Whoo-Wee, what a first week of 2021.
As I’ve talked about here, I recently finished a PhD where my research topic was focused on causes of rural out-migration. In short, what is happening in a place like WV that causes people to leave, when we know that folks in this place desperately want to stay?
(you can read more, if you are interested here: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7568/).
As I did this work, the differences in politics and resources between rural and urban kept coming up as a huge, massive, critical difference, and the politics for residents in the places being “left behind”.
What this leads to are lines of stress - where people that should be on the same side, and want the same outcomes, don’t - and I learned a long time ago that telling people they are bad people for feeling the way they do isn’t a productive way to make change. At the same time, I don’t subscribe to the view that the best way to fix anything is by destroying it. I also don’t think you can wish or “complain” away change - which seems to be much of what the tension in my little region is about. The change - long predicted to come - is here, and folks are not doing well at managing, understanding, or working through that change.
I’m not sure what to do with all of that - but having honest, open, and non-inflammatory conversations, where we start with the same set of facts seems key. How we can get to that point, strangely, seems almost out of reach.
Photo of a really fascinating sheet of ice on a pond, where I think the colors are due to different stresses and thicknesses in the ice.
Have a great weekend.