Wowser...

Do I ever miss writing! it's not that I haven't felt like writing, it's that I haven't had 1. time, 2. focus, 3. enough of an urge to overcome my apathy (I may come back to that feeling later...)

In any case...how much positive can a girl say about the New Yorker!? If I have said it once I've said it a million times...I love the New Yorker. In the Sept 12 2011 issue George Packer wrote an incredibly depressing article about how our country (since 9/11) is 'coming apart'; that was also the title I believe. Packer profiled Mt Airy NC as one of our cities that is feeling and experiencing this decline and loss, and oh my, there are no easy answers when it comes to vets returning home w/o futures, loss of jobs and what used to be called the local industry, and just general malaise on the part of many of these rural small towns across America.

Of course I spend the rest of yesterday and today trying to feel optimistic and brainstorm some ways that towns and realities like this could be re-vitalized again, and for the long run. My mind seems to always turn to agriculture as an option; and I think Packer mentioned something about small towns doing something local and home-grown, but that in effect all it was doing was supporting the ever-widening gap between lower and upper class and the haves/have nots. What came to my mind was a small rural farm producing organic meat that then gets shipped off to CA to a restaurants that charge $20 a pound for it (of course Packer gave a economy/financially framed reference). I thought my idea wasn't a bad one, in that NC had lots of land, farmers who know how to raise cattle, etc. already in place, but I too was saddened to think that putting that kind of industry in My Airy NC would only support the capitalism and have/have not mentality already in place and most probably not 'do' anything substantial for re-building a long-term economic solution to what's already been destroyed. (At least I thought of something though!)

Packer refereed to what it used to be like in these small towns, and I know them too, having spent a great deal of time on my grandparents farm outside of Athens Ohio; families within a community, local businesses, usually some kind of larger industry (in NC's case it is/was textile manufacturing), local schools and businesses, etc. But what with that industry now shipped overseas, Packer raises some solid issues to think about, and I nearly came to the conclusion that small towns like that are pretty much doomed when these kind of changes occur.
I still think this story supports some of my strong feelings that,
1. We need to amend public education to include much stronger training and development programs for the trades (and not just heating and air conditioning repair),
2. We need to include a much more pragmatic curriculum, such as balancing a checkbook, how to cook and eat healthily, how to sew, etc. (more Home Economics)

Since I think about eating and nutrition and food production a lot, I was hard pressed to come up with any suggestions for other possible routes of rural renewal that didn't or lessened promotion of that ever-widening gap...it's a tough, complex issue and Packer was saying exactly that.

Overall, Packer wrote a fine article that has me thinking.

(Speaking of thinking; I will have to check out Bath and Body works (I think that's the company) that went into Athens OH to start their business (I believe he owner lived in that town as a boy?))

And that's a street in My Airy NC in the picture above...all nice and 'normal' looking, uh?