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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Rise of Zoom Towns

How will the pandemic reshape flyover country?
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Last month, NPR ran a segment on “Zoom towns”—towns that had suddenly become attractive to professionals on the coasts because of COVID19. (Forbes lists some of the most popular ones here.) Lilly Smith reports that many of these towns were already growing before the pandemic, and the sudden influx of new residents is causing problems: “Gateway communities in the West had already been feeling a strain, according to Danya Rumore, an assistant professor at the University of Utah who led the study. It looked at towns that had less than 25,000 people; were within 10 miles of a national park, monument, forest, lake, or river; and at least 15 miles from a census-designated urban area. They identified 1,522 towns that fit this description, conducted in-depth interviews with public officials from 25 of those communities, and then surveyed an additional 333 officials. ‘One of the most striking results is the extent to which housing affordability and cost of living issues are a concern in gateway communities across the West,’ says Rumore. ‘More than 80% of survey respondents from towns of all shapes and sizes said that housing affordability is moderately to extremely problematic for their community.’ Second homes and short-term rentals were a main cause for concern. ‘The local workforce is simply priced out. . . . People who work here can no longer afford to work here,’ said one community development director.”

In other news: An autograph book that includes the signatures of Mark Twain, Harry Houdini and Thomas Edison goes up for auction. How did a jeweler named Lafayette Cornwell get all of these signatures? “In time, eight presidents and several first ladies signed Cornwell’s autograph album. So did Mark Twain, Harry Houdini and Thomas A. Edison. For decades, well into his own middle age, Cornwell had a knack for turning up where well-known people were and persuading them to sign. Sometimes they did more than that. Herman Melville wrote a quote from Shakespeare. Oscar Wilde quoted his own poetry. John Philip Sousa wrote three measures of ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Mary Todd Lincoln signed ‘Mrs. Abraham Lincoln,’ which David Lowenherz, a collector and dealer, said was unusual. After her husband’s assassination, she usually just signed ‘Mary Lincoln.’”

The house where James Joyce’s grand-aunts lived, which he used as the setting of his story “The Dead,” has been approved to be turned into a hostel: “Dublin city council has greenlit a controversial plan to convert the house made famous by James Joyce’s story ‘The Dead’ into a hostel, with a campaign group supported by writers including Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín and Edna O’Brien saying they will appeal the decision.”

Rachel Monroe writes about the people who investigate military imposters: “Politicians lie to get us into wars; generals lie about how well things are going; soldiers lie about what they did during their service. In 1782, when George Washington awarded ribbons and badges to valorous Revolutionary War troops, he was already worrying about pretenders. “Should any who are not entitled to these honors have the insolence to assume the badges of them they shall be severely punished,” he wrote. When Walter Washington Williams, thought to be the last surviving veteran of the Confederate Army, died, in 1959, President Eisenhower called for a national day of mourning. It turned out that Williams had fabricated his service, and that the second-longest-surviving Confederate soldier probably had, too . . . But it’s only recently that lying about military service has been considered a particularly heinous form of lying, one with its own name: stolen valor.”

Andrew Taylor reviews Ian Rankin’s latest Rebus novel, A Song for the Dark Times: “By my reckoning, this is the 24th outing for John Rebus, Scotland’s best known retired police officer. One of the many pleasures of the series is that Rebus ages in real time. COPD now makes climbing stairs an increasing problem, so he and his dog Brillo are in the throes of moving to a downstairs flat.”

Jonathan Chaves reviews Catharine Savage Brosman’s stories: “I have not read so fine a work of American fiction in decades.”

Burke’s defense of natural rights: “Much of the hostility toward Burke—a defender of ordered liberty in America, India, Ireland, and the Caribbean against British imperialism and the slave trade, and in France against totalitarian democracy—is rooted in a common but narrow academic reading of the final chapter of Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and History. But, as Steven Lenzner has pointed out, Strauss himself noted, in that very chapter, Burke’s recognition of natural rights that must be respected by any legitimate law and regime. Contrary to the common portrait of Burke as an enemy of human rights and of any opposition to inherited authority, Burke expounded a natural law philosophy that undergirds rights in the same manner as our own Constitution—as protections of human dignity and self-government rooted in our God-given nature.”

Photo: Vernazza

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