I’m not sure exactly when my work life shifted from mostly making things to mostly talking about, thinking about, organizing, planning, and managing the making of things—only that it happened sometime after my family moved to the U.S.
This was pre-pandemic, when the cost of living in my rural hometown was relatively affordable compared to other parts of the country. And yet everything felt exorbitant, especially after multiple outlets I freelanced for began to have funding issues.
At first I took a job waiting tables in the tourist town where I’d done the same job in high school and college, thinking I’d just use my tips to cover the gap in our income and continue reporting and writing and making audio. My focus had always been rural lands and subcultures, meaning pretty much anything tied to natural resources, environment, and all the other ways people depend on and relate to rural places. Even if journalism as a field was struggling, those topics were (are) always going to be important.
But then two things happened. First, I got injured, which made it impossible to wait tables. And second, right around the time that podcasts really started to be a thing, audio colleagues started to reach out with editing work. I enjoyed editing—I still do—and I gladly accepted the projects that had come my way.
Then, as they say, suddenly various years had passed. I’ve worked on shows and series I’m proud of and I have great colleagues, some of whom are now close friends. My family is more stable than we were when we first moved back.
I also never fully stopped reporting or writing or making little pieces of audio to send to the people I love. (Think less avant-garde sound art and more the sounds of my dog dreaming or María José Ferrada’s Kramp read aloud via WhatsApp voice memos.) But as I became part of bigger podcasting teams and held more responsibility for our collective work, I more or less stopped making things on my own in any focused way.
This of course is not unique and I don’t feel torn up about it. I just know I want and need to be making some stories on my own, particularly at a time when it feels more important than ever to be paying attention to rural places. So in addition to a new show I’ve been helping develop, I’ve been taking on more solo work reporting and writing. And making this newsletter.
At first I really tried to approach The Sticks like any other editorial project. I researched newsletters as a form, talked to people already making them, planned out an editorial calendar, etc. etc. And then I started actually doing it and realized I want to let this be whatever it is. To make the thing and have that be enough.
RURAL LINKS:
Living the Land: Really want to see this film set in 90’s China, about a rural family facing pressure to leave their home and migrate to the city for work. From Huo Meng.
A talk about rural gentrification in the US, by Lise Nelson, of the University of Arizona, at 3.30p ET on Friday, April 17. You can sign up here to attend via Zoom.
Recently someone reminded me of Minari, the beautiful film by Lee Isaac Chung, which follows a family that moves from California to Arkansas to follow their dream of farming.
Also, if you haven’t read María José Ferrada, oh but I hope you will. Kramp and El Hombre del Cartel would be a good place to start. Maybe unsurprisingly, these novels are about working class families living in the provinces, both tender and thorny. Kramp has been translated into English as How to Order the Universe and El Hombre del Cartel as How to Turn Into a Bird.