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Rural Life

Outsiders: The Gender Balance of Housework, Inside and Out

  • May 28, 2020

Our editor has written an article about household gender roles for A Voice for Men. Check it out here.

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photo by P. A. Jensen, of a book by poet Jim Johnson, featuring a painting by Carl Gawboy
Uncategorized

Poe-try

  • May 19, 2020May 19, 2020

He died before I could get another chance to see him for the first time. Louis Jenkins, plainspoken prose poet, was speaking at a poetry reading in the biggish city, in a liberal church, hosted by the independent bookstore. So

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Support Local Journalism, They Said: A Small-Town Model

  • April 27, 2020April 27, 2020

The gnome was on its ass, face up, smiling. It had obviously been in a street fight, and lost to the street—or driveway, anyway. The tan-and-rusted minivan doing its predawn rounds with hazards flashing had wandered off that driveway, its

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural LifeFor Fun

For Fun: Post-Viral Parenting

  • April 22, 2020April 27, 2020

The virus lays bare the trades we’ve made. Trading our time for money, we’re told, is what we all do. Fair enough. Trading our kids for money, we’re not told, is also what we all do. Fair not enough. Foul.

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Sports

Arc Enemies: Comparing a Two-Point Arc in Hockey to Basketball’s Three-Point Arc

  • April 15, 2020

A two-point arc in hockey? No thanks. Our editor’s latest at US College Hockey Online outlines why an extra-point arc works in basketball, but wouldn’t in hockey. (Our editor sorts his social media into separate accounts; to get his takes

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & Policy

The Progressive Flat Tax

  • April 14, 2020April 14, 2020

Imagine that we didn’t pay income taxes online, or by check. Imagine that we paid them in person, in cash, on Tax Day. Maybe everybody in town would bring sacks of cash to the Central Tax Pit and dump them

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Coronavirus and Gratitude

  • April 4, 2020April 14, 2020

By writing this I hereby forfeit the popularity contest that I was never going to win. Friends, I come bearing inconvenient news: we’ve missed the point about the coronavirus. Yes, yes, this flavor of coronavirus is, indeed, a big deal.

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Sports

Minnesota Nice on Ice: An Ode to the Spectacle (and Diversity) of College Hockey

  • January 17, 2020

I recently saw a fight at a college hockey game. No penalties were assessed—it was a Politeness Fight. Parents stood nearby, watching their kids shoving… the puck into each other’s hands. “Here, you take it,” said one boy. “No, I

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural LifeFor Fun

For Fun: Lady Trojans Invade the Northland

  • January 11, 2020January 17, 2020

“Next on the agenda is Principal Swenson for an update with the mascot problem. Ray?” “Thanks. As some of you know, we got a cease-and-desist letter from Really Equal for All demanding that we change our sports logo. Apparently a

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven, Education

Losing the Race in College Sports (Part 1 of 3): The Myth of Overrepresentation

  • December 26, 2019January 1, 2020

Discussions of race in college sports often rely on faulty statistics. One recent, high-profile example comes from The Atlantic, where sports columnist Jemele Hill offered an intriguing thought experiment involving black student-athletes and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Unfortunately,

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven, Education

Losing the Race in College Sports (Part 2 of 3): Race Is Just Part of the Story

  • December 26, 2019January 17, 2020

The first installment in this series examined whether black, male student-athletes, and black students generally, are fairly represented on campuses of universities that participate in major-conference athletics. This part of the series focuses on their performances in the classroom compared

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven, Education

Losing the Race in College Sports (Part 3 of 3): Big-Money Sports vs. the Classroom

  • December 26, 2019January 1, 2020

The first installment in this series examined whether black, male student-athletes, and black students generally, are fairly represented on campuses of universities that participate in major-conference athletics. The second installment analyzed the effects of race on classroom performance, both among

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Sports

En-Title IX

  • October 3, 2019October 4, 2019

You could hear our shivers. We hummed like refrigerators in our plastic seats, our frigid winter jackets micro-trembling, heat dissipating up, up, up into the bannered rafters. Thirty-seven minutes until game time, little pockets of people huddled among the 7,000-some

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural LifeEducation

Schools? Blame the Parents.

  • September 26, 2019

We needn’t harken to the days of Laura Ingalls to remember when going to school was a privilege. Much more recently, children still walked to school, in the winter, trudging through the elements with slates and books and literal lunch

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Generations Removed

  • August 12, 2019

My father is a Baby Boomer, but he jokes that he was raised during The Depression. He grew up on a small, family-run potato farm that was a lot closer to “farming” than to “agribusiness,” if you catch the distinction.

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven

Poll-Wise: Can Polls Predict College Hockey’s National Tournament Better than the PairWise?

  • July 29, 2019

Our editor has published an article on US College Hockey Online (USCHO.com) about whether polls or computer-based rankings are better at predicting the national-tournament field in college hockey.     P. A. Jensen is editor of RuralityCheck.com. He lives in

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & PolicyEducation, Kernel

College Students Are Adults, Right? [Kernel]

  • July 29, 2019July 29, 2019

This is a new, shorter format: the Kernel (hence the picture). Feedback is welcome, especially on our editor’s Twitter account (@RuralityChecker). As always, thanks for reading. A local car salesman recently offered up this tidbit in casual conversation: “High school

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & PolicyKernel

Amenities of the State [Kernel]

  • July 18, 2019July 20, 2019

The mayor of Duluth, MN, wants more affordable housing in the city. The idea has at least two problems. The first involves perspective, and the second involves funding. First, perspective. Leaders of cities bemoan high housing costs, but that’s often

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & PolicyEducation, For Fun

Mind the Gap: Four Solutions to the Education Achievement Gap

  • July 14, 2019July 29, 2019

C. N. Hughes, Ed.D. Director State Agency on Trends In Race and Education State of Minnesota St. Paul, MN 55155 Dear Dr. Hughes, This letter summarizes the findings of our grant (“Closing Minnesota’s Race-Based Educational Achievement Gap at All Costs,”

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Sports

A Thought Experiment for #EqualPay

  • July 10, 2019

Imagine that women’s soccer takes off. Would we be talking about #EqualPay for the men? For the uninitiated, the US Women’s Soccer Team is in the middle of a firestorm, and that firestorm is squarely in the gender pay gap.

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For Social Justice, Team USA’s Coach Should Give Up One of Her Jobs

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