Less than 100 years ago our great grandparents had a pretty good solution for getting by without being held hostage to the oil companies. They called it "Living in Town". It didn't require a huge sacrifice and in many cases they were the envy of their friends who lived out of town on farms and for whom every trip to the store, the church, the bank or going out to eat would have been an event at best or an ordeal at its worst. People lived within a short distance of almost everything they needed to do on a daily basis. Work, library, church, doctor's office all within a short distance of home. And if you needed to go out of town on business you had the 1911 airport equivalent just across the bridge at the railway station. No metal detectors, no strip search, no lines. You waited on the platform for the train to stop and stepped into the rail coach you wanted to ride on. From Newcastle you could get to Portland, from Portland to Boston and from Boston to anywhere in the lower 48 that you wanted to go. O.k. it did take a bit of time (in 1876 it took the Transcontinental Express 83 hours from New York to San Francisco) but they didn't charge for an extra bag or two.
Now I am not advocating eliminating the internal combustion engine but maybe living close enough to those things that you need to do (or want to do) on a daily basis is a better way to thumb your nose at the Petro Speculators who keep bidding the price of a barrel of oil up every time they think the economy is starting to rebound. And what better way to do that than to live in a cozy little home that is just blocks from everything you could ever want to do in town like heading over to the
Maine Coast Bookstore for the New York Times, coffee and free Wifi, go shopping for new sneakers at
Reny's, or pick up a book at
Skidompha, or sit at the counter at
Waltz Pharmacy 
for a frappe and a hot dog with your friends? Later in the evening after you walk the dog around the neighborhood and say hello to your neighbors (Hello Mr. Bartley) you might want to take a stroll across the river with your sweetie, watch the reversing falls as the sun goes down and stop in at the
Newcastle Publick House for a burger and a beverage on the porch. And just think how much time you would save driving kids from practice to rehearsal to home! So stop talking about how much you hate paying $4 at the pump, ditch the 8 mpg Urban Assault Vehicle and buy a place in town. Like this
home on River Road that was built by a (wind powered) sea captain for his wife and has waterfront.
So listen to your ancestors, be Green and move back to town!
