And I could also write a bit about how it was hell and I fervently hope it dries up and blows away. The whole “sense of place” study is laden with emotional connections. For example, in my area they’ve looked to consolidate the rural schools that are 500-800 kids, K-12, but no one wants to give up their identity to…

Being from one, it is sad. And as a social scientist by training, it pushes some pet peeve buttons that community succession isn’t something we ever talk about, but then again, getting the biologists a minute to talk about their version isn’t easy in today’s world, either.

A former coworker once had to have a hearing on his asylum where the US was seeking to return him to Central America because, sure, his dad and uncles and brothers were all on the death squad lists, but he was a just barely 18 so he’d be okay. It wasn’t “your ethnic group is being targeted but there’s no proof of your…

It is. But it was the norm I grew up with. To be fair, it may have been presented as a bit more nuanced—sure, the doctor isn’t stupid, per se, but he’s not one of us, and if he was he’d do honest work instead of scamming insurance companies (ie, every person is cheating everywhere in their minds, as part of why they…

This was very like my hometown. The male ideal was a state or county highway job where you had a union wage (but cursed out Detroit unions for destroying America) and were laid off for hunting season, which trumped everything else.

As someone who made it out, I love (or hate read) this type of stuff because I’m still looking to understand myself and my conflicts even as I’m now an old. I can’t speak to wider audiences, but I’m a sucker for it every time.

Oh, how the white (former) teen hockey moms in my town talk trash about the Native (former) teen hockey moms in the next town over.

A few years ago, we nearly had a fistfight in a rural economics class between the forestry and environmental ed students about whether the towns should dry up.

But what if she settles down with a guy who wants kids, and she can’t give him any? That’s not meant to be facetious—that’s what women I grew up with have said after kid 5. I know “toxic masculinity” is too buzzwordy in some sectors, but it’s the norm in the farm/timber town I grew up in.

It’s funny (not *ha-ha*, but *sob softly*) that Sinclair is all over the news now because, for a lot of us in places in Appalachia, Adirondacks, etc., there’s been a conservative monopoly on our news/entertainment/print since the beginning of time. I was 12 before we could get a tv station that originated more than an…

My high school graduated the first of the students to ever go on to be MD, JD and PhD in the early 1990s. In a town founded in the 1840s with a history of good test scores, lauded educational programs and four colleges within an hour’s drive. To my knowledge, these three are still the only ones to get these degrees.…

To not be able to talk to aunts and uncles. To never know your cousin’s families. To not have anything to say to former classmates when you see them other than bland weather or sports, and half the time that’s foreign territory.

Yes, this. Thanks for phrasing it as you did.

As someone from this background, yes.

Perhaps it is selfish. But that doesn’t change that it happens and, for a lot of women in very poor circumstances, it’s the only way they know to gain any self-value.

I grew up in this, so it’s sort of weird to see it described as an outsider’s perspective. But the way you describe it, from the Shriver report, sounds like my experience.

As someone from a similar background, I appreciate the coverage. It’s maddening to me that I hate and love the culture and my home so much at the same time.

I like to apply this to trips when it’s just me and spouse, too. If we’re going somewhere I have to wear a suit and take any sort of tourist-trap tour, it is not a vacation. It’s just a different type of work.

My inlaws have sanded their taste buds and heat sensors off over the years and it is always anyone but their own fault when food isn’t right. I can barely bear to eat with them anymore.

[Emily Blunt]?