Letters To Rural America: Different Roads, Familiar Problems

One of the things we hoped would happen when we started Pickup Trucks & Progress was pretty simple. We wanted rural people to have a place to speak for themselves.

Not somebody in Washington D.C. explaining rural America. Not a consultant with a PowerPoint telling us what folks in the country supposedly think and care about. We wanted to hear from the people who live here.

Our subscribers now come from rural communities all across America. Different states, different accents, different crops in the fields and different mountains on the horizon. But we've learned something along the way. A whole lot of the problems sound mighty familiar.

Recently, we received two Letters to Rural America from subscribers here in rural Virginia.

Janet Blanding of Fancy Gap wrote about something that ought to concern anybody who pays taxes and expects government to answer questions. Her letter, “Public Records Belong to the Public,” describes citizens facing FOIA costs running into the thousands of dollars while trying to obtain records involving economic development and a proposed data center project. Her point is simple enough: public records aren't much good to the public if ordinary people can't afford to see them.

Read “Public Records Belong to the Public”

Then Gerry Scardo of Dickenson County wrote “Dear Congressman,” a sharp letter aimed at Congressman Morgan Griffith and what Scardo sees as a growing distance between the people of Southwest Virginia and the man elected to represent them in Washington D.C..

Read “Dear Congressman”

These letters came from Virginia, but they could feel right at home in rural Oregon, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky or a hundred other places between.

Because rural America has plenty of county courthouses where folks wonder what's happening behind closed doors. Plenty of elected officials who seem easier to find during campaign season than after Election Day. Plenty of communities watching big economic decisions being made while ordinary citizens are left scratching their heads and wondering when somebody planned on asking them.

That's why Letters to Rural America exists.

You don't have to be a professional writer. You don't need a journalism degree, and you sure don't need somebody's permission. If something is happening in your community that rural America ought to hear about, write it down and send it our way.

It might be happening in Virginia today and Kentucky tomorrow.

Different roads. Different towns.

Same rural America.

Send your Letter to Rural America to urtopix1@gmail.com.

Because rural America has spent enough time being talked about.

Sometimes we ought to get to do the talking.

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