Rural Areas

As the temperature plunged to minus-40 degrees last month, Nastasia Wassilie waited. The 61-year-old widow had run out of wood and fuel oil, and had no money to buy more. Nor was there much food in the house. But people here in rural Alaska try to take care of themselves. Her sister would come to help. Surely she would.

Like everybody else in his farming village, Zhan Changchun used to get around on a bicycle. This month, the 29-year-old walked into a local dealership, pulled out $7,300 in cash from his leather satchel and drove away with the family's first car: a seven-seat micro-minivan that's jointly produced by China's Wuling and General Motors. The Zhans drained their life savings and borrowed from relatives, bold moves in a slowing economy.

A $7.2-billion provision in the economic stimulus bill to extend high-speed Internet service to the rural U.S. and other underserved areas has been hailed in Congress as the 21st century equivalent of government programs that brought electricity and modern highways to every corner of the country. Others think the benefits may be overstated -- especially the notion that every dollar invested will produce a $10 boost to the economy.

As owners of one of the oldest ferry services in America, Tom and Judy Bixler steer their craft across the narrow Tred Avon River dozens of times each summer day to link two sleepy Chesapeake Bay towns known for crabs, not jihadists. "The ferry goes pretty slowly," Judy Bixler said of the seasonal service, which dates back to 1683. "It's not like someone could commandeer it and go anywhere." But under a little-known domestic security program, the Bixlers and about 1.

Last summer, the tranquil English village of Kentisbeare woke up to find a dagger piercing its heart. The man who ran the neighborhood pub, the Wyndham Arms, had decided to call it quits. Hit by hard times, he locked up one evening and never came back, leaving the village bereft of its "local," the watering hole down the road where, for more than 200 years, the good folk here could always drop in for a pint, a pie or a piece of gossip.

In a flat, piney river valley deep in the Alaska interior, the village of Takotna is marked by a dozen or so houses, a shop, a tiny post office and a school. Intrepid gold miners ventured here decades ago. A small tribe of Athabascan Indians has hunted and fished the woods and riverbanks for generations. This summer Takotna, population somewhere between 46 and 61, has become one of the best-known villages in Alaska -- thanks to the $18.7-million airstrip the federal government is funding on the edge of town.

Shop owner Hideo Sakamoto knows this sad truth about his dying town: When he retires, no one will be left to take the reins of his tiny business selling eyeglasses and clocks. His two children have fled to big cities and his mother is bedridden. "It's a sad story," says the 57-year-old, "because I will not be passing down my business to my children." And not just that, he says. He and his wife, Mariko, are "so lonely." Almost every day, this Japanese town surrounded by streams and mountains is eerily quiet, with only a few elderly people walking down its narrow streets.

In the belly of the Central Valley, hard times have hit harder than just about anywhere else in America. But it's also a stronghold of Republicans ready to shrink the safety net. One in five Merced County adults are out of work, home foreclosures run rampant and anti-poverty programs are stretched to the limit. The county welfare chief calls it California's Appalachia.

More than half a century ago, residents of rural Early County erected a stone monument topped by an oversized peanut on the courthouse square here as a tribute to the region's signature product. In this self-proclaimed Peanut Capital of the World, people credit peanuts with the area's growth and prosperity.

Ron and Paula Marino decided to move from Las Vegas to this village of thick pines and ski-lodge-style homes so their two boys can attend Earl B. Lundy Elementary School. With its one teacher for a total of nine students, the school seemed like Shangri-La within the underfunded and overcrowded Clark County School District, which encompasses Las Vegas and outlying rural areas. But by the time the Marinos' 4- and 5-year-old boys are ready to start school, Lundy may be closed.