David Corbett, after reading your conversation with the author, I urge you to publish a few articles yourself. What you've said here is the best reporting on rural issues that I've read anywhere, in a very long time. When people have good information, they tend to act on it.

I honestly think the only people who actually know that stuff live in rural America.

I am also very interested in knowing a lot more about this rural-urban initiative you mentioned. Do they have a website?

Today, I live in Kentucky. But, I lived most of my life in the California mountains and spent 35 years in rural land use and development ( which included agriculture, oil and mining).

In 2005, an associate and I spent a year on the road delivering a presentation called "The Rural Urban Divide." Thanks to Howard Dean sent a bunch of the Democratic Party VIPs to one of our presentations. They were so surprised when more than 500 people showed up, they stayed three days to milk our brains. We were hopeful, but when they got back to us, they said, there weren't enough voters in rural areas to worry about.