Big bill's rural-health items touch Medicaid money, telehealth rules, mental-health hotline, drug treatment, Native care

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks with reporters as he
walks to a vote at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Francis Chung, Politico)

The whopping 4,155-page omnibus spending bill is whipping its way through Congress. The $1.7 trillion measure is crammed with public-policy changes and funding provisions.

Here are some items with rural resonance that made it in, starting with several health-related provisions:

• An earlier end to Covid-era state Medicaid funding and rules. Additional funding will end on April 1, 2023, instead of June 30. The change will end rules that effectively barred any state from dropping people from the rolls if the state wanted to get the 6.2% bonus.
  
• An extension of rules that supported telehealth options through 2024, which "falls far short of a push from some lawmakers who wanted to make that flexibility permanent," Politico notes. The pandemic ushered in telehealth as accepted medical care.
• Almost $502 million, a nearly $400 million increase, for the new 988 national hotline for mental-health services. "The ultimate goal is to be able to dispatch mobile crisis teams immediately to anyone in need, no matter where they live," The Washington Post reports.
• Easier access for health-care providers to prescribe buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction. They would no longer have to get a separate waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
• More stable funding for the Indian Health Service, a result of perhaps the largest effort by Native American groups "to provide more funding certainty to the federal health agency that helps serve roughly 2.6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives," the Post reports.
• A limit for tax breaks on land-conservation purchases: "The provision would automatically disallow any deduction that is 2.5 times more than what investors put into a partnership that is making the deals — an indication that easement organizers artificially inflated the value of conserved land to get more tax savings," reports Benjamin Guggenheim of PoliticoPro.
• "Maine lawmakers successfully included a pause on new regulations they warned would cripple their state’s lobster industry," Politico reports. "The provision delays new rules by six years, which critics argue will allow fisheries to put off actions that would prevent fishing gear from harming and even killing endangered whales."
  
• UPDATE: The bill funds a program that gives poor families $40 per month per child for summer groceries, and "allows schools and nonprofits in rural areas to deliver meals or offer pick-up options to families during those months," The New York Times reports.

The bill would also amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to make clear that the vice president, as presiding officer of the Senate, plays only a ministerial or ceremonial role in the counting of electoral votes from the states. The law's vagueness contributed to the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The bill would also raise the threshold for challenging electoral votes to one-fifth of both the House and Senate, from the current one member of each chamber.

Put that phone down. You're missing something. Be present.

By Zonelle Rainbolt

Executive Editor, Wesner Publications, Cordell, Okla.

At a recent celebratory gathering of young, middle-aged and older adults, I was interested to watch as the different groups interacted. One of the most surprising things I noticed was one man who was constantly on his cell phone. He wasn’t one of the younger set; as a matter of fact, he was one of the oldest ones in attendance. He wasn’t talking or texting, he was mostly reading, occasionally pausing to click on a few keys. I suspect he was going over emails, but the work day was long over and the party was just before a major holiday, so I can’t think there was anything so urgent it should take precedence over a celebration he was hosting.

Zonelle Rainbolt

At one point, he took an empty chair beside me, but we never exchanged a word, as he didn’t once look up from his screen. I so wish I had tapped him on the arm and said, “Be present.” He was actively missing a milestone event in the life of someone very important to him. My guess is the next morning he couldn’t recall who had been at the party, or maybe even what was so important in his “In” box. And those were moments and memories he wasn’t going to get back.

Our jobs in the ever-changing, often chaotic world of news reporting keep us hyper-aware there is quite likely something going on in the world that could, legitimately, claim our attention. It is so easy to think we can just take a quick glimpse at our email, text or social media and see what is happening, then get back to being with our family and friends. That is frequently a trap, however, as that quick glimpse often turns into a time-consuming trip through multiple online resources that draw us away from the moment.

It has happened to all of us at one time or another, yet, thinking back, it is hard to pinpoint a time when the public wouldn’t have been as well served if I had waited a bit later to do my work. Although the work we do is vital, we all need to consciously “Be Present” when we have time to be with friends and loved ones. I know that is easier said than done, and I have often been the poster child for putting family on simmer while I work just a little bit longer, go in a little bit earlier, stay a little bit later. And like the man at the party, those are moments and memories I won’t get back.

So, as we celebrate the Christmas season and race toward the start of a new year, I urge all of you to “Be Present” at every opportunity you have with those you love — and even with those you like and maybe even with those you are pretty sure you aren’t crazy about. What we are living right now is the real thing — not a dress rehearsal — and the moments we lose are gone forever. I promise, if you follow my advice, you will thank me later.

Rainbolt is president of the Oklahoma Press Association, which originally published this article.

'Adam is with us.' A genealogist finds DNA from first man

William Noel has DNA that links back to the first
man. (Photo by Tristan Lorei, The Free Lance-Star)

According to Wikipedia, "a haplogroup (haploid from the Greek: ἁπλοῦς, haploûs, 'onefold, simple' and English: group) is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single-nucleotide polymorphism mutation."

Very science-ish. Also, very exciting for participants in Virginia genealogist Paula Royster's research, which was "conducted into the origins of some of Fredericksburg’s oldest Black families—and for William Noel [a study participant] in particular," reports Adele Uphaus of The Free Lance-Star. 

Uphaus shares Royster's research announcement: “Mr. Noel, you are the only person living in these United States with this particular DNA type. You have the same haplogroup as the first human man. Adam is with us today.” 

Noel's DNA results "were so exciting that they kept her awake at night," Royster told Uphaus. Royster is a scholar of the African diaspora and founder of the Center for African American Genealogical Research, a nonprofit whose mission is to reunite African-descended Americans with their distant African relatives.

Mr. Noel's "DNA is part of a group known as A000, which predates modern humans and has as its common ancestor the man from whom all other human men are descended—a person genealogists call 'Y-line Adam,'" Uphaus writes. Royster explained to the group: "That type of DNA is extremely rare outside of Africa and was not even known to exist until 2012, when it was discovered in a South Carolina man. [Mr. Noel's] DNA is 40,000 years older than his. . . . We all have these ideas about who came first. You, Mr. Noel, represent the beginning of all creation.”

According to Uphaus, Royce referred to the slave auction block that stood at the intersection of William and Charles streets in Fredericksburg before it was moved to the Fredericksburg Area Museum, saying “You can see that our history didn’t begin with that 1,000-pound block on the corner."

News-media roundup: Local journalism aid not in must-pass bill; Oregon study faults local news; 2022's best corrections

As expected, neither bill aimed at helping local journalism were included in the omnibus spending-and-policy bill that Congress must pass by the end of the year and hopes to pass by Friday.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act lacks the proposed Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would have established a tax credit for newsroom salaries, or the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would have created a temporary anti-trust exemption for news publishers to negotiate with Google, Facebook and other tech platforms for compensation for use of content.

Dean Ridings, CEO of America's Newspapers, which lobbied with the News/Media Alliance for both bills — told Editor & Publisher, "This is certainly disappointing for us all! Either bill would have been very significant for our members and to the industry. We will need a different strategy for the 118th Congress," when Republicans will control the House.

The Agora Journalism Center in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication "found that Oregonians are unequally served by local news media and that some communities have few places to turn for local news," the university reports. "The report also describes how journalists and civic leaders are deeply worried about the state’s ability to confront its challenges at a time when the number of news outlets is declining, news audiences are shrinking, and misinformation is on the rise." What would a similar study in your state show?

Axios offers its "Best corrections of 2022:"
Jan. 11, New York Times: "The clue for 47 Across in the Monday puzzle may have implied incorrectly that coal is a viable source of clean energy. While it is possible to capture and sequester some of the greenhouse-gas emissions and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants, the technology has never been used on a large scale because of its high cost."
Jan. 22, Deadspin: "We learned after the publication of this article that 49ers OC Mike McDaniel, whom we describe as a 'white guy,' is in fact biracial. The article’s original text remains below. We regret the error."
Oct. 23, Washington Post: "The crossword in the Oct. 23 Washington Post Magazine included an incorrect clue for 95 across ('Fictional graduate of Springfield High School during the 1970s'). The answer, HOMER, refers to Homer Simpson, who didn't graduate from high school in the 1970s because, during that time, he didn't pass Remedial Science 1A, as seen in a Season 4 episode of 'The Simpsons.'"
Oct. 25, NYT: "An earlier version of a photo caption with this article misidentified the performer shown with James Corden in a 'Carpool Karaoke' segment. She is Nicki Minaj, not Cardi B."
(Like this? Here are Axios's best news media corrections of 2020 and 2021.)

Shortage of beds for sick children 'not simply the result of a deluge of sick children' but hospitals' desire for money

(Washington Post graph from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data)

The surge of children with respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and Covid has left hospital emergency rooms and pediatric floors scrambling for beds and staff, report Christopher Rowland, Dan Keating and Daniel Gilbert of The Washington Post. These deep shortages are exposing decades of cuts in pediatric beds at hospitals, especially those serving rural areas, the Post reveals.

The experience of Segura Nino, 29, is playing out for parents nationwide: "Segura Nino had spent 10 sleepless hours in a suburban Houston emergency room with her 3-month-old son Maleek when she boarded a medical helicopter to Corpus Christi, 200 miles away," The Post reports. "Nino was told that Houston, a city renowned for its world-class health system, did not have a bed for one more baby with RSV." After Maleek had come home, recovered, Nino told the Post, "It's crazy to have to go to another city to get care for your child."

The Post rpeorts, "Instead of finding inpatient care at community hospitals near their homes, parents often must travel to larger children’s hospitals that have the most beds. Not only are those facilities farther away, but they also are thronged by patients from an entire region — and even from neighboring states."

The problem is not just acute, but chronic: "The shortage of beds across the United States is not simply the result of a deluge of sick children. Over the past two decades, hospital systems across the country have whittled down the supply of pediatric beds, which lose money because they often are unoccupied," The Post reports. "Even when they are occupied by sick children, pediatric beds generate less revenue for hospitals than do adult beds, medical experts say."

“The major driver is economics,” said Daniel Rauch, a pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, which "cut 41 pediatric beds, citing market pressures," this year.

Nancy Foster, the American Hospital Association's vice president for quality and patient safety policy, told The Post, “These surges in RSV and flu have reminded us that we need surge capacity beyond what we might have expected for all, including children, and I don’t know we have the perfect solution yet. We’re going to have to MacGyver our way through the next few weeks to meet the surge."

Should you stay or should you go? How sick is too sick?

Image by NIAID on Unsplash

The dilemma: You have holiday dinner plans, but your nose starts to run and you have a shaggy cough. Now what? Even if your Covid-19 test is negative, what about the other 200 different viruses that are known to cause cold symptoms?

Situations like these have a lot of Americans asking, "How can we spend time together safely? How sick do you need to be to sit out the holidays a third year in a row?" writes Caroline Mimbs Nyce for The Atlantic.

She uses an episode to suggest an approach: "Paul Sax is a Harvard infectious-diseases specialist who likes to play poker. Every few weeks, he plays with friends in Boston. Recently, when it was Sax’s turn to host, one of the game’s regulars came down with a cold. The player tested negative for Covid but offered to stay home anyway. . . . Sax took him up on it. “Why go through the hassle of getting a cold?” he told Nyce, offering some practical advice: “If you’re going to the house of an infectious-disease doctor, don’t come with a cold.”

Flu season started early this year with Covid, the flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). And while testing can take out some of the guess work: "At-home Covid rapid tests are thought to be a good measure of infectiousness; some experts recommend that you can leave isolation by testing out," Nyse notes. "That’s not an option for the flu, RSV, or a cold."

Getting back to should you stay or go, Nyce writes, "For starters, pretty much everyone agrees that one symptom is an absolute no-go: fever. A temperature equals stay home, for at least 24 hours. (And no cheating with ibuprofen: You should be fever-free without pain meds.) Two other 'red flag' symptoms some experts mentioned are vomiting and diarrhea."

After fever and red flags, deciding how sick is too sick gets stickier. “Your individual health status is going to have an impact on how long you’re contagious,” Donald Milton of the University of Maryland told Nyce, citing flu data suggesting that children and people with obesity stay contagious for longer.

Sax told Nyse, “On average, a bad cold lasts 10 to 14 days. And yet people seem to have almost amnesia about that fact.”

Milton told her, “Basically, you need to ask people, ‘If you’ve got cold or flu symptoms, please stay home.’ If people who are recovering from a virus do come to the gathering, they should wear a mask.”

Then there's the curse of the lingering cough. "Once a person is past the initial phase of being sick, some coughs will continue to be caused by the virus, while others will be from irritation to the airways—almost asthma-like. And sorting out which is which is impossible," Sax told Nyse. Either way, “you’re not going to be very popular at a party if you're coughing a lot."

Food prices will remain high through the holiday season; market analysts see chance of relief in about six months

(Photo by Alison Marras on Unsplash)

"Sticker shock" is one way to describe grocery shopping this past year. Shoppers are not imagining the pain: "The Consumer Price Index shows inflation cooling but food prices — particularly for some holiday staples — remain high," reports Casey Quinlan of States Newsroom. "The CPI increased 0.1% in November, which was lower than some economists expected. Over the last 12 months, it rose 7.1%. Food went up 0.5% last month after an increase of 0.6% in October. The food index climbed 10.6% over last year."

While U.S. inflation has dipped in general, grocery prices have not relented. David Ortega, associate professor at the department of agricultural food and resource economics at Michigan State University, told Quinlan, “Grocery prices are still 12% higher than they were a year ago. . . . The good news is that food price increases and grocery price increases peaked in August. They’re just slowly starting to come down."

The war in Ukraine, supply-chain backups, agricultural-output decreases due to climate change and the deadliest bird flu in U.S. history have all contributed to increased food prices, Quinlan reports. Ortega told Quinlan that although it’s hard to say when food prices will begin to come down, he expects that it could happen in the next six months or so.

Donna McCallister, an assistant professor at at Texas Tech, told Quinlan that prices always increase this time of year, compounding the problem. Quinlan notes, "According to Bankrate’s Nov. 23 analysis of the cost of holiday essentials, six of 10 of the most inflated prices were for food, including turkey, bakery items, eggs, flour and prepared mixes."

McCallister gave Quinlan some suggestions for trimming grocery costs by "cutting down on food waste by going to stores more frequently for specific meals, buying some items in bulk, or switching from name brand to store brand to save money this holiday season."

Electric firms in Alabama, Florida fund conservative sites that play the news their way, and sometimes play hardball

Terry Dunn, a Tea Party activist, lost his seat on the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2014 after he was targeted by a smear campaign on news sites funded partly by electric companies. (Floodlight photo by Joe Songer)

"In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics." That's the headline on a long and complex story by NPR media reporter David Folkenflik and Mario Ariza and Miranda Green of Floodlight, which the story identifies as "a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action."

The story focuses on Matrix LLC, an Alabama consulting firm that has had Alabama Power and Florida Power and Light as clients, and six largely conservative news outlets that received at least $900,000 from Matrix, "its clients, and associated entities between 2013 and 2020. All of the media organizations deny their coverage was shaped by those payments and deny they acted unethically." Matrix founder Joe Perkins said the firm only paid for ads and other standard services; in a lawsuit, he says former CEO Jeff Pitts acted without his knowledge or consent. Pitts has countered that "Perkins knew everything" and he left due to Perkins' "unethical practices," NPR reports.

The story's object example is Terry Dunn, a Tea Party activist who was elected to the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2010 after promising "to hold a formal rate hearing at which Alabama Power executives would have to open their financial books and answer questions, under oath and in public. That hadn't happened for nearly three decades," NPR reports. When he pushed for the hearing, "He found himself the target of a political pressure campaign, replete with character assassinations and online smears." In 2014, Dunn lost by 19 percentage points in 2014 "to a catfish farmer who had previously served as a county commissioner. Floodlight and NPR have not been able to independently verify whether Alabama Power directed or had prior notice of the sharply critical coverage aimed at Dunn." However, "Alabama has still not held a rate hearing on electricity prices," and the relatively poor state has some of the highest rates in the nation.

More broadly, readers of the sites "have been unknowingly immersing themselves in an echo chamber of questionable coverage for years," the story says. Matrix shrewdly took advantage of the near collapse of the local newspaper industry and a concurrent plunge in trust in media in propelling its clients' interests. Matrix sought to ensure much coverage was secretly driven by the priorities of its clients. Payments flowed as the utilities in Florida and Alabama fought efforts to incorporate more clean energy in electric grids — a fight they are still waging. . . . An analysis by Floodlight and NPR of the three Alabama news sites with links to Matrix finds overwhelmingly positive coverage of Alabama Power."

UPDATE, Dec. 23: A freelance producer for ABC did dirty work for Matrix, NPR reports.

States' cuts in higher-education budgets wind up limiting rural students' opportunities at small-town universities

Emporia, Kansas, was once a busy railroad and cattle hub. Many residents today work in beef-packing or pet-food plants or the commercial bakery. The local university is suffering. (Photo by Ji Stribling, The Hechinger Report)

Four-year educational institutions that have served rural students are cutting and downgrading programs citing low enrollment and state budget cuts, reports Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report. His object example: Aida Witherspoon of southwest Kansas discovered computer coding at Emporia State University, which then said, "because of budget and enrollment problems, it was canceling her program and cutting, merging or downgrading" lots of other programs. “If I was still a high school senior,” Witherspoon told Marcus, “I wouldn’t come here.”

Marcus cites another example: "Henderson State University in Arkansas in May dropped 25 degree programs in disciplines including geography, history, political science, public administration, criminal justice, biology, studio art, communication, theater arts, English and Spanish. Several states are merging universities, many of which serve rural students."

For generations, the path out of rural poverty has been through higher education, but fewer rural young people attend college compared to their counterparts, Marcus notes. "That means the already limited options available to rural students are being squeezed still further, forcing them to travel even greater distances to college than they already do or give up on it altogether."

Andrew Koricich, an associate professor of higher education at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, told Marcus, “This is just the next in a long line of issues where rural folks are told by people who are not rural what they’re going to have and not have."

Many states with large rural populations "have steadily reduced their higher education funding. Spending on higher education fell in 16 of the 20 most rural states between 2008 and 2018 when adjusted for inflation, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities," Marcus reports. "Higher-education funding per student declined by more than 30 percent in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. In Kansas, it went down by nearly 23 percent."

Many institutional leaders claim "they’re trying to preserve and even expand choice, mostly by creating majors that rural students can take fully or partly online — including many that were never available on their local campuses," Marcus reports. However, "Advocates for rural students are critical of this trend — most notably Koricich, who called it 'cover' for deep program cuts. Another problem: Nearly 1 in 5 people in rural places don’t have access to high-speed internet, compared with about 1 percent in cities, according to the Federal Communications Commission."

Rural Canadian town that once rejected immigrants by local law now embraces their contributions. What changed?

Habiba Hmadi, a native of Tunisia, lives in Hérouxville.
(Photo by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin of The New York Times)

Fearing further dilution of French culture, Quebec has been the outlier in broad Canadian support for immigration. In 2007, Hérouxville, Quebec, pop. 1,300, set a code of conduct that caused a national buzz with its bold message: Immigrants and their traditions were not welcome, and there would be no "stoning women to death in the town square," Christmas was celebrated, and Halloween was the only time citizens could cover their faces, reports Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times.

Ten years after Hérouxville's code was established, Canada adopted a sweeping pro-immigration policy, Onishi writes. Now the shift has made its way into Quebec, including Hérouxville. Bernard Thompson, the mayor of Hérouxville, Quebec, a one-time supporter of the town’s anti-immigrant code, told Onishi, "We now want as many immigrants as possible."

New York Times map

Hérouxville's cultural attitude shift "stemmed from a combination of factors, including an aging population, a low birthrate, the need to fill an acute labor shortage," Onishi reports. "But also profound shifts in views among younger generations and the personal journeys of individuals like Mr. Thompson.

“If we’re unable to respect each other’s culture, whether it’s religious or not, I think that’s a mistake,” Thompson told Onishi. “We have to show an openness.”

Canada's his continuing its pro-immigration policy: "Canada’s federal government has announced plans to welcome record numbers of new immigrants over the next three years, with the goal of adding 1.45 million immigrants to the country’s population of 39 million," Onishi reports. "In contrast to other Western nations, where immigration has cleaved societies and fueled the rise of political extremism, there is a broad consensus in Canada over the value of immigration."

They're sort of friendly. But kill them immediately.

A spotted lanternfly adult and nymphs. (Photo by Stephen Ausmus, USDA)

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is an invasive insect from China that was discovered in Pennsylvania in 2014. "The spotted lanternfly remains a problem in Pennsylvania and has become a growing concern in neighboring states as the invasive leafhopper migrates, and hitchhikes, south (noted here)," reports Dan Sullivan of Lancaster Farming. "Efforts by entomologists, extension agents, farmers and the general public to stay ahead of the curve through studying the insects' behavior have yielded some surprises."

Sullivan provides some expert spotted lanternfly knowledge and tips:

• They don’t bite people; they’re actually kind of friendly, according to one extension agent (but they do cause damage and present a nuisance, so don’t go adopting one for a pet; in fact, it is widely recommended that they be dispatched upon sight).
• They’re not killing landscape trees, but they will kill tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), a rapidly growing deciduous tree native to East Asia and a widespread invasive species across North America that is the spotted lanternfly’s favorite host plant.
• They damage grapevines by sucking out nutrients, thus reducing the plant’s ability to make energy through photosynthesis and starving it of the starch typically stored in roots for survival through winter.
• While they have not been shown to kill or damage stone fruit or nursery stock, they have presented additional tasks for commercial nurseries due to the inspections required to ensure that plants are free of spotted lanternfly before they are shipped.
• Contrary to initial alarm bells indicating they were impervious to controls, insecticides, including “softer” insecticides such as insecticidal soap, have been shown to be effective in dispatching spotted lanternfly.
• Their population numbers fluctuate from year to year.
• Beneficial predators — such as praying mantises, spiders, wheel bugs and birds — offer a biological control.
• Certain naturally occurring beneficial fungi, such as Beauveria bassiana, offer another biological control, especially in rainy seasons.
• For now, Pennsylvania regulatory measures will remain in place, e.g., businesses and agencies, especially those that transport materials, are required to obtain a permit indicating employees have been trained on identification and removal, and that items have been inspected to remove spotted lanternfly.
• Individuals may still assist in spotted lanternfly control and are asked to do so by inspecting items, especially those that have been stored outside, before moving them and to destroy any egg masses and spotted lanternfly nymphs or adults upon discovery

Delicious, nutritious and nutty, Low Country heirloom Carolina Gold rice has been revived and is again for sale

South Carolina's St. Helena Island offers a glimpse into our country's
crop heritage. (Photo by David McLain, National Geographic)

Ingredients for dishes like smoky collards and New Year's favorite Hoppin’ John were introduced to American tables by enslaved Africans. The West African diet has "a long tradition of eating plant-based whole foods—so-called blue-zones-type foods—has been handed down from generation to generation," reports Dan Buettner of National Geographic. "The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of enslaved West Africans captured in places such as Senegal and Angola and brought to the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia to cultivate Carolina Gold rice."

Carolina Gold is "a unique heirloom grain. A West African strain, it was first grown, cultivated, and cooked on American soil by enslaved peoples on plantations," Buettner writes. "In the 19th century, it became the dominant rice in the U.S. market, only to all but completely disappear after the Great Depression. Though you couldn’t find it on grocery store shelves for decades, it was legendary in the Low Country for its unique starchiness and earthy, nutty flavor."

BJ Dennis, a South Carolina chef, told Buettner he was on a mission to bring back the cuisine of his rice-growing ancestors. “We took the rustic soul of the Africans and the Native American techniques and made this special mash-up,” Dennis told Buettner. "The resulting cuisine is uniquely American, explosively delicious, and as I’ve been discovering, it draws from ingredients that support longevity."

In Savannah, Georgia, Buettner met "Roosevelt Brownlee, a 75-year-old dreadlocked Gullah chef who has cooked for the likes of Stan Getz and Nina Simone," Buettner reports. "In a backwoods kitchen, he and his cousin Rollen Chalmers whip up 'pink-eyed soup,' hoecakes and red peas—all accompanied by Carolina Gold cracked rice. As his T-shirt proclaims, 'Rice Is Life.'"

Thanks to the efforts of people Dennis and Chalmers, Buettner writes, "You can now find Carolina Gold rice again on grocery store shelves and online."

David Sawyer remembered as a changer of lives through challenges to build confidence; helped start AmeriCorps

By Al Cross

Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky 

David Sawyer, a Kentucky-grown back-to-the-lander who ran a student-service program at Berea College, helped start AmeriCorps and became an international consultant on the environment, civic engagement and a wide range of other topics, was remembered fondly Saturday as someone who changed people’s lives.

“He centered his life’s work on service, right livelihood,” longtime friend Peter Hille, president of the Mountain Association, said at a memorial service in Berea’s Union Church for Sawyer, who died Nov. 25 at his home in Portland, Oregon, at 71.

Hille said Sawyer took the beauty and suffering of life and “held them as if they were high-voltage cables, and with that current thrumming through him, he just glowed, didn’t he? David was incandescent, and he burned with the intensity of that truth.”

Hille and Sawyer, a Lexington native, met in the 1970s as neighbors, two of many who had moved to rural Kentucky to follow alternative lifestyles and try to live off the land.

David Hartwell Sawyer III

Sawyer became director of the Students for Appalachia service program at Berea, and when Bill Clinton became president and wanted to start a national service program for young people, the White House asked him to help start the pilot project started before Congress actually created AmeriCorps.

“We were chosen to train 50 people to train the first participants of the AmeriCorps program,” his widow, Jennifer Sawyer, said at the service. “That to me is the thing that will live on about David the most. He changed people’s lives.”

And not just with AmeriCorps. Most of the 15 speakers at the service recalled times when Sawyer turned their lives around.

Professor and therapist Blake Jones of Midway, Ky., said Sawyer “believed in us when we couldn’t believe in ourselves,” always using their last names when he got serious about something they should do. Jones recalled this exchange:
“Jones, I want you to be the student director at SFA.”
“I’m sorry, David, I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, and you will.”

“David called himself a Buddhist Christian and I just assumed that’s just what they did; they just said stuff and just walked away. . . . So I became the student director," Jones told the crowd. “I needed unconditional love and I needed accountability, and he gave both those things to me.”

Lisa Perkins-Orta spoke at the service. (Photo from Zoom)

Lisa Perkins-Orta, an art therapist in Huntington, W. Va., told a similar story.

“He saw in me something I never knew existed,” she said, recalling how she came to his home for an SFA staff retreat and “I started crying because of how it smelled. It smelled like my Mamaw’s house and I hadn’t been home for a long time.” Without asking her permission, Sawyer told the group the story: “Perkins came in here and just wept.”

“He just bared me in front of God and everybody,” Perkins said. “That moment gave me the life lesson that who I am and what I am experiencing is worth something. . . . That was the first time that I ever saw my tears as something strong. . . . I was a little girl from Webbville, Kentucky, who didn’t want to keep on being in Webbville, Kentucky. Because of his belief, I became who I am.”

After a decade at Berea, Sawyer facilitated other national leadership programs, a global conference on climate change, and spent four years working with the BP energy company, coaching senior leaders, designing the cultural dimension of its merger with Arco. He was executive-in-residence for Kansas City’s Kauffman Foundation, promoting citizen engagement and civic innovation; the first executive director of Social Venture Partners Portland, and chief culture officer for gDiapers, maker of the world's first flushable and compostable diaper. He co-founded Converge, a network of consultants who help form social-impact networks, and at his death was president of Context, a consultancy on strategy, leadership and culture. He worked in many fields, including sustainable agriculture, education reform, national service, social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, the emerging green economy, and multisector collaboration.

Some of this material appeared in the obituary published on The Rural Blog Nov. 30.

State water board in Kansas says the state should end its 'de facto' policy of draining the Ogallala Aquifer

The Kansas Water Authority decided Wednesday that the state "should scrap its de facto policy of draining the Ogallala Aquifer," Allison Kite reports for the Kansas Reflector. "Instead, the board said, the Kansas government should take steps to stop the decline of the aquifer, which supplies water to one-sixth of the world’s grain supply, and save it for future generations."

“It has taken decades for this to be said formally in writing by an official state body,” said Connie Owen, director of the Kansas Water Office. “This is nothing less than historic.”

The authority board voted almost unanimously to say in its annual report to the governor and legislature that the “policy of planned depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer is no longer in the best interest of the State of Kansas,” and to recommend the state create a formal process to establish goals and actions to “halt the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer while promoting flexible and innovative management within a timeframe that achieves agricultural productivity, thriving economies and vibrant communities — now and for future generations of Kansans.”

The language had wide support among board members. “My opinion of this is that it should have been done 15 years ago, or 20,” said Lynn Goossen, a farmer who is also the board of the groundwater management district in northwest Kansas.

Hite notes, "The Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water, stretches across parts of eight states from South Dakota to Texas. After World War II farmers started pumping water from it to irrigate crops in arid western Kansas, establishing the region as a booming farming economy. For decades, the water was used with little thought of ensuring enough remained for future generations. But now, the water is running out. Some parts of the aquifer have half the water they had before irrigation on the aquifer began. Parts of western Kansas have an estimated 10 years of water left. There’s little surface water since streams that reliably flowed through the area in 1961 all but disappeared, according to the Kansas Geological Survey."

Authority Chair Dawn Buehler said many farmers have been waiting on the government to tell them it’s time to do something: “We’ve heard that over and over from people — that, ‘Well, you know, we’re not at a dangerous zone yet because they’ll let us know when it’s time.’ I think the importance of today was saying, ‘It’s time.’ ”

Friday flora/fauna: Invasive black carp thrive in mid-America; homes found for L.A. ponies, ousted as city ends rides

Black carp (U.S. Geological Survey photo)

Invasive and damaging black carp have established themselves in the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois rivers, according to a study that is "the first to identify an established population, or one that is naturally reproducing and living to adulthood, anywhere in the U.S.," reports Meredith Howard of the Belleville News-Democrat in Illinois. The study was done by Southern Illinois University, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Missouri State University and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

USGS said the carp “prey on species such as snails and mussels and pose a risk to many already imperiled native mussels in this region.” Howard notes, "Mussels improve water quality by filtering out algae, bacteria and pollutants and they also provide nutrition for other species." The carp, native to east Asia, were imported to control vegetation in Southern fish farms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the recently passed water-resources appropriation expands federal efforts to control Asian carp.

Alessia Del Val, 4, on a Griffith Park pony. (LAT/Christina House)

Since 1948, pony rides have been available in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, but under pressure from animal-welfare activists who said (sometimes yelling at children during rides) that the horses were overworked, the city didn't renew the contract for the petting zoo, which expires Dec. 21. A veterinary inspection "did not show any outright signs of neglect or animal abuse, the expert found some animals were in need of help for saddle sores, as well as hoof and dental care," the Los Angeles Times reports. "The expert recommended better shelter and amenities, such as easier access to lower water troughs."

Owner Stephen Weeks worried that he wouldn't be able to find homes for more than 30 ponies, but he said he got 50 calls a day, and by Wednesday 25 had homes. Weeks told the Times the rest will probably go to a sanctuary so they can get medical care, and he chose not to sell any for auction or to another horse-ride business. “Some ponies are obviously capable of working, but as far as commercially working, it’s just my preference,” he said. “They’ve done that, and now they should experience something new in life, less work. ... It's almost like saying goodbye to a family pet.”

Photo from The Notebook by Poplar Terrace and Friends

Bradford pear trees were once a popular landscape planting, but they turned out to have several problems, including being invasive and hurting other species. It got so bad in Kentucky that the University of Kentucky is offering a bounty (seedlings of better species) for proof of destruction of Bradfords, a cultivar of the callery pear. In Louisville, "Bradford pears were aggressively growing into a field of white flowering trees on River Road, resulting in the destruction of the much-needed native species and the surrounding forest land," so they were removed, local philanthropist Christy Brown reports in her latest Poplar Terrace newsletter. "Ultimately, while it may be alarming to see so many trees uprooted, bear in mind that removing invasive species helps protect the biodiversity our River City relies on. In order to protect the resilience of our environment, we must protect the wild lands which enrich our health, culture, and economy."

Amid shaky finances in rural health care, Heartland Forward report suggests ways to improve access and services

By Worth Sparkman
Axios NW Arkansas

Affordability, telehealth and a trained, motivated workforce are the keys to keeping the engine of rural health care running smoothly. A Heartland Forward report outlines strategies policymakers and community leaders in rural America can use to improve health care access and services.

Many rural hospitals in the U.S. face a funding crisis. Many small, independent hospitals face possible closure or consolidation through acquisition as they struggle with finances. One in 10 hospitals in Texas and more than half of Mississippi's rural hospitals are at risk of shuttering.

The report analyzes data from Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee, where Heartland Forward convened focus groups and expert interviews, but researchers see potential applications for its concepts nationwide. Authors found three areas with the most possible impact:

• Increasing price transparency and working to reduce complexity in understanding the health care system can lead to residents using it more often for preventive care rather than acute care.
• Expanding access to telehealth by lowering policy barriers for providers and normalizing the tools for patients.
• Boosting the health care workforce through training, streamlining licensing regulations and providing advancement opportunities for practitioners.

True to its nature as a "think and do tank," Heartland developed three tools for communities in the six-state region to use to guide care-related planning and decision making:

• A policy recommendations document that provides a detailed map of barriers and opportunities to address affordability, telehealth and workforce issues.
• An interactive accessibility dashboard that provides detailed county, congressional district and state-level data on various health and wellness topics.
• An interactive labor market tool with detailed geographic data on 31 health care professions.

The bottom line: Researchers write that as access to health care declines in rural areas, the workforce becomes less productive and slows economic performance, so a focus on health and wellness will also rev up an area's economic vitality.

Holiday hits: From the gloomy octopus to the most gleeful holiday poem, let wonder guide your reading; and more ...

Illustration by Edward Koren, The New Yorker

By Heather Close

It's Friday! Take a moment to celebrate the uniqueness of our glorious planet and the joy of being alive. 

One little girl knows that there are rules for everything. So, when she decided to adopt a unicorn, she asked Animal Control for permission. And got it.

La Junta, Colorado, celebrates an unlikely friend, Aphonopelma hentzi, commonly known as the Oklahoma or Texas brown tarantula, which ranges as far east as Louisiana. This small town aims to become "Tarantula Capital of the World."

"Don't stand so close to me" was a popular song by the Police. It's also the mantra of the Gloomy Octopus--it doesn't sing. It throws things.

Need a lift out of winter melancholy? Reading about positive changes for birds and humans will make you smile.

Today, the hip Three Kings would bring gold, frankincense, myrrh and SPAM figgy pudding.

Heated, compressed and hopefully headed in the right direction, an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal explains fusion and what all the fuss is about.

Mermaids in Montana and mooncake makers in Philly's Chinatown are just two of the discoveries made by Boston Globe reporters who traveled across the nation and made some momentous stops.

Whether it's “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses, or music to cook and bake to, get those holiday play lists ready.

Still don't have a tree? There's still time. Pick a good one!

There are still so many good times to be had. A 'super-surge' holiday poem from The New Yorker will leave you feeling warm and hopeful.

News-media roundup: 2 Mich. weeklies die, but one revives; American Journalism Project may fund 4 news startups

Three Rivers, Michigan, has about 8,000 people. (Google map)

When the Traverse City Record-Eagle saw that the Three Rivers Commercial-News in southern Michigan was closing, it used it as an example of the value of news was not so community journalism in its appeal to readers for year-end donations. But today the Commercial-News is being revived by Michael Wilcox, owner of a small chain of papers in the region, the paper reports.

The news was not so good for the Straitsland Resorter of Indian River, Mich., which died because its owner wanted to retire and couldn't find a buyer after trying for three years, Rich Lamb, publisher of the Presque Isle Advance in the county to the east, writes in The Bulletin of the Michigan Press Association. "The Resorter is a money-making newspaper, so it seems odd to me there were no sale possibilities . . . Perhaps this will spark someone to pursue purchase."

The Kansas Press Association is offering its members an on-demand journalism training course aimed at address staffing issues, and some other state press associations are also offering it. “It’s really hard to convince a young kid that just graduated from a journalism school to move out to a little town of 900 people and work out there,” said Lindsey Young, a former high-school teacher who developed the course. She and her husband, Joey, own Kansas Publishing Ventures, which publishes four weeklies. The course has eight lessons and covers more than 30 topics. For more information, contact Joey Young at: joey@kspublishingventures.com.

The American Journalism Project, with support from the Google News Initiative, is launching a Local News Incubator to "seed and support new local news organizations led by exceptional talent, with the aim of advancing a new generation of impact-driven and innovative news organizations from conception through launch," AJP said in a press release. It will take applications through Feb. 15 from "founders with innovative ideas to advance local news. The incubator will support up to four startup ideas; each will receive $400,000 in seed funding, and personalized, hands-on support to complete a robust research and development process and fundraising campaign." In 2020, AJP helped establish Capital B and Mountain State Spotlight through a similar model. Since its launch in 2019, AJP has invested in 33 organizations. For more and the application, visit theajp.org/incubator. AJP and Google News Initiative are hosting an information session Jan. 12; register here.

Immigrants and urban migrants are helping small towns grow; how welcoming is your community to them?

By Devin Deaton

Action Learning Manager, Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group

Rural communities are generally considered friendly, welcoming places. While this may be true for some, there is also a strong history of suspicion of outsiders, especially if they look, sound, or act differently from the local population. This kind of resistance or rejection is a structural barrier to opportunity for the excluded groups and the larger community.

Recent data show that many rural communities are beginning to grow, thanks to an influx of new residents, many of whom are immigrants from all over the world. Today’s economy presents a challenge for longtime and new residents alike, and this is particularly true for immigrants who may have linguistic or legal barriers to work and social services. Rural communities that are more welcoming to immigrants and new residents are more successful at attracting residents and growing their economies.

It’s not only immigrants who need to be welcomed into rural communities. Some rural places are seeing an influx of newcomers from urban areas due to the rising costs of urban living and remote employment. Welcoming community initiatives are also helping build and restore positive community relationships between Native nations and nearby non-Indigenous residents.

The changing demographics and growing diversity of many rural communities present the opportunity for long-time residents to engage one another and newcomers in a process of mutual learning that can foster a healthier community dynamic.

We recently held a virtual networking session facilitated by our co-Executive Director Chris Estes with 120 rural leaders focused on these issues. Participants shared a few organizations helping their towns and rural places be more welcoming:

Welcoming America, particularly its Rural Welcoming Initiative, provides resources and technical assistance to rural communities seeking to become more welcoming to new residents, particularly immigrants. Welcoming America's Certified Welcoming program has served as a valuable roadmap for local governments seeking to build truly welcoming communities.

Community Heart and Soul is a process tailored for small towns that can help engage the 'missing voices' in rural communities. It is a resident-driven process that engages the entire population of a town in identifying what they love most about their community, what future they want for it, and how to achieve it.

 
Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute supports 'weavers' who have found a more connected way to live by working in neighborhoods and towns to make connections and lead with love. Weave connects and supports weavers within the community who are creating a more welcoming place for all.

Strong Towns advocates for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable, and inviting. They work to elevate local government to be the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place.

Rural practitioners emphasized the importance of adopting a formal welcoming plan at the city or county level. A welcoming plan can provide the strategic map to organize public and non-profit efforts at welcoming into a coherent whole. Welcoming information and happenings can be shared via social media pages, like this one from Dodge City, Kansas.

Conscious and intentional design of rural welcoming events is crucial. Whether it is designing a Welcoming Week that allows communities and businesses to showcase their cultural distinctiveness or storytelling sessions for both longtime and new residents, care must be taken to meet people where they are both physically and emotionally.

This can mean hosting gatherings at local immigrant-owned businesses or community churches rather than in public facilities. It means creating space for newcomers to bring their own food and culinary traditions, music, and cultural norms to an event. Encouraging visibility when designing an event will make it more inclusive and welcoming. Allow people to design their own ways to engage with community events instead of forcing them to get involved with the systems that already exist.

Welcoming communities require a foundation of trust. Practitioners emphasized the importance of establishing trust between longtime residents and newcomers and suggested that trust is a key ingredient to the success of a welcoming initiative.

Trust is built through hard, intentional work. Language is too often a barrier to trust, particularly with immigrant residents. Practitioners suggested that language exchanges, where residents spent time learning each other’s languages, were a good way to build trust and share culture. Aspen CSG recently published two resources on building trust and growing language skills with immigrant residents.

Open and honest communication is a primary way to build bridges among different social groups in a community. Practitioners emphasized that conversation must be two-way and that everyone should have the space for meaningful participation. This means that longtime, often white, residents must be open to and willing to enter initially uncomfortable spaces to experience new cultures, foods, and events as part of the welcoming process.”

In many communities, power is held by a local elite that can be resistant to change. Many rural practitioners suggest that shifting power dynamics is a big part of their local welcoming initiatives.
Power held by a small group can exclude many residents, not just immigrants or other newcomers. One rural practitioner from Alaska shared a story of how cultural and linguistic exchange between an Alaska Native tribe and a nearby non-native community promoted closer relationships and increased the desire of political leaders to find solutions across jurisdictional boundaries.

New FCC broadband map faulted by telehealth advocates; it's easier to challenge, but the deadline is Jan. 13

The Federal Communications Commission's new maps of high-speed internet service in the U.S. may be "a step in the right direction" but it leaves much to be desired, telehealth advocates say.

They told senators Thursday that the maps. which will guide Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding for internet expansion, "need to be significantly revamped -- as some communities are entirely missing from the maps -- to ensure the unserved and underserved are accurately represented," Cara Smith reports for Inside Telehealth. They want the FCC to extend the Jan. 13 deadline for comments.

"A government official told Inside TeleHealth that navigating the FCC maps also were confusing, so individual community members may have significant challenges navigating the data," Smith reports. "Even if the maps are corrected in time, lawmakers and stakeholders still worry about instances of fraud, waste and abuse from contractors receiving funding to construct broadband in unserved or underserved areas."

Smith notes that the Government Accountability Office, the bipartisan auditing arm of Congress, has "called for the White House to synchronize the over 100 federal programs that aim to expand broadband access to rural areas and other locations with limited or no access to internet, and to ask for congressional help if necessary. Without a national plan, GAO said, the federal government could miss the chance to expand internet access and increase access to essential services, like telehealth."

The new map is still based on reports from telecommunications companies, but at a more granular level, Robert Gallardo, director at the Purdue Center for Regional Development, told Kristi Easton of The Daily Yonder. "That’s the same glitch that we had before, which is providers reporting on their own,” he added. “Now you can go in and challenge that availability, but it does require a little bit of prep time, meaning you can see the options you have to challenge the availability piece.”

To challenge the map, "One has to include either a bill from the provider or include a screenshot from the website that shows the package is not available for that address," Eaton reports. "The worry, according to Gallardo, is that challenging the map takes some technology know-how that not everyone may have. And the deadline to challenge for this map is Jan. 13."