That first summer, Celedon asked her youth-engagement group to set up an evening workshop with Southside teenagers. Meet at the downtown library and bring enough Hmong sausage and rice to feed 40. Get the kids to tell you about community needs from their vantage. And keep it fun. “It got off to a slow start,” […]
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Anne Hartley’s brick house in Ebony, Va., overlooks windswept fields, a Methodist church, a general store and the intersection of two country roads, a pastoral setting that evokes an Edward Hopper painting or a faded postcard from the South. Now this scene is being threatened, Ms. Hartley said, by a plan to build what every […]
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CALGARY, Alberta — Judy Greenwood did not want to leave. But when the evacuation alerts on her phone blared repeatedly and emergency officials knocked on her door, she and her husband loaded their four cats into the car and drove away from their rural hamlet to escape approaching wildfires. In much of the western province […]
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LAS PALMITAS, Mexico — Pedro Parra stood by his horse’s side as the animal dropped to the ground under the weight of anesthesia. Its four hooves flailed for a moment, then ceased, and a team of volunteer veterinarians rushed in. One placed a pillow under the patient’s neck; another tied a rope around a back […]
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North Carolina Democrats weren’t sure what to expect when Anderson Clayton, 25, won their election for chair, making her the youngest state party leader in the country. At one of her first meetings with state party officials, she said, one looked at her with a worried expression and said, “I didn’t know if you were […]
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CLEVELAND, Texas — The sound of gunfire — whether from hunting, or target practice, or celebration — is common in much of rural America. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Texas, where the occasional volley rarely raises alarm. So when someone from an immigrant family from Honduras called 911 on Friday night to […]
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LOGANVILLE, Wis. — Brenda Statz remembers the rain on the day they lost Leon, her husband of 34 years. The deluge had fallen for weeks, flooding their fields, delaying the harvest, pounding the roof of the barn where Mr. Statz finished his morning chores, then ended his life. It was Oct. 8, 2018, a Monday. […]
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Many clients have been spurred by the pandemic, which “definitely changed the mind-set of people living in Japan regarding the idea of rural living,” Mr. Allen said. “The fact that property in the Japanese countryside is by and large undervalued and there are viable properties that are almost turnkey has finally dawned on these people.” […]
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NEW HOME, Texas — Bright yellow uprights tower over what was recently a flat expanse of cotton fields, now transformed into football turf. Nearby, cranes pull up the walls of what will soon be a new elementary school. Not too long ago, you could count on two hands the number of annual graduates from the […]
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An Oklahoma state education board could vote as early as Tuesday on whether to approve the nation’s first religious charter school, potentially setting up a high-profile national legal battle over whether taxpayer money can be used to directly fund religious schools. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa are seeking […]
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Nowhere are the disparities more apparent than in health care. Technically, it has long been available to all, thanks to the universal health care law passed when Andrés and Marleny were children. But in practice, the barriers to access are often insurmountable: a lack of reliable transportation; clinics that are understaffed and often difficult to […]
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Along the riverbanks of Eastern Kentucky, the redbud trees are just starting to bloom, their branches still lumbering under the weight of last summer’s catastrophic flood: Lawn chairs, trampolines, twisted gutters and school backpacks remain high in the treetops, each item a persistent and disorienting sign of how life here was turned upside down last […]
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GREENWOOD, Miss. — Since its opening in a converted wood-frame mansion 117 years ago, Greenwood Leflore Hospital had become a medical hub for this part of Mississippi’s fertile but impoverished Delta, with 208 beds, an intensive-care unit, a string of walk-in clinics and a modern brick-and-glass building. But on a recent weekday, it counted just […]
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The 30 women sat in wooden chairs, facing each other in a rectangular formation. At the front of the room was the ruling Communist Party’s hammer and sickle logo, with a sign declaring the meeting’s purpose: “Symposium of unmarried young women of the right age.” Officials in Daijiapu, a town in southeast China, had gathered […]
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Conservatives have approved a series of ballot measures in pursuit of an improbable plan to redraw the state’s border. We spent time in the region under dispute to see what the debate says about the country’s divisions. WHY WE’RE HERE We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. Residents in eastern Oregon […]
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For decades, institutions of higher education provided steady, well-paid jobs in small towns where the industrial base was waning. But the tide of young people finishing high school is now also starting to recede, creating a stark new reality for colleges and universities — and the communities that grew up around them. As Americans have […]
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She mentioned Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Mary Peltola of Alaska, and Senators Jon Tester of Montana and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, as examples of elected officials with an unusually broad appeal because they understand the priorities of their districts or states. In her case, those priorities center on relieving economic despair and providing […]
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TOPPENISH, Wash. — Three days before Christmas, the only hospital in this remote city on the Yakama Indian Reservation abruptly closed its maternity unit without consulting the community, the doctors who delivered babies there or even its own board. At least 35 women were planning to give birth at Astria Toppenish Hospital in January alone, […]
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The increase in loyalty among white Democratic identifiers, he continues, “is due largely to their increased liberalism because defections” to the right “among white Democrats” have been heavily concentrated among those with relatively conservative ideological orientations. This increased loyalty has also been apparent in other types of elections, including those for U.S. Senate and House […]
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Six people were killed in a “series of shootings” in a rural Mississippi town on Friday, the authorities said, adding that the suspected gunman was in custody. Bailey C. Martin, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, confirmed the killings in Arkabutla, a town of about 290 people about 45 miles south of Memphis. […]
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WARWICKSHIRE, England — The S.U.V. trundled along the winding English country road at dawn, its five masked occupants decked head to toe in black as the hills of the Warwickshire countryside rolled past. Squinting through the rain-flecked windows, they spotted their target in the distance: hunters on horseback on the grounds of a grand 18th-century […]
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Andrew Crawley, an economist at the University of Maine who is scrutinizing housing, labor and school data for clues to the future, said the number of workers in the state is still down since the pandemic. School enrollment may be ticking up, he added, but so far, the results are inconclusive. “For now, it’s a […]
Read MoreELK CREEK, Neb. — In this rural part of Nebraska, county-board agendas include moratoriums on solar farms and some residents scowl when they pass the handful of wind farms that have sprouted. But the idea of a new mine that could help power the transition to renewable energy has received broad support. The tenor of […]
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