I agree with Joey about the valid reasons for living in the country, and feel a lot of ambivalence about having just moved back into the city.
I have switched between the City of Ithaca and rural Tompkins County 7 times in 4 decades. I have finally compromised by living on the northeaster edge of the City (near the Sciencenter). I get good views of the sun and moon here, but I know I'll be heading for the hills--in my car--when the night skies are especially clear because that's the only way to see the Milky Way, meteor showers, etc. In many ways I was happiest when I lived on the edge of the village of Freeville; I rode my bike to work (at the Post Office) and to shop (at the village market). I had a wide range of wildlife in my yard (beyond the bunnies, deer and raccoons that we now have everywhere). If I wanted even wilder nature, I walked to the nearby marshes south of Fall Creek. As Joey notes, public transport is the Great Missing Link in Tompkins County. If there were park'n'rides in the Town of Ithaca (my most recent rural location), I might still be living there. Villages and hamlets are very consistent with "green" planning: rural nodes are being promoted by area planners as an important alternative to suburban sprawl, where people can work, shop, eat out (in the same café as their neighbors), use services such as a post office, or library branch AND/OR catch public transport to elsewhere. However they are not being implemented on a practical basis to any significant scale YET (tho there are a lot of good folks working hard on implementation). We need to demand that local politicians begin implementing better public transport (buses paired with park-n-rides) sooner rather than later. "Build it and they will come" applies to public transport even more than to ball fields. Having smaller buses running more often and at useful hours would make country living a much more ecological option. Margaret >Some of us live in the country because we just >plain want to and try to do it as sustainably as >possible. I have lived in cities and the >concentrated pollution and noise etc. input >levels don't agree with me or my health. We have >a bus out to Danby but unfortunately it stops at >5, so that means carpooling or driving for >meetings. In other parts of the world, I was >able to catch later buses out to the >country-because there was higher demand. > > >"Simon St.Laurent" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bethany Schroeder wrote: >> Another thing to consider is that some of us live outside the city >> proper because we either are growing or hope to grow food to feed >> ourselves and others and we either are now or hope to generate energy in >> some form or another to augment or save on the energy that we all use, >> among other things. > >I keep asking people who live outside the cities, villages, and hamlets >whether they can think of their house as a farmhouse. That often sends >people for a loop, but a fair number have been able to say "yes, >definitely." > >I'm still figuring out whether or not my own house will work that way. > >> I thank Wendy and Jeanne for their generous responses to George's >> "spunky" comments about the necessity for postponing our meeting. > >I should probably clarify that my note about plowing sidewalks was >serious, and that I enjoyed George's remarks too. > >Thanks, >Simon _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
