[SustainableTompkins] town mice vs country mice?

[Margaret McCasland]

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" <simonstl at simonstl.com> 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