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Are You Aware? A Convergence of Crises — The Opioid Epidemic
This is part V in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 841,000 people in the U.S. have died of drug overdose since 1999. Drugs are the leading cause of death from injury in the U.S., by a significant margin. In 2019, 29% of injury-related deaths were caused by drug poisoning. The next closest causes of death by injury were falls, firearms, and motor vehicle-related deaths, at around 15-16% each. That same year, about 70% of all drug overdose deaths were caused by opioids. Opioids, opiates, and opiums — what are they? An opiate is a derivative of the…
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Are You Aware? News from the Heartland
This is part IV in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. It is almost a golden rule of campaign journalism: Find a small-town restaurant packed with white conservative voters, and ask what their hopes are for America. The restaurant patrons enthusiastically support the Republican candidate and bemoan the direction of our country and her values. After the pancakes are eaten and the coffee cups drained, the intrepid reporter books it back to the big city. We watched this scenario play out in the election of 2016, where a majority of rural Americans voted for Trump, many of them expressing the thought that big…
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Are You Aware? Bridging the Divide
This is part III in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. I grew up in a rural part of Pennsylvania. One of our homes was on a “rural route” for mail, and our property consisted of about an acre of land in the middle of some woods. There was an old covered bridge and a small creek just down the hill from us. It was a child’s paradise. Later we moved to a small town, where our address was simply the name of the town and the state. We picked up the mail by walking a couple of blocks to the small post…
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Are You Aware? How Farmers Survive
This is part II in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Do you know how farmers survive? They have relied for decades on USDA loans. Every year many farmers apply for loans to buy or rent farmland, to buy seed or stock or equipment or fertilizers, and even to cover living expenses. Many farmers could not operate without loans. It’s an annual cycle of borrowing at the beginning of the crop year to purchase the needed items, and then paying up at harvest and not having enough cash reserves to start the next growing season — and then beginning the cycle again. Timing…
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Are You Aware? A Pandemic in the Country
This is part I in our “Rural America” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. When my family goes on road trips, we often measure our progress relative to population centers — sometimes pulling off the highway, briefly, to stop at a convenience store or a fast food joint along the way. Yet, sometimes, I find myself thinking about what life is like in the space between. My mother was born and raised in the mountains on the border of Washington and Idaho. We laugh at stories of her and her three sisters waking each other to venture out to the outhouse in the middle of the night,…
