rural

People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.

Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut ... We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn__ the opposite equally true?

If it ran, a Bean would eat it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.

If it ran, a Bean would shoot it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.

The world grows ever complex. More urban. Less peaceful.

I was born for the peaceful life,for rural quiet:the lyre's voice in the wild is more resounding,creative dreams are more alive.To harmless leisures consecrated,I wander by a wasteful lakeand far niente is my rule.By every morn I am awakened unto sweet mollitude and freedom;little I read, a lot I sleep,fugitive fame do not pursue.Was it not thus in former years,that I spent in inaction, in the shade,my happiest days?

In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns.

I wish I could run away,_ Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients_ rooms, darting around like little ants. __ can__ leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway.___hy?_ asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. __t__ break her heart if I left.___in__ that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin_ up?___ot for me, it isn__.__ersey made a pitying face in his direction. __o, you wanna keep bein_ towed around with your mom, livin_ in a gross town like Danvers?___s there a choice?___eah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it__ too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates.

It was a country life, a precious existence.

Hush now, __is time to sleep and dream secrets of long ago.

An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below.

I keep forgetting that if you live in a big city only mad people talk to themselves.

_ in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of _ire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define. Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be. And by the way of the rural what may we say? A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say. Iohannes Scottus _riugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp. (Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)

The attendance of that brother was now become like the attendance of a demon on some devoted being that had sold himself to destruction

Frustrated, El Líder went home, rested his pitching arm, and started a revolution in the mountains.

Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That was a fact of factory life you couldn't know from the outside: Getting into a factory was easy. The hard part was getting out.

At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter__, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn__, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called __eal America,_ and I know it rankles some folks__ity folks, mostly__omething awful, and I wish I could tell them it__ only done out of politeness. That it__ only people saying nice things about the dying.

Rural and traditional escapism. That__ my angle. Places and events where we are free to relax and be ourselves, where nobody tells us to hurry along or conform or grow up. Somewhere we can properly live.