 2025. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell) </figcaption></figure><p>Along the way, we pick up Charles Cutler, who is also headed to the center. He’s lived in the Ozarks for decades but began utilizing OATS several years ago after losing his driver’s license. He’s still trying to get it back, but for the past five years or so, OATS has been his set of wheels.&nbsp;</p><p>As the two passengers banter and chat between themselves and with Schultz, I see that not only does OATS provide a means of travel – it also delivers a sense of community, another desperately-needed commodity in rural areas where traditional social structures appear to be fading as communities shrink in size.&nbsp;</p><p>“You meet a lot of people on the bus – I’ve met a lot of good friends on the bus,” Cutler told me. “Also, it gets me over to the senior center so I can paint over there and have social interactions.</p><p>“If I don’t have a ride to get around, I don’t get a chance to see any people.”&nbsp;</p><p><a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf">We know that loneliness is considered an epidemic in the United States</a>. And while personal relationships most definitely still exist in rural areas, the bonds at the local general store and church aren’t quite the same as when people lived and died in small pockets of our rural landscape.&nbsp;</p><p>By having providers like OATS, riders not only have the chance to visit places where they can find connections, like at the senior center, but also build friendships with fellow riders. (Like the couple on one route, Schultz told me, who fell in love.)</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227667" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1366&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1334&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-5-1-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">OATS driver Sandy Schultz walks Lark Newell to her door after returning home from a doctor’s appointment. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure><p>After rolling down the road from the senior center, Schultz picked up Lark Newell, who needed a ride to a doctor’s appointment. She doesn’t drive any longer. Stricken with foot troubles, she used the bus’s motorized lift, and Schultz secured her walker so it wouldn’t roll. </p><p>“I no longer drive, and otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get to doctor appointments or do whatever I need to do,” Newell said. “I’m very, very grateful for this service.”</p><p>In Newell’s case, the doctor’s office is just a few miles away – but even short distances are insurmountable when walking is the only option. We dropped her off and Schultz handed her a card with a phone number so she could call when she was done to get an ETA on our return. Next, we headed to other folks out in the rural Ozarks.&nbsp;</p><p>Lee Nagel lives on the edge of Taneyville, a village of about 275 people very few services other than its post office, a Dollar General, and a school. It’s also about 20 miles one-way from the local hospital where he receives dialysis multiple times a week.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Amid details of military service and local history – his family has been here for generations – Lee shared about the kidney failure that changed his life in 2020. An episode landed him in the hospital and forced him to begin dialysis. And that led to OATS support when his truck stopped working.&nbsp;</p><p>“I would have to depend on friends,” he said. If OATS weren’t available, “(I) wouldn’t last long.”&nbsp;</p><p>As with every organization, there are staffing shortages and stress. Things don’t always go as planned – like on the day I rode along, when we faced a couple of roadblocks and delays. This isn’t taken lightly. Reliability is something that is considered such a priority that the promise is written on the side of OATS buses.&nbsp;</p><p>Yet even if there are hiccups, it’s clear the service makes a significant difference – for the riders, as well as the drivers.&nbsp;</p><p>“It’s like getting to know them, they become family, too,” Schultz said. “I think that’s what keeps the drivers staying in this job so long – because they do like the people and they like what they can do for them.</p><p>“If I hadn’t gotten this job, I’d never get to meet these wonderful people.”</p><p>Along the way, we stopped to pick up William Van Kirk, who also needed to get to dialysis treatment. He uses a motorized wheelchair to get around. He, too, benefited from the lift at the back of the van to get inside.&nbsp;</p><p>The morning proceeded with similar stories. At one point, we delivered Newell home from her doctor’s appointment. We later headed deep into the hills to pick up a woman headed to the dentist.&nbsp;</p><p>“I don’t like to drive,” the rider said. “I gave that up when I got Sandy.”&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227668" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-8-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">William Van Kirk arrives at Cox Medical Center Branson for his dialysis appointment in March 2025. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>The Looming Cuts</strong></h3><p>Just like the song says, money makes the world go round – and it also helps the OATS buses roll down the road.&nbsp;</p><p>The very low fares – a sign inside the bus I’m riding notes a round-trip fare within the county is just $5 – keep the transportation accessible. Much bigger bucks come from that state funding, as well as contracts OATS has with companies, Medicaid, and other insurance.</p><p>When contracts’ funding is affected, it can cause issues for OATS and its riders. For example, in late March of 2025, <a href="https://www.ky3.com/2025/03/26/many-southwest-missouri-seniors-may-soon-be-temporarily-without-oats-transit/">local news outlets reported that dwindling funding from one partner agency</a> would cause a temporary pause of some routes.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>The current concerns focus primarily on state funding, which is one source of money that allows OATS to offer its low-cost fares. That funding was bumped in recent years, and the increase was a “godsend” for OATS and other transportation providers, said Yeager.&nbsp;</p><p>“It’s my understanding that the governor is recommending reducing that by $5 million,” she said. “I argue that they should not reduce it because an investment in transit is a return on investment. It’s a good investment. With that money, we’re able to bring in federal dollars so that $5 million actually equals $10 million.”</p><p>“It did not help OATS expand, but what it did do is help us stabilize what we charge local contracts,” she said. “We didn’t have to charge as much because the state was helping. And the state, along with the federal grants, helped us keep what we charge – our hourly rate – at an affordable rate for many of our funding partners.”&nbsp;</p><p>It also helped OATS maximize funding to replace aging vehicles, which have rapidly increased in price in recent years.&nbsp;</p><p>I reached out to the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) for some information about the reduction. There are few details about the “why” so far, but a reduction in general revenue was confirmed.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227669" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/OATS-Transit-10-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Lee Nagel arrives for his dialysis appointment in March 2025. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure><p>“MoDOT’s budget each year is determined by the state’s legislative process and ultimately approved by the governor,” wrote Taylor Brune, assistant director of MoDot’s communications department, via email. “Unfortunately, we cannot comment much further until that legislative process concludes.”</p><p>Whatever happens with the state budget, the bottom line is that rural options for transportation are important. They provide a crucial resource if we want to help keep people at home in rural parts of the country, whether that’s the Ozarks or another region. And they’re important to have in place before they’re needed.&nbsp;</p><p>“Even if you think transit doesn&#8217;t matter because you don&#8217;t need it – you’re able to get where you need to go – it still impacts everyone because you probably know someone or have a family member that needs transportation,” Yeager said. “Especially in rural areas where people may not have access to rideshare programs like Uber or Lyft or there might not be other taxi providers, companies like OATS provide a lifeline to people.”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/missouri-oats-transit-offers-transit-and-social-connection-for-rural-residents/2025/04/18/">Missouri OATS Transit Offers Transit and Social Connection for Rural Residents </a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  397. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227661</post-id> </item>
  398. <item>
  399. <title>Q&#038;A: Romanticizing Rural Desert Life, with Michael Branch</title>
  400. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-romantacizing-rural-desert-life-with-michael-branch/2025/04/18/</link>
  401. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-romantacizing-rural-desert-life-with-michael-branch/2025/04/18/#respond</comments>
  403. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Claire Carlson]]></dc:creator>
  404. <pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  405. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  406. <category><![CDATA[Path Finders]]></category>
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  408.  
  409. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="768" height="526" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?fit=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?w=768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=760%2C521&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=400%2C274&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=706%2C484&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?fit=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  410. <p>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&#38;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. [&#8230;]</p>
  411. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-romantacizing-rural-desert-life-with-michael-branch/2025/04/18/">Q&amp;A: Romanticizing Rural Desert Life, with Michael Branch</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  412. ]]></description>
  413. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="768" height="526" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?fit=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?w=768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=760%2C521&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=400%2C274&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?resize=706%2C484&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch-e1744904487875.jpg?fit=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/path-finders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Path Finders</a>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can <a href="#signup">join the mailing list at the bottom of this article</a> and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p>Living in the desert is no easy feat, much less the rural desert on 49 hilly acres at the end of a 2.3-mile-long dirt road. But that’s exactly what environmental writer and humorist Michael Branch, his wife Erin, and his two daughters Caroline and Hannah did for over a decade outside of Reno, Nevada.</p><p>From his time living on so-called “Ranting Hill,” Branch wrote a number of books, including Rants from the Hill, a 2017 collection of essays on his “fascination with the durability of pastoral fantasy.” Branch moved to the rural desert with idyllic dreams of retreat, and came out the other end with a more, er… realistic sense of what it means to live miles away from urban splendors like a grocery store or a gas station.</p><p>I caught up with Branch earlier this year during the <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/nevadas-cowboy-poetry-gathering-attracts-western-romanticists-from-near-and-far-away/2025/02/05/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Cowboy Poetry Gathering</a> in Elko, Nevada, over picons (a Basque cocktail Elko is famous for) and talked about how easy it is to idealize rural living, and our mutual love of the Silver State.</p><p>Enjoy our conversation, below.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p><p><strong>Claire Carlson, The Daily Yonder:</strong> <strong>I feel like I see this a lot, where people will move to rural areas and not really realize what that actually means, they just want to romanticize the whole experience. So I&#8217;m curious, do you feel like you did that and then were slapped in the face with reality?</strong></p><p><strong>Michael Branch:</strong> You know, I didn&#8217;t really set out to be a humor writer, but I have become one. And I would say the three biggest influences on that choice were, first of all, just feeling that my environmental activism was often leading to despair. And that humor helped me to be more resilient and hopeful. But really, the two real-world experiences that made all the difference for me, one was becoming a father because you have all these ideas about yourself that a kid can detonate with a single question. So when your kid gets old enough to say, “Dad, why do you say you believe this, but you do this other thing?” and you&#8217;re like, ah, it&#8217;s true. I&#8217;m a hypocrite. There&#8217;s a lot of humor that arises in that incongruity between who you think you are and who your kids teach you that you actually are.</p><p>And that dynamic is at play in just the same way with rural living. I came up reading Emerson and Thoreau and kind of fantasized about this retreat from the vices of overcivilization to the wilderness. And then our dream came true. We got property in the middle of nowhere, we planned our own house and we got to live the dream. But it&#8217;s such an unforgiving landscape that all of those romantic notions about both children and the landscape are challenged every single day. So yeah, you&#8217;ve really hit it on the head. I romanticized it because I didn&#8217;t grow up [rural] and I came to it through a kind of literary dream world. I was going to be Thoreau heading for the pond or Huck Finn lighting out on the raft. And I got out there and it was <a href="https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=2346&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mormon crickets</a> and flash floods and wildfires and blizzards.</p><div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Michael-Branch.jpg?w=780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227773"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Environmental writer and humorist Michael Branch fell in love with the high desert of Nevada, despite the real-world difficulties of living there. (Photo by by Kyle Weerheim, provided by Michael Branch.)
  414. </figcaption></figure></div>
  415.  
  416. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><p>I’ve got a buddy who says, “you have to always reckon the relationship between the real self and the ideal self.” And my ideal self was going to retreat to the wilderness and have these Thoreauvian epiphanies. And my real self was like, shit, I can&#8217;t even maintain my own driveway. And this place is going to burn down. So you learn to laugh at it because you&#8217;re laughing at yourself for these often kind of silly, idealized notions you had.</p>
  417.  
  418. <p>And yet at the same time, it&#8217;s still amazing to be out there.</p></div></div><p><strong>DY: It’s one thing to move to a rural place, but it’s another thing for that place to be Nevada, which as you just said can be a hard place to live with fires and drought and extreme cold and extreme heat. And you grew up on the East Coast – so what made you decide on Nevada?</strong></p><p><strong>MB: </strong>I moved to Nevada because I took a teaching job at the University of Nevada, Reno, and came out to start a graduate program in literature and the environment. I had offers at other places including the University of Oregon, and of course Eugene is great and Oregon&#8217;s great, and that landscape is immediately easy to love. And so I came to Nevada for professional reasons, but now I am an absolutely confirmed desert rat. I&#8217;ll never be able to leave the high desert. Think of all of the tropes of looking at the stars at night or looking out across the ocean, and that feeling of feeling really small in the midst of something really big and having that make you feel both tiny and also like everything is precious. And [Nevada] is a really hard landscape to love. And that&#8217;s part of what I address in my writing is that to me, places are people, and if we get in the business of saying that some are more beautiful or more important or more valuable than others, that leads down a pretty dangerous road.</p><p>Our environmental aesthetics have been trained on European romantic paintings and writing and music. If you look at a page from a Sierra Club calendar, you have no problem saying that&#8217;s a place that should be protected. But if you look at a photograph I took in the Great Basin, maybe that&#8217;s a good place to put nuclear waste. So a lot of what I try to address in my writing is what does it mean when we stereotype a landscape, and how is that like stereotyping a person? What do we lose? What do we miss? And ultimately, I try not to be too preachy about it, but I try to help people see that if you come through a landscape and say there&#8217;s nothing there, all you&#8217;re talking about is your ability to perceive.</p><p>It just means you haven&#8217;t learned to perceive that landscape yet, because there&#8217;s never nothing there.</p><p><strong>DY:</strong> <strong>I find Nevada interesting because it&#8217;s actually the second-least rural place in the country (behind California) when you classify it by where people live – most are in the Reno or Las Vegas metropolitan areas. But when you come to an event like the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, you realize there are so many people living here and there&#8217;s so much culture, but I feel like people overlook it, just forget about it. There are so many misconceptions about what Nevada is and that you can just store your nuclear waste here because people think there’s nothing here, but that’s so untrue.</strong></p><p><strong>MB:</strong> You&#8217;ve hit on a couple things that also fascinate me, and one way I&#8217;ve put it to people is that demographically, Nevada is one of the most rural and the most urban states in the country. We have this massive land area, and the book I&#8217;m working on now – the counties I’m writing about have an average population density of one person per square mile. In 1890, the standard for unsettled frontier wilderness was two people per square mile. So even in the 19th century, this would&#8217;ve been considered unsettled wilderness. And yet, as you say, almost everybody in Nevada – now don&#8217;t tell people on the ranches out here – but almost everybody in Nevada lives in the city. So it is a very curious relationship. And if you look at the politics of so many western states – Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada – it&#8217;s blue cities and red rurals.</p><p>There’s a lot of talk about the increasing wealth gap or political polarization, but one of the things I see happening in the country that worries me a lot is that increasingly it seems like people in cities do not understand what life in rural places is like, and vice versa. We&#8217;re not communicating with each other anymore. And I really wonder if the polarization that we&#8217;re suffering from politically, whether we can ever address it without also addressing this rural-urban divide.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group is-style-default has-light-gray-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
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  420. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:33.33%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#path-finders"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="780" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?resize=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-70866" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1296%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=760%2C760&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1536%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=800%2C800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1568%2C1568&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=706%2C706&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?w=1697&amp;ssl=1 1697w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /></a></figure></div>
  421.  
  422. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:66.66%"><p>This interview first appeared in <strong>Path Finders</strong>, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox. </p></div></div>
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  451. </div></div></div><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-romantacizing-rural-desert-life-with-michael-branch/2025/04/18/">Q&amp;A: Romanticizing Rural Desert Life, with Michael Branch</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  459. <item>
  460. <title>Homemade Easter Eggs Are a Beloved Treat–and a Big Moneymaker–for Rural Congregations</title>
  461. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/homemade-easter-eggs-are-a-beloved-treat-and-a-big-moneymaker-for-rural-congregations/2025/04/17/</link>
  462. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/homemade-easter-eggs-are-a-beloved-treat-and-a-big-moneymaker-for-rural-congregations/2025/04/17/#respond</comments>
  464. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Zack Harold]]></dc:creator>
  465. <pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
  466. <category><![CDATA[Rural Life]]></category>
  467. <category><![CDATA[Living Traditions]]></category>
  468. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227879</guid>
  469.  
  470. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C972&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C900&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1500&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C585&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  471. <p>When pastor John Langenstein found out he’d been assigned to North View United Methodist Church in Clarksburg, West Virginia, everyone he talked to had the same response: “‘Oh, you’re going to the egg church.’ Didn’t matter who I was talking to, ‘You’re going to the egg church,’” Langenstein remembers. “I said ‘OK, well, that will [&#8230;]</p>
  472. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/homemade-easter-eggs-are-a-beloved-treat-and-a-big-moneymaker-for-rural-congregations/2025/04/17/">Homemade Easter Eggs Are a Beloved Treat–and a Big Moneymaker–for Rural Congregations</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  473. ]]></description>
  474. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C972&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C900&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1500&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C585&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/North-View-eggs-7-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  475. <iframe title="Spotify Embed: LIVING TRADITIONS-Homemade Easter Eggs Are a Beloved Treat–and a Big Moneymaker–for Rural Congregations" style="border-radius: 12px" width="100%" height="152" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/6WnRSK68sFapqdpem0ABIg?si=1ece1dc4cf19479d&#038;utm_source=oembed"></iframe>
  476. </div></figure><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p class="has-drop-cap">When pastor John Langenstein found out he’d been assigned to North View United Methodist Church in Clarksburg, West Virginia, everyone he talked to had the same response:</p><p>“‘Oh, you’re going to the egg church.’ Didn’t matter who I was talking to, ‘You’re going to the egg church,’” Langenstein remembers. “I said ‘OK, well, that will be interesting.’ And then (they said), ‘Oh, you’re not ready.’”</p><p>Langenstein knew all about hard boiled Easter eggs, plastic Easter eggs and the candy versions from Cadbury and Reese’s. But the eggs for which North View was famous were something much more special.</p><p>For nearly three decades, the church has been cranking out shiny chocolate Easter eggs decorated with delicate sugar flower petals. They are available in three generous sizes and six flavors: coconut, cherry nut, maple nut, solid chocolate, peanut butter, and butterfinger.&nbsp;</p><p>The eggs are hand-made in North View’s basement. Langenstein might run the show upstairs in the sanctuary, but down here he’s just another volunteer.&nbsp;</p><p>The kitchen is Serena Ashcraft’s domain.</p><p>“The molds are double-coated and ready to go,” she explained during a recent visit. “We’ll put filling in them. And we’re doing maple nut this morning.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcStM3bzm94p1rjZoMpOo8nwDxcL7J5fH3bA0UhbXqNxqlGL5spEYo06AtclKyjgfypAP3fPjG_XxbUFLOSDyU5x9OODfcZMYXRjumPqjRmVduYUmr37nXfsXsv4bVOS0Su2VPfssGy3fQL3bkNkA?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Serena Ashcraft and her husband Danny coat eggs in North View’s basement kitchen. (Photo by Zack Harold)</figcaption></figure><p>Ashcraft and fellow member Janet Shanholtz run North View’s egg brigade. Ashcraft&nbsp; handles the daytime and Shanholtz&nbsp;handles the evening crew. Together the women order supplies, organize sales and manage five shifts of volunteers each week: two on Mondays and Tuesdays, plus a Saturday shift.</p><p>That’s necessary — because North View cranks out between 6,000 and 8,000 eggs in a typical year. Each one contains filling made by 87-year-old Nadene Holt. She has held that job since the very first Easter egg sale at North View, in 1997.</p><p>“The people are dead now that I started with,” Holt said. “They said ‘We’re going to do Easter eggs. Nadene, do you want to help?’ I said, sure. And here I am.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdhe0hX9SDxf04fgJ-J3xi6ZIHPpIgqrAwiqA5sRtXRrkqMyccKjMXN_sDeYQVQ55Bwj8YIMHt0In29BoTErhuk1HWbeYaGPK2JicQdl9t-FodkjJRqMVnRWVJns_wk-vhHtNgVZ_kczous-BEqYHs?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Nadene Holt mixes egg filling while fellow volunteer Nancy Bain stuffs it into coated egg molds. (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)&nbsp;</figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/digest/article/view/30218/34793"></a>The origins of the church-made chocolate Easter egg are kind of hazy.&nbsp; <a href="https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/digest/article/view/30218/34793">According to research by folklorists Mira Johnson and David J. Puglia</a>, these delicacies appear to have first shown up in the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century in central Pennsylvania. Today, the eggs seem to be largely a central Appalachian phenomenon — showing up in Pennsylvania as well as Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and, of course, West Virginia.</p><p>The history of North View’s eggs is easier to track. In the late 1990s, church member Ruth Jaumot helped out with an egg fundraiser at nearby Bridgeport High School. That gave the church’s pastor an idea. He asked Jaumot to make them for the church as well.</p><p>“So the recipes were copied down. These are the same recipes we’ve been using for 26 years. But the flavors have really not changed throughout that time,” Langenstein said.</p><p>There has been one change, actually. The church added Butterfinger after a few years and it is now a customer favorite.</p><p>“You’d be surprised what it is,” Holt said. “It’s peanut butter and candy corn, melted.”</p><p>Since candy corn is difficult to source in the spring, the church makes sure to purchase an ample supply after Halloween.</p><p>“We get a call from Serena and she says ‘Y’all better be out there. It&#8217;s a dollar for a big bag,’” Langenstein said. “We get all we can.”</p><p>The recipes are typed out on a well-worn, stained sheet of copy paper. But Holt doesn’t need that. She knows all the recipes by heart, scooping and mixing the ingredients in her worn KitchenAid mixer.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcPd1d7fG_0axiPOBvLcJwp0NBqkJ5AZD2JLRQ5ZI1AT8Jm0ECJbTEMY8sGfuZ0nUrgjWPSjVIoB_86I1i-ZlbE_Od__clIjzlRaDbUTN7MHOSDW8ZXJt3lsWQI9FPPMWvFwCD4fVrsVMMqDmpE1jw?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">North View’s original recipe sheet, with the Butterfinger recipe scribbled on the bottom. (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)&nbsp;</figcaption></figure><p>She knows exactly how to get the dough to the perfect consistency: not too sticky, not too dry.</p><p>“See how it lines up around the beater? It’s pretty much ready to come off,” Holt said during a recent production day. “It still looks sticky so I need to add a little bit more sugar.”</p><p>Once the filling is ready, volunteers ball it up and stuff it into the chocolate-coated egg molds. After the eggs are filled, they put&nbsp;one final layer of melted chocolate across the bottom to seal everything up.</p><p>It looks easy, but North View volunteers say this is the trickiest part. Too little coating and the filling will dry out and get crumbly. Too much and the egg will be difficult to remove from the mold, potentially ruining the whole thing.</p><p>Doing it right requires lots of practice, a steady hand and the help of a secret weapon: North View’s collection of vintage 1970s hot plates.</p><p>Like Holt, the hot plates have been part of the fundraiser from the very beginning. Volunteers use them to keep the chocolate flowing while they coat the molds. By chance, they proved perfect for the job.</p><p>“Without trying, these hot plates keep it where the chocolate tempers,” Langenstein&nbsp;said.&nbsp;</p><p>Tempering is a delicate process where chocolate is heated to right around 110 degree Fahrenheit before cooling. This stabilizes the crystals in the cocoa butter, creating that shiny, smooth — and shelf-stable — look that you see in commercially made candies.</p><p>“We’ve just not found anything as good as these 1970-whatever hot plates,” Langenstein said.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeA_MAgmoKynXOYwnn0OR5io6AUvC3gkmxe9xGwokLedioaKIVOFAfI1ewMNr08Zns1XgX5NAiyS48aIRpFdcrfVPkhJ2v35pUdd5fqCBY8NaBVcAM7qrPxYBoZDy_D95ptPPSCanCAgR8L24S91iM?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Well worn but still working, North View’s hot plates are the secret to the eggs’ shiny, snappy chocolate coating. (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p>Now stuffed and coated, the eggs go into the freezer to set up. They emerge after 20 to 30 minutes, ready to receive the finishing touch: a tiny, handmade flower made from egg whites and more powdered sugar. Church member Andrea Fazzalare makes them at home on wax paper.</p><p>“She starts before Christmas on these,” Ashcraft said.</p><p>Andrea had 6,000 ready when the church started egg production in January.</p><p><em>“</em>And she’s probably going to make another thousand before we’re done,” Langenstein&nbsp; said.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXelsW57lme33jr36T3IsPKg_jTny8UVNyXQegLtKRiWOxImmNC7q4dHcCQWkTYp64n2smsRy3jnLxlcEMN9mr12LkObbNZU8rhikC80_EMwAAsKemfapSqCFDu3nYgBvuEwxHvoGrgsVQKNY7lXhg?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Flowers made of egg whites and powdered sugar adorn North View’s eggs. (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p>Completed eggs go just across the hall to a storage room. It’s aptly called “the egg room.”</p><p>&#8220;This is a sacred spot, locked up all year just in preparation for when it can be filled,” Langenstein said. “We have … five shelves here. They will all be filled by the end of the season.”</p><p>This is where the eggs are packaged and labeled, ready to go to local beauty parlors, tire shops and car dealerships. Local small businesses sell the eggs and collect the money for the church.</p><p>“Babies,” which are about the size of a Reese’s egg, cost $3. The church charges $7 for a half-pound “medium” egg. Full-pound large eggs — which look like something a chocolate emu might lay — sell for $9.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWbYxiVpoiWaDIcBPL_2MtJmKd8oqulwTbivtkosBO_3QgBh_fZmjnVLDMXOaM-XVr9cP83dEISz9zqJ4DyzP37mZQ37qMsSpRRfl9zXPbWzGNy5PFQENVzS5HFD2-aNRDxxim_PfFJjXSMOIzwdo?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Church volunteer Pat George puts flowers on completed eggs. (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)</figcaption></figure><p>North View also sets up its own sales at the courthouse, the local VA hospital, the mall and other locations around town.&nbsp;</p><p>“Last year they set us up by Hallmark, and Hallmark didn’t want us down there because we were competition to them,”&nbsp;Holt said.</p><p>North View eggs are renowned well beyond the Clarksburg area, too.</p><p>“I’ll go to a meeting up in Wheeling or down in Charleston and somebody will say, ‘Oh is it egg season? Medium cherry nut, small coconut, make the medium a white chocolate, I want milk chocolate for the other,’” Langenstein said. “People are ready. They have their order. Sometimes before they say ‘hello.’”</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide"><img decoding="async" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdcUZXNxL4H4lqXYe2iTA8RnCDwy3uhp_-F7ZFIDgSXqilMWnQth8cFZtw1AuHN6kOIApqppySE51xnycN03Nc4CSvEP5uDJAxhDbnVlf7gefN9g0Z9l0DOkrla4JdN2AQ0FUdzVmd6ShkZ3GozqLA?key=qat7LGioiHrMPcYYqtr1EFuI" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">North View pastor John Langenstein surveys the available supply in the “egg room.” (Photo by Zack Harold / Daily Yonder)&nbsp;</figcaption></figure><p>The church also ships eggs all across the country. The sale generates tens of thousands of dollars for the congregation each year. Over the years, North View has used that money to purchase everything from new carpet to a new organ.</p><p>But Langenstein says the biggest benefit of the church’s annual egg campaign is the way it brings the congregation together.</p><p>“Easter is a long season here. One of the best parts of this whole process, other than that it helps support the work of the church, is it’s just fun. For as much work as it is, and as much of a taskmaster Serena can be, we get all generations coming in. Last year our youngest person helping out with eggs was six years old,” he said.</p><p>That’s the kind of legacy that will outlive even a 1970s hot plate.</p><p><em>CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misspelled Nadene Holt&#8217;s first name.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>&nbsp;Zach Harold is a ninth-generation West Virginian, foster dad, bluegrass musician and an award-winning freelance writer, radio producer and documentary filmmaker based in Charleston, West Virginia.&nbsp; In his spare time, he continues his quest for the perfect hot dog.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group has-white-color has-dark-gray-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-5574e2e9863dd9627a539869e5365b18"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
  477.  
  478. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:40%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="780" onerror="if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === 'function') newspackHandleImageError(this);" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227984" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=760%2C760&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1296%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1536%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=2048%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=800%2C800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=600%2C600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=2000%2C2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=780%2C780&amp;ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=706%2C706&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT_Color_Square-scaled.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /></figure></div>
  479.  
  480. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:60%"><p>This article is part of the <strong>Living Traditions</strong> project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia.</p>
  481.  
  482. <div class="wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-100"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-white-color has-primary-variation-background-color has-text-color has-background wp-element-button" href="https://dailyyonder.com/living-traditions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read More Living Traditions</a></div></div></div></div></div></div><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/homemade-easter-eggs-are-a-beloved-treat-and-a-big-moneymaker-for-rural-congregations/2025/04/17/">Homemade Easter Eggs Are a Beloved Treat–and a Big Moneymaker–for Rural Congregations</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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