Decent account of Appalachian backwoods poverty. It’s not too different in substance from anything in its genre, be it contemporary or from the ‘30s or '60s “discoveries” of the rural poor or 18th century English travellers’ accounts, but then “same as it ever was” is the genre.

It is at National Review so there’s that but it’s mostly too honest to get that bad - quickly and delicately notes that marriage doesn’t much help and the lack of abortion maybe hurts, gets into a discussion about how welfare systems are gamed to keep the whole thing running without pretense of having any better idea, notes how it all works out nicely for the local elite. (And nice they didn’t give it to VDH who sometimes does “rural life” dispatches that are literally complaints that people are on his lawn with a few references to Ancient Rome.)

I traveled across the country east to west once, but mostly 8 hour/day drives on I-80. Some nice scenery with occasionally an eyebrow-worthy moment on the radio or local diner’s newspaper, but the main point of cultural contact outside of the big cities was national parks or, well, services for interstate travelers.

Then down in LA I got an old motorcycle and came to appreciate the windy mountain and back roads, took her up to Portland and then as far as Seattle, then east to Missoula and back on different routes.

Wow, was that an education.