Outside of the metropolitan centers, writing the narrative of the new south and its cultural change, the rural south unrolls. The small towns of this region exude a curious sense of pride and stoicism, mixed with hope and the effects of a long, slow decline. Each year there are far fewer who recall the glory days each town has enjoyed, but there is a present light that glimmers like faith. The south is a region whose past is very much its present. These images neither criticize nor praise this landscape as if it is an endangered place. They are a verse, an ode to a slowly fading present.