Former 'city dweller' explores rural-urban divide in new graphic novel

Mahadavian reflects on rural life and the rural-urban 
divide in his new novel, This Country. (Yonder photo) 

In his new graphic novel, cartoonist Navied Mahadavian reflects on rural life, the rural-urban divide and the political divisions between “city dwellers” and “rural folk,” Myat Theingi of The Daily Yonder reported.

Searching for affordable living and what Mahadavian described as the “allure of possibility,” he and his wife moved to rural Idaho from the San Francisco Bay area.

Despite some unpleasant encounters due to his race, his interactions with people in the town opened his eyes to the emotions and pride of people who live in rural places, the complexities of their political beliefs, and their reasons for distrusting people who come from the city.

“So, after reading my book, I hope that city dwellers will gain some insights into rural life and vice versa. I also hope they see that there are divisions and different cultures. But there are also friendships that I forge, that show that it is possible to bridge those divides in a meaningful and lasting way,” Mahadavian said in an interview with Theingi.

Rural areas can invite innovation by welcoming diverse 'creative class' talent, groundbreaking study says

Though rural America has still not regained the jobs it lost in the Great Recession, rural places can be hubs of talent and innovation too thanks to the rural creative class, a new study shows.

"The study by researchers at Oklahoma State University and Purdue University uses detailed data from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service." Richard Florida reports for CityLab. "It is the first nationally representative survey of innovation in rural businesses and communities, covering more than 10,000 businesses in some 2,200 counties, with nearly three-quarters of the responses coming from businesses in rural areas (defined as non-metropolitan counties)."

The study creates an Innovation Index from factors like the presence of intellectual property (patents, copyrights and trademarks), accomplishments like new services and products, and customer feedback. It also assesses how innovation affects rural businesses' performance and other related factors like income levels, unemployment rates, and presence of creative workers, Florida reports.

Then, the study applied the Innovation Index to the nine types of rural and urban counties (as measured by the USDA's rural-urban continuum codes). Businesses in the six rural types of counties indexed below the national average for innovation, but this is mostly because rural areas simply have a lower share of innovative firms, Florida reports.

Innovation correlates with low unemployment rates and higher pay, and it has an outsized effect on the surrounding community, the study found: "places that are adjacent to areas with high levels of innovation appear to experience higher levels of creative class employees than would be expected." In other words, Florida reports, "Innovation invigorates talent and the creative class which in turn spills over to nearby places."

The key takeaway for lawmakers is that policy should focus on growing, attracting and keeping talent, which can be done by "adding to amenities and ensuring that communities are open to, and inclusive of, talent across the lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation," Florida reports. "These policies and approaches, which have typically been viewed as more appropriate for larger cities and urban areas, may have even more to offer smaller rural communities."

Berea College announces winners of Appalachian narrative essay contest; top winner counterpoints Hillbilly Elegy

Lonormi Manuel (Facebook photo)

So much of what pop culture says about Appalachia comes from the outside, and is often riddled with stereotypes and ill-informed judgments. The "Appalachian Narratives for Our Time" contest from Berea College's Loyal Jones Appalachian Center is a breath of fresh air, with personal essays about the realities of living in Appalachia. Berea recently announced the winners, which were selected by best-selling author Silas House. House, a Laurel County native, is Berea's National Endowment for the Humanities chair.

"Appalachia has a rich and, at the same time, challenging history," center director Chris Green said in a press release announcing the winners. "All too often, however, national media portrays difficulties in the region as the fault of people who live here. We wanted to give the majority of Appalachians who grow up and make good lives a new opportunity to tell their stories."

Lonormi Manuel of Anderson County, Kentucky, a native of East Tennessee who grew up in Southwest Virginia, won first place for "An Exaltation of Appalachia," which House described as creative and complex. Here's an excerpt:

“The Appalachia of my childhood had all the problems ascribed to today’s Appalachia, problems which—I repeat—are found in every single community in this country. (Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. They have probably lied to you about other things, too.) The Appalachia of my childhood also had a rich tradition of music and literature, a natural beauty second to none, a culture of helping to build our neighbors up instead of tearing our neighbors down.”

This week Manuel discussed the essay on WEKU-FM's "Eastern Standard." She said she titled her essay an "exaltation," one of the few uplifting synonyms for "elegy," as a deliberate riposte to J.D. Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy, which she said depicts Appalachia as a hopeless, dying place in need of outside help.

"What I want is for Appalachia to stop waiting for somebody from the outside to bring us a solution to our problems," Manuel told host Tom Martin. "We can't help the fact that a lot of our problems have originated outside of our homes and our communities, but we have the power within us, if we will stand up and look in the mirror and say, 'Yes, I can do this, we can do this,' and believe it . . . I want to prove the stereotypes wrong, I want us to reclaim our identity for ourselves, and I want us to stand up and say, 'We have the right of self-determination, and we don't need your elegy to tell us who we are.'"

Richard Hopkins brought home second place for "From Moonshine to Lawyer." The Northern Georgia resident recounts his rise from childhood poverty, and talks about how his school's Future Farmers of America advisor became his "benchmark for how to act and go through life."

Jamie Ward, born and raised in Gray Hawk, Ky., won third with "An Appalachian Upbringing," which House lauded for its handling of regional historical and cultural contexts. From the essay:

“I’m in my thirties and I still struggle with my Appalachian identity. How do I reconcile my frustrations with my gratitude and values? How do I represent my hometown to the greater world in a way that is honest yet protective of the people I love so dearly? How do I advance in my profession without sacrificing the needs of my community?”

Quick hits: Rural folks worry more about money; bump stock bans hit bumps; there is a rural creative class . . .

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Personal finance: Americans' anxiety about their finances is worsening across the board, but rural residents are even more pessimistic: according to a Pew Research Center report, only 36 percent of rural Americans believe their financial situation will improve in the future, as opposed to almost half of those living in urban and suburban areas, Jacob Passy reports for MarketWatch.

Guns: Months after a deadly Las Vegas shooting, seven states banned the sale and possession of bump stocks, which enable semiautomatic rifles to fire at the rate of fully automatic rifles, and several other states are expected to pass bans soon. But states that have passed the ban are having a hard time enforcing it. New Jersey residents were supposed to turn in or destroy their bump stocks by mid-April, but "So far, New Jersey State Police say, they have not received a single one," Matt Vasilogambros reports for Stateline.

Rural innovation: "One of the most persistent myths in America today is that urban areas are innovative and rural areas are not. While it is overwhelmingly clear that innovation and creativity tend to cluster in a small number of cities and metropolitan areas, it’s a big mistake to think that they somehow skip over rural America," Richard Florida reports for CityLab. A series of studies from the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service digs into the drivers of rural innovation, and finds that not only are innovative businesses common in rural areas, but that rural innovation gets a boost from the arts. Read more.

"For all the ways Americans are divided today along urban and rural lines, the two groups are at least united in this: Majorities of both, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, believe that everyone else is looking down on them," Emily Badger reports for The New York Times.

Study of broadband, entrepreneurs and creative class in rural areas gets surprising results

Access to broadband might not be as important to rural, non-farming entrepreneurs and the creative class as people think, says a study by researchers at Oklahoma State University, published in The Review of Regional Studies. Researchers Brian Whitacre, a professor and extension economist at OSU, and Ph.D. student Kelsey Conley found that high levels of broadband access could actually "serve to reduce the numbers of entrepreneurs and creative class employees in rural America."

The study used federal data "to compare the relationship between broadband adoption/availability and creative class and entrepreneurs both over a period of time (2000 through 2011-12) and during a specific period of time (2011-12)," Whitacre and Conley write for the Daily Yonder. The study centers on two maps, one of rural counties that have the highest levels of entrepreneurs and creative class workers (above) and one of rural counties that have the highest levels of broadband availability and adoption (below). Researchers say the maps don't overlap in the way one might expect.

"Characteristics that were controlled in the study included factors such as age, race, education levels, unemployment rates, the existence of natural amenities that can effect development patterns, and the percentage of workers who were engaged in agriculture or manufacturing," Whitacre and Conley write. "The study also used a spatial technique that helps eliminate the impact that neighboring counties might have on broadband deployment and adoption."

"Even after all these other factors were considered, we typically found negative relationships between broadband and entrepreneurship," Whitacre and Conley write. "When it comes to broadband adoption, we found that high levels of broadband adoption in non-metropolitan counties are associated with lower levels of creative-class employees. Similar negative relationships were found between broadband adoption and entrepreneurs in non-metropolitan counties." The same negative findings existed for broadband availability.

"One explanation could be that increases in rural broadband adoption led to discoveries of job opportunities in non-entrepreneurial sectors," Whitacre and Conley write. "For example, an entrepreneur in a rural area might use their new broadband connection to find a better employment opportunity (either locally or perhaps in a more urban area). Therefore, this increased broadband adoption led to a decrease in entrepreneurship in rural area." (Read more)

Wendell Berry to receive lifetime achievement award from National Book Critics Circle

Wendell Berry

Renowned Kentucky farmer-author-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry will receive the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, states the organization. "Now 81 and still productive, Berry is the author of eight novels, two short story collections, 28 volumes of poetry and 31 volumes of nonfiction. Set in the imaginary town of Port William, Kentucky, his fiction constitutes a cycle about themes of life in rural America. An outspoken environmentalist, organic farmer and pacifist, Berry has written about and engaged in civil disobedience against industrial agribusiness, ecological destruction and militarization."

The National Book Critics Circle also named the 30 finalists six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry—for the outstanding books of 2015. Awards will be presented on March 17 at the New School, in a free ceremony open to the public. For a complete list of finalists, as well as winners of other awards, click here.

Rural arts and culture summit in Morris, Minn., June 2-4

From June 2 to 4, a rural arts and culture summit called "From the Group Up: Cultivating Creative People and Places" will be held at at the University of Minnesota campus in Morris, Minn.

The summit will "gather artists, art organizations, rural-centric organizations and community and economic development leaders to learn about creative people and places that have built their stories 'from the ground up,'" according to the event website. "People from across the state and country will gather to celebrate the imaginative and creative thinking that has helped to create vibrant small town cultures." Registration is open until May 28. (Read more)

Study finds that 217 rural counties are among top 25 percent of counties with most creative workers

Some of the most creative people in the U.S. are living and working in rural America. A report by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 217 rural counties are in the top 25 percent of nation's most creative class counties "when measured by the percentage of workers who are employed in creative-class professions," such as arts, architecture and engineering, Tim Marema reports for the Daily Yonder. Many have a college or a university. (USDA map; CLICK HERE for an interactive map with county data)

"The creative-class thesis holds that communities that attract and retain more workers who are in creative occupations will fare better in today’s economy," Marema writes. "ERS researchers identified creative occupations listed in the 2000 census and refined their selection criteria (the fine print of the study’s methodology and the data itself are here). Then they identified the top quarter of U.S. counties that had the largest percentage of creative-class workers." (Read more)

Spending time immersed in nature can increase creativity and critical thinking, study confirms

Those who appreciate rural places already know this, but a study has found that spending time fully immersed in nature can improve creativity and problem-solving. "Little is known about the human brain on technology, but many social psychologists fear that so much 'screen time' is rewriting our neural circuitry, and not for the better," Kevin Redmon of Pacific Standard magazine reports. Researchers wanted to find a tangible measure of how nature impacted the brain to counteract technology's sometimes negative impacts, something that had previously been unavailable. (Kentucky Tourism photo)

David Strayer, a professor of cognition and neural science at the University of Utah, and University of Kansas psychologists Ruth and Paul Atchley worked with Outward Bound to complete their experiment. Fifty-six students were asked to complete neural wordplay activities known as remote associates tests. Half the students took the tests before a camping trip, and the other half took them about midway through the trip. Students who took the tests after four days in the woods scored 50 percent higher then their peers. "Current research indicates that there is a real, measurable cognitive advantage to be realized if we spend time truly immersed in a natural setting," the authors write. The study, "Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings," was published in this month's issue of Plos One. (Read more)

The findings should be no surprise in New England, the New Hampshire Union Leader editorial board opines. "Most Granite Staters know that living among the hills, rivers, forests and mountains is good for the soul and body," the editorial states. "We also know what it can do for our peace of mind. Now scientists are confirming that it can improve creativity, attention span and mental function. Nice of them to catch up to us."