When I went to bed last night, Columbia University and, to a lesser extent, NYU, were in the news in relation to student protests framed as "pro-Palestinian." UC Berkeley has been in the news for several weeks in relation to the stances that students there have taken. So, imagine my surprise when I awakened to news this morning that had humble and ruralish Cal Poly Humboldt--until a few years ago even more humble Cal State Humboldt--in the news. Here's what the California sun wrote this...
NBC news reported under the headline "Tammy Baldwin fights to maintain appeal in rural Wisconsin amid Democratic slide." The subhead is "The senator has outrun other members of her party in rural areas before. This November, she'll have to manage being on a ballot with Donald Trump." Here's the gist of the story: Baldwin is bracing for a tough re-election race against likely Republican nominee Eric Hovde, a multimillionaire and bank owner who loaned $8 million of his own money to his campaign...
I want to wrap up this series about the Public Policy Institute of California's "Spotlight on Rural California" with a nod to budget priorities and how rural people and places may not rank high with policymakers having to make hard decisions about cuts. In this regard, Chris Lopez, of Rural County Representatives of California, commented at the event, "We're going into a tough budget year and we [rural communities] want to be part of the conversation." Ashley Swearengin, who leads the Central...
As reported by Axios, President Joe Biden has opened ten field offices in North Carolina, a crucial battleground state that could decide the 2024 Presidential election. The Biden campaign has focused its efforts on urban and suburban voters, believing that they represent a constituency that could give the incumbent President the state and its 16 electoral votes. Biden only lost North Carolina by 1.34% (or 74,483) votes, and it was the only state that Donald Trump won while also failing to win...
Russell Banks' latest book, American Spirits, was published posthumously a few months ago, and reviewers have been mostly positive about it. I recently got around to reading it and found the insights regarding rural folks, incluidng their attachment to place, quite compelling. This excerpt is from the first of the three stories, "Nowhere Man," which involves a man, Doug Lafleur, who, with his siblings, sold their interest in the land they inherited from their father (Guy Lafleur) in the rural...