The Rural Ethicist: What’s in a Name
By Katharine Adams
May 2026
Lately, I’ve been toying with changing the title of this column.
This entire house of cards sprang up as a lark, anyway, when I decided I should do something with my collection of ramblings, often recorded in such gilded settings as a salt-crusted car in grocery store parking lots.
This column has an embarrassingly unabashed affection for words. The doggone things. They’ll walk right on by to the next bus stop if you let them. Sure, they’ll politely lend themselves when you’re in a pinch, but not for long, because they don’t stay at the party long.
What’s in a name? Well, several things. A name ain’t nuttin', yet it also holds some weight. The surname “Pianarosa” conjures up a glossy grand piano and long-stem roses for me—or at least it did as a child, when I first heard it. By contrast, the surname “Catfish” paints a whole different picture.
With a bloated boatload taking up room in a writing app on my phone over the past eight years, I don’t have any plans to retire this rig anytime soon. Anybody who is patient enough to sit through ten minutes of my hogwash can probably tolerate a few more. With a hyperlink button beckoning to “clickadoodle-do” to enter my website and archive, I figure why not keep running with the ridiculous?
There is enough grave importance in our poor, strained world right now, with near-daily alarming news that is covered extremely well by highly qualified reporters. I cannot add much without spinning in a big spiral, so I may as well stick with what I can reliably deliver: hooey.
Back a few hundred years ago, I shared the “why not” origins of starting up a column in the Otis Observer with my first submission, in November, 2018:
“Today, I started a column. I didn’t know today would be the day while eyeing the Observer’s deadline and noodling over whether to chase it. I combed through a growing list of short, goofy essays I’d accrued, many scratched down on a writing app called ‘Byword’ while leaning over my counter, stirring a simmering pot. Others were recorded in parking lots.
“I popped the question to my other half, leaning back in my office chair: 'So, what the hay should I name a column?’”
And after a beat, he simply stated the obvious: a variation on my business title, Rural Ethic Studio. I erupted in a chuckle at the ridiculousness, thinking, “Bingo!”
If it weren’t for his input, I might have left my festering musings to sit and gather digital dust for yet another year. The column’s title “doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” I wrote, “but I have always loved the mood, slanting sun and field-of-grass visuals generated by the evocative term, ‘rural.’ Meanwhile, the rituals and resourceful industry of the quiet life inform, ‘ethic.’”
Looking back, it’s still the only way I can put it. But for yuks, here are a few alternatives I scratched down that almost rhyme with “ethicist:”
Title: The Rural …
Et cetera-ist (is there no end to the ways a thing can be described to a long-suffering listener?)
Fetishist (how weird can it all wax?)
Memeticist (had to look this one up: a fascination with how memes spread in society)
Satirist (well, let’s not hit it with a plank over the head)
Guesstimist (my true daily condition, probably the most accurate alternative)
Bellicist (um, no; I learned it sure doesn’t mean one who enjoys ringing cute little chimes)
Back when I was 11, my rock star idol was the late Erma Bombeck. I’m grateful to my mother for buying me her books. In time, I decided to put a little Bombeckian practice in over one weekend in the late ‘70s, when I was 12, while camping at the Hudson River Revival festival in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, with a family whose children I was supposed to be watching.
I ended up really just becoming another among their children. I don’t think I ever did any of the work they toted me along to do, which was to be a “mother’s helper.” That whole notion seemed to evaporate once the bus wheels came to a halt on the festival grass.
Instead, I asked for notepaper and a pen, describing other duties I wanted to attend to: recording what I saw around me.
Over the weekend, I saw the family here and there, amid the campfires and pickers, and the mother would glance at me with a smile and ask, “was I having a good time?”
I woke up in our bunkbed-lined, empty cabin, as one keeping typical 'tween hours, only to realize the family was already up and gone. I grabbed my notepad and pen and headed off to the breakfast tent, capturing both my impressions of people and the last few minutes of pancakes being served.
My tolerant bosses would check in about what I was up to, but never required anything of me. They only asked what I might be writing. It took me decades to understand what a gift that was.
With nothing in this life guaranteed except for the passage of time, sometimes we find ourselves needing to pivot, start a new chapter, and embrace change. Other times, we dip a few toes in the water, while keeping the other foot held fast to the shore, to keep a bookmark.
In the end, it’s time to ramble on and start fixing dinner.
