It did not stumble and rush through its space, this quiet stream. Rather, it literally flowed with the landscape, and when it encountered barriers, it either went around them or kept nudging, pushing, and bumping against them until it found a way through.
The mortality rate is higher among #rural adults — and the gap with urban areas is growing
Rural adults from ages 25-54 died of natural causes at a 6% higher rate than urban residents in 1999. Twenty years later, that number grew to 43%, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Indigenous men and women experienced the largest rate increase, with Indigenous women seeing the largest rate spike over the 20-year period..."
When painting this abstract landscape painting, I had fun letting watercolor, ink and water flow and playing with the expressive color contrast between the bold red of the barn and the bright greens of the landscape.
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Calls for More Mental Health Care Providers in #Rural Areas
Citing ProPublica’s reporting on the barriers faced by veterans in crisis, Sen. Jon Tester asked VA Secretary Denis McDonough to increase the number of providers and ensure they are “in locations where #veterans need them most.”
May the artwork take you to one of those sleepy, quiet days in summer, when it's too hot to do anything but sit on the porch with a glass of iced tea, and watch the grass sway ever so gently in the breeze.
Donald #Trump often tells #rural folks that he loves them. Contrary to myth, not all of them love him back. According to The Rural Voter, a new book by the political scientists Nicholas Jacobs and Dan Shea, only about one in 10 rural people are what they call “#rabble-rousers” the kind of #MAGA die-hards who tweet incessantly or raise a stink at school board meetings, often with an intimidating edge.
…"rural whites express more racist attitudes. “And yet,” they go on, “for many rural residents, attitudes about races are intimately linked to perceptions of hard work, self-reliance, a disdain for government handouts, and the dangers of elites.”
…"they think nonwhites don’t work hard, aren’t self-reliant, and are the clients of nefarious “elites.”
…"those who harbor higher levels of rural resentment—are more likely, on average, to support violence against the state.”
The dogs and I see tens of kangaroos around our property when on our morning walks. Most of the 'roos are quite used to us and just stand and watch us as we pass by.
“One of the more unfortunate developments is that people have started injecting meth.”
We partnered with the Daily Yonder for a Q&A with William Garriot, an anthropologist who says the impact of meth on rural communities in the U.S. has only gotten worse (but it’s not just a rural problem):
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
'"Now I will be your wrath. Look at everyone you hate – those overeducated liberals and Hollywood elites and arrogant city people and social justice warriors trying to make you feel bad for being White and being a man and being American. They despise me just as much as they despise you. Let's show them who this country really belongs to.'”
“To understand Donald Trump, you have to start with Barack Obama. Trump’s successful candidacy would not have been possible in the wake of any other presidency; It was the backlash against America's first Black president that pushed Trump into the White House.”
“When one looks to the places where Trump’s support was most intense, again and again one arrives in majority-White rural areas.”
"For many years, it was assumed that successful racial appeals had to be offered subtly, to provide voters a kind of internal plausible deniability, so that they could tell themselves they weren't being racist when they responded to such appeals. By the time 2016 came around, this was no longer true. White identity had become important enough that Trump could succeed by wearing his bigotry on his sleeve.”
“Even the common, and perfectly accurate, criticism that Trump doesn't practice what he preaches likely resonates in rural areas, where you often find a strong moral code that is regularly violated by many of the people who live there."
"The fact that rural areas have plenty of infidelity and teen parenthood (which occurs at significantly higher rates among rural Americans than city dwellers) doesn't necessarily make people reject traditional family values; it can make them cling to those values all the more fervently, as they consider them under constant, visible threat.”
“Even if Trump fails in 2024 and becomes nothing more than the laughable two-bit grifter he always has been at heart, his effect on the politics of rural America will be felt for a generation, if not more. He showed every Republican what rural Whites, and the GOP base more broadly, really want and how to give it to them."
"The result is a politics saturated in bitterness and bile, and a party whose most loyal voters don't expect their leaders to offer them anything but the ugliest kind of emotional satisfaction. Even when Trump is gone, in rural America he will still be king. And the rest of the country will suffer for it.”
~ Ibid.
Trump's hook: He promises white rural voters "restored dignity through dominance” (p. 140).