This began to change last summer when friends visited on their way home from Washington state. All of the camping sites near town were full, so they parked their little camper on the slab in our backyard for a night. Something clicked at that point that allowed me to more seriously consider life with a camper.

Backyard shed with potential

I’ve always loved the challenge of designing for small spaces (as do most architects, apparently, smaller than skyscrapers anyway). There’s so much less room for error than in a large space. It demands a higher level of organization — not that larger spaces shouldn’t also aspire to a high level of organization — and the client and designer have to know exactly how the space will be used.

The shed project — combined with Facebook photos from a friend refurbishing an Airstream, milling his own lumber (mesquite) for the flooring — brought me back to these sleek, aluminum houses on wheels this summer, to living in small spaces.

I still don’t know what I’d do, exactly, if I owned an Airstream trailer though. First off I’d have to buy a vehicle to pull it, then have somewhere to go often enough to warrant ownership. The practicality of it still nags at me when I remember some RV parks charge as much to park your trailer as it costs to stay in a hotel.

But the idea of being able to take your house with you somewhere, sleep in your own bed when you travel (to a degree) use your own kitchen on the road instead of having to eat out so much, these are happy thoughts (even considering how often I lament the transient nature of our American culture).

And of course, come Scissortail it could function as artist quarters as well.

ScissortailArtCenter.org

Prairie Threads (website down at the time of this writing) opened about two years ago. When she told the town council she planned to open a fiber arts store they thought she was crazy but supported her anyway. Clearwater, like so many other tiny towns, is on the verge of dying.

Hannah & Maisie & threads

Her good friends back in Washington State, where she had recently moved from, thought she was nuts as well, certifiable. Why would someone move from a lush, populated, coastal state to the landlocked Great Plains, to the edge of a grass covered desert, to a sleepy little town?

All of those Washington friends have since visited her in the Nebraska Sandhills, and none of them are questioning her sanity any longer. Upon visiting, her friends realized how productive she was artistically after getting away from the frenetic city-dweller mentality. They realized you can sit and have a real conversation without the pressure of somewhere to go, someone to see, something to do. They saw how she is now a real part of the community she lives in — crazy or not — in a way she never experienced living in the big city.

We talked about Kathleen Norris’ book Dakota and how living on the prairie encourages a slower pace of life, a contemplative life that encourages creativity. We all agreed that, as artists, we become crabby if we don’t have the time to work out an idea that is simmering in our head, and that focused time — something that can look an awful lot like doing nothing to a casual observer — is a necessity in creative work.

I drew a lot of parallels to the Scissortail art center idea during the conversation. MareLee pointed out that the yarn store venture was a lot of work and required years of persistence preceding success. Teaching is a key aspect of her business (she has 40 years of experience to draw from across all fiber arts: knitting, spinning, dyeing, weaving, etc). She was able to purchase a home and place of business for a song (her son, living and working in Washington D.C., pointed out that what she paid was barely a down payment on a place in the city).

If you’re ever in north-central Nebraska, make it a point to stop into this prairie gem. While you’re up there, have a meal at Green Gables in Orchard, Nebraska, a barn converted into a restaurant.

In the scheme of the developing western United States, the challenges small towns face now look a little different. The rails have already been laid for the most part, trucks allow people to live in remote places without growing all of their own food. The internet allows people in rural America the option of living with the same luxuries, if they have the money, as the people in large cities.

Small town America as a charity case
Last week, Damaris at the Internet Monk suggested the church in America make small towns a new mission field. She lives in a small town that just lost its grocery store. The owner retired and there was no around to replace him. “Where are the wealthy churches willing to back a small business operator in a rural area as their mission project? . . . running a doctor’s office or grocery store in rural America isn’t typically considered missions by many Christians. But if caring for people’s daily needs is a means of mission work in Burkina Faso, why not here?” That in itself is an interesting question, but it’s not the question that really prompted this article.

In the comments following Damaris’ appeal, a few people began to question the validity of saving small towns in the first place, let alone with church monies. Some people were suggesting we should, perhaps, just let them die — maybe even help them close up shop.

Should a small town try and be revived, or should it die?

Life in a small town — and by small here I’m thinking 2,500 people at the very most — wasn’t something I ever really wanted in life. My idealized space was always the countryside outside of a large city or the actual core of the city. Living in Siloam Springs, Arkansas for more than six years (not exactly small by rural standards at 14,000 people, but half the size of anywhere else I’d lived at that point) probably opened the idea up to my subconscious. Giving serious consideration to Hazelton, Kansas was the first active step in my considering life in a small town, very small. The past month I’ve been pondering a property for the arts center in the even smaller Kansas community of Ada, which appears to be made up of all of 8 named streets.

Who makes the call?
If we say that we think small towns should die, who makes the call? How small is too small? Do some small towns have cultural value that gives them precedence over their peers that might not have a museum or small college?

The debate over the value of rural America is actually already underway. A few weeks ago I heard a news bit about whether or not road maintenance in some of the more the rural parts of Nebraska should continue to be funded, or simply be forgotten at the state level. Fuel taxes are among the highest in the country in Nebraska and they still don’t cover the cost of highway maintenance.

Even if current sentiments and economics seem to suggest certain small towns are not worth keeping around, these may not be the best way to place value on rural communities. Some things about rural life can and have been argued for even as the world becomes more and more urban, and these ideals are worth fighting for.

When I was in college I took a community planning course — unfortunately I only had time for one. One of our projects was to anticipate the growth of our own city, Lincoln, Nebraska. The projects were then evaluated by a professional planner, and after the critique our professor pointed out that we all assumed the city would get larger. Why do we always assume our communities will grow?

What happens if we decide we need to shut down small towns now and then in 100 years see a need for them again?

The new small town
Is there an in between, does it have to be all or nothing? Is there a new look for small towns, can they persist, indeed flourish in a new way that hasn’t necessarily defined yet?

When thinking about Hazelton and Ada, I’ve realized quickly that the internet presents business opportunities that were formerly not an option in rural communities. Hobby farms or organic farming might work as Americans (thankfully) continue to become more and more aware of where their food comes from. Rural places will have to find ways to leverage their less-considered natural resources in order to attract outsiders. A good example of this is the Star Party in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Some sacrifices will inevitably have to be made, but I believe creative individuals — people who think outside the American lifestyle box — will be able to make it work. How would you make life in a small town work?

Yesterday morning’s Excellence in Giving newsletter featured a recent New York Times article, Nonprofits Fear Losing Tax Benefit. A couple of quotes caught my attention, including the following.

“It’s disappointing that the charitable sector, which is broadly committed to improving the well-being of civil society, is in this case indifferent to repairing what’s wrong in the country at the expense of protecting its marginal tax advantage,” said Rob Reich, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.

In my opinion Reich is off base. Maybe I’m missing something here, happy to be somewhat ignorant of the inane American tax system (Can a person actually be what is considered knowledgeable in this?), but the marginal tax advantage for nonprofits is less important than the tax deductions for people who give to 501(c)(3)s. According to the Times article, there are three schools of thought when it comes to deductions for charitable giving. One suggests donors are not influenced by the opportunity to itemize, to catch a break on their taxes. My own experience begs to differ. Donors do pay attention to this. Numerous people I’ve talked to about giving to M-DAT start their line of questioning with “Is it tax deductible?” If donors will no longer be able itemize, they will probably be less eager to give — at least in the short term.

Donors have, in essence, been conditioned to expect this special treatment, just like nonprofits. If the tax system drops deductions for charitable giving, I can imagine a number of very hard years for nonprofits. Following those few difficult seasons, however, I can also imagine those lost donations beginning to filter in again as people become used to the idea that the government does not — indeed, should not — bear influence on their generosity.

In light of my own past, present and potential future involvement with nonprofits, it may surprise some when I say that I’m all about significantly simplifying the American tax code. That includes doing away with deductions. I can imagine how the government’s original intent with this part of the tax law might have been noble, attempting to encourage donations to charitable organizations. Unfortunately, people’s motives have been negatively influenced by the law.

People should give out of their generosity; they shouldn’t be writing checks with hopes — even in the back of their mind — of lower taxes (even though lower taxes in and of themselves are also a good thing). People should give to a cause for the sake of the cause.

I picked this book up in part because it examines life on the Great [northern] Plains. Set during the Great Depression, it follows a year in the life of a farming family near a small North Dakota town. It’s well-written, poetic at times, in a format broken up by dates instead of chapters. As someone who usually needs short chapters to keep me going through a story, this could have been problematic. It wasn’t. In fact, it worked very well in the context of the novel and moved the story along at a good pace. One thing I didn’t understand, however, was the ubiquitous use of italics. Each paragraph contained multiple italicized words, and any emphasis the reader attempts to subsequently apply is strained at best after a few sections of the book.

Kathleen Norris, in Dakota, suggested Hudson’s The Bones of Plenty surpasses Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a novel about farm families during the Depression. I’ve yet to read Steinbeck’s work.

Abandoned House, Prairie from @Michael's Flickr Photostream

What’s most interesting to me about this literary work is its depiction of farm life on the prairie. Hudson’s characters talk about how farming is changing, how the little guy can’t compete with the company farms any longer — even back in 1933. How prices tanked and middlemen made profits even when the growers lost money. How certain hybrids are supposed to do better than others, and about the government’s fatuous attempts to raise prices and control supply. The author employed historic figures for bushels of wheat and quoted government pamphlets from the 1930s when giving words to local officials. As a bit of a sidebar to this review, one of my favorite literary quotes talks about government involved in farming. From Joseph Heller’s Catch 22:

Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”

This is the prairie that my wife and I grew up on. This is the prairie that, after living in the Ozarks for more than six years, covertly drew us back to it’s amber waves of grain. This is the prairie upon which we hope to establish a contemplative place for artists to come and create, learn.

Course, we’d still much prefer the location to be a little ways out in the country, per our oft-repeated, Kathleen Norris inspired philosophy of the Plains.

Adding: Some history on the mercantile can be found here in the History of Hall County, thanks to Google Books.

Adding again: It appears as though the building is used (owned?) by Skagway. I’ve seen their box trucks parked at the loading dock a few times since originally posting this.

Regardless, the long-term idea for the Art Center does incorporate literature and music, at least in theory. Recently I’ve wondered if the focus should be opened up to all of these arts (drama just doesn’t fit into the scheme of the retreat in my head, no offense to our friendly thespians) right away.

This may, practically speaking, be advantageous financially. It may work towards soliciting more applications and interest early on (assuming this is needed). Hmmm . . .

In the past six months or so I’ve realized how little in life I’ve set and attempted to complete any kind of long-term goals. In some ways I’m just not a very goal-oriented person when I think about it, but when I think about it some more I can be very driven, and being a goal-setter seems a natural extension of this mindset.

In some ways I haven’t had to think about long-term goals up until now. There was deciding on a major before college, changing majors during college (which was actually a somewhat painful deliberation) and then less than a year after graduating before becoming involved with Mission Data International. Once we were serving (or attempting to serve via support raising) with M-DAT we did have one long-term goal in mind, but it didn’t seem to be something we needed to labor over so intently since we were, in our human thinking, on the right track to achieve it at the time.

Since then we’ve been derailed, or at the least been diverted onto a side track. This change in direction seemed to be doubly affirmed when our house in Arkansas sold ten twelve months ago. I was hoping, even after having to put it on the market, that I’d find some supplemental part-time work in town (Siloam Springs, that is) before the house would sell. God had other plans though, and he’s set those plans into motion — even if we don’t know what they are for certain yet. The house sold in two weeks and a month after that we were moving into a somewhat crazy, at the time, downtown living arrangement.

And maybe, at least in part, all of this thinking about goals creeps up on a person when they enter their 30s.

Now the wife and I have set a long-term goal, a big goal that seems in many ways insurmountable in the Scissortail Art Center. This pursuit is a thrilling idea for me and also feels necessary. I will probably set other nearer term goals related to my own sculpture, maybe language learning and reading as well, but at the moment I have a deep-seated felt need to establish and work towards a larger and enduring idea.