The Prairie Panicle No. 16
A monthly report and recs list from West of 98
Welcome new readers! Thank you to longtime social media connection Becky McCray for sharing my most recent work on her LinkedIn page and bringing new faces to West of 98. Becky is a tour de force in rural community-building who walks the walk of living and owning a business in a rural place. Her ideas have helped shape my own. If you’re new, I encourage you to read this essay I penned in October, setting forth the ideas behind West of 98 and its mission moving forward:
As for today, The Prairie Panicle is a mid-month newsletter with my recent writing, read/watch/listen recommendations, and thoughts that don’t fit into a full newsletter. If any reader has a thought or a question for me, I’ll add them in future Panicles!
What I’ve Written
Becky recommended my most recent essay, with my Five Rural Priorities for State Government: Rural Broadband, Economic Development, Healthcare, Education, and Infrastructure. You can read about these ideas (and how I created the list in 2021) here:
I kicked off 2025 by reflecting on Stamford’s historic football season and the manner in which has me leaning in to the ultra-local as a tool of community improvement:
On Christmas Eve, I republished last year’s Christmas Eve essay on the merits of embracing the darkness of winter as inherent to healthy seasonal living:
The difficult balance of hardship and joy of Christmas is a regular theme in my holiday-season writing since I launched West of 98. I revisited that topic with some help from Merle Haggard, Michael Scott, and Wendell Berry:
Online Reading
Compact publishes a wealth of thoughtful work that defies partisan stereotypes. “Striking Alone” discussses labor organizing at Amazon and how the wrecking ball of online retail has also helped wreck “third places” that are critical to our shared sense of identity. Added recommendation: longtime readers know that I have previously written about third places and I am personally passionate about making them work.
Farm policy is another passion of mine (and my wife works on it full time). The good folks at Farm Action have released policy recommendations to address the monopolies that are steadily strangling American agriculture and rural communities. You can read it here.
The Los Angeles fires have been devastating to the folks impacted and saddening to the rest of us who have watched in real time. “LA’s Dreams Went Up In Flames” is an important read on the failures of local government by elected officials who were worried about everything but the vital work of good government.
is a longtime West of 98 recommendation. In “Why You Shouldn't Burn It All Down” he writes at Mere Orthodoxy about the difficulty of pursuing meaningful life amidst “The Machine” (as coined by the great ), without falling to the bleakness of Theodore J. Kaczynski’s worldview. Yes, THAT Ted Kaczynski. For those of us who are suspicious of our tech-and-industry-based society, it’s a topic to consider carefully.Books I’ve Read
I got more recommendations in 2024 to read “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry” than just about any book I’ve read. I got it for Christmas and so far, it lives up to the hype and the depressing realities set forth in the book.
This is not a new read, but for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I recommend “Hellhound on his Trail” by the great Hampton Sides. Sides has written incredible books but this is one of the best. It details the events leading to the assassination of Dr. King and the massive manhunt afterwards. I walked away asking a question that has never full been resolved: who WAS James Earl Ray?
I need a website/app to list and track all my reading, but I don’t love Goodreads given its place among the tentacles of Amazon. Do any of my readers have a good recommendation?
Listening/Watching Recs
I’ve been re-watching “Justified” lately, and the show still holds up in all its glory. It deserves a full-length essay of its own one day, but in many ways, it’s about community and localism, in addition to old-fashion law enforcers battling criminals that they went to school with.
My friends at Doomer Optimism have a great new episode with
interviewing Wally Chamberlain about ultra-local civics. They discuss topics like distributism and subsidiarity of which I am a personal fan and the working of the ultra-local “town meeting” model of government in New England. If you’re a nerd like me, you’ll enjoy it.I’m working on a refresh of the West of 98 podcast. The Substack voiceovers receive more traffic than the podcasting apps and Spotify totally destroyed the user-friendly podcast host Anchor.FM. Stay tuned, but in the meantime, check out the back catalog of West of 98 and Rural Church and State:
West of 98 Store
I stopped buying books at Amazon once I discovered Bookshop.org and now I have my own West of 98 bookstore on their good site. You can browse and purchase the books that I recommend or buy your own books. They pay me a small commission, which doesn’t get me rich, but it does help build a fund for the West of 98 project. Even if you never buy my recommendations, do your online book shopping at Bookshop! Their profits support independent bookstores. Amazon doesn’t need more money.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.