Quick hits: Newspaper sitcom; free child care; inspiring cave cleanup; soybean field discovery; dark sky ruminating

Can a sitcom about journalism capture its 'grit, humanity, and relentless optimism'?

Keeping a local newspaper alive is one thing, but revitalizing one staffed with employees who list texting and tweeting as their most recent writing ventures is an entirely different story. Meet Peacock's new mockumentary, "The Paper," which depicts the life and times of the struggling Toledo Truth Teller newspaper and its quirky staff. "Members of the news community weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry," writes Gretchen A. Peck of E&P Magazine. "For publishers and editors. . . the [show] raises big questions: can a sitcom capture the grit, humanity, and relentless optimism of real journalism?" The trailer is here.

New Mexico will be the first state in the union to offer free child care to all its families, regardless of income. "The state has been working to lower child care care costs since 2019, when it created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department," reports Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. The new policy rollout in November will allow all families access to the state’s child care assistance program without meeting eligibility criteria and will remove any copay requirements. Families are expected to save an average of $12,000 per child.

Hidden River Cave's kaleidoscope-like Sunset
Dome is a popular tourist attraction.

What was once a heavily polluted cave in Horse Cave, Ky., is now a point of community pride and a tourism draw. "For generations, the cave was all but lost to the town on top of it. Miles of caverns and waterways brimmed with sewage that sent a putrid stench up from the depths and across downtown," reports Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York Times. "The restoration of Hidden River Cave is one of the most remarkable examples of a cave cleanup. . . . Last year, 30,000 people, more than 10 times the town’s population, toured the cave."

Some ranchers prefer the beaverslide for stacking hay.
(Photo by Linda Teahon, Offrange)

No need to purchase fancy machinery to stack hay bales -- a beaverslide is much cheaper and simpler to own. "The haystacking device consists of a wide, sliding fork at the base of a ramp and a cable pulley system rigged to the ramp’s underside," explains Katie Hill for Offrange. "Ranchers use a team of horses or a motorized vehicle to pull one of the cables perpendicular to the beaverslide, which in turn hoists the fork up the ramp, bringing a giant pile of hay up with it. . . .At the top of the ramp, the hay falls to the other side, forming three-story piles that can reach 25 tons in weight."

It hadn't been seen or touched by humans for 2,000 years, but this summer, artifact hunter Ben McGhee unearthed the discovery of a lifetime: "A hoard of 51 Native American blades buried in a Missouri soybean field," writes Chris Bennett of Farm Journal. "Based on the location, and the lack of percussion flakes or hammer stones within immediate proximity, McGhee believes the cache was transported to its present location, close to the water’s edge, for trade access." Native Americans traded the blades, which could be more precisely carved into arrowheads.

Glacier National Park is an International Dark Sky Sanctuary. Visitors can see the Milky Way from St. Mary’s Glacier, pictured here. (Photo by Ray Stinson, National Park Service)

In places where the cover of night is treasured, skies filled with stars, glowing planets and the Earth's solitary moon light the way. For many people, dark skies offer a window into thoughtfulness and mystery. "There is a feeling of possibility, timelessness, and, potentially, of fear, in the night sky," writes Sarah Melotte of The Daily Yonder. Some rural places "claim the preservation of dark skies as a core value. They protect a visitor’s experience of wonder and mystery. . . There are 152 dark sky 'places' in the continental United States." Find dark skies here. 

Quick hits: As farmers mobilize for protest, one in 1979 is recalled; West Virginia crooner invites folks to visit state . . .

U.S. Rep. Dan Glickman, D-Kansas and later secretary of agriculture, left, with prized Polled Hereford bull "King George" and his owner, farmer and American Agriculture Movement communications czar Leon Riffel. (Photo courtesy of Crystal Carson)

As Farmers for Climate Action get ready for their early-March rally in Washington D.C., let's revisit the 1979 Tractorcade. "In early February 1979, David Senter — a fourth-generation farmer from Burleston, Texas — and more than 3,000 other striking farmers from around the country drove their tractors to the nation’s capital to demand parity for farmers. The predominant issues at that time were fair commodity pricing and country-of-origin labeling," reports Dan Sullivan of Lancaster Farming.

Spring planting will soon be upon us. Heirloom seeds are something special to consider as you plan your 2023 garden.

"Don't hesitate, come and see the Mountain State," croons Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr. in his latest release, "Come Home to West Virginia." Murphy, who once washed cars, is working to keep jazz classics from what some call "the Great American Songbook" alive and is adding his own creations. He still lives in coal-rich Logan County and finds ways to celebrate Appalachian life through big-band music.

Read something unusual about America's last rural president: "A nuclear reactor was melting down. Jimmy Carter came to the rescue. As a 28-year-old Navy lieutenant, Carter was one of the few people on the planet authorized to go inside a damaged nuclear reactor," reports Gillian Brockell of The Washington Post.

Bison and Montana go together. In this outdoor classroom, a recent bison harvest highlights a growing number of state-level curriculum programs that teach students Native ceremony and food traditions.

Wikipedia map

Moffat, a small Scottish town of about 2,400, "first gained attention as a Victorian-era spa town known for its sulfur-rich springs. More recently, the town’s fame has taken a darker turn—literally. After upgrading its public lighting, in 2016, Moffat became the first European town to receive International Dark Sky Place certification," reports Blair Mastbaum of Atlas Obscura.

Catching Covid-19 may be the best way to avoid the worst of it, a new study from the University of Washington has found. Contracting the disease may offer more durable immunity, reports Julia Marnin of The Seattle Times.

Too hot? Too cold? "Cold is far more deadly. For every death linked to heat, nine are tied to cold," reports Harry Stevens of The Washington Post. It's a complex argument: "If cold was deadlier than heat, and the planet was getting hotter, global warming might actually save lives. But whose lives?"

How do human fingerprints get their special swirls? Their intricate patterns "are produced during fetal development by waves of tiny ridges that form on the fingertip, spread and then collide with each other — similar to the process that gives a zebra its stripes, or a cheetah its spots," reports Heidi Ledford of Nature.

"Phillip Andrew Marx takes care of chickens, ducks, and turkeys in exchange for money to help him graduate college with no student debt. . . . For Marx, he said he believes change starts with farmers, and he’s proud to work on projects related to farming and agriculture," reports Kristi Eaton of The Daily Yonder. This piece presents a new program in CaliforniaCorps, a job program for students, and it's a program other states can mimic.

A universal human experience is fading: Sky gets 10% brighter each year, survey shows; previous estimate was 2%

Screenshot of interactive Light Pollution Map, which shows where skies are dark and bright all over the planet.

Seeing stars keeps getting more difficult because "artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year," according to a study that analyzed reports "from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers," reports Christina Larson of The Associated Press. "That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data.

The research, which includes reports from the nonprofit Globe at Night project in 2011-22, was published Thursday in the journal Science. To illustrate the magnitude of the change, researchers "gave this example: A child is born where 250 stars are visible on a clear night. By the time that child turns 18, only 100 stars are still visible," Larson reports.

“We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” which has been a universal human experience, said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at Chile's University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved in the study. “If you can still see the dimmest stars, you are in a very dark place. But if you see only the brightest ones, you are in a very light-polluted place.”

“This is real pollution, affecting people and wildlife,” Christopher Kyba, a study co-author and physicist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, told Larson. "Kyba said he hoped that policymakers would do more to curb light pollution," Larson reports. "Some localities have set limits. . . . Prior studies of artificial lighting, which used satellite images of the Earth at night, had estimated the annual increase in sky brightness to be about 2% a year. But the satellites used aren’t able to detect light with wavelengths toward the blue end of the spectrum — including the light emitted by energy-efficient LED bulbs. More than half of the new outdoor lights installed in the United States in the past decade have been LED lights, according to the researchers. The satellites are also better at detecting light that scatters upward, like a spotlight, than light that scatters horizontally, like the glow of an illuminated billboard at night, said Kyba."

Georgetown University biologist Emily Williams, who was not part of the study, said skyglow disrupts circadian rhythms in humans and other forms of life: “Migratory songbirds normally use starlight to orient where they are in the sky at night. And when sea turtle babies hatch, they use light to orient toward the ocean – light pollution is a huge deal for them.”

Nearby development puts a Virginia county's dark sky at risk

Google map, adapted by The Rural Blog; click to enlarge

As new housing and commercial developments creep closer to the Rappahannock County Park — a designated International Dark Sky Park in northern Virginia — stargazing enthusiasts wonder what will happen to the nightly natural wonder that has all but disappeared in more heavily populated areas, Christopher Connell reports for the weekly Rappahannock News. 

Fifteen miles southeast of the park, in adjoining Culpeper County, 760 homes and a new shopping center are being built, and local environmentalists are trying to convince developers "to go above and beyond what Culpeper zoning ordinances require to limit light pollution," Connell writes. Groups interested in keeping the sky dark sky virtually with the homebuilder's development manager, who seemed receptive, but the environmentalists' principal concern was with the shopping center.

As populations have grown in the towns surrounding Rappahannock County, longtime residents say the sky has already become less dark. Joyce Harman, a nearly three-decade-long resident, told Connell that from her house she "can see the lights of Culpeper, Warrenton and Front Royal. There’s tons more development."

Dark skies are important to the readership of the Rappahannock News, Connell writes. When the nonprofit Foothills Forum formed in 2015 to support the newspaper, it surveyed over 3,200 residents on what they saw as important issues and "people ranked keeping the skies dark as their sixth biggest concern." The Forum provides support for such polling, and for stories like Connell's; he is a retired reporter for The Associated Press.

Quick hits: Test-driving electric tractors; light pollution ruining views of starry skies; ever hear of 'light trespass'?

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 us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The Association of Health Care Journalists is accepting applications for fellowships aimed at early-career journalists who want to pursue careers in science, health, and/or environmental reporting. Read more here.

A volunteer firefighter in rural Tennessee has been charged with setting fires that destroyed multiple buildings. Read more here.

A new project in rural Oregon is letting farmers test-drive electric tractors to make sure the machinery holds up in the real world. Read more here.

Bristlecone pines can live for thousands of years, but many are dying because of the one-two punch of climate change and invasive bark beetles. They're not the only trees climate change is hurting. Read more here.

Neighborhoods, even in rural areas, are getting brighter at night. That light pollution, which critics call "light trespass," is ruining our views of the stars, says one op-ed. Read more here.

The Des Moines Metro Opera is telling the tragic story of an Iowa farm family. Read more here.