Rural Quotes

In rural Spain, at least, it is far better to arrive than to travel, however hopefully. ~ Honor Tracy

They only trusted the wisdom of people brighter and more worldly than themselves when it was expressed in the vocabulary and style of rural idiots. In his guise as Brazenydol, he had once had a contract with DARPA to teach a team of physicists the basic terminology of tractor pulls so that they could give an acceptable explanation of omniwavelength stealth to a Congressional committee that didn't understand tractor pulls, either. ~ John Barnes

We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere - a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer - can go to a store, get a phone, get online, and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

At Camfed, we have focused on transforming the vicious cycle of poverty in many rural African communities into a cycle of opportunity. Alumnae of Camfed's programs go on to become role models and mentors for future generations of young students. We call this the 'virtuous circle,' and we know this is a model that works. ~ Ann Cotton

The attendance of that brother was now become like the attendance of a demon on some devoted being that had sold himself to destruction ~ James Hogg

..my feelings for the countryside…the beauty and the wildness, the enchantment of so much colour and life and warmth of the sun. Most people are restless in the country, they feel a vacancy, and want to get back to the shops and pavements and traffic; what they call life. Sometimes this war seems to have come directly out of that restlessness. ~ Henry Williamson

The Moon Pie is a bedrock of the country store and rural tradition. It is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact. ~ William R. Ferris

Rural communities in Africa, South Asia and Latin America are where the majority of hungry people are and the inequality that exists between women and men in these communities is holding back progress. ~ Dionne Warwick

Strengthening local airports in Iowa is important for economic development and improving the quality of life our rural areas and urban communities ~ Chuck Grassley

Unfortunately, the term "identity politics" has been weaponized. It is most often used by speakers to describe politics as practiced by members of historically marginalized groups. If you're black and you're worried about police brutality, that's identity politics. If you're a woman and you're worried about the male-female pay gap, that's identity politics. But if you're a rural gun owner decrying universal background checks as tyranny, or a billionaire CEO complaining that high tax rates demonize success, or a Christian insisting on Nativity scenes in public squares - well, that just good, old fashioned politics. With a quick sleight of hand, identity becomes something that only marginalized groups have.

The term "identity politics," in this usage, obscures rather than illuminates; it's used to diminish and discredit the concerns of the weaker groups by making them look self-interested, special pleading in order to clear the agenda for the concerns of stronger groups, which are framed as more rational, proper topics for political debate. But in wielding identity as a blade, we have lost it as a lens, blinding ourselves in a bid for political advantage. WE are left searching in vaid for what we refuse to allow ourselves to see. ~ Ezra Klein

I can recall, as a young adult, running through the rain forest at the Forest Reserve, at times feeling a sense of fear when I felt I was in danger. In danger of confronting an ugly snake or a coral snake, which represented the greatest fear of someone in a rural area when you traverse the forest. ~ Anthony Carmona

I think my songs are singing to the rural heart. It's not whether you're from a big city or the middle of nowhere in a small town. ~ Rodney Atkins

It is an incredibly hopeful experience watching communities come together and actually reassemble democracy. The democracy's been taken away from us. But they're reinventing democracy out there in rural Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in Pittsburgh. ~ Josh Fox

Capitalist agricultural production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. ~ Karl Marx

Being in nature is inspiring. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and spent countless hours of my youth wandering the woods in awe of the beauty that exists all around us. ~ Allison McAtee

A concrete embodiment of the jubilee commandment was evidenced in a rural church in Iowa during the "farm crisis." The banker in the town held mortgages on many farms. The banker and the farmers belonged to the same church. The banker could have foreclosed. He did not because, he said, "These are my neighbors and I want to live here a long time." He extended the loans and did not collect the interest that was rightly his. The pastor concluded, "He was practicing the law of the Jubilee year, and he did not even know it." The pastor might also have noted that the reason the banker could take such action is that his bank was a rare exception. It was locally and independently owned, not controlled by a larger Chicago banking system. ~ Walter Brueggemann

Growing up in a rural setting in Minnesota, I was raised with the outdoors and a sense of adventure. ~ Ann Bancroft

Darwin's Bestiary

PROLOGUE


Animals tame and animals feral
prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral:
the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile,
rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile.
Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride - every peril
was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural,
while Courage, Devotion, Thrift - every bright laurel
crowned a creature in some mythological mural.


Scientists think there is something immoral
in singular brutes having meat that is plural:
beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral.
Yet between the lines there's an implicit demurral;
the habit stays with us, albeit it's puerile:
when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel.



1. THE ANT


The ant, Darwin reminded us,
defies all simple-mindedness:
Take nothing (says the ant) on faith,
and never trust a simple truth.
The PR men of bestiaries
eulogized for centuries
this busy little paragon,
nature's proletarian -
but look here, Darwin said: some ants
make slaves of smaller ants, and end
exploiting in their peonages
the sweating brows of their tiny drudges.


Thus the ant speaks out of both
sides of its mealy little mouth:
its example is extolled
to the workers of the world,
but its habits also preach
the virtues of ~ Philip Appleman

Symptomatic of this rural-urban identity crisis is our eager embrace of a recently imposed divide: the Red States and the Blue States. That color map comes to us with the suggestion that both coasts are populated by educated civil libertarians, while the vast middle and south are criss-crossed with the studded tracks of ATVs leaving a trail of flying beer cans and rebel yells. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. But I certainly sense a bit of that when urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, "so far from everything?" (When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.) ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,
the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I grew up in a university town in eastern North Carolina - what's called Tobacco Road. It was very rural. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Since the nineteen-fifties, rural Florida has marketed itself to Northerners and Midwesterners as an unexplored paradise of citrus and mermaids. ~ Anne Hull

And then one day we found ourselves in a cornfield. After that it seemed like the whole world was made of corn. It was just the same cornfield over and over. I got to thinking that we'd suddenly be out of it and the Manhattan skyline would pop right up on the other side. But that never happened. The corn went on forever. But eventually we hit the slave state of Missouri, with its constant panorama of rural beauty. ~ Karl Wiggins

'You have chickens?' That's what nearly everyone asks next, after they find out about our family pets. They just need to make sure they heard me correctly. Perhaps it's because I don't come across to most as a rural-loving farm girl. ~ Amy Robach

Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament. ~ Sarah Hall

But these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion ... ("Afterward") ~ Edith Wharton

Though I've lived in the rural West most of my life, I never once fell in love with a horse. Not once. Neither end. ~ Edward Abbey

Rural and traditional escapism. That's my angle. Places and events where we are free to relax and be ourselves, where nobody tells us to hurry along or conform or grow up. Somewhere we can properly live. ~ Fennel Hudson

The world grows ever complex. More urban. Less peaceful. ~ Fennel Hudson

I realized some time ago that, while there are really, really high quality schools in urban India - my daughter attends one - there are very few high quality schools in rural India. And that is mostly because of the perception that there are not enough people to pay a reasonable fee in rural India. ~ Shaffi Mather

You may think I'm crazy, but I believe you can't help who you fall in love with. Maybe you're in love with the correct person, the one who's right around your age, your same religion, someone your parents were thrilled to meet when you took him or her home. If you are, well, then you probably don't believe me. But you might just as easily have fallen for your lab partner in college, who came to your northeastern liberal arts school from some rural town in the Appalachians, and the minute her hand brushed against yours while reaching for a beaker you knew you were a goner. And you wouldn't have cared if she was a he or he was a she or if he or she was already with someone else. ~ Jane L. Rosen

Before drawing any affirmative conclusions let us first note the absence of the concept of imitation as a general pastoral or moral guideline. There is in the New Testament no Franciscan glorification of barefoot itinerancy. Even when Paul argues the case for celibacy, it does not occur to him to appeal to the example of Jesus. Even when Paul explains his own predilection for self-support there is no appeal to Jesus' years of village artisan. Even when the Apostle argues strongly the case for his teaching authority, there is no appeal to the rabbinic ministry of Jesus. Jesus' trade as a carpenter, his association with fishermen, and his choice of illustrations from the life of the sower and the shepherd have through Christian history given momentum to the romantic glorification of the handcrafts and the rural life; but there is none of this in the New Testament, which testifies throughout to the life and mission of a church going intentionally into the cities in full knowledge of the conflicts which awaited here there. That the concept of imitation is not applied by the New Testament at some of those points where Franciscan and romantic devotion has tried most piously to apply it, is all the more demonstration of how fundamental the thought of participation in the suffering of Christ is when the New Testament church sees it as guiding and explaining her attitude to the powers of the world. Only at one point, only on one subject - but then consistently, universally - is Jesus ~ John Howard Yoder

Rural American families who depend on firewood to heat their homes will be hit just as hard as those who use oil and natural gas. ~ Richard Pombo

I loved living in Hollywood - and the weather there was just fantastic - but there is something about rural England, and especially Suffolk and Norfolk, that pulls at my heartstrings. ~ Amanda Donohoe

The spirit of a country, if it is to be true to itself, needs continually to draw great breaths of inspiration from the simple realities of the country; from the smell of its soil, the pattern of its fields, the beauty of its scenery and from the men and women who dwell and toil in the rural areas ~ George Stapledon

Everyone should educate themselves in more wise and responsible consumption; promote personal responsibility, along with the social dimension of rural activities, which are based on perennial values, such as hospitality, solidarity, and the sharing of the toil of labor. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I like rural areas. ~ Will Oldham

Being born not long after the war meant that money was tight. I grew up in a rural corner of Lincolnshire and my father worked on local farms. Being one of nine kids meant we didn't have much. ~ Geoff Capes

The rural Chinese in Henan Province mixed alcohol and business like you wouldn't believe. Perhaps as a result, they also had a charming nationalistic blind spot: they honestly believed they could out-drink everyone else on the planet. As an Irish-American who outweighed them by 50 pounds, I had come to find this both amusing and useful. ~ Matthew Polly

Johnny Cash had all of the same talents and problems as Elvis - a poor upbringing in the rural South exposure to gospel music throughout his childhood a penchant for drug abuse ... they had the same sort of influencing experiences but Johnny' Cash's problematic relationship was with his father not his mother. If he had had the mommy issues that Elvis had instead of a compelling need to prove himself to his father, he wouldn't have been the badass man in black, the guy in Folsom Prison watching the train roll by. Elvis was a lot of things but even with the karate and the gunplay he was more unstable than badass. ~ Molly Harper

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has been positioning himself to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Hillary once developed a program to deliver rural healthcare, while de Blasio once dropped a groundhog on its head. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Nigerian nun Bernadette Duru says the African church hierarchy is indifferent to people in rural areas. ~ Sylvia Poggioli

Our speech accurately reflects the prejudices of the ruling group. Since the rulers and the rich and the educated (who directed language) generally lived in cities, we developed such words as "villain," which meant a rustic; "heathen" and "pagan," which also indicated those who dwelt in the country; "boor," which meant a farmer; and many other such words which downgraded rural inhabitants. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other. ~ Kathleen Norris

As a young boy growing up in rural India, most of what I knew of the world was what I could see around me. But each night, I would look at the Moon - it was impossibly far away, yet it held a special attraction because it allowed me to dream beyond my village and country, and think about the rest of the world and space. ~ Naveen Jain

It's called a gui-tar. It's used to perform American rural music. It's said to be especially popular in Texas, " he told her. "It's also the instrument of choice for playing 'the blues,' which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making. ~ Adam Johnson

I'm from a rural town outside of Stockholm, so in coming to L.A., I've been able to not think that much about my background. It's much easier for me in this big town, this big bubble to isolate myself from that and be a little more self-confident. I'm here to do my take on soul. ~ Erik Hassle

The use of methamphetamines has become pervasive in our country, and especially in rural areas. ~ Collin C. Peterson

I didn't grow up on any sort of border; more in the middle of nowhere, in rural eastern North Carolina. ~ Tim Pratt

Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Roosevelt loved the subtleties of human relations ... He was sensitive to nuances in a way that Harry Truman never was and never would be. Truman, with his rural Missouri background, and partly too, because of the limits of his education, was inclined to see things in far simpler terms, as right or wrong, wise or foolish. He dealt little in abstractions. ~ David McCullough

If people's night fears of sorcery - which negatively influences their decision to use mosquito nets - fail to impress the outsider, the brute everyday reality remains; in a number of rural African villages it is still much too common for very real hyenas to snatch people, especially children, out of their own homes as they lie sleeping at night, because of the lack of a good front door. ~ T.K. Naliaka

Companies like Husk Power Systems are working to impact positively not only the environment, but to ensure that someday everyone, including the poorest of the poor in rural India, will have access to clean and affordable electricity. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas. ~ James Earl Jones

Most of my books are set in the American Midwest, where I have always lived. Midwesterners are lovely, down-to-earth people. The luxury of choosing this region as a setting is the endless supply of seasonal change images that accompany it; in addition to, the wide variety of settings, urban and rural, to choose from. ~ Leigh Michaels

To drive a car in rural America is freedom. Before I had a car, I'd never seen a rock and roll show, I'd never seen a comic or a show. ~ Penn Jillette

Deployment of broadband may be hampered by market failures in rural and remote areas. In such cases, well targeted state aid may therefore be appropriate. ~ Neelie Kroes

My agent tells me I am drawing the largest salary ever paid in the halls of England. Wonderful, isn't it? for a quiet, rural gardener like myself. ~ Lillie Langtry

I remember what it was like in the 1960's in rural Louisiana. Women did not have many options. My own best friend in high school had a baby at 16. I don't want us to go back to those days. ~ Kim Gandy

The tide of life, swift always in its course,
May run in cities with a brisker force,
But nowhere with a current so serene,
Or half so clear, as in the rural scene. ~ William Cowper

At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death. ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal

Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life. ~ Roz Kaveney

I decided in '96 to dedicate my life to mostly promoting literacy and education for girls in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. ~ Greg Mortenson

According to traditional wisdom in rural France, a baby in the womb should be compared to fruit on the tree. Not all the fruit on the same tree is ripe at the same time ... we must accept that some babies need a much longer time than others before they are ready to be born. ~ Michel Odent

For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room. ~ David Foster Wallace

As a kid I never had the impulse to climb anything. I think that most kids who live in small towns or rural areas outside of the city, that's what they do - climb walls, or trees, or whatever. To me, it was more dance classes and not being very boyish. ~ Jamie Bell

Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape. ~ Arthur Smith

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

In 1840 I was called from my farm to undertake the administration of public affairs and I foresaw that I was called to a bed of thorns. I now leave that bed which has afforded me little rest, and eagerly seek repose in the quiet enjoyments of rural life. ~ John Tyler

If it ran, a Bean would shoot it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it. ~ Carolyn Chute

And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every Child may joy to hear. ~ William Blake

I'm thinking of people in rural Japan and China, where McDonald's hasn't yet arrived. These are the thinnest, healthiest, longest-lived people with the least risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. ~ Neal Barnard

In general, I avoided giving lectures or attaching myself while abroad to a university. To learn what I wanted to know, I went instead to rural communities and onto actual farms. Talk with university people, government officials and U.S. personnel stationed in the country was much less rewarding for me. ~ Theodore Schultz

As children, we had access to all the open space imaginable. We would set up camps in rural Utah where the Tempest Company was at work laying pipe. We spent time around the West in Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado. Wild beautiful places. Now, many of these natural places have disappeared under the press of development. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

I wish I could give you all the examples over the last two years as secretary of agriculture, where I hear people in rural America constantly being criticized, without any expression of appreciation for what they do do. ~ Tom Vilsack

Cities were once rural and one day they will turn to be rural again. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I live in rural Alabama, and it's very conservative. I've had one guy say 'you can't be a minister and a DJ at the same time'. I thought 'how does someone get to choose what God has assigned me to do - God has given me a ministry. ~ Robert Hood

It was a small farm in a little rural town by the Indiana state border. I lived there from ages 5 to 12, I would say, before we moved to Dallas. We had chickens and a vegetable garden, and I had to get up to milk the goats at seven in the morning or do it at seven at night. ~ Scott Michael Foster

The only communications truly without influence are those that one learns to ignore or never hears at all; this is why Jacques Ellul argued that it is only the disconnected - rural dwellers or the urban poor - who are truly immune to propaganda, while intellectuals, who read everything, insist on having opinions, and think themselves immune to propaganda are, in fact, easy to manipulate. ~ Tim Wu

When someone with a rural accent says, "I don't know much about politics," zip up your pockets. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

It is vitally important that we can continue to say, with absolute conviction, that organic farming delivers the highest quality, best-tasting food, produced without artificial chemicals or genetic modification, and with respect for animal welfare and the environment, while helping to maintain the landscape and rural communities. ~ Prince Charles

The trustworthy postman dressed in khakhi uniform riding a bicycle has been an integral part of urban and rural landscape in India; I wonder if this cultural icon will ever be replaced by the local pizza delivery man? The ~ Ambi Parameswaran

Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying, my editor at the time Terri Windling and I sat down to figure out what to call what I was writing for the interviews that were to come. Terri came up with the term mythic fiction and I think that sums it up perfectly. There are almost invariably mythic elements in my fiction (as well as bits of folk and faerie lore) and the term doesn't lock me into writing only in an urban setting since many of my stories take place in rural areas. It never caught on, but when I don't describe what I do as simply fiction, I'll go with mythic fiction. ~ Charles De Lint

The campus is an oasis, settled in an otherwise nondescript town in rural America. A place where the grain elevator and the railroad grew together. ~ Fritz Nordengren

If you take the time to visit rural regions, where horsemen ride by and yurts are set up in summer meadows, you will come to know that the Kazak culture lives on. ~ Tim Cope

The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002). ~ Paul H. Blaney

Like a lot of rural places, southern Illinois is basically a bunch of small towns knit together, a Babel's Tower mix of rednecks, rubes, freaks, tweakers, gun nuts, and aging hippies--real hippies, not the newfangled crunchy kids they're turning out these days--who'd fled into the dark-licked hills sometime during the bloodiest days of a war that wouldn't stop shaping their lives and had never come out. ~ Jason Miller

To keep farmers on the farm we must maintain a strong farm safety net, but we will also have to build a thriving companion economy to compliment production agriculture in rural America. ~ Tom Vilsack

Also, whenever I read this paragraph to people who don't live in the South, they get hung up on the fact that we had furniture devoted to just guns, but in rural Texas pretty much everyone has a gun cabinet. Unless they're gay. Then they have gun armoires. ~ Jenny Lawson

I grew up in rural Arizona. My dad ran a general store. ~ Ann Kirkpatrick

It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America. ~ Dan Quayle

Let us build a 21st-century rural economy of cutting-edge companies and technologies that lead us to energy and food security. Such an investment will revitalize rural America, re-establish our moral leadership on climate security and eliminate our addiction to foreign oil. ~ Tom Vilsack

I made an executive decision in college when I learned how behind I was in the world of books, films, and music because of my rural upbringing. I really reduced the amount of time that sports took up in my life.I still have some Faulkner to get through. ~ Nick Offerman

Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban. ~ Richard Louv

I am fortunate: my parents told me the world was my oyster, when they could have said I wouldn't make it for a lot of reasons - rural, girl, small African country. So, no regrets. ~ Dambisa Moyo

But there's more than just solving the how-to problems. I've often said that if we're going to have a real rural renaissance, I'd just take the solving of the how-to problems for granted. The first thing I'd provide would be festivals. ~ Ralph Borsodi

Many hands were willing to perform the last tender ministrations. It is characteristic of the small town and rural districts. Sympathy there takes concrete form. It becomes cakes and cinnamon rolls and sitting up nights, husking corn and washing dishes and closing the eyes of the neighboring dead. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

History suggests that attempts to privatize Medicare by relying on private companies to offer Medicare benefits in rural America simply will not work. ~ Bennie Thompson

In her book Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America, Jennifer Sherman posits that in places lacking resources, morality is social capital. Appearing "good" unlocks jobs and community resources. But morality is determined in a fluid way; it's just as much about fitting in and looking the part as it is about good behavior. Being white, wearing the right clothes (not too fancy, not too dirty), being male, being married, and having children were all part of the appearance of morality. But it wasn't just about "good" behavior. John Sadler had stretched the law in an extra-legal way to get around the tax code. But this was looked on as an example of good behavior - he was conning the government after all. This made him smart and quick-witted, a cunning businessman and someone you would respect. Hell, he was a leader in his community. ~ Lyz Lenz