Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Demography is destiny, the old saying goes, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that destiny is rarely a straight line. Demographic trends used to feel like slow‑moving background noise—births, deaths, and migration quietly nudging our communities from decade to decade. Now those same forces are front‑page news, from aging […]
If you don’t know where you want to get to then, as the Cheshire Cat told Alice in Wonderland, “it doesn’t matter which way you go”. In rural and small-town America, the challenges are familiar: aging infrastructure, shifting demographics, and limited budgets. But the real story isn’t about what’s missing—it’s about what communities are doing […]
Small Town & Rural Comprehensive Planning: JCShepard.com’s Theme for 2026 Comprehensive planning in small towns and rural counties is not a big complicated urban process writ small. It is about neighbors deciding what kind of place they want to be in the future… and then putting that promise in writing so the next subdivision, the […]
It’s the end of the year. A good time to set goals and list our achievements. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Americans love lists. The Top 10 this, and the Top 20 that. We seem to be constantly trying to get back on the teacher’s Student of the Year list, […]
Why does your town exist? What makes your community thrive? How is that for holiday time existential questions? Recently I revisited a recording by Minnesota Public Radio of a community meeting up in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in the heart of 10,000 lakes country. Two University of Minnesota Extension educators in the Community Vitality program, Ben […]
Despite a slight rebound from October’s five‑year low, Creighton University’s latest Rural Mainstreet Index report shows the Midwest & Northern Rockies heartland still mired below growth neutral, with weak grain prices, soft ag land values, and cautious rural bankers keeping recession risks elevated. November’s RMI: Off the Floor, Still in the Red The Rural Mainstreet […]
I am going home for the holidays, so I’m feeling a bit more philosophical than usual. We are driving up to Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving with my dad—wherever Dad is, that is home. Home is also the farm in Michigan which my mother’s family homesteaded, and now the cemetery where she rests. Home is also […]
There was a time when we built civic buildings with pride. We designed with an eye for architectural standards and constructed in brick and stone to last. Then we grew out of those grand old buildings. What do we do with the big old school in the middle of town when the school board moves […]
A Holistic Rural Energy Vision for The Rural Energy Stack: Layering Biomass, Geothermal, and SMRs with Wind and Solar for Resilience How Integrated Clean Energy Systems Can Revitalize Rural Economies Today’s bonus post follows up on this week’s fourth installment in JCShepard.com’s October series on rural energy, exploring how the clean energy transition is reshaping […]
How biomass, geothermal, and SMRs are powering the next chapter of rural clean energy This is the fourth installment in JCShepard.com’s October series on rural energy, exploring how the clean energy transition is reshaping life across America’s heartland. While solar and wind have dominated the headlines—and much of our previous coverage—this week we dig into […]
