The tiny towns that dot the landscape of every rural region in the country provide endless fodder and perpetuate many a myth and misconception, the kind of stuff urban legends are made of.
I can only speak to the Rocky Mountains because I grew up in Wyoming where “men are men and the sheep are scared,” and have spent most of my adult life in Idaho where potato trucks have been known to tip over, spill thousands of pounds of spuds onto highways, and force temporary closures.
I’ll share what I know.
I can also say with 100 percent certainty that the wide open spaces we are known for promise to embrace anyone brave enough to endure the howling wind.
Welcome.
Here are 10 misconceptions about people who live in rural areas:
1) We are all farmers
Photo Credit: Susanne Nilsson/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
As much as I love home-grown food, I wouldn’t know the first thing about tilling the land. Too bad for me.
What’s more unfortunate is the fact that farms and other rural businesses are dwindling, which means the lack of job availability is driving country people into larger cities.
After the recession, deep poverty hit across the board, making rural life unsustainable for a large chunk of the 46 million people who live in rural communities.
But rural tradition is still strong in Idaho, especially during the fall potato harvest, when students in the eastern part of the state get a two-week break for “spud harvest.”
Yep, that’s right.
Kids get to miss school because farmers rely on the extra, strong hands to help with the potato crop, which will eventually be turned into delicious french fries.
2) We tip cows for fun
Photo Credit: Mikel Ortega/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
No, we don’t.
Because it can’t be done.
Cows weigh a thousand pounds or more and don’t sleep standing up.
If you want a good kick to the gut and risk death, go ahead and stand behind or next to a cow while trying to tip it over.
3) We are uneducated
Photo Credit: JACK SPARKS/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Just because the mainstream media attributed Trump’s presidential win to ‘uneducated rural America’ (the people who came out in droves to vote), doesn’t mean it’s true.
Rural areas are filled with all types of yahoos – from Harvard-educated yoga instructors, to small business owners and blue-collar workers, to freelance writers and tech gurus.
4) We are racist rednecks
Photo Credit: Joe Sepielli/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Here’s a stereotype that runs deep and can’t be summed up in one paragraph.
Let’s just say we don’t all accuse Mexico of sending rapists and criminals over the border, or call for a complete halt to Muslims entering the country.
We have been known to drive out white supremacist colonies, however.
5) We don’t know how to use the internet
Photo Credit: Toms Baugis/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
For eight years, I worked for a thriving e-commerce company that is well-known nationwide for its booklets of admission tickets to the most iconic attractions in big cities.
It was/is a highly coveted place of employment in a town of 3,000 people.
Because millions of ticket booklets are sold online, it’s kind of mandatory to know how to use the internets to be employed there.
6) We are survivalist nuts
Photo Credit: ▓▒░ TORLEY ░▒▓/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
While possessing canning and freezing techniques are great skills to have, not everyone is that resourceful.
Not everyone stocks their basements with bottled water, cans of beans, Spam, fruit cocktail and powdered Tang.
Maybe we should, though, with the way the world is heading.
7) We all shoot guns
Photo Credit: Peretz Partensky/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
We don’t all shoot and kill animals in the woods for meat.
The hunters I know are very respectful of the animal and the land.
Poachers are considered bad people.
The gun menacingly placed on the rack in the back of the pickup always intimidated me.
Can’t they just buy a handgun and put it in the glove box like everyone else?
8) We don’t have indoor plumbing
Photo Credit: Bill/ Flickr (CC by 2.0)
This is actually partially true.
It’s crazy to think that nearly 63,000 households in this country do not have complete plumbing.
This means 1.6 million people are living without indoor plumbing, including toilet, tub or shower, or running water.
Many Americans can still remember what it’s like to use an outhouse.
Relics of the past, outhouses are now cute little storage sheds with the crescent moon carved neatly into the door.
9) We use farmersonly.com to find dates
Photo Credit: Joey Harrison/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
We find our mates like everyone else – in bars, at the gym, and on the internet.
What’s funny is I’ve seen people on Tinder making the joke that they thought they were joining farmersonly.com.
The joke is on them: They are on Tinder.
10) We ride our horses to the bars
Photo Credit: Jean van der Sluijs/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Ok, this is true.
I’ve seen it in remote, rural towns, places where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid used to raise hell.
Although a horse probably isn’t the best designated driver, cowboys have been known to tie their horses to the hitching post in front of the bar.
Why else would a hitching post exist in front of a bar?
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Robb North/Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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The Cruel Reality Of Finding Love While Studying Abroad
By Caitlin Roberts
Our love was easy.
Our love was what both of us had always been searching for, and when I left him in the Paris Metro station that day, I really believed that the two of us would survive a year apart, but it was not that cut and dry.
It soon became this messy cluster of depression, missed phone calls, and living in this constant state of missing each other.
It destroyed us from the inside out and it led to him saying to me, “I think that we may have run our course.”
What I ultimately learned over this past year and some change, is that a long-distance relationship, with an ocean standing between the two of us, could be one of the worst decisions either of us have ever made, yet neither of us regret any of it.
Almost every girl dreams about going abroad and having the cliché, tall, dark and handsome man sweep them off their feet, but I never thought it would actually happen to me.
Something like that only happens in dreams, right?
So, when I arrived in London to spend a semester abroad, the last thing I thought would happen was to meet the love of my life.
When I met him, I had only been in the city for six days.
Hell, I had only gone to one class.
I just kept asking myself, “How is this happening to me?”
Our first conversation was about drinking tea and discussing history like we were invited by Catherine the Great of Russia to one of her salons in the 1700s.
That just completely knocked the wind out of me.
Not only did I meet a handsome English boy six days into my trip, I met one that loved history as much as I did and wanted to discuss it with me over tea.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven and that was only the beginning of the best, and simultaneously the worst, thing that has ever occurred in my life.
Just when I thought things could not get any better, January 24, 2015 happened.We spent the whole day shopping, eating lunch, flirting and just enjoying each other’s company.
It was that day when I realized that I was in love with him.
I was head over heels, for lack of a better term, in love with him.
Only two weeks had gone by and we were almost inseparable and I honestly thought I was crazy for feeling this way.
How could I know for sure after only two weeks?
Later that night, after we had way too much to drink with his friends and I was successful in having them all yell “Roll Tide” when we took tequila shots at a bar in Clapham, we were standing out in the cold air drunkenly goofing off waiting for our Uber to arrive.
I had said something completely ridiculous and he responded with a jovial laugh and said, “This is why I love you,” and pulled me closer to him.
Without hesitation, I responded by laughing and saying, “I love you too.”
For the first week after that night, we were very noncommittal with “I love you,” because we were both wary about saying it too soon, but it felt right so finally we said it.
We both put it out there, even though we were not sure who actually said it first on the street a few nights before or whether that one counted.
We said it sober instead of just texting the uncertain “I <3 you” and decided to embark on the greatest and most fulfilling relationship either of us had ever had.
The next three months were filled with too much netflix, The Simpsons, debating over whether or not putting Nesquik in milk was considered a milkshake, and going on dates to places like the Churchill War Rooms.
I felt so alive.
A Creperie in London. Photo Credit: Davide D’Amico/ Flickr (CC by 2.0)
I felt so safe and sure of myself.
Being with him gave me so much confidence to just be me and go after what I wanted.
He supported me and was genuinely interested in everything I had to say, even if I did talk about my love for Kate Middleton too much.
He loved me for me and wasn’t asking me to change a thing.
I didn’t feel like I needed to be someone I wasn’t, just to make him stick around.
My friends back home quickly noticed my change in demeanor.
I would light up whenever I would talk about him.
I was not trying to find faults that would allow me a way out, like I had done with every other guy I had ever been romantically involved with in the past.
This time was different and I really thought that this one was going to stick.
Fast forward to May of 2015, and my friends had arrived for our month long trip through Europe.
We checked off our eight days in London and the next stop was Paris.
He joined us for the last three of our five days and when I had to say goodbye to him on the afternoon of May 14, you could have thought that one of us was dying or that we were never going to see each other again.
The second thought could have honestly not been too far off.
We had only spent four months together, which has never seemed like a lot in retrospect, yet we both felt as if we were losing someone we had known for years.
We felt like we were losing a part of us and we didn’t know if we were ever going to get it back.
We stood there in the metro station, holding each other while constant waves of tears rolled down the shapes of our faces.
For me, no one else was there.
It was just the two of us, cherishing the last time we would physically feel our love for each other for half a year.
Then, it was over.
We both went our separate ways and embarked on the dreaded long-distance relationship that so many people avoid at all costs.
“I have searched so long for the perfect girl for me,” he said. “And now that I have found her, I’m never letting you go.”The next six months were awful in the sense that I was alone most of the time even though I was surrounded by friends who were constantly trying to cheer me up.
None of it seemed to work.
My body was constantly bogged down with an overwhelming sadness and I sunk into a state of depression that I had seen in others, but never experienced myself.
Facetime sessions, phone calls, and texts that read “I miss you,” and “I love you,” were becoming too much.
I was not only sad, but I was angry.
I couldn’t understand how I could find someone that I thought was perfect for me and I wasn’t able to be with them.
I was becoming bitter and angry because I was just so sick and tired of missing him.
Things on his end, 4,300 miles away, were just about the same.
We wanted so badly to make this thing that both of us had searched for, for so long work, but it seemed like it was only getting harder everyday.
November 14 is when he left Alabama after coming to visit me for two weeks.
After that date, nothing seemed to be going right.
Sweet, loving conversations turned into screaming matches over things that did not matter and times when both of us would spend half of our day angry at one another because we were six hours apart in time.
We began to rip apart what was left of this, piece by piece like animals.
Then, my visit in March, marked the end.
Something had been off for a really long time and it had driven a wedge between us.
Our Titanic hit the iceberg and started going down fast, but unlike the original, there were only two casualties this time.
Now, I have to ask myself, “How will I manage to get over him?,” because I never imagined that this would be the outcome.
I imagined it lasting for much longer, and possibly forever, but now I am seeing that some things are not meant to last, no matter how much you want them to.
I still love him with every inch of me and I can’t say I regret us, because I would be lying.
Part of me hopes that when I move to London later this month, our timing will be right this time.
Maybe in this version of the Titanic, Jack and Rose survive the turmoil and overcome everything that is thrown at them, but I absolutely cannot throw my life away by putting all that I have onto a sinking ship.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
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Is This South Africa’s Tiananmen Square Moment?
Bryce Swerhun had spent most of his time in Johannesburg safely away from the sounds of explosions near the University Of The Witwatersrand (Wits).
But something drew him to the campus on October 10 as scores of angry students gathered in a large protest for the elimination of college fees across the country.
What Swerhun, a Canadian who is in South Africa doing field work for his PhD program at City University of Hong Kong, saw there was nothing short of government sanctioned violence against young people on a scale rarely seen in liberal democracies.
Student organizers of the so called #FeesMustFall movement warned private security gathered on the steps of the Great Hall at the center of Wits’ campus that some among their number may start hurling stones at them unless they opened the doors to the building.
By the time Swerhun entered through the visitor gate and walked upon the scene, some protestors were indeed throwing stones at the security guards.
Then the police got involved.
“I saw the water cannon truck shoot up and spray the students below,” Swerhun said in an interview with RISE NEWS.
Swerhun said that “several hundred” student protestors were in the area around the Great Hall at the height of the clashes and that police were being very heavy-handed in the way in which they were breaking up the group.
Tear gas canisters leaving trails of smoke as they hit the ground. Rubber bullets thumping through the air. People yelling. People running.
Through the chaos in front of the Great Hall, Swerhun said that he saw one scene that reminded him of the troubling racist past of South Africa.
A white police officer had a group of black protestors cornered while allowing other students to freely pass. When a group of white students walked behind the officer without being stopped, the cornered black students started to argue how unfair it was.
This is what has become of Wits, one of the world’s top universities. Sad no? pic.twitter.com/3ja1OfCV0g
— Sure Kamhunga (@SureKamhunga) October 11, 2016
At a certain point, Swerhun decided that he had seen enough and that he wanted to get back to the safety of his hotel room.
He walked behind the Great Hall, where he spotted a church where some students seemed to be gathered.
He thought that he could escape from the campus by going through the church.
“The priest then slumped over and then the blood was pouring out. They shot him because he defied them.”
What follows sounds like it is straight out of movie.
“There was a significant moment that reminded me of Tiananmen Square,” Swerhun said.
When he reached the church, most of the students in the area where gathered in a parking lot. There he saw a priest in white robes standing in the entrance.
“He [the priest] seemed to be making a statement, that he was there and it was a place of refuge,” Swerhun said.
But then a massive armored police vehicle started racing towards the church.
“It was moving at quite a speed and everyone is running away,” Swerhun said. “When I get behind a parked car, I see the priest put his arm and the vehicle backed up and left.”
Joy swept through the crowd but it was a short-lived feeling.
“Another armored vehicle came and started shooting rubber bullets at random, Swerhun said. “The priest then slumped over and then the blood was pouring out. They shot him because he defied them.”
Swerhun said that the shooting of the priest had a profound impact on the people who witnessed it.
“Some people got really angry and I saw someone say ‘call up the people with the petrol bombs.'”
“This was nothing but a brutal show of state force,” Swerhun said. “Those police in the vehicle were not in any danger.”
The priest was then brought into the church were he was tended to by private paramedics.
Despite being shot in the face with at least one rubber bullet, he was able to walk out of the church to a waiting car.
While the violence has largely been ignored by the world’s media, it shouldn’t be.
The issue is unlikely to go away even though things are starting to calm down on the streets.
Sure Kamhunga, a political commentator who has a large Twitter following said in an interview with RISE NEWS that the government should do more to end the clashes.
“Meet the student body. Listen to their demands. Offer a solution that paves way for mutual understanding,” Kamhunga said in way of advice to President Jacob Zuma’s government. “Students have already proposed a funding model and that is a good start to reach a common understanding and solution.”
Calling Young South African Writers, Journalists And Leaders: Tell Your Story And Make A Difference
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
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The Strange But True Story Behind How The Internet Discovered The Identity Of “Grateful Doe” 20 Years After His Death
By Erika Hills
After over twenty years, a South Carolina family is able to have closure thanks to the help of some resourceful Internet sleuths.
Known only as “Grateful Doe” for two decades, Jason Patrick Callahan was involved in a fatal Emporia, VA car accident in June 1995 while following The Grateful Dead’s 1995 tour.
According to The Washington Post, authorities were able to quickly identify the driver but not the passenger.
Due to the extent of Callahan’s injuries, it prevented them from accurately sketching or describing him. Callahan was hitch-hiking along the East Coast, WSOC-TV reported, which further increased the difficulty in identification.
On Dec. 9, the Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS) confirmed that Grateful Doe was 19-year-old Callahan from Myrtle Beach.
Volunteers and amateur detectives on the true-crime forum WebSleuths began working on Grateful Doe’s case in July 2005.
Ten years ago users on the site started cross-referencing the case with hundreds of entries in the missing persons’ database, The Washington Post reported.
WMBF-TV reported that following an updated facial reconstruction of Grateful Doe this past year, the case caught fire once more. This time, users on Reddit and Facebook joined the efforts to give him a name and his family closure. On the Grateful Doe subreddit and Facebook page, many people came together to post tips, updates, photos, and even the original newspaper article describing the accident.
Information indicating that Grateful Doe may be Jason Callahan was received on social media a year ago. It led to the Myrtle Beach Police Department working diligently alongside other agencies to link both cases by collecting DNA samples.
As they waited in anticipation, many people following the case expressed their elation in the mere possibility of it being solved after so long.
11 months later, upon the news of Callahan being identified, people from different corners of the Internet united.The relentless support and hard work of countless strangers, in a mission to bring a name to the nameless and closure for a family, has finally paid off.
“Rest in peace, Jason Callahan. I am so thrilled you have your name back,” a Reddit user commented on Dec. 10.Have a news tip? Send it to [email protected] Like to write? You can become a Rise News contributor.
Cover Photo Credit: Grateful Doe Facebook Group
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