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The Rural Blog

Serving up this year's Thanksgiving dinner will cost 5% less than it did in 2023. The average price of this year's turkey dinner with all the trimmings rings in at $58.08, compared to 2023's, $61.17, and 2022's painful $64.05. And while the decrease is welcomed news, this year's Thanksgiving meal is still 19% higher than it was in 2019, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation's 39th annual survey. 
The holidays can be the best time of the year, but it can also be the most awkward. As we reconnect with family, friends and coworkers, conversations can veer into uncomfortable stories or political views that lead to dead silence or arguments. In her opinion for The Conversation, philosopher Alexandra Plakias "offers a few strategies people can use to minimize awkwardness and deal with it when it does, inevitably, happen."
After years of decline, the frozen food delivery icon formerly called Schwan's closed its doors after 72 years of service. The company's direct-to-consumer delivery model increased its popularity among rural communities, where its signature yellow trucks became synonymous with good people and food.
The decades-long practice of adding fluoride to public water supplies to prevent tooth decay is under fire from anti-fluoride activists, including "fluoride foe Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was tapped for a top spot overseeing public health as head of the Department of Health and Human Services," reports Joseph A. Davies for the Society for Environmental Journalists. Kennedy wants "to remove fluoride from drinking water, and President-elect Trump has said he supports the idea."
In the simplest of terms, waves are energy moving through water. Given their existence as flowing energy, it's surprising that up until the past two decades, waves were untapped as a possible U.S. electricity source."At a moment when large offshore wind projects are encountering public resistance, a nascent ocean industry is showing promise: wave energy.
Midwestern agriculture has its fair share of industrial farms that use chemicals to enrich soils, kill bugs and prevent weeds to increase crop yields. But amid the region's miles of traditionally grown crops, Clear Creek Acres farm is growing 50,000 acres of corn, soybeans, oats and other crops "without the use of synthetic chemicals."
Reporting on Addiction is a collaborative movement staffed by media professionals working to decrease addiction stigmas by sharing leading practices for covering all types of addiction.One of the project's best offerings is its website's visual guide, which allows journalists to access photo portrayals that illustrate addiction experiences from multiple real-life angles. 
Electric utility Entergy wants to build a $3.2 billion natural gas plant in rural northeast Louisiana to provide energy for an unnamed company's data center. Some people are "calling the development a 'godsend' for the region; however, environmental and economic concerns have left some officials and residents questioning the viability of a project that creates more fossil fuel emissions and could result in electricity rate hikes.
Growing up on a junkyard may sound depressing, but for Jeffrey or "Jeffie" Brewer, an East Texas native sculpture artist, his childhood days living among discarded things helped him develop his quirky, playful artistic style. He shares some of his artistic wisdom and childhood experiences in the condensed version of their Q&A is shared below.

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