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Reasons Rural Rocks
August 5th, 2011 by Mike Knutson
While Rural America has been pummeled lately in the media about the stale, old news of declining population, some new friends in Alberta have been talking up a storm about why life in rural communities “rocks.”
It started last week when Odessa Sherbaniuk (@sherbani) created the #ReasonsRuralRocks hashtag and asked rural fans to respond. Twitter users everywhere respond immediately. After only a couple days, Sherbaniuk had enough responses to write a blog post sharing her top 10 favorites of the week.
To give you a flavor, I’ve copied the top 5 from her list below. You’ll have to read her blog post to get the rest or begin following the #ReasonsRuralRocks hashtag yourself.
5. Lower cost of living allowing me to work less and play more! @plind
4. Watching a storm roll in and smelling the scent of rain in the air. @MyRuralRoots
3. Water that tastes like water. @karla_kerrigan
2. Rush minute instead of rush hour. @ARDNpaul
1. Coming back home after years of being gone and hearing people call you by your first name. @onepercentyello (Source: “#ReasonsRuralRocks Top Ten July 25-29” ).
I’ve contributed a couple tweets to the list myself. In fact yesterday, after returning from an interview with a second-year teachers in a rural school as a part of our GoTeachSD project, I felt compelled to tweet: “Children in rural schools often receive more personal attention from their teachers because of small class sizes. #ReasonsRuralRocks.” Listening to this passionate young teacher reminded me of the countless stories teachers have shared with me over the last year highlighting the differences they are making in the lives of rural children everywhere.
I’m sure you have your own reasons for loving life in rural communities. Sometimes, we just need to pause for a moment and remind ourselves of those reasons. Odessa Sherbaniuk deserves credit for reminding us to do so.
If you don’t have a Twitter account, feel free to share your thoughts here. I’ll post them for you, and give you credit. It’s a list that I’m hoping will continue to grow from a long time to come.
Tags: Alberta, Reasons Rural Rocks
Posted in Community Development, Quality of Life, Rural | Comments (
2 )
August 5th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Thanks for this wonderful post! Glad to get word of the trend out there (and it never hurts to have my name out there as well haha). For those interested, this weeks Top Ten is now available http://bit.ly/nxCHLz Enjoy the weekend you lovers of rural!
August 6th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Thanks for starting the conversation. It’s been fun to see the tweets.