Thank you for joining us here in this wonderful place. I would like to say quick word what he had before you is one of the most remarkable, if not most remarkable productive partnerships in american journalism. It is a partnership that, over the years, has taken them and millions of readers from austin to seattle, tokyo, shanghai, beijing. Now it has them hopscotching across america in a single engine airplane. Partnership inis its most clearest light. We see their complementary interest at work. They write about the compelling or quirky characters they meet in the adventures they have along the way. Jim writes more about factories, and deborah writes about schools. Deborah writes about language in the way people talk. Jim writes about beer. But they are both driven by the same great curiosity. And excitement about learning, and adventure that took them to china, and has not taken them back to rediscover parts of america that dont get a lot of coverage in national publications. I think that is what we might as well start. Why you chose to do this. How you went about thinking about where to go in the first place. Jim, do you want to set the table . Thank you for reading our magazine, and leading us to this adventure. I guess this started when devon when devon i got married. When deb and i got married. It was a bleak time in england. , after we got married, in oxford, england, we went to a work camp in ghana for our honeymoon. [laughter] that set the table. Fair warning on both sides. The series point would be that we just got back from three years living in china where we traveled around by bus and train, and airplane him and car. Years we have flown across the country a number of times in our small plane. We thought, why dont we apply a setina models and get of d. C. For a while. To give their credit to our older son, he is the one who suggested it to us. He said we were getting antsy after being back in d. C. For a few years and said what you do what you do best. Getting your plane and see what you can find. Ikes what was the process of figuring out where you could go . That is an ongoing process. We were looking for interesting, smaller places. Small is a flexible definition. Aspen doesnt have many people who live there. That would not count. , a sizable town, was in our category of small because it seems like it is on the fringe somewhere. We are looking for places that are not in the first year of National Media attention. Not the east coast where most of , or if they gotten the news it would be for a Natural Disaster or some oddity, or somebody was going to illustrate a theme piece. Placesed to go to these and tell more about people once we have the general pop deposition. He put something in a blog post that said tell us about your town. She would visit your town. It was an amazing response. In a couple of days we had a thousand people ride in with why their town was interesting. Why their town was changing and developing. Outwe actually started choosing a few that we knew a little bit more about. Sioux falls, south dakota. It was the first one. The text was could we remember it was sioux falls and not sioux city. Once we learned that, that was a mistake that we had made. We needed to set the record straight. How many people are clear on the difference between sioux falls and sioux city . We can tell you if you want to know. Is the largest city in south dakota and the capital of the planes. An interesting place. If you have a credit card payment it probably goes to sioux falls. It is a great, diverse city that has immigrants and refugees from around the world. Sioux city, in iowa, was 80 years ago the superior of sioux falls. Sioux falls thinks sioux city has gone down. Wantsity had a town that aspirational he. Each city has a town that looked aspirational and. Ly. Is the cartoon image that america is largely emptying out into a few big metropolises, and the rest of the country is being marginalized. Where there are people, they are clustering in a handful of walmart and applebees. That is not what youre finding it all. Sioux falls turned out to have a diverse local economy. To brag on it for a second, it is a huge agricultural center. Downtown sioux falls, who has been . It is very beautiful since they repaired the falls. They were derelict long ago. The sites are the falls, the state penitentiary, because the story is 100 years ago when they were setting up a state university, do you want the anniversary of the prison, they decided on the prison because it was steadier. This enormous slaughterhouse, where thousands of kids meet their fate. Apparently the pig laws are laxer. They come across to sioux falls, and then theyr go to china. The companies owned by a chinese firm. They have agriculture. They have high tech. Us thethe may see macys balloon. They have finance. It is the first of many places. We thought this would be an interesting place to live. Aspect ofas the human sioux falls that was something that surprised us. We thought we had seen mostly ethnic, scandinavian types. It is been a center for Refugee Resettlement in the u. S. Since the 1970s. It started with vietnam, largely with the Lutheran Services in sioux falls. Sioux falls became so good at this, so good at taking refugees , umbrella organizations decided to send wave after wave of refugees to sioux falls. The has happened since 1970s. Right now in the School System they have 10 of the School Population are refugee and immigrant kids. There are 30 different languages spoken in the schools. If you have have english language programs you get extra money to help those kids in their immersion programs to learn english. It is a work well in sioux falls because the programs are designed that all of the nonenglish speaking kids will be speaking the same foreign language. There are 30 of kids who speak 70 is, and the other this longtail of 27 different languages. Swahili, arabic, all kinds of languages. Thisave not only refugees, barrage of commitment to medic situations where they have been a camps for five years or tear years or two years, one of the women i met, when she was six years old she and her family had to flee die for she had to fully perform. Had to flee darfur. They finally get to sioux falls. Here she is. This beautiful young woman. 16 years old, in high school. She was acclimated by this point in wanting to join rotc, which she did. Challenge. Nted to she was still wearing her muslim one of the hardest things for her was on dressup day at the school, when you wear your formal uniform they would let her wear her muslim headscarf with the formal uniform. She was allowed to do it. , ithance, when i was there started a ball rolling. The people who were her commander at the school was helped trying to solve the problem. He went up the ranks. This year that word that she was allowed to wear it. It is touching. This is something you found in burlington. Schools wrestling with an immigrant population. Definitely. One of the Elementary Schools had its own kind of drama. It was a regular Public School in a rough part of town. And a lot of the kids were living in this school as well. It was a failing school. They were either going to close the school down or bus the kids out. Activists, and they are very active in burlington, said this will not be. We have a third way. They decided they would make the school into a real example of the successful focused school. In can guess that the word burlington is sustainability. They were making in the Charter School around sustainability. Such such a magnet and such a Successful School that now it is one of the best Elementary Schools in the 60 , 40 has about around the town, and 60 from that neighborhood. They lean on everyone as a community to contribute building the gardens, making being lunches. Two touching things from the principal, they go around the rules of things. They have to meet the standards of the schools. But, the important thing is they uponed that each kid leaving six. Needed to know how to ride a bike and to swim. They got by extended to the school and they taught the kids how to ride bikes. Teachers forw swimming and march them down to the lake when the weather gets warm and teaches them how to swim. Engagement and dedication, were just going to make it our way, that you see s in theents on all kind o small towns. Lamy talk about the native populations. The city or town, what is it that keeps people there . Or bring them back . People return. One theme. I want to Say Something on what deb was talking about. It is natural if you are involved in National Level politics over the last generation to think bleak thoughts about the fabric of American Life because there are happen. For things not the payoff for blocking things were scoring points is so much what what we invite or swim in all the time. The absence of that in regional level activities is so dramatic. What is interesting people dont even comment on it. Here we aresaying doing the business. They dont even bother saying that. The school is solving its problems. , if you of weeks ago are wanting to have a noncorny ofse of the functionality American Public life, you would see it in one of these places where people are paying attention. The local patriotism, we have these thousand plus nominations of people saying come to our town. People cared about their city. Nd why it was special why even the things failing about it more difficult. There is a high representation ,f people, you grew up here people who have come to the metropolis and think if you want to achieve you have to come from the metropolis. It is interesting to see people whose loyalty is so local. The town where i grew up, redwoods, california. It is viewed by people in los angeles as the boondocks. Piece, one wrote a long mockery of my homeland apart from other things. There are people there, including a man who is a real tech entrepreneur, who has built this company in this little town because he cares about its future and the conditions. We ask what the story of the town is. There is this local attachment and patriotism that is quite impressive. For example, in holland, michigan. Holland, michigan. We went there after somewhere we knew in college was from holland. , it is a small town on the Eastern Shore of lake michigan. Economically it is distinctive for having a high manufacturing proportion of gdp. Anthropologically it is about 51 dutch, calvinist, conservative. Half of one percent are jewish, including our friend who is there, part of a long scrap business. He was sayingo im going to go back to holland. We saw him. He has built a culture there with his wife that they have made a life that matters. They have all kinds of philanthropy. It is interesting to listen to the way people talk about their hometowns. You usually hear, in sioux falls, i love sioux falls. ,n other towns, like eastport population 1300, as cold as it can possibly be, the answer is how could i not live here. A test case, we havent been to most was a chart of the 10 polluted cities in china. China was like a thousand times more polluted than the u. S. These are the top 10 cities. One that we went to was fresno, which is a hardpressed place. Even their there are people who care about trying to have the spark of fresno. This guy was having a downtown place. They care about it. Winters am a california is winters, california is a notch down from napa. Soft, rough and ready. Charming. Still forming. There were a number of young couples, young families. The husband or the wife was usually from winters. Said whenn, each one they met their future spouse, the agreement from the beginning was you have to understand we are going to winters. If you buy into this, this is where we are going to live. This is a pretty small town. The commitment to the town, you can say those in words, but will be saw the people do was try to figure out how to make their sustainable and built for a future where they could create a family life that usually meant small town life where you know your neighbors and everyone is watching out for one another. That was a definite aspect of it. Town,e the assets of the take advantage of them and build them up in a modern way. In maine it was all about being a town that wasnt really living up to its ability. There are going to make that into a worldclass port. They are the main depot for shipping pregnant cow from texas to turkey. It is a long story. [laughter] go ahead. Eastport has 1300 people. Every one of whom looms in our imagination. The first night, they are doing this production of the glassman manager. The guy selling tickets was the editor of a local newspaper, which is thriving. The stage manager was the barista at the coffee shop. The people who urges making it happen. One of them is the port manager who got the call of some person in texas who runs a company to have an account and make sure all of the embryo cals are female. The guy from texas said how would you like to send pregnant cows to turkey . And he said oh sure we would love to do that. If we say no, someone else will say yes. They have the deepest port in the continental United States. The farthest extreme of the north american continent. You now have these wrapups. Tens of thousands of cows have come up by truck from texas and other parts of the u. S. With supplies. They load them into the shipping containers. Portholes. During the journey the cowboys shovel and more straw to keep it filled up. When they get off istanbul they go through a cow carwash. This is to replenish european herds after mad cow disease. This is one of several big businesses. Tidal energy, americas tidal energy center. On the bright side, when the canadian arctic melts theyll be the closest a plaintiff coast port to china. [laughter] the glasses 110 full. The glasses 110 full. My wife start looking for property there. [laughter] for 100,000 you can get a nice house with a view of the ocean on all sides. There are some tensions. You have these people working hard to make this town work. Even they admit now they are taking a lot of risks. Onre going on face faith that these things will work out. Native tf them are sport. This is a point of tension within the town. Town person from away more than once. People who were native born, this doesnt mean you happen to be born and you come to eastport. You have to be born in eastport. The people from away, and the people not from away. They dont always see eye to eye on things. Our town is doing fine without these changes and big fancy ideas coming in. The big fancy ideas are what is moving the town. 1300,en in the town of always not happy. Big ideas coming from people come from the outside . Not really. I think they start from the people who are inside or want to be there. There are a lot of people the been away for a while. They both worked outside for a while. This guy, a different person, he grew up there growing oranges. His grandfather had been an orange grower. The last thing he wanted to do was grow these oranges. It is forming work. He became a fantasy or he became a financier. He is now back trying to preserve and make a viable business of the historic orange groves. Threat,ead off the main this interest the citrus pest making its way from florida to california. I think that South Carolina is a good example of people from away and people from their deciding to come back. Want to tell the story question my greenville is a phenomenal turnaround story. It was a big textile area. , it has theere bmw most impressively redone downtown we have seen. The mayor says that whenever they are trying to get businesses, international ones to come, the reaction is are you kidding . They come there, and then they are talking to Real Estate Agents and getting a house. It is a beautiful place. It illustrates the community, the good and the bad. The more effective, the more exclusive. Places including holland and greenville, where there is this tight community, i published a note from a woman who was a visiting professor in greenville who said i hated greenville with the heat of a thousand, million suns. I couldnt wait to get away. It is part of the american tradeoff. Ran into so many young people who are in their 20s have gone away for college and come back visiting their parents at home. This incredulity. This is my hometown. Everything is change. They are doing the Tech Startups. This Silicon Valley in greenville that is becoming known around the country is a good inky pater situation a good incubator situation where you can learn to be a coder or get support for your startup. It is kids from greenville and kids from all over the place returning to this town. And, reshaping it. Lets talk about what it is like me on the road 50 of your time. Im curious about the process of arriving at a new place. Do you usually have a friend that serves as a local guide . Like bouncing around . Ill take that. , i hopewhen we arrive this works. We have committed to this for the next series of time. The answer is no, nobody meets us. We hope the rental car works. We hope there is a motel at the place we have booked. Just kind of go. The trapmorning, set lines for the usual suspects. There is always a great group of people where you can knock on the door and they will talk to you. The newspaper editors, the mayor, the schools. Fiscal principles the school principals, the librarians. Business. Starting a people here are, and journalists know this, there is this forgettable exponential curve of when you go someplace and you get contacts. You spin the first half of the time trying to find able to talk to. Suddenly there is a Million People to talk to and not enough time. We spend the first days people up. Suddenly there are visits. What is the strangest place youve stayed so far . Yeah. [laughter] city it dont say what was then. There is a personal friend we dont want to inconvenience. I know. One of the places we have stayed was not literally a shipping container, but it wasnt always a shipping container with no windows. It was over something which i will describe is part of america prison industrial complex. A 24 7 Activity Center for prison businesses. It was nice. It was very comfortable. Was it quiet . Very quiet. And a surprising difference in your sleeping pattern that no light can enter the room where you are. It is easier to sleep in. Yeah. That was one of the stranger ones for sure. Places were like traveling businessmen are. , jimlaces that work best does air control. I do ground maneuvers.