<p>RE: barrels vs bales of hay. I think bales are traditional shaped and barrels are the big rolls that are sometimes shrink-wrapped and left in the fields.</p>
<p>In Virginia I was used to seeing bales of hay. Never saw barrels or rolls until I came to the Midwest.</p>
<p>2cakes is correct–they don’t mean barrels as in beer!</p>
<p>Ha! For three of the four towns near Buffalo (most of which I’ve never heard of), the aerial photo they have is a photo of . . . Manhattan. The town near p3t I HAVE seen, and it’s lovely, but it lacks the East and Hudson Rivers, Roosevelt Island, and Central Park, and is somewhat less densely settled than the photograph suggests.</p>
<p>My wife grew up in towns like these. She says the kids all did drugs and got each other pregnant.</p>
<p>Hm, apparently the authors of this article think it’s great to raise children in a town (like Davenport, Nebraska) where they probably won’t meet a black person till college. I don’t know whether I’m more irritated by their assumption that all their readers are white, or by their assumption that none of their white readers would care about this issue.</p>