Some other things I remember: 1) We spoke of the cost of specialty coffee(s), 2) that most restaurants are not worth the money because "we can make it better at home." 3) My words here - of old-school financial literacy - but not our wealth nor money, 4) the changing weather - but not climate change. We did not talk politics - but "almost", we did not say negative things about others, and we didn't talk about our churches, but we did talk about faith and death.

A simple article to spark the imagination and exploration.

https://www.nextavenue.org/retiring-to-a-rural-area/?utm_source=Next+Avenue+Email+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1806de65f5-Tuesday_Newsletter_07_06_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_056a405b5a-1806de65f5-166271137

Rural Prosperity Report if you are interested, I can email it you. Just ask. (Or search for it online - through the Aspen Institute.)

https://anthropology-news.org/articles/radical-media-challenges-rural-stereotypes/

Radical Media Challenges Rural Stereotype

Debunking the Myths - https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/debunking-three-myths-about-rural-america

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/03/five-myths-about-rural-america/

#1: ‘Rural’ is synonymous with ‘Midwestern’
#2: ‘Rural’ is synonymous with ‘white’
#3: ‘Rural’ is synonymous with ‘conservative’
#4: Rural Americans don’t care about the news
#5: Rural America is the ‘real’ America

Media messages that amplify cliches and affect the understanding of rural life.

As sources for stories, rural folks have rarely been portrayed in a realistic light. One of the earliest and most popular depictions of rural life in popular culture was the comic strip "Li'l Abner." Al Capp grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and his closest connection with rural life was a teenage hitchhiking trip through Appalachia. But that didn't stop him from producing the comic strip that, at the height of its popularity in the 40s and 50s, was carried by nearly 900 newspapers in the U.S. for a combined circulation of 60 million. It created the stereotype of the "hillbilly," launched the national phenomenon of Sadie Hawkins Day dances, and spawned a Broadway musical, two films and a theme park. But the strip portrayed Appalachian poor people – and rural people in general – as uneducated, stupid rubes totally lacking in worldly experience and common sense.

When television came along, the hillbilly tradition expanded into shows like "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Green Acres," "Hee Haw" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." For a time in the early 60s, these were some of the most popular shows on TV.

In the movies, hillbilly pop culture took a very dark turn with "Deliverance." The uneducated hillbilly rubes of Li'l Abner became retarded and crippled misfits and savage sexual predators in the movie. These rural sadists terrorize a quartet of Atlanta urbanites on a canoe trip.

"Deliverance" spawned a sub-genre of exploitation movies that capitalized on the fear that some urban residents feel when visiting isolated rural areas. The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series, "The Hills Have Eyes," and "Children of the Corn" were all premised on the fatal encounter between modern suburbanites and rural brutes.

Valerie Kaliff (left) understands that rural areas can have a sense of mystery and maybe even foreboding for urban folks. "It is unnerving to people because it is so quiet and still and you can hear the croaks or the frogs and the animals and the coyotes howl," she says. "And it is eerie for people if you're not used to it."

https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/life_08.html

Three Focus Groups - Over the 4th of July Holiday, with three different groups, all who were sitting around chatting, I asked the question "What does it mean to be rural? What defines us?" The first group were neighbors and their extended families to our farm - 9 people. The second group was my extended family - 8 of us - around a fire ring. The third group was a small group of people at the local lumberyard - 7 of us.

What I learned:
1) We immediately go to our cultural myths. 1) Clean air - even though we spray 24D and RoundUP EVERYWHERE twice a season. 2) Clean water - even though all of us are on Rural Water because the farmers poisoned the groundwater with arsenic back in the 1930's because of grasshoppers, 3) know your neighbors, 4) better values, 5) and other cliches...

When pushed to go deeper we talked about: 1) Dark skies - no ground light. You could see the Milky Way. 2) Decibels of sound. That when you are NOT in a tractor, NOT working the elevators and corn dryers, and other equipment on the farm, you could hear the train wheels on the rails 6+ miles away. 3) Time - that they owned their own time, and even employers understood that. (Some joked that they had the TIME to ponder and answer my question. 4) Jack of all trades - had to do everything by themselves - unless neighbors helped - could not find labor, and if they found it, they could not afford it. 5) Distrust of strangers - not too sure about the over-exuberant extroverted city people. 6) Their machinery is always better (newer and more valuable) than their homes. 7) Broken down bodies - men, women and children all had stories of long term effects of injuries sustained long ago. (I lost the tip of a finger, a deep scar on my left wrist, burn marks on my arms, etc. We all agreed that is the price you pay for being rural.)

Finally, after the laughter and truly, moving beyond the cliches, it was generally acknowledged that: 1) Place matters, 2) every place is different, 3) if your place fits you, like a pair of boots, you can go far because your walk will be more comfortable. 4) if your place does not fit you, then you'll be bitter, and not very effective, 5) that urban and suburban areas are places too and that good people come from there too, it's just that they have different "comfort zones."

There is more here... but this is just a short capture, so that I wouldn't forget.

I live in the house that my great-grandfather built in 1898, after living in the "Pig Shed" (a sod and wood home) for 10 years, on this homesite. My family owns 880 acres, and the land is in a family trust, that my mother and aunt each receive a small stipend from the cash rent to cover the costs associated with retirement and aging. I grew up in this house. (It was modernized in 1959 - plumbing, electric, structure, and appearance. (My grandmother lived here until she moved to assisted living when she turned 100. She fell off a cream can taking down her Christmas decorations. She died before COVID at 103.) The farmstead is now the responsibility of me and my wife, Laura. We had our first date here, 15 years ago, and we were married and will be buried on the farmstead.)

We are surrounded by agri-business - RoundUp ready corn and soybeans. We have an ethanol plant 10 miles to the SE, and a sugar plant 40 miles to the northeast. (My neighbors say that they grow "Rum and Cokes." I have known my neighbors - Liberty Grove Township - and the farmers who rent our land since I was born 60 years ago. There are no strangers here. (And, over the past 50 years, our region has lost 75% of its population.)

We don't have the labor force necessary to upgrade buildings or infrastructure, so we are all jacks of all trades and masters of none. Meaning that things are built to be "good enough." My wife and I replaced the roofs on three outbuildings, tore down and rebuilt a garage, and this summer we'll put steel siding on a Quonset that we have nicknamed "Moby Dick" and will replace all the wiring in the house, replace ALL of the plumbing in the house, add a full bathroom, in the next 12 months. We seek the advice, support, and counsel of our neighbors when we run into unknowns. They are very willing to advise, loan us tools, and even work alongside us if we feed them well enough.

My wife and l run our international consulting businesses from the farm. And, are enjoying making "this old farmstead" livable for the next 50+ years, to pass on to the next generation.

Good morning Deb and Wendy,
Reading your insights and experiences compels me to ponder the variables of personal motivation, interpersonal competence, ability to delay/prolong gratification and think differently about the transactional nature of relationships, having an intellectual AND vicseral experience with "enlightened self interest" and the deep value and fungibility of social capital, a wider perspective of time and it's value, a wider comfort zone for temperatures, pain, physical movement and discomfort, and the speed/velocity of preceived personal growth.

Having lived and worked throughout Alaska for 25+ years (173 different communities/villages/camps) that are remote, and, depending on the anthropological history of humankind that one subscribes to, have been inhabited for 22,000+ years, I have come to understand why people have remained, and suffered/survived/thrived.

Thank you for playing in the sandbox alongside me.