Jay C store closing

[plantsnobin]

It was announced this past week that our local grocery store is closing. We are a small town of about 5,000. There is a Save a Lot store, the JayC and Walmart. OK, I guess you could count that co-op, but they probably won't be open long anyway. Save a lot sells crap generic stuff, I refuse to buy my groceries at Walmart and wouldn't pay the prices at the co-op even if they carried the stuff I need. I don't think people really realize the impact that the big box store mentality has on our local economy. Walmart does (did) have cheaper prices than JayC, but what will happen to their prices now that they are the only game in town? I see my town turning into every other town in this country. Walmarts, fast food places, big ugly billboards, more asphalt and now the town council is talking about zoning and a two mile 'buffer zone'. Guess who lives outside of town limits, but within this buffer zone? Sorry, I know I am being a big baby, and I don't oppose progress, but hate to see what is happening in the name of growth. I suppose it is the same just about everywhere, and I really don't think there is anything anyone can do.

[houseodessey]

Our economy is based on growth and sprawl and that's all that our city hall people know, all over the US.

Where I live, FW annexes lots of unwilling little burgs all the time so that it can expand its tax base, etc. Why do you think I want to move to the sticks? I'll leave the headaches to whatever charitable org. inheirits my property when I pass.

I'm a big baby, too.

[sammyqc]

Ouch, that is sad. I live in what used to be a small town of 35 000 or so. Five years ago, the provincial gov decided to be effiecient, and took five little towns and made us one big city of over 250 000. Now we have urban sprawl in my little town like you wouldn't believe, and no infrastructure to support it, limited services, total bureaucracy up the yazoo!!!

Progress! Yay!

[plantsnobin]

So it isn't just in the US, huh. I always thought our northern neighbors where more level headed. I really hate what is happening to our town, not that it was ever a great place, really, but going to get much worse. Problem is, if you move to a little town to get away from these issues, you just create the same problem somewhere else. Too many people on the planet, plain and simple. I guess you just stay put and make the best of it, at least til you just can't stand it anymore. Once they finish the bypass near our property, Walmart will probably move from north of town to about 500 ft from our property. The manager actually said that at a meeting we had 3 or 4 years ago about the 'proposed' bypass. Said that he hated to see them put in the road, but if they did Walmart would just move. I am seeing large numbers of pigs in my future. Right on the property line. Maybe turkeys...they smell really good in August.

[houseodessey]

"Problem is, if you move to a little town to get away from these issues, you just create the same problem somewhere else."

Not me, I didn't breed. Anything I buy will be left to some kind of preservation type organization when I die with instructions and deed restrictions on its usage. I'm sure someone could find a way around all of that, but at least I will have tried.

Put those stinky animals on your borders. Maybe they'll dissuade people from moving in. That's what my neighbor (right next to the proposed 18 house development is doing). She got two roosters and I took two, too. Hopefully the potential buyers will hear their crows and move on to less green pastures.

[sammyqc]

We used to have a lot of 'green space' which seems to give developers the willies and the greedies. Three blocks from where I live used to be wide open space, trails for walking, lovely old trees, wild raspberries and roses everywhere, a couple hundred acres. It used to be part of farm decades ago. Now it's a suburban development, with hundreds of houses, and not an old tree in sight! Pretty sad. And it's not just in my part of town, it's all over town, unrestricted development. And of course the roads have not been improved to accomadate the new traffic, the water and sewer system has never been updated, so we have boil water advisories and water restrictions in the summer. A lot of people were mad, protests at city hall, petitions, etc, but with the amalgamation, the new city gov simply blamed the old city gov, and said their hands were tied. When election time came around, the new city gov was basically handed their heads on a platter, and new people came in. Guess what? Things are pretty much the same.

Wish I could pull a "Godfather" move, like with the dead horse head, except it'd have to be fake (too squeamish for me) Maybe the mayor, some of the councillors would wake up then!!ha

[canadamike]

It is sad, but we are still developing our cities around the omnipotent automobile, and the heck with the climate. Same thing is happening where I live.

[Alan]

I agree Mike.

What I find most frightening is the sheep like stature of the people doing the development as well as moving into the cheap housing, accepting the tainted food, passing out the drugs, and drinking the water from the fountain of supposed liberty and freedom.

Undereducated, sometimes outright stupid people, with no idea of what "real work" is, who think that lettuce grows on the supermarket shelf. No matter how much those of us who do our homework on global warming, self-sustainable farming, community agriculture products, alternative transportation, the poisoning of the food, the water and the air, scream, these people just don't listen! And what's worse, they are determined to breed and teach their children to shop at the big box store, accept what the government tells/sells them, never question authority, or if you do learn to commit a crime and not want to do the time, get the best, low life, POS, left leaning, politically correct, whiny ass lawyer you can so that you don't have to be punished for what you've done. You don't have to eat your veggies but be sure you watch plenty of T.V. and what is mother nature again? Oh yeah, isn't that the strip of grass between the highways?

And what's worse, trying to educate these people makes you a conspiracy theorist, a pessimist, and in time a witch deserving of being burnt at the stake all because people don't like to face facts. Instead they watch American gladiators and go back to sleep!

Thats what's ruining the world, people don't know how to be intellectually motivated, spiritually based, physical beings with point and purpose and respect and reverence for nature and the power of the spoken word and physical labor. Everything is just a product begging for your fat-ass dirty dollar to shut up and buy, buy, buy, whatever we have to sell you. If you don't have oil, bomb the hell out of a country that does, of course that will also solve terrorism don't you know?

Things that were common knowledge years ago, particularly common courtesy and agricultural knowledge are now relics stuck in museums, particularly as a result of the industrial revolution and the growth of the military-industrial complex, globalization, and big government. Children and adults no longer know nor care how to survive because they think their government has their best interest in mind and they've been given everything, there is no reason for them to learn to provide when they are spoon fed everything for free at the expense of people who actual contribute something sustainable to society, something tangible that has been known and passed down generation after generation for 10,000 years and could be here in another 10,000 years. Instead they rely on concrete jungles, full of delinquents, murderers, rapists, the latest celebrity gossip, what did Martha Stewart say about this? How am I better than that person, Does this dress make me look fat? Wow, check out my cell phone, it accepts calls, has the INTERNET, a phone, and oh my me, it wipes my ass!. And then there are the folks exploiting all this, they are the developers, the middlemen, the business class, the blood sucking creditors, vampires, looses without souls and then the big man himself, uncle SAM and his fellow conspirators around the world who proclaim from the mountain and on the dollar bill itself; "The Rich get richer the poor get poorer, out with the middle class, landowners and slaves only!"

Go ask a kid how to plant a seed, grow the fruit, Harvest the fruit, prepare the fruit to eat, and then save the seed, I bet he can't tell you, but by all means if you ask him to show you how to beat his favorite computer game, he will spend 8 hours of pure fantasy showing you step by step. And we wonder why ADD is a new thing? We wonder why we are struggling, why do prices keep going up? Why is global warming escalating? Why do we have to medicate our children? Why do other countries hate us? Why is our food supply not safe? Why are there such high rates of cancer?

It's because we live in an artificial world, an imaginary box that supposedly shields us from the cold hard facts of reality. That truth and justice still exist. That you can find peace and happiness in an open society without fear. That the greatest truth you will ever know is the truth that is told to you by the seed you plant, the water that germinates it, the sun that causes it to grow, and the fruit and food that nourishes you. That communities can be families and families can be community and money is nothing more than paper printed with false promises. That society as you know it, every comfort of the modern world, ever piece of celebrity gossip, every horrible sin committing constitution defiling politician are all pushing the envelope of a lie and that millions of people have bought into it and have furthered the agenda by ignoring the truth because the truth frightens them. Instead they are raising armies of brain dead unthinking children destined to become the future slaves of the privileged, that is unless the bubble is poped and the illusion destroyed. Which can only happen through education, experimentation, and the renewal of long lost knowledge which should still be common sense.

Just a rant. Sorry.
Alan

[houseodessey]

It's good to see the Alan who takes the time to rant back. I agree wholeheartedly.

I totally lost (my remaining) faith in humanity about 3 years ago when I saw a commercial (when I still watched tv) featuring a teenager who declared his cellphone "boring".

How the heck can an inanimate object be boring or exciting, for that matter? I then paid more attention to how much attention cell phones, gaming machines, tv, ridiculous pop websites and music sites got and wrote off an entire generation (although I'm sure there are a few good members).

It's very easy to get discouraged these days. I've decided to give up on them, mostly. Maybe when I live in the country, I'll see less children with ridiculous senses of entitlement?

It's always nice to know that someone else is outraged and aware, though. That's why I love this site so much! People actually think, rather than accept the status quo, regardless of their personal beliefs and convictions. We all seem to be able to call out manure when we see it.

[grungy]

Right on, Alan. Keep on rant so or later we might br heard. The ground swell is coming on and so we might see the pendulum start swinging back towards sanity.
val / grungy