Free Republic

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An autopsy conducted Thursday shows that wolves likely killed an itinerant teacher in the southwest Alaska village of Chignik Lake, according to the Alaska State Troopers. Village residents found the body of Candice Berner, 32, a short distance from town on Monday. Multiple injuries due to animal mauling caused Berner's death, trooper Col. Audie Holloway said, referencing a report from the state medical examiner's office.

Kentucky lays claim to the most famous of log cabins -- the one in which Abraham Lincoln was born. In the early days of Kentucky, log cabins were abundant throughout the state, and a few of these survived to be photographed in the early 20th century. Also in this collection of vintage images -- two log cabins under construction in 1940 in East Kentucky, where the old ways die hard.

Tennesseans are proud of their frontier heritage and have preserved quite a few vintage log cabins and farm buildings. After the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in the 1930s, mountain communities were displaced but some of their habitations were preserved. This article presents an archive of monochrome photographs which documented these historic structures.

The Shenandoah National Park displaced some 450 families from the northern reach of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. The Park meant the end of a generations-old way of life for the mountain folk, many of whom didn't want to leave. [numerous vintage photographs]

Life in the mountains of East Kentucky has been demanding since the early days of European settlement. In the many isolated valleys and hollows, it is a hardscrabble life, even today, yet many of the mountain folk wouldn't trade that life for the city, even when they could -- isolation and self-sufficiency being primary reasons why the first settlers came here to put down roots.

Two major Federal projects, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Tennessee Valley Authority, brought the outside world irrevocably into the Tennessee high country, displacing whole communities from ancient abodes and altering forever the way of life that had endured from the Colonial period. Among the archives from that time are a scattering of photographs which recall an independent, hardy, resourceful, and industrious people, worthy descendants of the Backcountry settlers of long ago. [Many vintage photographs.]

For women, looks may matter more if they live in the city than in rural areas, a new study finds. The results, which are based on body shape rather than overall beauty, showed that in cities the most attractive gals had higher social and psychological well-being. That same link wasn't found for country residents. The researchers suggest with higher population densities, cities offer more potential friends and sexual partners, allowing city folks to be choosier and so theoretically able to select the cream of the crop to associate with. Though the study is based on women, the researchers suspect similar...

Wisconsin's rural hospitals hope to offset a state Medicaid cut with a tax that would bring more federal money to the hospitals. The proposed tax on the state's 59 "critical access" hospitals, all in rural areas, would prevent the hospitals from closing important services, officials say. The tax would be similar to a tax adopted in February on the state's 72 non-rural hospitals, said Eric Borgerding, a lobbyist with the Wisconsin Hospital Association. The proposed rural hospital tax, in a bill to be introduced in the Legislature soon, would make up for a 10 percent Medicaid cut that started Friday,...

Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places. Alone, it took her three hours to drag herself the 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury. A dutiful farm wife, Ms. Clark somehow even got to her feet to latch the gate. And her first call when she got to the house was not to 911, but to a daughter 30 miles away. “I told her she’d better come feed the horses,”...

In June, 40-year-old Shane Dawley and his 36-year-old wife, Rhonda, uprooted themselves and their four boys from their suburban Atlanta rental home and bought an old five-acre farmhouse in Ogdensburg, Wisc. Their goal: Flee the rat race and adopt a more self-reliant lifestyle amid the troubled economy. While urban and suburban real estate is still generally under pressure, the rural market is holding up better in many areas, thanks in part to buyers such as the Dawleys. Sometimes dubbed "ruralpolitans," these city and town dwellers are looking at land as their new safe investment, one they hope could prove more...

They represent a migration that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Urban planners have until now proceeded on the assumption that retiring baby boomers will downsize to a high-rise and spend their days lapping lattes and taking the streetcar to the art museum. A lot of them will. But new data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says baby boomers will head to the country in big numbers, in the Northwest changing the face of rural Oregon, Washington and Idaho. And it's not just because the 83 million boomer generation is the largest in U.S. history and all of their...

Most of the mobile homes in the U.S. are located in the south, where land is more plentiful, the weather is warmer, and rural poverty is higher. The region is home to over 56% of the mobile housing units in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey data released Monday. Specifically, two cities outside of Jacksonville, Fla., had the country's highest concentration of mobile homes, which are generally about 12-feet wide and include a kitchen, a living and dining area, and one or two smaller bedrooms. While mobile homes make up only 6.17% of the...

WALSENBURG, Colo.-Don't tell Dorothy J. Tenorio that Washington is nearing a deal to improve her health care. A former grocery clerk, Tenorio's been scraping by on disability benefits for more than a decade. The 60-year-old, and many of her neighbors, are skeptical health care overhauls pending in Congress will change much in Colorado's rural San Juan Valley. "I would tell Congress, they need to get out here to Huerfano County and see how bad it is, see what we're living with," said Tenorio, who suffered a neck injury in 1979 and hasn't worked since 1996. In rural America, many like...

The Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park in the small town of Tazewell, Virginia, sponsors a July 4 festival every year, filling the Park area with displays, demonstrations, and re-enactors. For those who prefer the traditional ways, pictures have been posted.

Angered by White House decisions on everything from greenhouse gases to car dealerships, congressional Democrats from rural districts are threatening to revolt against parts of President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-year agenda. “They don’t get rural America,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley. “They form their views of the world in large cities.” Cardoza’s critique was aimed at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, but it echoes complaints rural-district Democrats have about a number of Obama administration decisions. “I wouldn’t say it’s a complete strikeout, but they’ve just got a few more bases to it when it...

As goes Michigan's crumbling economy, so go some once-paved rural roads now being turned back into gravel. About a quarter of the state's county road agencies largely left out of the federal stimulus package, which focuses on highways and other major thoroughfares, say they can't afford some costly repaving projects and have crushed up deteriorating roads. Montcalm County alone estimates it saved nearly $900,000 by converting almost 10 miles of pothole-plagued pavement into gravel this spring. Reverting to gravel on low-traffic roads has been done to some degree for years and long-term savings and maintenance costs vary widely. But it...

THE RULES OF RURAL N.B. ARE AS FOLLOWS Listen up City Slickers & out of province Tourists 1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot. 2. Turn your cap right, your head isn't crooked. 3. Let's get this straight; it's called a 'dirt road.' I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way. 4. They are cattle. They're live steaks. That's why they smell funny to you. But they smell like money to us. Get...

Doug King publishes his keyboard music online and his wife, Marjorie, sells home-made pottery to customers in Iceland, China and New Zealand. But doing business from their rural Dane County house is virtually impossible without high-speed Internet. "We got to the point where we’re simply unable to do business" using the dial-up Internet their phone company provides, King said. The couple finally signed up for a wireless modem from Verizon, which in the last year has sought to build nine cell towers in rural Dane County to keep up with growing demand. But wireless service isn’t available everywhere, either, leaving...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Selects-Top-Rural-Health-Care-Advocate-to-Oversee-Key-HHS-Agency/ Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pm President Obama Selects Top Rural Health Care Advocate to Oversee Key HHS Agency THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________ For Immediate Release February 20, 2009 President Obama today announced the appointment of one of the nation’s top rural health care professionals as Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Dr. Mary Wakefield, Director of the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota, will oversee this critical agency, which helps to deliver health care to...

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Wayne Loewer's truck reveals a lot about his life. A 12-gauge shotgun for duck hunting rests on the floorboard. A blue thermal lunch bag containing elk meat is shoved under the seat, left in haste that morning by his teenage son rushing to catch the school bus. Binoculars in the console help Loewer scan his 2,900 acres of rice, soybeans and corn. The dashboard radio is set to classic rock, playing the same Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes from Loewer's high school days, when Brinkley was still a thriving small town with stores and a movie theater. His muddy...