A Lifeline from the World (Richard Longworth)

"It's easy --and wrong -- to say that the people in these towns are globalization's leftovers, men and women who can't cut it in this new economy, refugees happily hiding from the rest of the world, with no interest in that world and nothing to say about it. Many do indeed feel like castaways, but they long for more links with a world that has passed them by.

...But what struck me most in the two days of conversations was the almost desperate thirst in the state's isolated small towns for some link to the wider world, for the need to tap into minds and thinking beyond the town limits, if only to feel that they haven't been totally exiled from life..."