Word: ruralism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Florida was once a swampy rural backwater, the poorest and emptiest state in the South. But in the 20th century, air-conditioning, bug spray and the miracle of water control helped transform it into a migration destination for the restless masses of Brooklyn and Cleveland, Havana and Port-au-Prince. Florida developed its own ventricle at the heart of the American Dream - not only as an affordable playground and comfortable retirement home with no income tax but also as a state of escape and opportunity, a Magic Kingdom for tourists, a Fountain of Youth for seniors, a Cape Canaveral...
...avoiding the shopping mall, we discovered that a dish printed as “chickenfish” on the menu was actually a deep-fried fish covered in multicolored sprinkles and served with a large cherry in its mouth. Following that memorable dinner, we visited a school in a rural farming village, where farmers harvest crops by hand and still make arts and crafts using the same techniques they have employed for more than 40 years. The experience reminded me that lunch at Subway followed by a subway ride back to work is still as foreign to the majority...
...trip to China—even if my version of China is dominated by futuristic Pudong—when my own inertia overcomes the thrill of living and working in a country hurtling towards the future and trying to preserve its traditions. As eating chickenfish and visiting rural China taught me, uncomfortable encounters in a foreign culture, even if sometimes incredibly awkward, push you to question what motivates people to live life the way they do. Even if I will never understand what is so appetizing about eating a fish head, staring at one, instead of pizza or fried chicken...
Life can be complicated enough for members of the transgender community - the last thing they need is to have to choose between two bathroom doors: male or female. Fortunately for students at the Kampang high school in rural northern Thailand, there's now a third option. Introduced in May, the third bathroom features a symbol on its door of a human figure divided vertically, its blue side wearing pants and its red side sporting a skirt. The Kampang school's principal says he decided to build the new bathroom after a poll found that nearly 10% of the school...
...refuses to enroll kathoeys. Nevertheless, Thailand is a far more open-minded place than even the United States. And the tolerance isn't just a liberal, urban phenomenon. Kathoey beauty pageants are popular in Thai villages; the Kampang school is located in one of Thailand's poorest and most rural regions. As one Thai hill-tribe creation myth goes, in the beginning, there were three sexes: female, male and an intertwining of the two - just like the image on the Kampang bathroom door...