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John Baden writes about how life has changed in Montana:
From the Civil War until Earth Day, only approximate benchmarks, our
region had a coherent culture, economy, and politics. The glue holding
them together was commodity exploitation and conversion. The folks who
mattered in community life manipulated real stuff, cows and trees and
water and grain, not symbols and electrons. People dealt with the
furniture of the world and cheating was easily exposed. Folks were
interdependent, knew it, and acted accordingly. That’s what’s gone.Now things really are different. Ever more people’s incomes are
independent of their locations. And ever more folks want to live in
places with Bozeman’s qualities. Consider growth in America. The
locational advantages of Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit are gone —
all have lost population. What’s booming? Bellingham, Boise, Bend, and
Billings all are growing rapidly.
It’s a nice piece on coping with change. The whole thing is here [2].