Quick hits: USDA plans fertilizer production in U.S.; farmers' 'stops' that aren't seasonal; curiosity builds community

Brooke Rollins

The Department of Agriculture plans to use tariff dollars and trade renegotiation resources to help fertilizer production in the United States. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the "USDA is focused on helping move fertilizer supplies more quickly, but cautioned it will take time for crop nutrient prices to begin falling," reports Kim Chipman of AgriPulse. "Rollins said she hosted a meeting with executives of four top fertilizer companies and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett." The Trump administration hopes to roll out its full plan to move fertilizer production back to the U.S. sometime this week.

The University of Maine's Fort Kent campus will provide dorms,
 a lounge and a cafeteria for recovering teens. (UofM photo)

Just like some adults, preteens and adolescents can end up with severe drug and alcohol addictions that can end in an overdose or many failed recovery attempts. Recovery advocates in the tiny town of Fort Kent, Maine, will "use new funding to try a novel solution to the problem: a public boarding school for high schoolers in recovery," writes Lanan Cohen for The Hechinger Report. The new approach will "focus on abstinence and mental health to help students overcome their substance abuse problems." Educators hope the boarding school structure will allow students time to solidify new choices and coping strategies while remaining in school.

Graphic by A. Dixon, Offrange

It's not a farmers market. It's a farmers "stop," and it's open all year long. Farming advocates hope the concept continues to catch on. "The Argus Farm Stop model is built on a consignment basis with a 70/30 split: Farmers set their own prices and keep 70% of every sale, while Argus retains 30% to cover operating costs," reports Heidi Roth for Offrange. "A café inside each location accounts for roughly a third of sales but about half the profit, effectively subsidizing higher farmer payouts while creating a community hub where farmers can gather, and customers can meet producers." Not all farmer stops have the same elements, but all aim to support local farmers while fostering community spirit.

Musical talent from far-flung places often took center stage at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. "The festival is rich with rural tradition, pulling in rural musicians from across the states and every continent except Antarctica (as far as I know)," reports Phillip Norman of The Daily Yonder. "I caught an ambient country jam by Setting in the backroom of Boyd’s Jig and Reel Scottish Pub, and hit the Knoxville Art Museum to witness the electric saxophone wizardry of Sam Gendel. . . . Big Ears is a festival for music nerds who are interested not only in how a concert sounds, but also how it reflects the lived experiences of the people making the music."

Beth Howard (Illustration by N. Nichols)

As an activist and community organizer for Appalachia and the broader South, Beth Howard hopes her memoir, Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Anti-Racist Solidarity From a Coal Miner’s Daughter, helps readers see Southern differences through a lens of curiosity that they can apply to their daily interactions with other people, writes Nhatt Nichols of Rural Assembly. Howard said, "I think one of the biggest lessons for me when I was learning to organize is the importance of listening and asking really good, open-ended questions." Nichols adds, "Howard advocates for getting out into your community and finding other people who are doing organizing work that resonates with you, and offering to lend a hand, to learn more about your community without centering your own ideas."

Maine's bill to pause larger data center projects awaits governor's approval; ban would be the first of its kind in U.S.

Maine's data center bill would pause planned projects in two rural
towns for 18-months. (Photo by Troy Mortier, Unsplash)

If Maine's new data center bill becomes law, the state will become the first in the country to push pause on large data center construction. 

"The Maine Senate took a final vote on April 14 to enact first-of-its-kind legislation banning large data centers in the state until November 2027," reports Julia Tilton of The Daily Yonder. The bill would halt data centers that require 20 megawatts or more of power, including two already planned in the rural towns of Jay and Limestone.

The Maine legislation "would also establish a study group to examine the impact of such facilities and recommend legislative guardrails," reports Jenna Russell of The New York Times. Maine lawmakers have already made data centers "ineligible for certain business tax exemptions." 

Maine Gov. Janet Mills has yet to sign the bill into law, and it's unclear whether she will, given that it would mean halting data center plans already in the works. "On April 10, the governor said that a data center proposed at a retired paper mill in Jay, Maine, must be exempt from the ban while speaking to the press at an event in Bangor, Maine," Tilton explains. "An amendment with that carve-out failed to pass the legislature." The current bill doesn't include any exemptions. 

Like many New England residents, Mainers already deal with a fragile grid and pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Advocates of the ban say the moratorium is needed to prevent further increases in electricity costs and to protect communities from environmental hazards associated with AI data centers, such as noise and excessive water use, Tilton reports. Advocates also point to the relatively few jobs data centers produce, even as they gobble up vast resources.

Mills, who is facing a heated Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate, has "ten days to veto the legislation, sign it into law or allow it to become law without her signature," Russell reports. "President Donald Trump has threatened to sue states and withhold funding if they pass laws restricting the AI growth."

Maine lawmakers consider a moratorium on data center developments as more towns reject proposals

Maine lawmakers are considering a moratorium 
on data center builds. (Photo by I. Quick, Unsplash)

As data center developers target parts of rural New England for their sprawling compounds, advocates for Maine want answers to questions "about electricity prices, grid reliability, and impact on water resources," reports Julia Tilton of The Daily Yonder. Several Maine communities rejected data center proposals, in part, because Mainers already pay some of the highest electrical rates in the country.

As lawmakers examine the pros and cons of data centers, "one idea floating around Maine’s statehouse is to impose a moratorium on data center development," Tilton explains. "How Maine navigates these challenges could be a model for the rest of New England, which shares an aging electric grid and faces a similar set of circumstances."

Currently, Maine lawmakers are "considering LD 307, a resolution bill that would establish a data center coordination council to provide input and evaluate policy options for data center development in the state," Tilton reports. Passing a state moratorium would prevent larger data center projects from obtaining permits or building until the moratorium ends.

Not all Maine lawmakers agree that a moratorium is the best option. Matt Harrington, a Republican of York, Maine, voiced concerns "that a moratorium 'would harm' a data center development in his district, which includes several towns in the state’s more urban southern region," Tilton writes. Lawmakers suggested they could grant the data center in Harrington's district an exemption.

Questions about the state's grid and its capacity to "feed" data centers without raising residents' utility bills remain a concern. Seth Berry, executive director of Our Power, a Maine-based nonprofit organization advocating for energy democracy, favors the moratorium. He told Tilton, "There are just so many unknowns. We really have to slow this down and step back and look at this massive new development, preferably as a region.”

Neighbors in Maine volunteer to build window inserts for each other to fight the winter cold

Students in Vermont build a WindowDresser insert. 
(Photo by Andrew McKeever, The Yonder )

Harsh winters in Maine can make it hard to keep the cold air outside from creeping into the older New England style homes. WindowDressers is a community-based heating solution that keeps warm air inside by inserting an insulated wooden window into a home or commercial window frame, Andrew McKeever reports for The Daily Yonder.

The concept started in a church in Rockland, Maine, which was losing heat due to its leaky aluminum-clad windows. Church member Richard Cadwgan decided to build window inserts for the church windows, which he learned about at a Midcoast Green Collaborative conference, a Maine-based nonprofit organization. Cadwgan told McKeever the window inserts were a “win-win-win – lower heating bills, fewer carbon emissions, and greater comfort in the cold winter months.”

After word spread to other community members, Cadwgan and former congregation president Frank Munro took orders for 185 inserts for homes the next year, and 1,231 inserts the year after. With so many orders, more volunteers were needed, so “community builds” were formed. Now, there are 52 community builds throughout Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Community builds allow for volunteers with no prior carpentry experience to help build the window inserts after just a brief instruction from their team leader, McKeever explains. Jim Salsgiver, one of the original organizers, told McKeever, “I love the builds and getting together, meeting new people. What’s so cool is somebody comes in and says, ‘Okay, well I signed up, but what do I do?’ And, you know, after three hours, they’re acting like pros doing it and excited about it and telling their friends.”

As of 2024, at least 78,600 inserts have been made, saving almost 4 million gallons of heating fuel.

Long Canadian Pacific trains bring a small town's busy Main Street to a standstill each day

A westbound Canadian Pacific train makes its way into Jackman, Maine.
(Photo by Linda Coan O’Kresik, Bangor Daily News)

In Jackman, Maine, drivers waiting to cross Main Street can spend 30 minutes idling as Canadian Pacific Kansas City trains pass through the heart of town. Daniel O’Connor for The Maine Monitor reports, "More than 3,000 cars and trucks pass through the railroad crossing every day."

Doubling as U.S. Route 201, Jackman's Main Street and the railroad that divides it connects Quebec with "southern Maine and the rest of the Northeast," O’Connor explains. "Trains passing through town sometimes exceed 200 railcars, stretching for more than two miles in length. . . .That’s longer than 90% of North American freight trains operated by companies like CPKC." Some of the wait time can be blamed on aging rail lines and increased traffic.

Jackman, Maine, is 16 miles from the Canadian
border. (Northern Outdoors map)

Locals tried to avoid Main Street during the hours when trains were scheduled to cross, but train schedules varied too much. Waits can be extended when an international border scanner, which checks trains for illegal goods from Canada, notifies Customs and Border Protection that additional scanning is needed.  

For Jackman residents and Route 201 travelers, the long and unpredictable daily train waits are frustrating and pose a potential danger. O'Connor explains, "With the town split in half for part of the day and ambulances on one side of the track, trains could delay responses during an emergency."

Maine’s border shares seven rail crossings with Canada, but Jackman’s border crossing "is the only one to see a clear increase in shipping year-over-year," O'Connor reports.

CPKC has made rail improvements to "upgrade the rails in the area since it acquired the route in 2020, but said border security caused slowdowns in Jackman," O'Connor adds. "Many in town seemed to accept that the long trains were just part of life up north."

Rural kids rally: Nature nerding; 4-day school week; hikes instead of detention; farm safety; the 'Little White Duck'

Whether it's discovering a ginormous toad, finding the most gooseberries or uncovering troves of fossils, when kids venture into the great unknown of rural places, adventures unfold. A new graphic novel by cartoonist Tiffany Everett, Diary of a Nature Nerd, celebrates all the discoveries and learning nature nerding youth can make while tramping over hill and dale. "Everett encourages readers to explore new places, keep journals about what they encounter, and think like scientists," reports John R. Platt of The Revelator.

Rural school districts with teacher hiring and retention challenges turned to 4-day school weeks as an employment perk that also saves districts money. The 4-day school week schedule has been criticized as cutting too deeply into student learning time, and yet some rural schools are keeping the shortened schedule because it's a practical fix. "The schedule is especially popular with rural communities, where students and teachers often have to travel long distances to get to school," reports Anya Petrone Slepyan of The Daily Yonder. "But when it comes to assessing how the four-day school week affects students’ educational outcomes, the results are inconclusive."

At the end of the 3 1/2-mile hike, the students grab their 
backpacks and head home. (All Trails photo)

Instead of sitting in detention for breaking school rules, some high schoolers at Morse High School in Maine have opted to take mandatory hikes instead. Morse counselor Leslie Trundy was inspired to start the program after attending an outdoor conference, reports Madi Smith of NPR. Trundy told Smith, "I hoped that time in the woods, like, I could sort of take the skills that I have on the road with them, or on the trail, and be a listener for them and [while students] pay back the time to the school and sort of serve their consequence, [they] also receive more care and attention."

While growing up on a farm may sound wholesome and safe, farms can be dangerous places for children and young adults. The list of risks is long and can include everything from cows and barbed-wire fencing to big tractors and grain bins. To help farming families build safety awareness and habits, the National Farm Medicine Center and National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety support the "Cultivate Safety" website, which offers free resources in English and Spanish. For a quick safety check, Rural Mutual shares its "Top Tips" list for farmers and kids to review.

Often remembered as the voice of Sam the Snowman from the classic 1964 Christmas television special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Burl Ives also acted and sang. For children who need to calm down after rowdy play or to get ready for bed, Ives' recording of "The Little White Duck and Other Children’s Favorites" is delightfully soothing. Ives’s collection of "traditional folk songs for children is as much fun for the kids as it is for the adults (I dare to say)," writes Jan Pytalski of The Daily Yonder. "Ives was central in promoting traditional folk tunes all the way back in 1940s and continued performing for many decades after."

Quick hits: More bacon; thriving town-owned grocery store; shocking fertilizer prices; drones for rural duties?

Five-month-old pigs from the latest breeding line Smithfield 
has developed. (Smithfield Foods photo via WSJ)

Just like lots of people, pork companies would like more bacon. For pigs to produce more bacon, they need bigger bellies, a trait pork industry breeders have been developing for years. "Today, slaughtered hogs weigh about 285 pounds on average, a 30-pound increase since the late 1990s," reports Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal. "The increase in hog weight coincided with the explosion in popularity of bacon as more than just a breakfast item." With bacon in demand and razor-thin profit margins, the pork industry is using breeding programs to "build a better pig." 

St. Paul, Kansas, hadn't had a local grocery store for more than two decades, but in 2005, the town's new mayor challenged his community to use municipal support to plan and build a grocery store. St. Paul residents embraced the challenge and the St. Paul Area Community Development Corporation stepped in to help with planning and financial legwork, reports Kansas State University. In 2008, the St. Paul Supermarket opened, and it continues to thrive as a town-supported grocery store. Its motto is "the friendly store." Read its success blueprint here.

Fertilizer costs are high in the currency of corn. (Krista Swanson, National Corn Growers Association )

With alarmingly high fertilizer costs and falling commodity prices, U.S. farmers are grappling with how to stay afloat in today's market. "Farmers are in the middle of calling input suppliers to get quotes for fall fertilizer, and the prices are shocking," reports Tyne Morgan of Farm Journal. "The corn price to fertilizer price ratio on inputs such as phosphate is now the highest on record, and as corn prices continue to slide, it’s creating financial hurt on farmers. . . . An unnamed farmer asked U.S. Farm Report, 'How are we going to survive at these prices?'" 

After severe storms damaged crops and farming equipment across Nebraska, the state used drones to help mitigate the aftermath. "Using drones to help with disaster response shows the role they now play in the state’s economy, after years of investment and research from the state government," reports Chris Teale of Route Fifty. "Officials in the state are looking at ways drones can be used, especially to help those in rural areas. Delivery of food, medical supplies and other resources is one use case receiving a lot of attention."

A Maine roadway.
(C. Banks photo)

Among all the states, Maine remains one of the most rural and wild. "Greater Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Bangor, and other populous areas make up just a small slice of Maine’s pie," writes Chris Sedenka in his opinion for WBLM radio in Portland, Maine. "It’s fascinating just how much of the state remains truly remote and untouched. . . . We still have territories named T2R9, you’re not going to find that in every state. . . . According to the data, Maine’s rural population makes up 61.5% of the total. That is an absolutely huge number. . . .The majority of the state is basically just pine trees and wildlife."

Living a long life could partially depend on geography. Some counties just seem to support populations who keep on keeping on. 

The map above shows which U.S. counties have an overall life expectancy above 80 years.
(Map via Brilliant Maps)

In rural Maine, farmers worry migrant workers will be too afraid to show up for work and crops will rot in the fields

Blueberries burst forth during Maine's early summer,
but they need to be harvested quickly. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the Trump administration steps up its immigration and deportation efforts, Maine farmers who rely on immigrant labor to harvest seasonal crops such as wild blueberries are concerned about labor shortages. Some farmers worry that no matter how legal their past immigrant employees may be, fears about deportation will keep them from "showing up to rake [blueberry] fields — out in plain sight," reports Joyce Kryszak of The Maine Monitor. Without immigrant workers, Maine farmers say they can't bring in all their fields within the short window to harvest before crops begin to rot.

Harry Ricker and his wife, Nancy, own Ricker Hill Orchards in the small town of Turner, Maine. Each year the couple pays to participate in the H-2A visa program to employ "dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica," Kryszak writes. They don't think they can hire enough non-immigrants to complete their apple harvest. Harry Ricker told Kryszak, "There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have [the H-2A] program. Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Meanwhile, state officials are working to help Maine businesses stay on top of visa program requirements and changes. "Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, told Kryszak, "Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance. There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

Local apple and blueberry farmers aren't the only ones worried. "Agricultural farmers of all types . . . and fisheries. . . have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities," Kryszak reports. "A 2015 Maine Department of Labor . . . survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56% of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines."

The rural journalism business model hasn’t failed, but it needs updating; a nonprofit cooperative option beckons

By Al Cross
Director Emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism

It’s become conventional wisdom that the advertising-based business model of newspapers has failed. But that is not true in many small communities, which could become the nuclei of a national enterprise of nonprofit newsrooms that will provide better journalism with sound business practices, including economies of scale.

So says Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of the National Trust For Local News, who recently announced the creation of a third state-based nonprofit journalism company, in Georgia, adding to those it has in Colorado (24 newspapers) and Maine (22), and says “wild success” would be a total of 15 such companies in the next five years.

Shapiro was interviewed on the Nov. 1 edition of the “Local News Matters” podcast of Tim Regan-Porter, executive director of the Colorado Press Association. When he asked her a question that many journalism funders and advocates ask, “Why save a failing business model?” she said the question is based on “high-profile failings of metro newspapers,” which aren’t reflected in the smaller papers the Trust owns or is considering buying.

Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro

“We have profitable papers in our portfolio and we come across profitable papers every day!” she exclaimed. “This idea that the business model is forever and always broken just reflects a real lack of curiosity, and I would say empirics, on the part of its adherents.”

That sort of language reflects Shapiro’s background as an academic researcher of journalism, with a Harvard Ph.D. in business studies, but she has developed a deep appreciation of small community newspapers, and she has become one of their most knowledgeable and articulate advocates.

“Because I was not trained as a journalist and didn’t come through that system, I didn’t come to this work with, you know, sort of hierarchy in my mind of metro news above all,” she said. “Plenty of funders also share that orientation, of like, metro news is sort of the highest level of news and the rest of it is sort of service journalism or amateur hour, basically. . . .

“I see it as actually the highest form of local news, because I think it actually reflects what truly local means, and the way that I think everyday people experience what ‘local’ means . . . local as in, ‘I live in this neighborhood’ or ‘I live in this town.’”

Shapiro is trying to make a distinction that badly needs making, at a time when local news is in trouble and a lot of people who want to help it don’t fully understand that “local” depends on how the audience of a news outlet defines its community.

She told Regan-Porter that the fracturing and diversification of business models “based on place and economic inequalities between geographies” – primarily rural and urban – means that “there really is no one-size-fits all,” and “There’s gonna have to be different solution sets for different scales.”

There are many differences among localities, she said, and many rural communities still have many independent retailers who advertise in local papers; but overall, the rural-paper business model must also include subscriptions, events, donations and “anything you can get.”

On a company scale, the Trust’s state-based approach is not fundamentally different from newspaper chains that use economies of scale and shared services, but Shapiro said it wants to preserve newspapers’ local identities, which she said is essential for long-term success.

“These are deeply local institutions, and their value and their long-term success depends on that: the quality of local participation and local engagement,” she said.

That requires a quality product, and the Trust’s chief portfolio officer, Ross McDuffie, said recently that it has “quality local news as the North Star of decision-making,” not “profits or shareholder value.”

Of course, the Trust’s companies must stay in the black, but they have “longer time horizons,” Shapiro said, with the top goal being community impact, not profit.

“The path to impact has to be through disciplined management of the business, because without money you have no mission,” she told Regan-Porter, who then cited the maxim that nonprofit is not a business model, it’s a tax status.

For-profit chains do short-term things that reduce the quality of reader experience, Shapiro said: “We are long-term investors in the quality of the product, and a quality product and an engaged audience are the drivers of long-term success.”

One cornerstone of quality is accountability journalism, but that’s not the main reason people like their local paper, Shapiro said: “Our model focuses on strong communities and social cohesion.”

The Trust says its mission is to conserve, transform and sustain community news organizations, and ultimately build stronger communities by keeping small, traditional sources of local news in local hands.

Shapiro said the Trust is willing to buy papers that would have difficulty surviving on their own but “wouldn’t be replaceable by something else” and can thrive in a nonprofit group. She said the Trust’s goal is “sustainability across a network so that we can serve larger communities and smaller communities.”

Shapiro said the Trust is still figuring out how to integrate the operations of its Maine papers, which it bought in August, and in other states wants to find publishers who can make strong anchors in a scaling-up strategy. “The good news is, we hear from those kind of folks every day,” she said.

The bad news, she said, is that time is short.

“Rural news publishers, in particular independent rural news publishers, are at risk of extinction, either getting bought by political forces or just closing because of really difficult economics in small places,” she said. “I think we are really in a race against time.”

Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. This is his latest column for Publishers' Auxiliary, the monthly newspaper of the National Newspaper Association.

Quick hits: Chris Stapleton; the first hydrogen-powered ferry; Stephen King's library; was Paul Bunyan a real man?

Chris Stapleton is one of the most famous men in country
music and beyond. (Photo by Stacy Kranitz, GQ)

The holidays mean getting together with relatives, but those gatherings can lead to heated discussions. As an antidote to arguing with Uncle Alan over religion, there is one topic everyone might be able to enjoy: Chris Stapleton and all his general awesomeness. Brett Martin of Gentlemen's Quarterly went road-tripping with the musical icon and asks, "Is Chris Stapleton the One Thing That America Can Agree On?"

Farm accidents happen, from tractor mishaps to pumpkin harvesting cuts. Each year, nonfatal injuries occur to about 33% of the farming population in the United States. One way to prevent accidents from becoming fatal is to be trained on how to slow blood loss until help can arrive. "Stop the Bleed is a nationally recognized, 90-minute certification program providing participants with hands-on opportunities to recognize life-threatening bleeding and intervene effectively by properly using a tourniquet in the event of blood loss caused by an injury," reports Jenny Schlect of AgWeek. Many 4-H extensions and rural nursing programs offer the training.

The "Sea Change" hydrogen ferry
(Switch Maritime photo via Canary Media)

While some of America is going all-in on electric, hydrogen power is also a renewable energy option. "America's first hydrogen-fueled ferry is set to launch in San Francisco early next year after more than five years in development," reports Maria Gallucci of Canary Media. "As the milestone nears, the vessel's owner says it's already looking to deploy more zero-emissions ferries nationwide — particularly in places where aging, polluting diesel boats still ply rivers, sounds and coastlines.

Remember when your phone stayed in your house or workplace? Many younger Americans don't remember when phones were tied to a landline. "My tween will never know the sound of me calling her name from another room after the phone rings. She'll never sit on our kitchen floor, refrigerator humming in the background, twisting a cord around her finger while talking to her best friend," writes Julia Cho for The Atlantic. "'We don't even have a landline anymore,' people began to say proudly as the new millennium progressed. But this came with a quieter, secondary loss — the loss of the shared social space of the family landline."

From the redwood forests to Maine islands, 
Paul Bunyan stories live on. (NG photo)

Famed lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox Babe are the stuff of some superbly American tall tales. But as history tells it, those stories "were spun from ever more ridiculous yarns," reports Josh Keefe of National Geographic. "But there's much more to his story. . . . In Bangor, Maine, a framed birth certificate of Paul Bunyan hangs in the city clerk's office. . . . Despite Paul Bunyan's 'birth certificate' and the many children's books that place his birthplace in Maine, evidence suggests that Bunyan was invented sometime after logging operations moved west and began clearing almost all of the old-growth forests in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, says Michael Edmonds, a historian and author of Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan."

Well, maybe Paul Bunyan never lived in Bangor, Maine, but Stephen King and his wife Tabitha did. King shared a tour of their Bangor home, now their library, with John Williams of The Washington Post. "Fear not, the king of chills serves as a friendly guide to his library," Williams reports. King told him: "The house has been here since 1845; we've been here since 1976. . . . But we don't really live here anymore, and it's kind of a time capsule."

Opinion: Returning lands to Indigenous people is one way to ensure treasured landscapes thrive

The tiers of stone placed in the river are a method of fishery
restoration. (Photo by Tristan Spinski ,The Washington Post)

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. ~ John Muir

John Muir, an American naturalist who is credited with founding our national parks, imagined a world "stripped of the Native Americans. . . to create his ideal of pristine wilderness," writes Bina Venkataraman in her opinion for The Washington Post. What a surprise conservation in Maine would be to Muir, where Indigenous knowledge and people are saving some of the state's most beloved lands.

"The Penobscot Nation's record of caring for nature while still using it — hunting moose and duck while keeping their populations steady, selectively harvesting timber to preserve forests and restoring rivers to support fisheries — inspired an effort to return a 31,000-acre tract of forested land to tribal ownership. Late last year, the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group, bought the parcel from an industrial timber company, and it announced it would give the land to the tribe once it pays off $32 million in loans. Called Wáhsehtəkʷ by the Penobscot, which means east branch of the river (and is pronounced WAH-seh-teg). It's the largest contiguous tract that the tribe will have acquired in more than four decades.

"The transfer is part of a movement to return lands to Indigenous stewardship and work with tribal communities to protect biodiversity. The hope is both to restore justice for tribes that were long ago stripped of their ancestral homelands and to learn from long-standing Indigenous practices new ways to save a beleaguered planet. The pending land return in Maine, or 'rematriation' as some Indigenous people call it, stands out because of its scale — many previous land returns in the eastern United States have been on the order of hundreds of acres — and because the Penobscot will decide how the land will be managed.

"This is a significant change. For most of the past two centuries, Western conservationists have largely ignored Indigenous people's knowledge of landscapes and wildlife, along with tribes' historic claims to the land. But that is no longer tenable. Worldwide, Indigenous-managed lands host 80 percent of the world's biodiversity, by some estimates, and encompass much of the world's remaining intact forests, savannas and marshes. If environmentalists and political leaders hope to conserve more natural landscapes, including carbon sinks and critical buffer ecosystems such as wetlands that can protect against the harms of climate change, collaboration with tribal nation leaders is critical.

"Modern environmentalism has been deprived of Indigenous knowledge, in part, because it has seen nature as something apart from humans. Early thinkers hold some responsibility for this. . . . In the Muir tradition, the U.S. government drove tribal people out of areas that today are considered America's most beloved landscapes — Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades — a history documented by David Treuer, an Ojibwe writer.

"When Henry David Thoreau — someone I long admired for his quest to 'live deliberately' — traveled to the Maine woods in the 19th century, he distinguished between 'scientific men' and Indian guides, even as he acknowledged the latter's navigational expertise. It's laughable now to think that communities that had inhabited a place for centuries, gaining intimate knowledge of the natural features, flora and fauna and passing down that knowledge across generations, could have less to offer scientifically than settlers encountering those lands for the first time. Yet it was only last year that the U.S. government formally recognized how much tribes can contribute to ecological knowledge of their ancestors' landscapes."

Maine has ambitious broadband plan for fiber-optic internet service for 'everyone who wants it' by the end of 2024

Josh Landry installs fiber-optic cable in Dedham, Maine.
(Photo by Carolyn Campbell, The Daily Yonder)

Just because Maine is the second most rural state (61.4% the 2020 census, second only to Vermont's 65%) doesn't mean it can't be the most connected. Gov. Janet Mills "has pledged that everyone in the state who wants high-speed internet will be able to get it by the end of 2024, whether they live in more populous areas around Portland or in the state’s extensive rural regions, where more than half the state’s population resides," reports Carolyn Campbell of The Daily Yonder.

Campbell uses the northeastern Maine town of Dedham, pop. 1,700, as an example of the lengths the state has gone to: "Laying fiber cable to remote regions is the first phase . . . . Moore Fiber Solutions completed installing 60 miles of fiber optic cable as part of Dedham’s broadband infrastructure build-out. . . . Many internet service providers have avoided this last stretch of connectivity, termed the 'last mile,' between the ISP network and the users in homes and businesses. The reasoning is that the cost of laying and maintaining fiber-optic cable in remote regions is too expensive."

The project is already over budget, and its expense has drawn criticism, but Downeast Broadband Utility President Danny Sullivan told Campbell: “Fiber is the only platform that provides equal download and upload speeds. Whether you’re a content creator, a business, a health entity, or even a retired person receiving telehealth care, fast upload speed is a fundamental necessity. It’s time to stop reinventing this wheel and get fiber installed to businesses and homes in all communities, no matter how rural.” John Moore, a fiber-optic installer who worked on Dedham's project, told Campbell, “Last year as we were laying cable, kids would be sitting on their porch without the ability to connect to school online. Getting fiber’s gonna change their life.”

The funding for Maine's expansion is ongoing and includes money from both state and federal coffers. "Maine’s 2020 Broadband Plan estimated the total cost to build out 17,502 miles currently unserved by fiber-optic or coax cable would be at least $600 million," Campbell reports. "To advance digital equity for all Mainers, regardless of ZIP code, in 2021 the state created the Maine Connectivity Authority, a quasi-public agency, to leverage state and federal investment in broadband infrastructure through partnerships with private providers and rural communities."

Every summer, George H.W. Bush was a small-town guy

George H.W. Bush spoke at the Memorial Day observance in
Kennebunkport in 2007. (York County Coast Star / Bob Dennis)

George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Massachusetts, grew up and graduated college in Connecticut, made his fortune in Texas, and retired there after his public life, but every summer of his life (except the one when he was at war) he went to his family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, reports the local weekly, the York County Coast Star, in the wake of the 41st president's death late Friday: "Members of the Bush family spend their summers on Walker’s Point, from Memorial Day into the early fall. Bush and his wife Barbara were active members of the community."

Kennebunkport “has always been a part of my life -- a place where our big, close family has always come together surrounded by good friends and wonderful townspeople,” Bush told The Boston Globe last year. “In that sense, Kennebunkport has been my anchor to windward through a full and challenging life. It has kept me grounded and focused on what is really important.” An anchor to windward, as Navy folks know, is "an anchor dropped in a storm to keep a ship from wrecking," Kate Taylor reports for The New York Times in a story from Kennebunkport, where a Navy anchor overlooks Walker's Point as a monument to Bush.

Kirsten Camp, executive administrator of the Kennebunkport Historical Society, told the Star, “The history he’s leaving behind here in Kennebunkport is not just the history of his presidency, but it goes way back. His father still holds the course record at Cape Arundel. If President Bush were never president we would still be talking about a family with a wonderful legacy in Kennebunkport. This is one place that hasn’t changed in his life. Everything in his whole life changed, except this place.”

The Star and Times stories have several anecdotes about the Bushes' life in the town of 3,500. “Everybody in this town has stories about their lives with the Bush family in it,” Camp said, calling the deaths of the Bushes a “huge loss” but family members “continue the legacy in Maine and in Kennebunkport.” Another Times piece, by Amy S. Walker and Bill Marsh, says “For all of Mr. Bush’s attempts to portray himself as a lover of Texas barbecue and pork rinds, and despite its being a symbol of his affluent New England upbringing, he never let go of his Kennebunkport home.”

Rural schools struggle to bridge the digital divide

Rural schools have long been leaders in distance-learning and online education. "To offer a full slate of courses to their students, they’ve had to be. Some states, fearing a divide between rural and urban communities, have developed statewide initiatives to provide technology to rural schools," Sarah Butrymowicz writes in The Hechinger Report. Maine, she points out, gives every student a laptop, and Alabama requires all school districts "to offer advanced placement courses through distance-learning technology, where students video-conference with teachers. (Edison School in Yoder, Colo.; Butrymowicz photo)

In 2010, only 57 percent of rural households had broadband Internet access, compared to 72 percent in urban areas, according to a November 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Teachers in rural settings don't require students to go online to complete assignments and have to be flexible about staying after school so students can work on the computers. “The Internet can give them library resources that they might otherwise not have,” said Aimee Howley, senior associate dean in the College of Education at Ohio University, who studies technology integration in rural schools. Technology can also be used for simulations of things, she said, that “you just can’t do on site."

For schools facing shrinking budgets and consolidation, technology could be rural schools’ saving grace, said Bob Wise, a former governor of West Virginia who now serves as president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., that has studied the challenges facing rural schools. “We’re encouraging every district to develop a systematic strategy for employing technology,” he said. “My guess is you will see a number of rural schools actually saved and renewed as learning centers.”
  

Organic dairy farmers' boom turns to bust

The bad dairy business is worse for organic dairies. Caught between doubled prices for organic feed and a recession-driven drop in demand for their products, many have gone out of business, The New York Times reports. (Times photo by Caleb Kenna: Vermont dairy farmer Craig Russell and a calf)

The situation seems worst in New England, because of costs of transporting feed from the Midwest. "In Vermont, 32 dairy farms have closed since Dec. 1, significantly altering the face of New England’s dairy industry," Katie Zezima writes, quoting state Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee: “We expect to lose a lot more farms this year.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture "says sales of organic whole milk in February were 2.5 percent lower than in February last year, with sales of organic reduced-fat milk 15 percent lower," Zezima reports. That represents a big reversal; sals of organic milk more than doubled from 2006 to 2008.

Some farmers are trying to stay afloat by selling directly to the public. The Vermont House of Representatives passed a bill this month to increase the amount of raw, unpasteurized milk a farmer can sell to consumers, Zezima notes. (Read more)

Mainers want to repeal school consolidation law

Maine legislators heard from rural residents upset over a loss of control over their schools, as they re-evaluated a 2007 law consolidating school services. If history is any indication, the state will probably face a referendum in November on repeal of the law.

The law was aimed at saving money, but "referendum supporters see consolidation as an assault on local control, especially in rural areas known for moose-crossing signs and vast forests separating small towns," writes Associated Press reporter Glenn Adams. "They say the law has failed to deliver savings to local districts." Rep. Peter Edgecomb, who sponsored a bill to reform the law, called consolidation was a "strong-armed tactic that has no place in our rural state."

Supporters of consolidation, including Gov. John Baldacci, say that the bill has saved $36 million each year by eliminating duplication of services. The bill reduced 94 school administrative units to 24. (Read more)

Small-town America looks different from a bicycle

University of Kentucky law professor Bill Fortune, left, gained "a new appreciation for small-town America and its people" by riding a bicycle 4,100 miles with a small group from coast to coast this summer, Tom Eblen reports in the Lexington Herald-Leader. (Photo of Fortune at the Atlantic Ocean near Portland, Maine, by Bill Rund)

"What impressed Fortune most were the places he never would have stopped to see, and the people he never would have met, had he been driving through in a car," Eblen writes. "There was the couple in Waterville, Wash., who bought and renovated the abandoned Lutheran church where they had been married years before. Now it’s beautiful again, and the couple rents it as a wedding chapel. . . . Fortune now knows that Buffalo, Wyo., claims to have the world’s largest swimming pool, and Huron, S.D., the world’s largest statue of a pheasant." Fortune says, "You see the country in a different way when you’re on a bicycle. If you made the trip in a car, you couldn’t see it as slowly and intensely as we saw it."

"Fortune marveled at the vast openness of the West as he passed abandoned houses and towns depopulated by a changing economy," Eblen writes. "Many people had lived in their small towns all their lives, but their children had left in search of jobs and a more exciting lifestyle. He saw human despair on Indian reservations, and noted there was at least one bar in every Western town, no matter how small, and gambling machines in every bar and gas station."

Explorers often like to draw boundaries, and we tend to agree with our friend Bill on this one: "The cyclists agreed that the West ended and the Midwest began when they crossed the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota near the Minnesota line," Eblen writes. "Gradually, the empty country gave way to tidy farms and farmhouses and well-kept small towns." (Read more) For the blog version of Eblen's story, with a very nice, three-minute audio slide show from Fortune, click here.

Obama wins very rural Maine and its more rural CD

Maine, the second most rural state by population (60 percent rural; Vermont is 62%), offered some hope of respite for Hillary Clinton amid an expected string of victories by Barack Obama in their struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination. She won New Hampshire, which often suggests the outcome in Maine (which borders no other state). But in today's caucuses, Obama won not only statewide, but in the even more rural, northern 2nd Congressional District. Obama campaigned Saturday in the district's largest city, Bangor. (Photo by Gabor Degre, Bangor Daily News)

With 90 percent of the caucuses reporting, Obama had 59 percent of the precinct delegates, and 56 percent of those in the 2nd District. He carried Bangor, "a city that Clinton was expected to, and really had to, win," writes Al Giordano in The Field. "In Maine, Obama had been behind Clinton in every single poll by as many as 36 points before 2008 – and the voting – began."(Read more) Clinton's loss "was not a total surprise to her team, though she had been leading in some polls," report Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz in The Washington Post.

In The New York Times, Kit Seelye calls Maine "Mrs. Clinton’s sliver of hope for February. . . . She had been hopeful because Maine’s demographics, blue-collar voters, who are older and make less than $50,000, fit the profile of voters who had supported her elsewhere. But Maine is a caucus state, and Mr. Obama has won almost all caucuses, which depend on deep organization and a passionate following."

"Massive numbers of voters braved inclement weather," writes Jonathan Kaplan of the Portland Press-Herald. He quotes Obama campaign manager David Plouffe as calling the result an upset, "adding that internal polling showed Clinton in the lead days before the caucus." The Daily News staff reports on caucuses in Bangor, Belfast and the Canadian border towns of Houlton and Calais.

Maine Republicans caucused Feb. 2 and gave 52 percent of their vote, and all the state's national convention delegates, to Mitt Romney.

Obama invades Edwards' rural congressional base

As the presidential primary season heads toward "Tsunami Tuesday" in 22 states on Feb. 5, Sen. Barack Obama has found support from two representatives from rural congressional districts, including Rep. Rick Boucher left, a Democrat from the 9th District in southwest Virginia, reports Rex Bowman of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"Boucher's endorsement could give the Illinois senator an important base of support in rural Southwest Virginia in the state's Feb. 12 primary," Bowman writes. While state Democratic Chairman C. Richard Cranwell endorsed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Boucher said Obama can win in both urban and rural areas, Bowman reports. “I represent a rural district of 27 counties and cities in southwestern Virginia," Boucher said in a statement. "George Bush received 60 percent of the vote in my district in 2004. I believe Senator Obama can carry it in 2008, and no other Democratic candidate can.” (Read more)

While Edwards had drawn endorsements from rural representatives early in the campaign, some such as Boucher are leaning toward Obama now, reports Julie Ardery of The Daily Yonder. In charting endorsements from representatives of the 25 most rural Congressional districts, Ardery finds Obama has picked up two — one from Boucher and one from Vermont's only representative Peter Welch, an independent. Prior to last week, Edwards was the only candidate any Democratic representative from a rural district had endorsed publicly. Four rural Democrats had endorsed Edwards, including Rep. Michael H. Michaud, D-Maine, who called him "the best chance Democrats have at taking back the White House" back in October. On the Republican side, Mitt Romney has the support of six rural representatives. (Read more, including a full chart of the 25 most rural districts)

A story for Independence Day: Maine island creates its own government

"Most of the nation marks 231 years of independence today with parades, picnics and fireworks. But the people of Chebeague Island, Maine, are celebrating just three days of self-government," after being governed from the mainland for 260 years, reports National Public Radio, introducing a story by Howard Berkes.

The move to create a new town, accomplished by passage of a bill in the state legislature, came in response to the possibility that the island's school would be closed. Berkes reports on the first town meeting (shown in photo by David Tyler): "Every folding chair was filled in the island gym and it was standing room only on the fringes. Registered voters held fluorescent green cards, ready to raise them high when it came time to vote. They had 110 items on the agenda, including the school and town budgets, establishing town jobs, and managing waste, traffic, boating, shellfish, elections, animals, cemeteries and more. It took four hours. But half the island’s voters had already spent months on developing this framework of government." Click here to read and listen. (Great sounds!)

Mabel Doughty, 85, told Berkes: "Before that, we felt that those people on the mainland, that somehow they owned the island. We’re going to be our own people. And it’s a little bit feeling what the people who did the Declaration of Independence. They fought so hard to get there. Just as we have. And I think from now on let’s say, the Fourth of July is going to have great meaning for those of us on the island."