Staunton Green 2020

Right up there with New York and San Francisco, good old downtown Staunton comes in with an 83 out of 100 in the walkability index, making our humble hamlet a much desirable place to live in relation to assorted amenities such as restaurants, coffee shops, retail, theaters, schools, libraries, churches and so on. That’s great for the bottom line, and our bottom lines.

So get off your bum and head out to do the town if you live here, and if not, put Staunton on your list of possible vacation or relocation spots when you start calculating how to amp up your quality of life as the energy-environmental crunch starts descending upon us even more.

Staunton offers just the kind of place to move to because The Queen City is gorgeous, with blocks upon blocks of affordable, gracious, beautiful architecture surrounding its downtown, which is itself right smack on the rail line. I’ll say more about why you should move here and what kinds of businesses you should open in a future entry.

But interestingly, after more than a few months of soaring and fluctuating gas prices, and increased consumer costs, where news and commentary has focused on the high price of keeping our fuelish American lifestyle afloat, a bit of a backlash has erupted. It seems the thought of driving less, living more simply, and getting out into the fresh air for a walk has more than a few people hunkering down to mount a defense against more conscious living.

(more…)

Continuing our focus on an implied Pollyanna, (We can do it!) today we find her in rather a funk.

However much she would like to see a new world, (a new earth?) born from the ashes of the old, still a battle rages within.

“We must face the truth.”

—”It will never work.”

“Its our duty to instigate positive change.”

—You sound like a liberal, and an annoying one at that. Not that all of you aren’t tiresome.”

“But, but, but…beauty, truth, goodness…”

—”See what I mean?”

And so it goes…

(more…)

Voices over the past century warning about drastic changes afoot in our lives have generally met with a mixture of indifference and scorn.

With cheap gas flowing from a seemingly perpetually available spigot, dire messages about the environmental impact of fossil fuels or a coming end to consumer excess were more often than not attributed to wackos. The collective conscious has never liked Cassandras anyway, and since most of the recent ones weren’t as hot as that Greek maven, we really had no use for them.

Its hard to say whether today’s cautionary voices on issues like peak oil and its repercussions, or those wailing over the climate and environmental picture, will continue to go in one ear and out the other, or worse, be met by counter analysts who caricature prognosticators with scathing derision.

Bottom line: Its tough out there in the marketplace of ideas. Still, a girls got to do what a girls got to do, leaving me no choice but to come out to the public as a high-heeled survivalist. (more…)