The nation's longest-running fight by a small town against the construction of a Wal-Mart is in St. Albans, Vermont, a town about a half hour from the Canadian border. People in St. Albans have been fending off the coming of a Wal-Mart since 1993, reports Sarah Schweitzer in the Boston Globe. (Opponents pictured above.)

"The duration reflects the high stakes: Should Wal-Mart win the right to build in St. Albans, opponents fear the retailer would be poised to proliferate in rural corners of a state that has resisted its overtures," Schweitzer writes. "Vermont has the fewest Wal-Marts in the nation, with four stores, compared with 46 in Massachusetts, 27 in New Hampshire and 22 in Maine. Wal-Mart officials say the push for a greater market share in Vermont reflects the realities of modern life."

The Wal-Mart fight in St. Albans has been anything but one-sided. Unemployment is over 10 percent and people in town complain there's no place in the community to buy a pair of underwear. "The conflict has divided neighbors and families, as issues of class and values have come to dominate the debate," Schweitzer writes. "Opponents say that supporters are being materialistic in forfeiting natural resources and the downtown for inexpensive wares. Supporters decry opponents as elitist for keeping jobs and cheaper goods out of a county that could use both."

Why do some communities have twice the average number of businesses? Two Oklahoma scholars see several avenues to business creation.

The recession is giving great press to North Dakota. Business Week is the latest national publication to admire the low unemployment rates on the Great Plains amidst the jobless carnage in the rest of the country. Business Week writer Rebecca Reisner goes to Bismarck and finds a city that "has remained largely unmarred by the global financial crisis, which has wrecked the U.S. housing industry, felled hundreds of banks of all sizes, and sent the national unemployment rate to nearly 10%. Right now, Bismarck residents have scant reason to worry." (Remember, however, that the Yonder found that these low unemployment rates were helped in part by outmigration.) 

Reisner notes that farm commodity prices are expected to fall. But it's energy, especially wind energy, that holds the greatest promise for new jobs. North Dakota does have optimal conditions for wind farms, and wind farms are being built, including the $250 million, 77-turbine PrairieWinds ND1 project near Minot. It will be the largest wind project owned by an electric cooperative (the Basin Electric Power Cooperative). The state also has 3 to 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

No wonder North Dakota has a $1 billion budget surplus. Property taxes have been lowered and because no flakey "liar loans" were given in North Dakota, the state doesn't have a foreclosure problem.  

Authorized by local men, organized by local women, Henderson County's Curb Market has been selling with success since 1924. Elizabeth Engelhardt pierces through the nostalgia, naming names.