subsitute upstate NY and your hometown for Maine and Wicasset

Is Maine another part of upstate NY?


From the commondreams web site:


Box stores--particularly Wal-Mart--are bad for northern New England. They replace forest and farmland, they decentralize towns and destroy communities, and they create a ripple effect by spreading copycat strip-malls. One only has to look to Brunswick, where a Wal-Mart Supercenter has sucked the life out of the heart of a pretty college town. (Bowdoin College is there.)

Despite the state's slogan "The Way Life Should Be" and the outdoorsy prepster image perpetuated by L.L. Bean, Maine is a poor state. Go inland from Wiscasset or Brunswick and the mansions and summer cottages give way to house trailers and far more modest dwellings. Maine desperately needs new jobs, but erecting another Wal-Mart is a naïve approach to employment. Abundant goods, lots of parking, and a few dead-end jobs are a poor investment. How many tourists will drive all the way to Maine to shop at a Big Box just like the one they have at home?

It may not be possible to save all the traditional towns—how do we keep Wiscasset from becoming the ugliest village in Maine? But we need to remember and to build upon what made places like Wiscasset wonderful. A sense of community depends upon a lot of factors—employment, security, good infrastructure. But community also includes history and what a place looks like (Chamberlain called the village a "flawless souvenir of the past"). Wiscasset may need jobs and a bypass, but it does not need a Wal-Mart.



Link to read the editorial is at the common dreams web site http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0707-27.htm