'We have survived the full body slam,' Iowa editor writes, reviewing what we have endured the past three years

Full body slam with Tom and Jerry (Gif, Tenor)

By Art Cullen, Editor
Storm Lake Times Pilot

What a weird run we’ve been on the past few years with the double-whammy of Covid-19 and Donald Trump.

The aftershocks of deep changes to our lives reverberate still.

The House finally elected a speaker with the 15th ballot on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump had to call in to the House floor on Kevin McCarthy’s behalf. Images of Trump standing on the veranda at the White House in an orange glow after his release from the hospital with Covid rose to mind. He just stood there, suggesting invincibility yet looking as if he might fall over.

Storm Lake was getting walloped by the pandemic. People were dying every week. The meatpacking plants were ravaged. Walmart ran out of toilet paper overnight. Newell-Fonda won the girls state tournament again, and then that was all she wrote. Some businesses went under. We nearly did. The government came out with the biggest relief program since the Great Depression. Most of us survived because of it.

During this time Steve King, our congressman for 20 years, was unseated in a Republican primary because of his comments on race and culture. JD Scholten, who nearly beat King in 2018, was forced to stage drive-in campaign events at Frank Starr Park, where he spoke into a microphone and diehards in cars tuned in on FM radio. Scholten got walloped by Randy Feenstra, a more polite version of King.

There were those daily Covid briefings where Trump would contradict the medical experts standing next to him as the president talked up his latest snake-oil cure.

You couldn’t go to church. Catholics yearned for Holy Communion. Who would have thought you could not get communion? Michelle Obama made a brief return as First Lady in the absence of one to counsel the nation on having the Covid blues. Doctors here confirmed that they saw an increase in depression. It is depressing sitting at home looking out the window wishing you were anyplace else, doing something.

Relationships changed, or ended. Zooming became a verb. Remote work became a real thing. I, for one, got used to it. I fancy myself living the writer’s life. That’s been a good thing, sort of a dream come true, really. That, and voters told Trump to take his act back to Mar-a-Lago. They chose Biden and cooperation over Trump and violent treason.

Voters liked the infrastructure bill. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell last week shook hands with President Biden over a new bridge to connect Ohio and Kentucky while the House Republicans fought yesterday’s battles. Sen. Joni Ernst was one of a dozen Republicans to vote for protecting gay and interracial marriages, which drew a rebuke from the Pocahontas County Republican Central Committee. There are signs of moderation that made Ernst feel comfortable enough to be sensible.

At one point oil prices went into negative territory when interest rates were at zero. We worried that we couldn’t get paper to print because of huge supply chain kinks. You couldn’t even think about looking at a new car on a lot because they weren’t there. They still aren’t. Newsprint prices are stabilizing. Oil shot up as the economy came back, along with grocery prices. Then interest rates ratcheted up to combat inflation. Meatpackers raised wages significantly over the past five years — from about $16 per hour to start, to nearly $22 per hour starting wage now, plus with better health care benefits.

Restaurants have come back, but dining in is down nearly 20% from pre-pandemic times. Take-out is way up. Inflation is subsiding. Congress did big bipartisan things, like reshoring computer chip making to the USA from Asia. We are beginning to address climate change. Our saber rattling with China over trade is subsiding, and China has trouble all its own coping with a wave of Covid. The insurrection was driven at least in part by the frustration of the pandemic cast on a motif of fear. Many of the participants are thinking about it from jail. Voters called again for moderation in the November midterm election. Democracy holds on as aimless rebels are shunted aside. Trump’s popularity is waning. Costs are coming down as job creation holds up pretty well.

The sun came out clear last Friday. It seemed like we had been living in a cold gray cloud for so long that 24 degrees felt like May. The brave men and women who defended democracy two years ago embraced President Biden as he gave them medals for their valor. Zealotry is not having its finest hour. Supply is finding demand. Iowa has Covid under control as deaths and hospitalizations decline. You would like to think that the fever has broken.

Flood roundup: Supply-chain shortages hamper recovery; editorial blasts AT&T; lack of flood-proof building sites noted

It's been almost a month since the record flooding in Eastern Kentucky and surrounding areas, and recovery has been spotty and will take years. Here are some recent items of interest:

Supply-chain struggles with building materials that have plagued the nation since the beginning of the pandemic are making it harder—and more expensive—for Eastern Kentuckians to rebuild after the flood, Chad Hedrick of Hazard's WYMT-TV reports. Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that the rebuilding would be the most difficult ever in the U.S.

An editorial in The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg rips into AT&T for not only failing to get most residents' phone service back up and running in Letcher County, but for the company's out-of-touch customer service. The paper's staff called AT&T in an attempt to get answers, and was told that flood victims who needed their service restored could contact the company online, call on their cell phones, or visit the nearest retail store. However, the editorial notes, many flood victims live where cell reception is impossible, meaning internet is also a no-go. And since many lost their vehicles in the flood, it's difficult to get to the nearest AT&T retail store 30 or more miles away. Read more here.

So many people were in harm's way during the floods because they live in flood-prone bottomlands. Landholding corporations and government agencies mostly own the higher ground, and they're not leasing it for commercial or residential development. In the case of reclaimed strip mines, their reclamation bonds may not have been released. Companies should be fairly compensated but obliged to allow some development to protect locals from future floods, writes Joe Childers in an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Childers was Kentucky coordinator for the 1981 Appalachian Land Ownership Study.

Paper in New Hampshire is applying conflict-mediation skills to increasingly irate submissions of opinion-page content

Sperling's Best Places map

The increasing animosity of opinion content submissions has prompted the Laconia Daily Sun in Laconia, N.H., pop. 16,581, to make some innovative changes over the past year in an attempt to increase local civility and bridge political divides.

The paper began considering the issue seriously after a well-known local candidate submitted a letter denying that the Holocaust had happened. The paper's founder, Ed Engler, had established a tradition of printing almost every letter to the editor he received as a means of elevating local discourse. After much discussion, the paper's leadership decided to print the letter, triggering widespread outrage. "It was painful evidence that Engler’s commitment to publishing as many letters as possible was no longer advancing a healthy dialogue among readers, if it ever had," Digital Editor Julie Hart writes for the American Press Institute.

About the same time, the paper won a grant from the nonprofit Endowment for Health to explore how civil discourse affected community health. It allowed the Sun to hire a new "solutions journalism" reporter who would write only about the critical issues facing the community as well as how other communities (or groups within the community) were addressing the issues, Hart reports. 

The Solutions Journalism Network trained the paper in practices such as "looping," an active-listening technique in which one person restates—without opinion—what they heard from their conversational partner, Hart reports. Editors at the paper realized looping could help with their opinion-page problem after two regular letter writers, who hold opposing political views, had lunch one day and heard each other out, Hart reports. They co-wrote a letter to the editor sharing what they discovered when they focused on listening instead of trying to change the other's mind.

Managing Editor Roger Carroll and others at the paper were "encouraged by the civility we’d seen when the writers came out from behind their names on a page and had a discussion face-to-face," Hart reports. The editorial staff and SJN staff decided to co-host a virtual roundtable discussion in May with frequent letters to the editor writers, instructing participants in the looping technique to help them listen while withholding judgment. "The group told us they learned a lot, and saw how these tactics could aid them in communicating more constructively in their contributed content," Hart writes.

The Daily Sun is still tinkering with its opinion page. It recently decided to stop printing all political cartoons and are using the space for local commentary. "We continued to re-evaluate our opinion pages, establishing guidelines around length, topic and frequency of contributions that are meant to focus the content on issues of public interest instead of personal attacks on other writers," Hart writes. "We published a policy that encouraged contributors to write in the third person, rather than take personal potshots in the second person, as too often happened."

The paper still believes printing letters serves a valuable function for the community, especially with the changes they've made. At the very least, the staff hopes hope to provide an opportunity for people to read constructively stated viewpoints from people who disagree with them, Hart writes.

"For other small papers considering changing the format of their opinion pages, consider ways to model constructive dialogue between groups in your community," Hart writes. "Maybe that means changing your editorial submission guidelines, offering training in looping, or dedicating your opinion section to local issues and reducing national political content."

Quick hits: Rural leaders speculate on what Biden might do for rural America; soil degradation costing corn farmers

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.

Kansas researchers say wind energy can revive many rural economies. Read more here.

A transgender-owned alpaca ranch in Colorado may foretell the future of the rural queer West. Read more here.

Soil degradation costs American corn farmers half-a-billion dollars every year. Read more here.

As the Biden presidency begins, advisors to the Rural Assembly speculate on what the new administration might accomplish with regards to rural America. Read more here.

Trump didn't come through on promise to put coal miners back to work. Read more here.

The Biden administration promises to clean up mine land and create Appalachian jobs. Here are some things it can do to make that happen. Read more here.

An editorial from The Roanoke Times muses on Thomas Friedman's call for Biden to appoint a rural czar, and notes specific actions such a czar would need to take to be effective. Read more here.

Rural-urban divide 'vivid as ever', rural Iowa editor writes

Art Cullen

Though Joe Biden flipped several red states blue in the recent election, "the rural-urban divide is vivid as ever," editor and co-owner Art Cullen writes for The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly paper in northwest Iowa.

Iowa stayed red, and pollsters may have some reasons why. Just before the election, one "found a big shift among independents who wanted a GOP Senate to provide a check on the 'socialists'," Cullen writes, though "running against socialism when Trump larded $60 billion in payments on agribusiness in the past two years for disasters of his own making seemed like a thin soup." 

Not to most. Rural residents who were "immersed in Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and Facebook lapped it up," Cullen writes. The propaganda, plus Republican efforts on the ground, resulted in a net gain of 20,000 more new registered voters for Republicans than for Democrats in Iowa. That "put a seemingly indelible red lock on what used to be a purple state," he writes, noting that the GOP gained seats on both sides of the state legislature. 

If the rural-urban divide "can’t be closed, the very idea of American democratic liberty remains challenged," Cullen writes. "There is a palpable resentment among those left behind from the economic coastal juggernauts that finds its expression in terrorist rubes from the sticks dressed in Hawaiian shirts planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan and execute her to start a civil war. . . . Joe Biden’s chief job of uniting the country starts on the Great Plains and Appalachia. It’s a tough sale, but Biden knows how from years of horse-trading in the Senate. Two ideas with appeal: renewable energy and agricultural conservation."

Our nominee for best 2020 high-school graduation editorial

By Laurie Ezzell Brown
The Canadian (Tex.) Record

In my own version of social isolation, I’ve spent as many free hours as possible studying the birds and squirrels and hummingbirds that inhabit my backyard, thinking perhaps I could learn something of solitude.

Lured by a plentiful supply of seeds and a frequently-refilled bird bath, they have all neatly assembled a life there, complete with its own pecking order and its own social justice system.

These backyard denizens take little note of any human, unless one is foolish enough to invade their space. I made that mistake recently, climbing a ladder to the roof in order to replace a wind-blown vent cap. Truly, hell hath no fury like a grackle defending its nest. I made my repairs, as quickly as the steeply-pitched, hot metal rooftop allowed, and ceded the territory back to black fury.

One weekend, John and I decided to remove a couple of dead tree branches. Hours later, and too many trips to the city tree pile to count, we were still sawing and loading and hauling. That evening, having cleared a small forest and expended every drop of energy we possessed between us, we idled on the back patio, tracking the well-traveled path of the squirrel family in residence.

The hunter/gatherer of the bunch made frequent trips down one tree trunk, sprinting the length of the picket fence, and scrambling up the third mock pear tree and into the branches, where he leapt from one to another with great assurance and ease, and with no small measure of panache. Up to the rooftop, then quickly back down, he retreated along the same route he had just navigated. He sent the songbirds at the feeder scattering and briefly confronted the fat doves perched atop the pickets as they scanned the ground, waiting for seeds to fall.

Wings flapped, feathers flew, the squirrel chattered as the birds pecked. A cease-fire treaty was reached, if not an accord. On went the bushy-tailed rodent, scrambling up the trunk of the old elm tree and launching into the branches, darting and dancing from one to another, until he skidded—claws scraping—to a sudden stop.

Where is that branch I’ve climbed, lo these many years? The one that led heavenward, back to my nest, my sanctuary? He retraced his steps, searching for an alternate route, a detour. There was none to be found. Down to the sun-scorched carport roof, where he skittered and scratched, not daring to stop. Alas, there was no escape. He ascended again, returning to his familiar path, hoping it had all been some terrible mistake.

Finally, the decision was unavoidable. He eyed the supple, still-green branch several feet away, accelerated and leapt, flying through the now-empty air and reaching—grasping—for that thin lifeline. His sudden weight bowed the branch. As it bent, he lost his purchase and slid, still clutching, until the branch suddenly sprang back. Propelled through the air, he reached—with all his small might—for the rung above, and lifted himself to safety.

I’ve not seen the squirrel take that same path since, but he did survive and seems unscarred by the grave danger he momentarily faced.

It made me think of how we, too, have been dislodged lately. Confronted by what Canadian High School Salutatorian Melody Hood referred to as “an evil protein capsid with destructive genetic material,” we have been forced to abandon our well-worn routes and are finding new patterns and approaches to old tasks, facing unknown perils and feeling that fleeting exhilaration when we succeed at something we once feared. Testing ourselves. Realizing we can and will survive—or at least, many of us will.

Our students and parents and teachers and school staff and administrators—removed from the familiar and safe and known—have leapt and risked falling, rebounded and soared higher, and found new ways to cross the cavernous void of time and space that seems always to loom ahead. They have relied on each other in ways they had not known they could. They have discovered strength and knowledge within themselves, and risked going it alone. They have worked harder, learned more, exceeded their grasp, and prevailed. Talk about class.

Yes, you are all the Class of 2020. And however much we hope to resume some semblance of normal next year, we no longer doubt our ability to meet and surmount the challenges ahead.

Ky. weekly editor who sent special edition to whole county after its first covid-19 case writes why she will wear a mask

Becky Barnes

The editor of a rural Kentucky weekly, who mailed out a special edition of the paper to everyone in the county after its first covid-19 case was confirmed, explained in a recent editorial why she believes wearing a mask and following other social distancing measures is important.

Becky Barnes, editor of The Cynthiana Democrat, wrote plainly and repeatedly that she wears a mask because "I'm not ready to die."

She admits readily that she's not a scientific expert, but notes that President Trump and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear aren't, either, and that they—and we—must rely on such experts to guide policy and action.

"I will follow those guidelines, not like a lamb to slaughter, but like a woman who will protect her family. I have elderly parents and in-laws whom I love very much. It would kill me to pass something along to them," Barnes writes.

As the government starts loosening some restrictions and opening businesses back up, that will increase the chances of infection. So, Barnes writes, it's better to be safe than sorry: "I will wear a mask because someone who knows more than I says it will help. I will wear a mask not because I am required to do so, but because it may help. This is all new. We are learning as we go. But if there is a chance it will help – I will wear a mask – for you."

Rural editor writes: Journalists' search for truth is imperfect, but they protect us from an authoritarian future

Steven Doyle

The editor of a small-town daily newspaper makes an impassioned case for the importance of a free press in a recent editorial. The nation's basic principles "start with the freedom of the press, the right to hold people accountable for their bald-face lies, their little untruths, their obfuscations, their obstructions and their sleights-of-hand, Steven Doyle writes for the Martinsville Bulletin in Virginia.

Journalists are often criticized, though, and that smarts, Doyle acknowledges, though reporters aren't perfect. He uses an interesting analogy: "Journalists are phlebotomists of truth, tapping around with our questions until we find a hidden, plump vein. We are humans and make mistakes. Not every 'tap' is with perfect touch and sensitivity," he writes. "But those of us who work for conscientious and non-ideological news organizations tap with unrelenting purpose – all the while facing that fusillade of snide disrespect and ridicule."

Doyle asks readers to beware of biased parties' attempts to slander the news media with cries of "fake news," and asserts—using a vivid image from the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale—that the absence of a free press is the fastest route to an authoritarian future.

Christian magazine editorial denouncing Trump continues roiling evangelical community

A Dec. 19 editorial in a Christian magazine denouncing President Trump has prompted heavy backlash from many in the evangelical community. The Christianity Today piece, written by outgoing editor-in-chief Mark Galli, called on readers to support President Trump's impeachment.

On Dec. 22, nearly 200 evangelical leaders slammed the editorial in a co-signed letter to Christianity Today president Timothy Dalrymple, Melissa Barnhart reports for The Christian Post. The Post published the full text of the letter.

"The signatories include Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty College; Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Ralph Reed, the president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; and Paula White Cain, Trump's longtime spiritual adviser who recently joined the White House staff," Veronica Stracqualursi reports for CNN.

"Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations," the letter read. "We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners, and we take deeply our personal responsibility to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's --- our public service." 

The Christian Post, an evangelical website, published its own editorial on Dec. 23, criticizing the Christianity Today piece and accusing Galli's writing of coming from a "toxic emotional and spiritual stew."

The Post editorial "apparently proved too much for an editor at The Christian Post, Napp Nazworth, who wrote on Twitter on Monday that he was 'forced to make the difficult choice' to leave the site, where he had worked since 2011, most recently as politics editor," Karen Zraick and Elisha Brown report for The New York Times.

Galli said that, though the editorial prompted some readers to unsubscribe, the magazine has gained many more new subscribers than it lost. "We have lost subscribers but we’ve had three times as many people start to subscribe," he told MSNBC on Dec. 22.

Seven of fastest-growing jobs pay little, dominate rural areas; programs seek to increase high-paying rural jobs

Art Cullen

One reason rural America is poorer and losing its promising young people: "The jobs that pay the least dominate rural economies," Pulitzer Prize-winning rural editor Art Cullen writes in an editorial for The Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa.

According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the 10 fastest-growing job segments over the next decade pay less than $33,000 a year and six pay less than $27,000 a year. Those jobs are: personal care aides, food prep and serving, home health aides, cooks, restaurant servers, janitors, and medical assistants. The three fastest-growing jobs that pay well (registered nurses, general managers, and software developers) tend to require a college degree and are much more common in urban areas, Cullen reports.

"Obvious conclusions include that to make a decent living you need a post-secondary education; and, some of the most important and literally vital jobs (home health aides) don’t pay a living wage," Cullen writes. "Teacher aides do much of the heavy lifting in schools but are paid a fraction of teachers, and have no union representation. Social workers who help disabled adults find meaning through work are paid barely more than the minimum wage."

Some programs are trying to split the difference: keep rural youth home while making it possible for them to get a degree. One such program, a partnership between Iowa Central Community College, Silicon Valley-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, and the town leaders of Jefferson, Iowa, seeks to create high-paying computer coding jobs in rural places, Cullen writes.

Buena Vista University in Storm Lake is also encouraging rural economic development with its new centers for agriculture and rural entrepreneurship. "We can rebuild rural Iowa with brains and ambition in great abundance here. Now, the political establishment is embracing the possibilities in these under-utilized and often forgotten places. The most important building block is education. Iowa is rediscovering its importance," Cullen writes.

Cullen and his family, who own and operate the paper, won the 2017 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. He won that year's Pulitzer for editorials.