First, a question: has everyone registered to vote? Now more directly (with pointing finger) have you? Three choices is not many but there are clear differences.

In this election I find myself primarily concerned with an issue that's off the public radar entirely -the decline of rural America. The US Census Bureau reported that my town's (also known as O'Neill, NE) population has declined from 3,772 in 2000 to 3,592 in 2003 at that rate of decline there will be a mere 75 years before the last person moves or dies. Other towns have much less time. Page, pop, 149, has about 20. Other Nebraska towns, the biggest in their areas, are faring worse. Burwell lost 48 of their 1130 in three years. Basset, a county seat, has lost a whopping 62 of its 743 residents since we were fifteen. Though these losses will vary from year to year, the trend of rural decline is accelerating and it seems as if the plains could be depopulated almost as quickly as they were settled.
Despite these alarming facts, this has received little attention from the national media. I have read one New York Times editorial buy, I think, David Brooks who proposed that northern Nebraska to the Canadian border should be transformed into a "Buffalo Commons" where most people would leave (or had already left) and the rest would run services for tourists from "Japan and Germany" who "would love to visit such a place." I support this idea as long as the American Indians (this means you, John) agree to paint their faces and run around whooping, this would get the French on board. Perhaps Buffalo Bill could be unearthed as well. Failing this plan, proposals to turn Manhattan into a 3-D "Buffalo Stockyard" (which would buy Nebraskan crops for feed) have been offered by some locals but seem unsatisfactory.

More seriously, few of the people out here want our communities to die. When General John O'Neill brought my ancestors and other Irishmen to this county he was hoping to give them a new life where they would bound to the land not by British serfdom but by American ownership. When Moses Kinkaid, and O'Neill congressman helped push through a "super" homestead act he was doing the same thing. These men had come to love the people of their communities and the way of life those people led. Even though rural people haven't been abused like General O'Neill Irishmen had been by Bthe British, they have been ignored or offered temporary solutions like subsidies.

I think we all have an interest in preserving the diversity of communities that enriches America. Register to vote and support the Second Homestead Act that is currently in Congress. I hope I'll be able to return to O'Neill -I love it.

posted by Matthew Schmitz   [6:56 PM]

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