#rural-life

#rural-life

Go these days to any independent bookshop or art gallery or zine fair, and you may find yourself asking: where are the humans? Title after title is devoted to clay and stone, trees and flowers, the riverine and the botanical, gardens and allotments. They share a vocabulary: care, tending, grounding, rootedness, nourishment, regeneration. Nature, however battered, is held up as an antidote to morbid modernity, its alienations, its amnesia.

As the year draws to a close, photographs offer us a way to look back at the moments that defined the year. This collection brings together images made by NPR photojournalists working in communities across the country, photographers who are documenting moments both consequential and quietly human throughout the year. These images don't just cover the year's biggest headlines, though, they linger on scenes, sometimes not widely known, that stayed with the people behind the cameras.

My Mother Reg wished me to go with him to the field, I paused because I did not want to go; But in her quiet way she made me yield Reluctantly, for she was breathing low. Her hand she slowly lifted from her lap And, smiling sadly in the old sweet way, She pointed to the nail where hung my cap. Her eyes said: I shall last another day.

Mabel Wells - or Memmie, to her family - lived her entire life in rural Kentucky. During the hourlong drive to her house, my younger sister and I counted cows and tried to guess which field went with what crop. Mabel was born in 1909, at a time when the Titanic was being built, World War I was still five years away,

For the past couple of years, we've been living on the family farm in the Midwest for a few months a year, to make sure the pipes don't freeze, keep the vermin down, etc., before another family comes for the summer. My husband isn't crazy about this arrangement (he's a city kid, and the farm is in a rural, red area), but loves the family, and realizes we save hella money this way. For the record, we are both progressive politically, feminist, anti-racist, etc.

Millet made it his life's work to portray the rural poor, a class that had been denied full humanity. He depicts lives of backbreaking toil but wants you to see that, behind the hoe, is a human being with a mind, a body, desires.

In Grant's telling, postal workers bring order and predictability to a country that can feel like it's unraveling, especially during crises that starkly illustrate how reliant we are on the federal bureaucracy.

Goldsworthy's sheepskin rug made from shearing scraps, stained and stitched with thorns, invites a visceral appreciation of rural life, juxtaposing luxury with the harshness of nature.

The Russians aren't just hitting military objects. They're hitting farms as well. Farming is at the heart of Ukraine culture, and that's what they are trying to destroy.

Spain's rivers invite you to pause, abandon rigid schedules and follow the gentle flow of nature, revealing a side that goes beyond the familiar postcard scenes.

The rent you are currently paying in some cities for a one bedroom flat now might have gotten you a considerably larger place years ago for your family - but more affordable places are still up for grabs in the country.

"Each night for a week in August, I would sit in the tall, tick-infested grass behind the orchard, hoping to connect with the creatures around me."

Expect unfiltered banter, a stalled motorcycle, and a chaotic plug for Matt's beer joints in this wild, laugh-out-loud podcast that's as real as it gets!