I just finished reading two works by David Rhodes: Driftless and its sequel Jewelweed. I am glad that I stuck with Mr. Rhodes and took up the sequel after reading Driftless. Driftless left me feeling very discouraged and pessimistic about the contemporary state of rural America and its prospects for the future. Jewelweed ended on a much more positive and optimistic note. Rural communities can continue to thrive if folks make a conscious effort to nurture them and folks consider themselves to be social beings and act accordingly. The building and maintenance of local community may require an occasional violation of civil law and the setting aside of social convention; neither occurs without risk and potentially serious negative consequences. The moral requirement underlying such behavioral choices is the pursuit of a common good and not personal gain. We are social beings; we have social responsibilities. In the end, our behavioral choices are our own for which we are individually culpable. Being broken is no excuse to not participate in community; we are all broken in some way--being damaged goods is simply evidence of survival no more no less. There are always second and third chances to get it right or at least a little better this go-a-round.

The family farm (in 1950 terms) so threatened in Driftless does not survive in Jewelweed, not even the Amish version. The overreach of corporate America so powerful in Driftless is little more than a dark and ominous storm cloud in Jewelweed--a storm that can be outrun, endured, or that simply dissipates in the face of strength of character. Local integral communities--as in such catchphrases as "Think globally, Act locally," "All politics is local," and "Buy Local"--are able to thrive even when and if compromise and accommodation with the more powerful is the order of any given day. The challenge is to pick these venues--these battles--carefully and to maintain sufficient personal integrity and a broad based liberty so that one can step back from previously made or now considered compromise and accommodation.

Local communities do not act nor do they survive in isolation. They have the capacity to inspire and nurture one another. At times the lace that holds that boot on the foot is the over-the-road trucker, who has a passion for local produce and product and shares his finds with his local community. This boot has the ability to kick some corporate ass as local folks go about living their lives with self-confidence, independence, interdependence, and a sense of their own intrinsic value.

If anyone out there happens to run into Mr. Rhodes, would you please ask him what happened to Graham and Cora Shotwell and their two children, Seth and Grace? I missed them in the sequel.