Editorials
‘Rich Men’ writer shares inspiration for lyrics
By Heather Close
The Rural Blog
Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond” exploded onto the charts shortly after he and a friend posted it. The song is heartfelt and includes political insults for just about everyone, but it also leaves questions about its singer. Who is Anthony Oliver? What does he want the song to say to listeners? “Anthony said that he wrote this music for his mental health, as he was dealing with depression, Brian Carlton of The Farmville Herald reports. “And he believes they connect with people because listeners know he believes what he’s singing.”
The singer gave the country insight into his views with a post on his social media accounts, Carlton writes. “’I’m sitting in such a weird place in my life right now. I never wanted to be a full-time musician, much less sit at the top of the iTunes charts. Draven from RadioWv and I filmed these tunes on my land with the hope that it may hit 300k views. I still don’t quite believe what has gone on since we uploaded that. It’s just strange to me.’”
Carlton reports, “’First off, Anthony wrote, his legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. His musical handle was done as a tribute. ‘My grandfather was Oliver Anthony, and Oliver Anthony Music is a dedication not only to him but 1930’s Appalachia where he was born and raised. . . . Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times. At this point, I’ll gladly go by Oliver because everyone knows me as such. But my friends and family still call me Chris. You can decide for yourself; either is fine.’ . . . Anthony said he dropped out of school at age 17 in 2010, later earning his GED in North Carolina.”
Hard work with little to show for it is one of the song’s themes--its lyrics cry out from Anthony’s personal experiences. Carlton adds Anthony’s post: “‘I worked multiple plant jobs in Western NC, my last being at the paper mill in McDowell County. I worked the 3rd shift, six days a week, for $14.50 an hour in a living hell. In 2013, I had a bad fall at work and fractured my skull. It forced me to move back home to Virginia. Due to complications from the injury, it took me six months or so before I could work again.’”
Exploring a non-profit model for rural journalism
By Al Cross
Director Emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky
Judy Woodruff of PBS continued her reports about journalism and democracy on “NewsHour” with a story about a rural Virginia editor-publisher who charges $5 a copy for her weekly paper, and a look at the prospects of journalism being funded by philanthropy as well as advertising and the audience.
“While that nonprofit model is showing promise in urban settings, economic realities persist for small, local newspapers that still depend on subscriptions and advertising,” Woodruff reports, referring to The Recorder, a weekly that covers three counties in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia and was the first newspaper to report plans for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project abandoned in the face of public opposition (and the first to report its demise, she says). Editor-Publisher Anne Adams raised her single-copy price to $5 in 2017, and when the pandemic hit in 2020, her readers helped her stay afloat with donations.
But few rural newspapers are asking for donations or charging that high a price for single copies, which would seem to require a certain level of quality that is harder to achieve when profit margins have become thin. “There just isn’t sufficient subscriber revenue to pay the bills, and of course, there’s not sufficient philanthropic dollars to lift them up over the profit margin,” newspaper researcher Penny Abernathy of Northwestern University told Woodruff.
It may take a different way of thinking. Sarabeth Berman, head of the American Journalism Project, which is supporting 41 newsrooms, including Mississippi Today, the Pulitzer Prize winner that was also featured in Woodruff’s report, said “These organizations are really thinking of their financial structure in the same way we think of other organizations that are really essential to our communities, like libraries and museums and other institutions that stitch us together.”
That’s harder in rural areas. Abernathy said, “These smaller communities are kind of at a loss as how you go about getting that initial ignition that brings people together and helps ‘em understand that they can do this, they can raise that money to support local news operations.”
She said, “Increasingly I’m worried that we’re evolving into a nation of journalistic haves and have-nots. That has huge implications for not only our democracy but for our society: How do we come together around a common set of facts to solve the issues that are confronting us in the 21st century?”
An earlier report in Woodruff’s series focused on another great rural editor-publisher, Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record of Texas, which now exists only on Facebook after it stopped printing in March.
Recovery is for everyone
Submitted by Maj. John G. Donovan, U.S. Army, Ret.
Board Chair, Recovery Community Network
Every September, the nation comes together to recognize National Recovery Month. Recovery Month calls us to bring awareness to the ever-growing recovery community.
“Recovery Month is more than just an annual observance, National Recovery Month represents a powerful opportunity for lowering stigma and increasing recovery options through community cooperation and collaboration,” said Katie Blue, the executive director of the Recovery Community Network.
Started in 1989, Recovery Month educates Americans that substance use help and mental health services can facilitate someone living with a substance use disorder to lead a full, healthy, and rewarding life. Recovery Month is a celebration of recovery. It’s a chance to raise our voices and recover out loud so that those who are struggling don’t have to suffer in silence. Moreover, it’s an opportunity to unite through a shared commitment to recovery.
Recovery Month recognizes that there are millions of Americans whose lives have been transformed through recovery. Unfortunately, these successes often go unnoticed by the broader population. Recovery Month brings attention to recovery by accenting the positive. Recovery month provides a vehicle for people in recovery to share their recovery stories and thereby increase awareness and understanding about mental health and substance use disorders.
Recovery Month celebrates the gains made by those in recovery, just as we celebrate health improvements made by those who are managing other health conditions such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. This observance reinforces the positive message that behavioral health is essential to community health. Recovery Month reminds us that prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover. After all, recovery is for everyone, and it benefits everyone too.
Seasonal page is about to turn
Inside the Outdoors
Mike Rahn
“What’s your favorite season?” It’s a question asked routinely of Minnesotans. A fair question, given the great contrast between our summer, fall, winter, and spring; from oven-hot temperatures and brow-mopping humidity in summer, to extremity-numbing cold in the depths of winter, and all gradations in between. Not surprising, there are strong opinions on the subject.
There is contrast not only in weather and our personal comfort zones, but in our favorite pursuits, many of which—like hunting, foraging, or ice fishing, for instance—are decidedly seasonal. Some of us—the luckiest ones—find something appealing about all of the climatic divisions of the outdoor year, each in its turn.
We’ve reached another seasonal page-turning time here in Minnesota, based on the abundant evidence in what we see, hear, and feel around us. And—no less important—in what is on our minds as we greet the autumn of the year.
For the first time in many weeks, the morning temperature here in the north-central part of the state has dipped into the 40’s. On the water, anglers flinging musky lures shortly after dawn on Sunday were in long pants and breeze-cutting windbreakers; one even a classic buffalo-plaid wool mackinaw. Here on this lake, where the family cabin has stood for nearly three-quarters of a century, the best “musky bite” is considered a fall event, though there has been no shortage of anglers heaving outsized baits and executing the classic figure-eight-at-the-boat retrieving routine for much of the summer. Time will tell if their success ratio improves now as the lake gradually cools with longer nights and the declining angle of the sun.
The first of the state’s hunting seasons are about to begin, with the September 1st start of the mourning dove season, and on Saturday September 2nd the start of a five-day early teal hunt. This is the third year of a three-year experiment authorized for Minnesota by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, a trial to assess its impact on the flyway’s teal population. Most states in the Mississippi Flyway hold an early teal hunt before the start of their general duck and goose hunting seasons, the reason being the habit of blue-wing teal to migrate earlier than many duck species, and thus be less available to waterfowl hunters.
This year’s early teal hunt begins three weeks before the start of our regular duck season, on September 23rd. The special teal hunt has not been without controversy. Some have been concerned that hunters will mistake other duck species for teal—especially under low light conditions at sunrise and sunset—and harvest birds that are not yet legal targets, though monitoring by Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) personnel during years one and two reportedly showed acceptable compliance.
The Fish & Wildlife Service and DNR will evaluate the three-year trial after this season to determine if the early teal season will remain part of the state’s waterfowl hunting framework in future years. Minnesota’s early over-water Canada goose season also begins September 1st, ruffed grouse and archery deer season begin in a mere two weeks on September 16th, and the fall wild turkey season September 30th. Can all this really be so close at hand?
One of fall’s appeals for just about everyone is its color, when trees cease producing chlorophyll and the latent colors that have been hidden in leaves become visible. There is already early evidence in the occasional maple showing a splash of brilliant orange. Frequently, this will begin with just a branch, or a major limb changing color ahead of the remainder of the tree. I’ve always maintained that the oranges and reds of autumn are best appreciated before the so-called peak of color. The contrast between orange and red and some still-vibrant greens is better, to me anyway, before the entire landscape is awash in fall colors.
Sumac leaves have begun to turn to reds and oranges, too, especially on sunny, well-drained slopes. Sumac is one of my wife’s targets for her fall weed harvest, the “crop” to be used in decorating our home’s window boxes after the colorful annual flowers they’ve held all summer have been stung by a heavy frost. Sumac produce elongated, candle-like clumps of reddish berries that remain colorful through much of the winter. Stems of red osier dogwood, flower stalks of tansy, and other dried weeds and seed heads complete the September find-and-gather list, much of which is ready for harvest already.
The hummingbird feeder I received for Father’s Day has been a big hit with the local ruby-throated hummers, but we’re getting close to the time when they leave us to migrate south to such destinations as the Gulf Coast, Mexico, Central America, and some even to the West Indies. Dependent as they are on flower nectar for survival, hummers can’t afford to wait too long, or they may risk gaps in the food supply necessary to make it to their winter destinations.
There are many other indicators of the transition from summer to autumn. Members of that flock of 11 young mergansers on our lake—now down to 10, impressive survival by any measure for wild creatures—are now almost indistinguishable in size from their mother, as the group pursues minnows in the shallows.
The leaves of soybeans in our local farmers’ fields are beginning to turn bright yellow, and sweet corn—my favorite food group—is in good supply at farmers markets and roadside produce stands. Road ditches are sporting purple fall asters, yellow brown-eyed Susan, and—of course—goldenrod to torment those with allergies. The creamy, grey-white berries of gray dogwood—an absolute favorite ruffed grouse food—are in evidence, too. Find them, and grouse are likely somewhere in the neighborhood!
Coffee out on the deck at dawn seems to demand a sweatshirt, more mornings than not. To those who love fall, it’s a welcome feeling. Welcomed along with all those other signs that a seasonal page is about to turn.
