Current Events > Holidays always acutely remind me of the urban/rural divide

(+) Yeah! (+)

Most of my mom's family lives in a rural area, they are a family of loggers and welders and diesel mechanics and power line technicians. Most of them are pretty intelligent but have a distrust of intellectual institutions and feel you don't need education to succeed and the likes.

Most of my dad's family lives in Seattle or Portland or a nearby suburb, all well educated, multiple millionaires among his siblings.

Anyway, my brother lives in Bellevue, a hoity-toity city across the lake from Seattle, his daughters are in a bilingual school for English/Mandarin (these are lily white girls) and have multiple activities they do (various types of dance, one of them is learning piano, other gets taken to various art competitions which she does well in).

So little 5 and 6 year olds that are already ridiculously driven and accomplished and all that, then I see like my cousins kids about the same age, and they are like throwing rocks at each other and chasing dogs. Don't get me wrong, that's good fun, but the rural kids are just not going to have a chance when they are going up against my brother's kids.
---