In summer there is the money. I've been doing electrical work. I'm on the "B team" and rather than do big jobs my partner and I go around the county doing service calls. My partner is a 30 year old buffoon who loves dispensational, apocalyptic stuff and is a swell guy.

I've really enjoyed being out in the country. Last week we were trying to find a farm "a mile and a half southwest of the Old Opportunity Schoolhouse." After driving the same roads (were they?) many times we found a patched-up trailer house with this old woman dressed in farm clothes. When she spoke I was shocked by her old world accent even though (as I found out) and I found out her family had been in the county for generations. This widow had always been isolated.

I also registered to vote, finally. I've thought a lot about rural issues, about the old woman in the trailer house. When I leave for college I stand the risk of being complicit in the rural tragedy where schools, parishes and mainstreets die. She is my fellow citizen in our rural, spread-out community and confound me if I go to the suburbs, God not willing. Most of my classmates despise it here because they've never lived anywhere else. The rest are content to leave, satisfied that they're sensitive enough to appreciate the beautiful pain of our rural cancer but unwilling to help bear and heal it.

posted by Matthew Schmitz   [7:20 PM]

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