A Vermont
Worth Preserving

In response to Richard Mallary of the Council on the Future of Vermont. I’ve known that Vermont was an undesirable place to live for many years for out-of-staters because they say there’s no money up here. Therefore, they stay in their high paying job areas and enjoy a visit here instead.

Meanwhile, Vermonters have learned to survive through thick and thin, through harsh winters, while at the same time they preserved their clean, unlittered environment.

In most communities both poor and elderly families are welcomed, and not discriminated against for wearing tattered clothes or driving a vehicle "that runs." Neighbor helping neighbor exists because they’ve endured many hardships together.

Mud we are not afraid of, nor a creaking door, or a leaning shack. Older unpainted houses blend into the gray of the surrounding trees and hinder not the landscape. A little piece of land to be worked by each Vermonter’s hand is a God-given American right. A garden here, a garden there, one house, a few chickens, whatever the family can manage, to help them afford their living expenses by living off the land no matter how small.

Older buildings in Vermont house many small businesses discreetly, without the need of giant office buildings appearing everywhere. Our immediate area has not started, yet, to come to that point of an "invasion of corporate headquarters" and hopefully it never will.

But the new houses popping up everywhere are discouraging. Hopefully, the newcomers will respect the landscape, and the clean Vermont environment, and not create in the distant future the same problems they fled from in their city areas.

Vermont doesn’t allow billboards, the roads are kept litter free, there isn’t a need for too many sodium lights, condos are carefully planned and not allowed to rise up in every vacant lot, malls and shopping centers aren’t everywhere, there’s barely any high-rise buildings, and nobody sleeps in doorways or in the streets.

Most people of this state speak our native language, English. We’ve been known in the past to be the safest state in the nation. Now we have to keep our doors locked and hope we don’t get robbed.

A ride home at night used to look like pure darkness settled over the land. Now there are so many huge newly-built houses lit up too brightly. Seems to be a day and night desire to show what they got. Trees are being mowed "Texas style" to show off who’s got the bucks, and the big ugly eyesore of a house to go with it.

If Vermont has to change, let it change for the better, if they’re clearing trees, do it for the purpose of setting up solar panels to make use of renewable energy.

Vermont’s humble population managed to live without litter all these years. We may have a rusty roof, or unpainted houses, and leaning shacks, but at least we care about the environment. And it shows. Our long years of care need not be an attraction to those who can care less.

Donna Brown

Rochester

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