Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
William Jennings Bryan, 鈥淐ross of Gold Speech,鈥� 1896
William Jennings Bryan鈥檚 rhetoric may be overwrought, but he makes a point that鈥檚 still worth considering.
Patty Limerick, 鈥淣ot My First Rodeo,鈥� 2020
The rural/urban divide runs through every region of the nation: the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, and various subregions of the West. Residents in every community in the nation stand in some relationship to the divide.
Even a small step toward clarity in thinking about the rural/urban divide鈥攊ts origins, its evolution, its current configuration, and its susceptibility to gestures and overtures of good will鈥攃ould make a big difference. Since every region struggles with this divide, taking this small step could have an impact nationwide.
Here鈥檚 the good news:听languishing in our storage cabinet for intellectual property, the Center of the American West has everything needed to take this small step. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, we performed a pubic program called the 鈥淯rban/Rural Divorce.鈥� Taken to communities from Rock Springs, Wyoming to Boise, Idaho, from Idalia, Colorado, to Vancouver, Washington,听this program worked.
And what do I mean by听鈥�worked鈥�?
The program provided an effective 听framework for exploring the tensions and resentments鈥攁s well as the alliances and collaborations鈥攂etween rural places and urban places. It created a forum that gave expression to the intense anger that some populations in the rural West felt toward cities, while it also put a light on the obliviousness to that anger that prevailed among many urbanites and suburbanites.听 And, maybe most valuable of all, this program used humor as the WD-40 for addressing and easing tension, achieving a seemingly impossible merging of the serious and the comical.
In the early 2000s, I and my coworkers responded to the success of this program in a decidedly peculiar way. Having crafted and field-tested an effective way to host deliberations on the rural/urban divide, we quit performing the program and stored the records it had generated in rarely opened filed cabinets.
And yet, even as we consigned our program to years in storage, the rural/urban divide grew wider, rural resentment gained strength, urban obliviousness made a resurgence, and the need for our program became ever more urgent.
In the presidential election year of 2016, herds of commentators and pundits could not stop talking (not that they tried!) about the rural/urban divide as a central鈥攑erhaps听the听central鈥攕tructure of political polarization and antagonism. And, at that point, the possibility of reviving our dormant program started to gain ground.
Given that the relevance of this program has expanded dramatically, why haven鈥檛 we just rescued it from the intellectual-property storage cabinet, dusted it off, replaced its run-down batteries, and sent it back out on the road?
Good question.
A New Approach to an Old Problem Hits the Road
In 1993, writer Ed Quillen published a memorable essay in the influential regional periodical,听High Country News.听Since Quillen was one of the liveliest thinkers ever to explore and contemplate the American West, he was quite the production center of certifiably memorable essays. But his 1993 publication stands on its own as a reminder that we forget Ed Quillen to our peril. (Having written that remark and decided to let it stand, I will now say the obvious:听 no one who knew Ed Quillen will ever be at the slightest risk of forgetting him!)
But before I offer a quick summary of his essay, we have to take a quick trip to the distant past.
The history of the relationship between what we now call the Rural West and the Urban West goes back for a millennium or two. In North America, some indigenous groups clustered in towns and cities, while other groups moved in a seasonal cycle through landscapes they knew well. Trade, and sometimes hostility, set the terms of a dynamic relationship between these differing ways of being at home in this area.
In the nineteenth century, the invasion of Euro-American settlers disrupted these established ways of life. Driven by a quest for resources, participants in resource rushes usually paired rural development and urban development. People yearning to take possession of minerals and land dispersed into remote places, and merchants and town founders responded fast to the opportunities鈥攁nd the markets鈥攖hat these migrations created. In early phases of Euro-American settlement, rural people and urban people were, to use a term of our times, 鈥渃o-dependent,鈥� sometimes in fairly congenial or at least reciprocally tolerant ways.
And now, after that massively over-generalized paragraph, we will leap over a century and a half, with a nimbleness rarely permitted to historians, and return to Ed Quillen.
The title of his 1993 essay offered its own effective summary of Quillen鈥檚 unsettling argument: 鈥淣ow That Denver Has Abdicated . . . Who Will Coordinate and Inspire the West?鈥澨�With precision and erudition, he traced the many transactions that once tied Denver to its rural hinterland. He then went on to trace the fraying鈥攔eally, the disintegration鈥攐f the belief that Denver鈥檚 well-being rested on the well-being of the rest of the State.
And here is the statement that, over several years. redirected my professional life:
Denver and its hinterland are a couple who were once intimate; each provided for the other and supported the other. Now they appear to be going their separate ways. Instead of cooperating, they compete.
In 1993, my emergence as a public intellectual had become an explosion of opportunity. Public speaking gave me an enviable chance to get to know people all around the state. I made frequent ventures to the Western Slope, to Southern Colorado, to the Northern Front Range, and to the Eastern Plains. At the same time, I got to know at least a small sector of the people we might call 鈥渢he Denver elite.鈥�
On multiple occasions of meeting Coloradans and hearing their stories and perspectives, I was participating in a social process that I could characterize as 鈥渄rinking through a firehose,鈥� though that phrase attributes a quality of discomfort to what was actually a delightful round of socializing.
But as I traveled hither and thither, there was one element of discomfort:听 what I heard from people in Denver and what I heard from people in the other areas of Colorado constantly brought to mind Ed Quillen鈥檚 observation. The perspective I heard in Denver and the perspective I heard in other locales did indeed match up with the analogy of a couple headed toward separation.
What could I do to help?
I could take advantage of the fact that I am the only person who hangs around in public policy circles, whose thinking was shaped by classes in renaissance and reformation history. (Thank you, Professor William Hitchcock; you are no longer with us on the planet, but you had a lasting effect on the programs of the Center of the American West.)
In those classes, I learned about the vanished tradition of 鈥渢he morality play.鈥� The Oxford Languages website offers a crystal-clear definition of this genre:
Morality play:听a kind of drama with personified abstract qualities as the main characters and presenting a lesson about good conduct and character, popular in the 15th听and early 16th听century.
In plays of this sort, living human beings lend their life force to the project of standing in for, representing, and embodying concepts or groups that would not otherwise be able to appear as compelling and coherent presences.
If this art form appealed to people five hundred years ago, then maybe it was time for a 鈥渞etro鈥� repurposing.
As soon as I conjured up this idea, Bill Hornby, the editor of the听Denver Post, pitched into the cause by writing up an inventory of the points of contention between rural Colorado and urban Colorado. Neither I nor Bill nor Ed Quillen, who I soon drew into this cabal, had even a remote qualification as playwrights. But if we had a list of 鈥減oints of contention,鈥� we could take it from there
And so the program we called 鈥淭he Urban/Rural Divorce鈥� began its travels around the West.
In play, Sandy Greenhills West sued Urbana Asphalt West for divorce, presenting鈥攁t length!鈥攈is grievances and complaints. Urbana contested the divorce, though, awkwardly, she was forced to admit that she had sometimes forgotten that there was a marriage in place, since 鈥淪andy was a quiet kind of fellow, and worked outside a lot.鈥�
In communities that agreed to host us, we would enlist a local person as the judge, and we would also recruit local people to testify as character witnesses for Sandy and Urbana. When we performed in rural areas, we soon figured out that it would be smart to add a moment of 鈥渄ebriefing鈥� to the end of our program:听 if I did not get the chance to tell the audience that I was playing a part and did not personally espouse Urbana鈥檚 opinions, I would have no one to talk to at the post-event receptions, while Sandy would be surrounded by comrades.
But it became increasingly clear that someone was missing from our entourage.
Sandy would reliably accuse Urbana of expansion and encroachment on his territory. Since urban boundaries were quite well-established and the era of urban annexation had petered out, this accusation did not make much sense. And yet Sandy was right in thinking that residential, and sometimes commercial, expansion was reshaping many areas in the West.
So who were we missing?
Suburbia! (Or, when a young man played the part, Subbie.)
So we added Suburbia, and we settled into our program: Sandy presented his grievances; Suburbia drank everyone鈥檚 water (including the Judge鈥檚); and Urbana had to listen to and respond to complaints that she鈥檇 never heard before or had forgotten right after she heard them.
[As to who 鈥渨e鈥� were, a number of good souls rotated in and out of the role of 鈥淪andy鈥� and of 鈥淪uburbia.鈥� They all met the definition of the word 鈥渢roupers鈥� (in Merriam-Webster鈥檚 absolutely accurate definition, 鈥減eople who deal with and persist through difficulty or hardship without complaint鈥�), and I am forever in their debt. You will see two of these good souls鈥擟harles Scoggin and Tamar Scoggin, in a photograph at the end of this posting.]
From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, the troupers and I 听traveled hither and thither: to Rock Springs, Wyoming; Bend, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Vancouver, Washington; the Elko Cowboy Gathering; to many sites in Colorado鈥揝alida (where Ed Quillen served as an expert witness!), Gunnison, Telluride, Idalia, Montrose, Denver, to the conferences of the Colorado Municipal League and Colorado Counties, Inc.
We had adventures beyond recounting.
Boarding the plane to Spokane for a performance in Moscow, Idaho, we were asked by a flight attendant, 鈥淎re you traveling together?鈥� 鈥淥h, yes, we are!鈥� we responded cheerfully.听 鈥淏ut we鈥檙e traveling to get divorced; we could tell you a little more about this if you鈥檇 like to hear!鈥� For some reason, the flight attendant chose not to pursue the conversation, and quickly directed us to our adjoining seats.
In Telluride, we were tested as never before on our ability to stick with the program of staying within our assigned characters, as real actors are supposed to do. The cascade of wildness began when Urbana said that Sandy could and should quit denying his paternity of Suburbia, since the kinship between them鈥攊n their defiance of regulation and claims of independence鈥攚as unmistakable. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 need a DNA test,鈥� I鈥搊r, rather, Urbana鈥� said. But that remark brought the bailiff鈥攑layed by the Libertarian Sheriff of San Miguel County鈥攖o life. 鈥淟et鈥檚 have a DNA test!鈥� the sheriff exclaimed, as he escorted Sandy Greenhills West out of the courtroom for a tissue sample. Order was restored not long after this, but I was a long time gaining control of a fit of laughter that, really, only the most skilled of actresses could have suppressed. Fortunately, I hit on the strategy of disguising the laughter as sobbing, choking out the observation that it was very sad to see that Sandy was so out-of-touch with reality that he could not recognize his own daughter without a DNA test.
And now, by main force, I am calling a halt to reminiscing, and moving on to summarize the usual content of 听the verdicts delivered by our multiple local juries: Suburbia was remanded for a Tough Love or Outward Bound program for character improvement, while Sandy and Urbana were told that their marriage would not be dissolved, though they would be required to take up rigorous methods of birth control on behalf of population limitation.
Anyone reviewing our old script would have to be impressed by how much we packed into a short time. We argued about water; agriculture; mining; the disconnect between Sandy鈥檚 production and Urbana and Suburbia鈥檚 consumption; excessive government regulation and unfunded mandates; our feelings听 about our 鈥淯ncle Sam,鈥� especially in the allocation of his money; the threat that big box stores posed to 鈥渕om and pop鈥� businesses; the condescension that second homeowners, outdoor recreation enthusiasts, and tourists often showed to local people; the dignity of physical labor; the persistent mythology attached to cowboys; the limitations of rural health care; the similarities and differences in rural, urban, and suburban dependence on automobiles; the negative stereotyping of rural people by urban people; the equally negative stereotyping of urban people by rural people; and the inequities of internet access to rural communities.
We covered a lot.
When we gave our presentation in small towns, nearly all the time we found that our audience was already familiar with all these topics, though they still appreciated the way our peculiar form of presentation brought these issues to life.
But when we gave our presentation in cities, audience members often said to us, 鈥淲e had no idea that rural people had these concerns.鈥�
We never had the chance to say, 鈥淥ur work here is done.鈥� Because it wasn鈥檛.
So why听 on earth did we put this vital program into storage?
I鈥檓 getting to that.
Rescue by Revision
The program petered out because we had saddled ourselves with an unwieldy operating mode. Before any communities鈥攅ven the ones who needed us most鈥攃ould host our program, three of us had to coordinate our schedules and travel together.
There had to be a better way.
Our script for the 鈥淯rban/Rural Divorce鈥� still carries overwhelming relevance. 听By 2016, there was no mistaking the fact that the time had come to get it back in the world. But it needed a major remodel.
In 2018, we got started. Jake Rothman, a gifted young man from Crested Butte with a history degree from Colorado College, came on board at the Center to get us moving.
Excavated from its long period of storage, the script needed rehab. Badly.
Jake identified the areas where the script most pathetically showed its age. He removed the cobwebs from the references to digital technology and to popular culture. And he worked the whole script over to change the venue鈥攆rom a courtroom where a judge presided over a divorce trial, to an office where a therapist conducted a last-ditch counseling session. Jake also gave Suburbia the right to grow up. With the passage of fifteen years, the one-time self-preoccupied, self-centered teenager now had the potential for being the most sensible member of her disordered family.
Jake also added issues that, in our first run of this show, we had either not noticed or had purposefully tried to evade. Clashing attitudes toward immigrants; intractable disagreement over gun control; troubling rates of depression and suicide in rural areas; layers and layers of meaning beneath the surface of conventional definitions of manhood and womanhood; epidemics of opioid and methamphetamine abuse; 听and a variety of manifestations of climate change (also known as drought, flood, and wildlands fire). With all these additional topics, Jake added intensity and weightiness to the script. But sticking with the format of a morality play, we could still offset the weightiness with a lightness of spirit, retaining room for the play of humor.
Just as important as the transformation of the script was the redesign of the operating system that would bring this new script into the world. The plan now is to prepare a kit:听 the revised version of the script; a video of me and two lucky people, as yet unidentified, who will play Sandy and Suburbia performing this new script; and a set of suggestions on how to adapt the program to capitalize on the issues that matter most to a particular locale; and guidance on how to recruit and select volunteers to perform the drama鈥攁nd to watch it and discuss it. With this kit in hand, a civic group, a high school class, a church-affiliated volunteer organization, 听a city council or county commission, or, for that matter, a local theater group could go to town and declare, with the assurance that they were investing effort in a worthwhile cause, 听that 鈥渢he show must go on.鈥�
Readers, Here鈥檚 Where You Come In
听From all reports, the pandemic has made puzzles very popular. So, for any reader wrestling with the emptiness and ennui that remote working and social distancing can produce here鈥檚 your chance to take on a consequential puzzle.
On many occasions, the Center of the American West has put forward the proposition that historians are the necessary craftspeople when it comes to the crucial human enterprise of tradition-sorting. Historians, this form of professional cheerleading proposes, are positioned to guide people in assessing their customs, habits, and traditions, by asking 1) what worked and deserves keeping? 2) what didn鈥檛 work and deserves to be modified or discarded? And 3) what should be kept on on the chance that a vision might appear for making it work in the future?
As every historian who has ever tried to execute this program has learned, it is a lot easier to exhort others to sort thoughtfully and wisely through a tradition than to perform this act by oneself.
So put on your thinking caps, whatever hat-gear is your preference: 听baseball caps, cowboy hats, red MAGA caps; or whatever city folks prefer to put on your heads (not to stereotype, but perhaps fedoras and berets?).
Rewriting as a Practical Exercise in Problem-Solving
The context of our Rural/Urban Divide program has been transformed by the pandemic, by the economic depression, and by the accelerated division and polarization of the Trump Era. Updating a script that had languished for years was never an easy task. But in the autumn of 2020, the difficulty of updating this script鈥攐r, really, updating anything else in our lives鈥攈as expanded beyond estimation.
But to return to the point: 听the relevance of this program has not diminished in the least. So it really听must听be updated.
Puzzle #1
How to Acknowledge the Steep Decline in Civility and Respectful Disagreement
When we put this play together in the mid-1990s, we thought the tensions in the nation were at a high pitch. We thought that the diminished capacity of citizens to engage in productive civic dialogue showed few signs of recovery or redemption. It seemed to us that rural Americans, urban Americans, and suburban Americans had become mysteries and ciphers to each other.
Little did we know of what was ahead.
So how should the script incorporate a recognition of the worsened condition of communication across the canyons of disagreement?
Here鈥檚 my first run at an updating and rewrite.
When Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia arrive at the Counselor鈥檚 office, they are surprised to find that the Counselor has collapsed in despair and cannot even pull herself together to greet them. Even though Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia are only symbols, they still have a streak of genuine compassion and kindness.
So they ask the Counselor what鈥檚 wrong.
The Counselor is weeping and has a hard time speaking for a moment. But then she manages to say that she has spent her career trying to help people communicate, and the state of the nation has convinced her that she and her colleagues in counseling have gotten nowhere and had an infinitesimal impact on the nation. She had already been feeling very sad, but then she watched the Presidential Debate on September 29. She had to sit, immobilized and desperate, as poor Chris Wallace pled with the President to stop interrupting his rival every few seconds. And she also saw his rival, every now and then, take the bait and respond in kind with insult and contempt.
After enduring that debate, the Counselor is ready to throw in the towel. She figures that what she saw in the presidential debate will be reenacted in her office, and her three visitors (and, indeed, all her clients in the near future) will devote themselves to shouting without restraint and making every effort to drown each other out. And she will be stuck in Chris Wallace鈥檚 miserable role, pleading with her participants to engage in 鈥渙pen discussion,鈥� and to abandon their reciprocal refusal to listen and to embrace mutually assured vexation.
So she has spent the day on websites in search of an occupation she could take up for a mid-career shift. She鈥檚 always liked making pottery鈥攎aybe with people at home more, there鈥檚 a growing market for charming ceramics?听 People have always told her she has a soothing voice; maybe she could start a product line of recordings for agitated people to listen to when they need help getting to sleep?
Here鈥檚 the upshot.
Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia must begin their counseling session with a goodhearted effort to persuade their Counselor not to give up. They remind her that when they traveled around the West together, fifteen years ago, they were part of a program with a firm commitment to making sure that conflicting viewpoints got a fair hearing. In those travels, they certainly argued, sometimes ferociously, but they never once talked over each other. So, really, Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia assure the Counselor, they have proven themselves to be willing practitioners 听of the kind of civil exchange that has vanished from so much of public life.
Later on, they begin to wonder if the Counselor staged this scene of pretended despair in order to bring out the best in her clients.
As the session ends, Sandy, Urbana, Suburbia, and the Counselor co-author a public letter to the growing multitudes of the failed moderators of electoral candidate debates, offering those moderators useful guidance on how they can hold their ground and insist on behavior that will 听require the debate participants to set a model for their fellow citizens, and not embarrass the nation.
Puzzle #2
The Moment and Momentum of Masking:听 Suburbia Comes Of Age
By the time the revised script goes out into the world, vaccinations may have prevailed over the coronavirus and the pandemic will be over.
Maybe.
But for now, let鈥檚 assume that, even if vaccines are widely available, the current widespread distrust over their safety has continued, and the question鈥攖o wear a mask or not to wear a mask鈥攊s still a matter of fierce contestation between the rural West and the urban and suburban West.
And now back to my trial run at rewriting the script for 2020.
When Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia enter the Counselor鈥檚 office, Urbana and Suburbia are masked and compliant with pandemic protocol. But Sandy is not masked, and he reaches out to shake the Counselor鈥檚 hand, all the time exhaling and inhaling without impediment. Urbana and Suburbia, though muffled, audibly gasp at this risky move.
It seems certain that the threesome will soon pitch into the familiar battle of 2020, in which coverings placed over noses and mouths鈥攐r the absence of those coverings鈥攈ave come to deliver a concise and clear declaration of political identity and to organize and orchestrate rage and resentment.
Here the script takes an unexpected turn.
Remember that Sandy and Urbana are the co-parents of Suburbia, and that a key feature of the revised script is that Suburbia has grown up and is revealing a heretofore under-developed capacity for self-examination and for recognizing her responsibility.
So when the fight over masks heats up, Suburbia comes into her own.
鈥淒ad,鈥� she says to Sandy, 鈥淚 am worried about you. When we traveled around in that divorce trial fifteen years ago, one of the things we always talked about was the crisis in rural health, with the closing of hospitals and the vulnerability of rural people dealing with serious illness when the medical experts they need to see are way beyond their geographical reach. That situation hasn鈥檛 improved over the last twenty years. So when you refuse to wear a mask, I get even more worried about your susceptibility to a real affliction鈥攁nd maybe an avoidable one. 听I am not telling you to do anything you don鈥檛 want to do, but I am just telling you that I was already worried about the unfair situation you face with access to health care. And now, when you keep saying that Covid-19 is probably a hoax, and you won鈥檛 submit to tyranny by wearing a mask, the main thing you accomplish is that those of us who care about you get even more worried about what kind of medical care you鈥檙e going to have to settle for, if this virus gets a hold on you.鈥�
Will this plea melt Sandy鈥檚 heart, and persuade him to put a mask on his face?
Probably not, but it seems like a better alternative than the usual fight.
One More Puzzle, This Time Involving a Pre-Existing Condition:
Sandy鈥檚, Urbana鈥檚, and Suburbia鈥檚 Concealed Complexity in the Old Script
When our troupe traveled the West in our first run of this show, we could never fully dismiss a burdensome thought:听 in our earnest effort to improve understanding and empathy, were we inadvertently confirming old stereotypes of both urbanites, suburbanites, and rural residents?听 Were we doing enough鈥攔eally, were we doing much at all鈥攖o capture the variation of ethnicity, race, class, income, and occupation in rural areas? In urban areas?听 In suburban areas?
Probably not.听
Through the old script, Sandy portrayed himself as a rancher or farmer, maybe a miner or logger. True, he would sometimes speak of the resentment that rural people working in ski resorts or tourist attractions felt toward urban and suburban visitors. But Sandy did not present himself as a small-town merchant or a restaurant owner. He certainly never spoke as one of the many federal employees, often born and raised in the West, working for land management agencies and fully committed to thinking of the rural West as their home. Telecommuters, enthusiastic converts to the exurban life, owners of second homes who genuinely care about the communities they live in could not, in the framework of the old script, claim even a marginal identity as rural Westerners.
In a very similar way, the characters of Urbana and Suburbia obscured variation in ethnicity, race, class, income, and occupation. As the targets of Sandy鈥檚 resentment, Urbana and Suburbia stood for the Westerners who lived in cushioned comfort and who, consciously or not, wielded power over the rural areas.
That characterization left the majority of urban and suburban people offstage.
How could we update the five-hundred-year-old form of the morality play to capture鈥攐r at least to hint at鈥攖his diversity within each of our three characters?
Here鈥檚 my best shot at a solution.
Near the end of the script, the last-ditch marriage Counselor pushes so hard that she finally reaches Sandy and Urbana. As she pressures them into self-examination, they break down, and unleash the confusion they have concealed from others and concealed from themselves.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know who I am anymore,鈥� Sandy admits. 鈥淚鈥檝e presented myself a rancher or farmer who lives on and knows the land and who produces the food that supplies Urbana and Suburbia. But maybe I鈥檓 actually a maintenance man at a ski resort! Or a ranger at a National Forest!听 Or a banker or a car repairman or a wildlands firefighter or a snowplow operator! What would be wrong with that? Am I really prohibited from revealing the many dimensions of who I am?鈥�
With Sandy bravely leading the way in honest reflection, the Counselor pushes Urbana and Suburbia to offer similar acknowledgments of the many dimensions of their identity.
鈥淎ll three of you,鈥� the Counselor says to them, 鈥渁re听plagued by stereotypes that simplify you and constrain you. And鈥�here鈥檚 the core of your conflicts鈥攜ou impose and inflict those simplifications and constraints on each other. Those stereotypes conceal you from each other like veils that you think you can鈥檛 throw off. But you can throw those veils off. In fact, you can set each other free from those constraints. Sandy, Urbana, and Suburbia:听 you have many dimensions, and together, you compose the kinship that we know as 鈥榯he West.鈥欌��
That has turned out to be quite a forceful Counselor, especially when we remember that she started this session in a state of personal collapse.
Handing the Baton to the Young
Here are the words that Jake Rothman, our youthful collaborator, wrote for the Counselor to say to Sandy and Urbana:
No matter how bad things between you two are, you are stuck together. Like it or not, and in spite of this big, globalized world, you two still rely on each other for so much. . . Splitting up would be a lot tougher than just living with this marriage because you share so much. In my professional experience, I鈥檝e observed that often couples learn more about each other and are able to understand each other鈥檚 viewpoints, even as they are in the process of trying to separate. It鈥檚 extremely important that you both understand this.
And here are the words that Jake wrote for the Counselor to say to the audience attending the pubic program:
All these characters have been symbols. Fortunately, you are actual people and not strictly defined representations. You don鈥檛 need a public therapy session to talk things out.
The circumstances of 2020 seem to call for a modification of only one part of Jake鈥檚 draft.
We know now that 鈥渁ctual people鈥� do 鈥渘eed a public therapy session to talk things out.鈥�
I hope that our script for the 鈥淟ast-Ditch Mental Health Counseling Session,鈥� revised with Jake鈥檚 help, will offer that opportunity to the nation as a whole to clarify the terms of the rural/urban divide and open a route to coexistence with a one-of-a-kind invitation to mutual understanding.
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Banner cartoon image by Bob Mankoff. The cartoonist Bob Mankoff was the first visitor in the Center鈥檚 Humor Initiative series.鈥�