Six out of 10 rural counties lost jobs from March 2012-2013. Click on the map to make it interactive.

Unemployment in rural counties continued to fall in March. That's the good news from the most recent employment figures released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bad news is that the number of people working in rural America has dropped by more than 55,000 in the last year. Six out of 10 counties lying outside urban America have fewer jobs this March than March a year ago. (Click on the map above to find the March unemployment rate and the change in jobs from a year ago for your county.)

The small recovery in jobs over the last year has been an entirely urban phenomenon. 

In March of this year, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent in the nation's most sparsely populated communities. In February, the rural unemployment rate was 8.9 percent — and a year ago, in March 2012, the rate was 8.7 percent.

Raymond Thundersky drew thousands of pictures of construction sites, often in their demolition phase. In this drawing, the wrecking ball is a pumpkin, and the building is being cleared for the imagined Chief Richard Brightfire Thunder-Sky Expressway. More images are available at the online archive of Thundersky's work.

Some people thought he was a great Mohawk chief, some thought he had royal blood, some thought he was Jesus and some just thought he was crazy.

Raymond Thundersky’s life was a mystery that provided fodder for the growth of a tantalizingly vague urban legend.

The real story of Raymond is like the trickster stories so common among Native peoples in which a character, often an animal, unceremoniously unseats man from his silly notions of Raymond Thundersky (1950-2004) in his clown costume and hardhat. comfort and superiority. Raymond’s gentle trickster spirit recently affected my life as I was drawn into putting together a show in the little gallery, Thunder-Sky Inc., that was created in his honor. My show, Digital Wigwam, takes gallery visitors on a journey into the little known U.S. history of Indian boarding schools through my family’s experience. The little gallery provides a sanctuary for the real stories of Native people living in cities as well as a haven for all the “outsider’ artists living as humans in an often inhuman urban world. 

Prior to his death in 2004, Thundersky roamed the streets of Cincinnati wearing a clown costume and hard hat while carrying a toolbox. An enigmatic figure, he frequented construction sites, creating a colorful trickster-like presence among the cranes and cement trucks.  He seldom spoke, preferring instead to draw – and draw and draw.

Obsessed with demolition as well as construction, his childlike drawings always envisioned the future. Taking his markers and paper from his toolbox, he would set up a temporary easel at construction sites.  His works were titled with names such as “Future Mohawk Freeway” or “New Clown Costume Factory.”

The cast of MTV's rural-themed "reality" show "Buckwild." The show was canceled after the death of Shain Gandee, left, front, row.

MTV canceled the reality show “Buckwild” after the death of one of its young stars. But the network may not have had its fill of shows that target rural young people for cheap laughs and outlandish behavior.

Jason Linkins in the Huffington Post reports on an MTV memo saying the network is looking for a replacement to the program. The memo (which the network says isn't accurate) says they should look for a “Buckwild” replacement “set in the south with loud, unpolished young kids.” The original show focused on the antics of West Virginia young people.

Linkins says he hopes the network doesn’t go through with the show. But if it does, he’s got another suggestion:

I am nothing if not charitable, and since this strain of reality television seems to do nothing but latch onto someone else's original idea to make a cheapened version of it, might I suggest something like "The Real Locovore Hipsters Of Portlandia"?

Same-Sex Marriage in Minn. A rural lawmaker in Minnesota says he’ll support a bill for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage if such legislation comes up.

"To further deny equal rights to all people would be a black eye on this institution and certainly on my own career," said Rep. Joe Radinovich, DFL-Crosby.

Last fall, voters in the counties Radinovich represents voted 62 percent in favor of a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The measure was defeated statewide, however, so the legislature is not proscribed from enacting a marriage-equality law.

Proponents and opponents of such legislation are courting rural representatives, who are seen as swing votes in the debate.

Pre-schoolers and Guns. The marketing practices of gun companies who sell weapons for children are coming under scrutiny after a 5-year-old Kentucky boy accidentally killed his 2-year-old sister with a rifle he’d received as a birthday gift.

The boy was playing with a .22 rifle called a Davey Cricket. The gun was pink and marketed as “My First Rifle.”