LOL. I started down the AI art rabbit hole too, but I have a house to finish building this year and staying any longer in this trailer because I got lost in AI are is not my cup of tea.

Your observation regarding Appalachian poverty was a good one – it was also fair. The land in Appalachia cannot support large scale farming, urban or industrial life. Canyons (aka hills and hollers) are too steep to plow by oxen, or modern equipment. Harder still – and literally too – the mountains are shedding rock which flows downhill taking topsoil with it. The plants, animals, water, climate, and dirt in those mountains need each other to survive (almost like they are all one living organism). Take one part away and everything begins to die – including humans.

Thanks to Biden’s infrastructure bill, rural Americans will finally get high speed internet (sometime in the next three years). This is the very first national investment that made any economic sense for Appalachia – ever! The stories of poor, rural people in Appalachia finally finding good paying work once they get high speed internet are inspiring. Likewise, the stories of children finally gaining access to education on the internet. Access to healthcare is making a difference too. But access to mental health services, via the internet, is especially important for families ravaged by opioid addiction after they were targeted by Perdue pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, the internet cannot provide access to dental care.

Today, one thing is certain – intellect and hard work have never had anything to do with progress or the accumulation of wealth.

Based on what I’ve been reading the internet is doing the same thing in African countries as well as India and China. Simply put, the internet is breaking the stranglehold that wealth and capital have held over populations blessed by natural resources, but deeply disadvantaged by the infrastructure systems designed to support western trade in the modern era.

Right now, I’m looking out my window where a few dozen head of black angus (cattle) graze year-round on just about 10 acres of land. No one feeds these cows, or trucks in water. Here in Kentucky, year-round rains keep the grass green and feeds the springs up on our mountain. Spring water flows downhill, along with the shedding rock, and feeds the streams and ponds that run through these pastures and water the cattle.

But in the deserts of Texas and other western states ranchers keep trying to raise gigantic herds of cattle. While Kentuckians need about half an acre of land to support one cow, desert ranchers need 20 acres or more for every cow – even then ranchers must truck in feed and water in late summer and deep winter. And yet, ranchers in the western deserts are richer than bluegrass ranchers because of state and federal subsidies that pay the cost of trucking feed and water (into the desert). Unfortunately, it does not work in reverse - one cow cannot produce enough manure, or produce enough pee, to turn desert soils into fertile soils.

My passion for the subject of land use explains my appreciation of your work. Successful human cultures have all emerged in response to the land. If people do not adapt to the land we live on, the land will kill us. By imposing cultures that emerged out of one landscape onto different landscapes, we triggered climate change that threatens to destroy all landscapes capable of supporting human life as we know it.

Keep writing Mr. Engheim. A million writers like you and the world WILL change for the better of that I am certain.