An urban “glut” of new lawyers hides the fact that many rural communities lack legal expertise that could help them address personal and societal issues. One lawyer who returned to her rural roots from the big city is part of an effort to change that. Last summer, I quit my […]
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For the better half of the last decade, newspapers have been treated as novelties. An under-appreciated resource whose disappearance is problematic, but for reasons that are seemingly pragmatic. To make matters worse, there doesn’t appear to be a solution in sight. “No one is quite sure how to stop that […]
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported earlier this year on an economic development project to grow lavender on former strip mines in West Virginia. After the story was released, the organization heard from a number of students involved in the program, saying they were disappointed and felt misled by the outcomes of the […]
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It’s been more than five years since documentary filmmaker Sean Dunne of Peekskill, NY, released Oxyana. The IMDb description reads, “The ‘Hillbilly Heroin’ epidemic that’s slowly rotting the soul of rural America.” As the film begins, a harrowing mist rolls over the hillsides and wooded ridges of Oceana, WV , while […]
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When a rural community has an emergency, it’s all hands on deck. “Rural cannot afford bystanders” Robb Webb, Director of the Rural Church Program Area with the Duke Endowment, told the audience gathered in Durham Arts Council in introducing the keynote panel at the 2018 National Rural Assembly (21-23 May). […]
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Robert Wuthnow tells the Daily Yonder it’s important to look beyond simplistic characterizations to understand how rural America might influence the nation’s political future. Robert Wuthnow’s new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is a distillation of the Princeton sociologist’s decade of research regarding rural communities. Wuthnow, along with a […]
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