By Anya Petrone Slepyan for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for North Carolina News Service Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

In the 1930s, women employed by the Works Progress Administration rode pack horses through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, bringing books to rural residents in hard-to-reach places. Nearly a century later, Kirsten Crawford Turner is carrying on that tradition, with the help of a truck and a U-haul rather than a horse and saddle bags.

Turner grew up in Shelby, North Carolina in the Appalachian foothills, an area pummeled by Hurricane Helene in September 2024. Though she now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, she saw the extent of the damage the hurricane caused during frequent trips up the mountain to bring food and supplies to family members in the Asheville area.

"I saw all the devastation and I thought, 'what can I do?'" Turner said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. "I cannot operate heavy machinery. I cannot rebuild this whole area. What can I do that would be impactful and make a difference?"

As a military wife and mother of three, Turner has been through difficult seasons herself, and said that she always found solace in reading. She had also learned about the historic packhorse librarians from a number of books, including Kim Michele Richardson's The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. So she thought, why not take books to people like a modern-day packhorse librarian?

She began by asking friends and neighbors for gently used books that she could deliver on her trips up the mountain. The project grew quickly in the months following the hurricane.

"It started with one box of books on my porch," Turner said. "Now I have thousands of books [to give away] in my house."

Books for Burnsville

On November 2, 2024, Turner and her husband pulled into the parking lot of the West Burnsville Baptist Church in rural Yancey County, North Carolina. Along with a handful of volunteers, including Turner's parents, they started passing out thousands of books that had been donated from around the country.

More than 500 people attended the event, including Burnsville residents Jamie Black and her 10-year-old daughter Jenavieve, a voracious reader who had been anxiously awaiting the event for weeks. The family had been without power for a month, but Black had seen a post about the event on Facebook and thought it would help her daughter, who like other children in the area, had missed a significant amount of school.

"Books take you away on an adventure," Jenavieve said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. "It doesn't matter what's going on around you if you're reading a good book."

That's one of the ideas behind the 21st Century Packhorse Librarian project, according to Turner.

"I think [reading] gives people a respite from their own story, so they can really process and heal from their trauma more gently," Turner said.

More than 100 people in North Carolina were killed by Hurricane Helene, and the September storm caused a record-breaking $59.6 billion in damages, according to the state budget office. Over 5,000 homes will need to be rebuilt, with thousands of businesses damaged or closed as a result of the storm. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein is urging state legislators to increase recovery spending, even as President Trump, who visited North Carolina in late January, is enacting plans to dissolve the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Since October, Turner has organized events in nine communities in western North Carolina, and given away more than 9,000 books for free. The books are arranged by age group, and there is no limit to how many books people can take.

"I don't put a limit on it. Because say someone is taking four tote bags full of books - that person could have lost their whole house and all their books," Turner said.

Donations have poured in from across the country, Turner said, with people driving from as far as Texas and Ohio to deliver books. People can also donate books through Turner's Amazon wishlists, as well as by mail.

A number of children's authors associated with Christian publishing and media organizations such as Story Warren and Rabbit Room have donated books. Turner, who is Christian, has also made sure to keep high-quality, large-print bibles in stock.

Though she isn't able to read everything that comes through, she tries to curate her selections. She avoids books with sexually explicit content and references to the occult, and prioritizes books that she considers to be healing and uplifting, especially classic literature. Many of the books on her wishlists are the same as those distributed by the original packhorse librarians nearly a century earlier.

"There's a lot to say about the power of story in the classics," Turner said. "Bless those kids, they love Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I can't stand that book. I bring it for them, but I also try to get a good book in their hands as well."

Bearing Witness

According to its Facebook page, the primary mission of the 21st Century Packhorse Librarian project is to "distribute quality literature, free of charge, throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains, ensuring that individuals and families - especially in rural and remote areas - have access to great books."

But Turner has found that her role goes beyond handing out books to those who want them. She spends most of her time at each event talking to people, and hearing their stories. This is both rewarding and challenging, Turner said.

"I get to carry a little bit of their burdens for them, and hear how much bringing books means to them. But it's also a bit emotionally overwhelming at times, because we hear not only stories from the storm, but all sorts of things we wouldn't imagine we'd hear," she said.

Turner also uses her platform on Facebook to bring awareness to the destruction in communities she visits, posting pictures of places like Marshall, North Carolina, that were devastated by the storm. She says bearing witness to the communities' distress is part of her mission to keep attention on the ongoing recovery efforts.

"The rest of the world has moved on with their lives, and people aren't thinking about it anymore," Turner said. "I don't want anyone to feel forgotten."

Recovering from disasters like Helene takes years, but Turner is in it for the long haul.

"People keep asking me how long I plan to do this. And the answer is always 'as long as God wants me to," Turner said.

And though the project was born as a response to the hurricane, Turner feels the books she brings help address a deeper need in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

"The more I hear, the more I realize that these books aren't just disaster relief, they're life relief."


Anya Petrone Slepyan wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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State officials are concerned congressional cuts to funding for public broadcasters could hurt dozens of rural communities across Utah.

House members approved a bill early Friday to claw back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is used to fund programming on Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio stations. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill.

Gov. Spencer Cox is concerned the changes will hit rural communities the hardest.

"I worry about the impacts that will have on safety, security, broadcasting in our local areas," Cox emphasized. "As somebody who lives in rural Utah, I think about our tribal nations as well. These are resources that are really important."

PBS and NPR outlets are based at the University of Utah but rebroadcast programming across the state via remote transmitters. The bill cuts $2.5 million from Utah broadcasters. The stations must now look to other sources, mainly viewers and listeners, to make up the funding shortfall.

Republican lawmakers have long called for an end to federal government funding for public broadcasting, claiming much of the news and other programming on PBS and NPR showed a liberal bias. While he agreed the public should not fund what he calls a "forum for partisanship," Cox stressed he is unsure the move will be effective.

"One of the things I'm most worried about is that these cuts actually won't do what some members of Congress think it will do," Cox asserted. "PBS and NPR will still go on probably doing what they do. But the locals, these are the things that are going to be cut, these are the things that will fall away."

Utah public broadcasters say the cuts will likely mean fewer regular programs and less local news. Currently, most local broadcasters cover an average of about 20% of their annual budget through government funding, but in smaller states and tribal nations, it can be as much as 50%.


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By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

In southwest Colorado, a rural electric cooperative is taking a big step towards energy independence and locally driven power decisions.

La Plata Electric Association (LPEA), a rural electric co-op for parts of Southwest Colorado, is in the middle of a two-year contract termination process to leave Tri-State, the generation and transmission organization that currently provides LPEA with electricity.

Rural electric cooperatives are member-owned, not-for-profit organizations that provide electricity to more than half of the country, including most of rural America. Established in the 1930s, electric co-ops were the government-backed response to a lack of investor-owned electric utilities in rural areas.

Venturing Out on Their Own

The cooperative model means that all customers of the electric co-op are also its owners. Each co-op has a member-elected board of directors that makes strategic decisions, most of which can be made without member approval, based on the bylaws of the individual co-op.

In March 2024, LPEA provided unconditional notice to leave Tri-State, starting a two-year stopwatch for the withdrawal from its contract and membership with the not-for-profit generation and transmission organization.

Leaving Tri-State "will allow us to invest locally and it will allow us to invest in a way that helps bolster economic growth in our service territory," said Chris Hansen, CEO of LPEA in a Daily Yonder interview.

Despite the member-elected board having control over decisions like leaving Tri-State, some members feel misrepresented by their board and do not support the move away from the Tri-State contract.

Dale Ruggles, a member of LPEA, expressed concerns that the LPEA board of directors is making decisions that do not reflect the feelings of their constituents. When asked what he would have wanted to see done differently, Ruggles said he wanted "a vote of the members, if the members vote to leave Tri-State, so be it".

Local control, cheaper prices, and flexibility with sourcing are what co-ops like LPEA hope to gain by leaving contracts with their current power suppliers.

But members who are against leaving Tri-State, like Ruggles, say that they are worried about the cost that will be put onto members and the potential volatility of being on the open market instead of in a consistent contract like with Tri-State.

The withdrawal from Tri-State comes with what some of these members see as more than a $200 million price tag."It's just too much debt, and they're not being transparent," said Ruggles to the Daily Yonder.

Hansen said that the money is a contract termination payment and not anything more than they were already contractually obligated to pay during their contract with Tri-State.

"It's not a punitive fine. It is the amount of debt we would have already had to pay if we stayed there," said LPEA board member Nicole Pitcher.

The payments are calculated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and are determined through a specific calculation that helps to maintain rate stability for the rest of Tri-State's members.

Moving Towards Renewables

Lee Boughey, VP of strategic communications for Tri-State, said that reliability and affordability are Tri-State's number one priorities. Boughey emphasized that Tri-State is owned and governed by its members - the distribution co-ops like LPEA all have representatives on the Tri-State board- and decisions like contracts are also dictated by the members. But part of that is allowing members to leave if Tri-State is not serving their own needs.

Rural electric co-ops are leading the way in energy innovation because of this member-driven governance. "It's part of the co-op model to respond to local demand and to do innovation," said Gilbert Michaud, a professor of environmental policy at Loyola University Chicago.

Tri-State is going through its own transition, led by the members. In 2020, Tri-State announced their Responsible Energy Plan, which laid out their plan to move away from coal and towards renewables like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.

Boughey said that as renewable energy has become more affordable, generation and transmission co-ops like Tri-State have been able to invest in them more. "For cooperatives, reliability and affordability are critical, so it's only natural that you would see cooperatives add more renewables as those prices came down," he said.

Until recently, cooperatives haven't been on the same playing field as investor-owned utilities when it comes to developing their own utilities. As a non-profit organization, Tri-State does not have access to renewable energy tax credits that are available to for-profit companies. Rural electric co-ops are now able to take advantage of direct pay tax credits, the result of legislation passed in 2022.

"We're among the first cooperative utilities in the country to own large [scale] solar, so that's exciting," said Boughey.

However, for LPEA, leaving Tri-State is still the right option, according to Hansen. He also said that leaving will lower the co-ops cost of electricity immediately, putting less pressure on rates.

"We've got lower wholesale contracts on the day we leave. On April 1, 2026, our wholesale power costs will come down," said Hansen. Some of that power will be coming from power purchase agreements with Tri-State, different from the contract, which would have locked them into Tri-State's rates until 2050.

The total bill for members won't necessarily go down, because of other increasing costs like infrastructure, but Hansen added that "it takes the pressure off of our rate structure if your wholesale costs are flat or declining."

Boughey also said that Tri-State's wholesale contracts keep costs down for its members. He said their contracts allow for more consistency, whereas being on the open market could have more volatility. Tri-State's rates have grown 2.46% between 2017 and 2025.

A Trend Across the Country and the Region

Attempting to get out of traditional electricity contracts is not unique to Colorado.

In South Dakota, in 2023, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision by a federal judge that Dakota Energy Cooperative could not leave its contract with its wholesale power supplier, East River Electric Power Cooperative.

Dakota Energy Cooperative wanted to buy energy from Guzman Energy, a for-profit company out of Denver, Colorado, which has been a partner to many rural electric co-ops looking to leave their long-term contracts. But in South Dakota, this became a question of local vs out-of-state, with East River Electric taking the stance that local is better, even if it was coal-powered energy compared to the renewables that Guzman offered.

On June 1, 2025, Indiana electric co-op Tipmont left its contract with its power supplier, Wabash Valley Power Alliance, after multiple years of negotiations.

In the Southwest, four other electric co-ops have left contracts with Tri-State over the last decade. Kit Carson Electric Coop, in Taos County, New Mexico, was the first in 2016.

As of 2022, Kit Carson has reached 100% daytime solar energy-all generated locally-something they never could have done under the Tri-State contract.

Kit Carson CEO Luis Reyes, who has worked at the co-op for over 40 years, said starting in the early 2000s, the Kit Carson member owners were concerned about committing to long-term contracts with Tri-State, which at the time was primarily buying and producing coal-powered electricity.

"The co-op program has been great. I think it's the best model to deliver electricity to everybody with the members being the focal point," said Reyes."My opinion is we lost who the focal point was. We catered more to what Tri-State wanted than what our members wanted."

Reyes says since Kit Carson left in 2016, Tri-State has "really turned the ship," but in 2002 when Kit Carson first wanted to invest in renewables, "solar was bad," Reyes said, according to the board members of Tri-State at the time. But for Reyes, "it was good business, and it's what the members want." For Reyes and Kit Carson, leaving Tri-State was the way to accomplish their solar and renewable goals that the members wanted.

Kit Carson completed their $37 million contract termination payment in 2022 six years after formally withdrawing from Tri-State. That year, Kit Carson said their power rates were lower than any Tri-State member.

The pressures from members leaving, decreasing prices of renewables, and new voices at the table have brought Tri-State a long way from "solar was bad". Current contracts, which Boughey said have been signed by most members, increase the amount of local power that members can generate from 5% to 20%, giving members a lot more flexibility to develop their own utilities.

A lot has changed at Tri-State since Kit Carson left Tri-State in 2016, and Boughey said that any member has the ability to pursue leaving at any time, if the current policies aren't working for them. They continue to have good relationships with co-ops that have left, including LPEA which is in the process of leaving now.

"It's not a negative issue," said Boughey. "It's flexibility that our members want to have, that some members take advantage of, and we work very closely to execute those withdrawals in the spirit of the cooperative business model.


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Despite debate in Washington over ending incentives to help Alaska's smallest places move away from traditional oil and gas-based power generation in the most remote parts of Alaska, one village above the Arctic Circle has found success and plans to invest.

Kotlik, a Yupik native village nestled on the banks of the Yukon River is using alternative energy as an economic driver.

Richard Bender, president and CEO of Kotlik Village Corporation, said the village has developed a three-phase plan to move away from oil and gas-based power to generate electricity for its 600 residents.

"Phase 1 is to purchase a battery storage system and switch gear," Bender outlined. "Phase 2 of Kotlik's energy plan is to produce energy using solar panels. Phase 3 is production of electricity using wind turbines."

Despite the success of places like Kotlik, and its aggressive plans for future alternative energy development, Washington lawmakers are debating a budget bill which would eliminate tax incentives for investing in clean power in rural Alaska, which could reduce funding for the projects the village depends on.

Kotlik collaborated with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group to produce a video about the project, which Bender noted goes beyond providing sources of alternative energy to the village.

"In addition to energy sovereignty, and sustainability, this project will have a positive impacts on health education and workforce development," Bender explained.

Bender added creating stability in those areas will spill over into different parts of the community and help the village keep people working at home, rather than moving to other places.


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