When times get tough, say it with gravel. In several states, AP writer Clarke Canfield finds that asphalt roads are being replaced with that good old country favorite, crushed rock. "The high price of pavement and the sour economy have driven municipalities in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Vermont to roll up the asphalt — a mile here, a few miles there, mostly on back roads — rather than repave," Canfield wrote.

There are more than 1.4 million miles of unpaved roads. Especially in the North, these roads can deteriorate quickly with cold weather. Now that asphalt has gotten more expensive — and federal stimulus money has gone fro big road projects and bridges, not country byways — counties are turning lightly traveled roads back to gravel. Michigan has turned 50 miles of asphalt road into gravel, for example. (For more info, go to the Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies at Penn State University.) 

Meanwhile, some folks like the idea of gravel roads — prefer them, in fact. "Do we really need to keep getting fancier? This is also about quality of life," said Richard Beal, a selectman in the town of Cranberry Isles, Maine, population 118.

More on the deadliness of rural roads from National Public Radio's Howard Berkes. Or maybe not.

Berkes reported Sunday that National Highway Transportation Administration statistics found that 56% of the country's traffic fatalities take place on rural roads. (Rural America is home to 23% of the population.) Berkes returns Tuesday to add more information.

It turns out that the deadliness of rural roads depends on your definition of rural. He quotes the U.S. Department of Agriculture's John Cromartie as saying that if you include only towns of less than 2,500 and the space in between, then "rural" fatalities drop to just 27% of the total.

And the NHTSA released a report Monday finding that it's really the area just outside of urban areas that are the most deadly. The agency finds that 86% of traffic deaths occur in cities and in the first 10 miles of rural roads outside of cities. Read Howard's story here. He concludes by finding that, yes, rural roads (or is it rural drivers) are still more deadly than those in the cities.

A trip to one of the Southeast's oldest hydroelectric plants brings perplexity and incurs an unexpected dryness.

Visiting the Clinton Library and wondering how the 1990s will look a half century later.