#rural press

[privatedarius]

Category winners for the 2023  Australia Star Prize for Rural Photography. Nature/ Landscape: Lisa Alexander, “Channel country comes alive” Production: Jacqui Bateman, “Leaping Sheep” 

[077891st]

trying to remember how to draw again 🐠

[sergle]

man it never ceases to be annoying to me the way that people will act like taking in a wandering animal is Stealing Someone's Lost(?) Pet Omg I Bet They Have A Chip, You Obviously Didn't Check, as if people don't literally drive out here SPECIFICALLY to dump animals

[batwynn]

Sometimes a business quietly stop supporting queer people, diversity, and the environment and that sucks, obviously. But sometimes they make an entire press statement and say how they’re embracing the bigot money with their whole chest:

Link to the press statement.

So, yeah. Fuck them. Bigot bucks only go so far, and they aren’t about to buy out your fucking shit dog food because you yee-hawed their hatred. Hope your business fails.

Alt text below:

Text:

STATEMENT

ISc

TRACTOR*

SUPPLY CO

June 27, 2024

For more than 85 years, Tractor Supply has been focused on one thing... serving Life Out Hero. Every day our 50,000 Team Members take eare of our eustomers like family. We deeply value our relationship with our customers and the communities we call home.

We are passionate about being good neighbors in our hometowns because without you, we would not be what we are. It is imperative to us that our customers hard-cared dollars are taking care of our Team Members and the communities we all love. As you supported us, we have invested millions of dollars in veteran causes. emergency response, animal shelters, state fairs, rodeos and farmers markets. We have also invested in the future of rural America. We are the largest supporter of FEA and have longstanding relationships with 4-H and other educational organizations.

We work hard to live up to our Mission and Values every day and represent the values of the communities and customers we serve. We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart.

Going forward, we will ensure our activities and giving tie diroctly to our business. For instance, this means we will:

1. No longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign

3. Rether ou Team Were En pronie Growline enterie, netok ing and supering the austeing a good neighbor and stop sponsoring nonbusines

activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns

3. Whire u cre martin grand Del eat it i enterie rain cornet

We will continue to listen to our customers and Team Members. Your trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance, and we don't take that lightly.

As we look forward to celebrating our nation's independence, we also celebrate our more than 50,000 team members across 2,250 stores. Rural communities are the backbone of our nation and what make America great. We are honored to be a part of them.

We are always here and ready to serve you and your family with our legendary service for the life you love. See you in the stores.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: TRASHLANDS by Alison Stine.

Okay my sisyphean task is temporarily VANQUISHED, the next book has been SELECTED, and I shall be reading Appalachian apocalyptica about garbage and art and parenting and community!

[bees-with-swords]

It is really really frustrating to put up with systemic issues about air pollution and fire season for OVER A DECADE, and now that the east coast of the US is dealing with smoke problems it's getting the kind of analysis and publicity in the media that I've been screaming myself hoarse for since I was seven years old. It's like Australia and California don't matter nearly as much to global media as New York does. It feels extremely shitty, like my house burned down and my family was displaced and a member of my community died, but right now wildfires are getting more attention than ever before because the east coast is getting just a slice of what we've been dealing with for years.

I just feel so much envy over the outpouring of awareness, love, and support, that I never received when exposed to air quality issues OR displacement. I've lost my childhood home, my community. The fire station we paid taxes for sent their engines to a wealthy neighbourhood 15 miles away---a neighbourhood that had opted, several years earlier, to get rid of their own fire station. The fire service didn't warn our neighbours on the private roads about the fire. Some barely made it out alive. One died. Because of the lack of warning, hundreds of pets and livestock couldn't be evacuated and burned alive. The very hills I grew up on were badly damaged by corporate policies after the fire, cutting down trees and causing massive erosion.

And all of that, all of that trauma that has left our community irreparably splintered, started out with small things. Like going outside and smelling smoke. So when the memes come in (the memes that have been made before but largely ignored by folks on the east coast) and the air quality control tips (turn on your shower, increase humidity, leave out trays of water), I can't help but feel... Lost? Is history repeating itself because folks truly didn't understand what we've been going through over here? Or because nobody cared? Does the Canadian government sincerely think they can allow campfires this late in the year?

Has nobody learned from us? My house burned down, my family is living with trauma and my parents are forced into an abusive living situation and the hills I grew up on are scarred from decades of fire suppression, and nobody learned from that? Why did it happen, then? Why is nobody from the East studying it, to make sure nobody over there goes through that? Why aren't Easterners talking about fireproof housing and controlled burns and living with fire rather than against it? Were you not watching us burn? Were you not learning from our baby steps? Why are you repeating our history?

People are asking such basic questions like 'how do I keep my air clean' and 'why do we have so much fire suddenly' instead of 'how do I install metal shutters on my home' and 'how do we eradicate settler-colonialism from our ideas about forest management?' and 'how do I support fire and climate refugees?'

It feels like I've returned from the war just to watch a dozen fresh faced recruits march off eagerly. Was nobody watching? Did nobody care, did nobody learn? If people won't seek out information until the smoke is in their lungs, how am I supposed to feel any hope? I don't want my job to be endlessly educating people who don't have a reason to care yet. I would have thought you cared already. I would have thought we'd be further along.

Please do research. I don't have the energy to educate people right now, I did it for years and years but so few people listened. Go look up something about TEK and controlled burns and fire suppression and old growth forests. There's lots of material you've probably never looked at. I know it can be hard to care about what goes on in other parts of the world, but now it's affecting you. You need to know the basics of what's wrong with our system, you need to know whether fire suppression may have long term implications for your area, you need to know how to do your part in local politics, and you need to know how to help the people who are affected.

After our house burned down I got a quilt. Pajaro Valley Quilt Association made quilts for fire victims, and my mom grabbed me the nicest one they had. You have to understand, I didn't have any nice things at that point. Most of my most precious possessions didn't make it out of the fire. But I have this quilt, because the community came together and gave me one nice thing that I'll be able to keep for the next generation. We need more of that. We need people to pour out love and make donations and send cards and do anything, anything, just to make someone feel less bad on the worst day of their life. If you want to help, that's how.

I didn't get any quilts from the east coast. It feels like everyone stopped caring after the first few years of fires and drought. It became old news.

But it's still real here, it's still exhausting, and it could be you too unless we all get on the same page.

[korrasamibottles]

Just watched a pair of squirrels chase each other in circles around a tree trunk for like 5 minutes. Intricate rituals.

[amrv-5]

[stumbles online covered in various cleaning agents] deepcleaned and packed a bag and it only took several hours of my one and only life on earth

[robertevansfan]

The Seeds of a Thousand New Worlds by Firestorm Coop

A virtual interview about ATR, storytelling, and rural solidarity with Robert Evans and Margaret Killjoy.

[laconicmoon]

deeply deeply iconic bumper sticker, what if i made it my blog banner. but i'm so attached to liza and kermit

[circa-obsolete]

[ant1m0ny]

People who say that crows are the most ominous animal have clearly never been stared at by a herd of cows on an empty country road

[benjaminaimemedia]

Grand Format - Résidence : Le média des histoires vraies en Normandie

[dabblesco]

Stretching umbilical cords, or the joy/sorrow of letting kids go

I woke this morning thinking about how my kids, the hearts of my heart, are about as far away from me and each other that they can be, geographically. One is in Europe, one in Australia, one back in Kingston while I am in Vancouver. It reminded me of the imagery I tried to share with them (but of course they found repellent, because, kids) that I can almost feel the leftover umbilical threads…

[girlscience]

I think half the time my escapism fantasies are just a desire to escape the internet

[marjitea]