Letter: Stand against the erosion of rural life
These beautiful fall days in our part of rural Southern Indiana I have been driving the backroads to get where I’m going. Everywhere I look I see fields of plenty. Corn and soybeans getting ripe for harvest are interspersed with woodlots and pasture land, houses, silos and barns. Bales of hay dot the fields as cattle chew contentedly in the autumn sunlight, and life is good in this entire rural agricultural region. It was so affirming that I was moved to sing to myself the old anthem, “Beautiful for spacious skies and amber waves of grain…”.
These fields surround the towns in all directions, out Jasper- Dubois Road and Kellerville Road to the north, and Meridian Road west and the Old Jasper Huntingburg Road to the south. To the east are Celestine Road, Schnellville Road, Ferdinand Road and to the west northwest, is Portersville Road, along with so many both named and numbered county roads everywhere that they are uncountable. And all this acreage is overflowing with priceless beauty and utility. SR 162 and US 231 are all bordered with productive farmland as well, and even in Jasper city limits, a few cornfields hug up to major streets such as Third Avenue and Newton Streets, much of the way to the downtown area, all of them connecting a web of life throughout the region.
I am reminded once again of the RDA and its major purpose to promote a new Mid-States Corridor north/south truck corridor to purportedly provide development needed to grow the town of Jasper bigger and to urbanize its now rural surroundings further.
What a scam! This area, like all rural areas, is already developed to its highest and best capacity! And this is what true wealth looks like! Do we really need to trade our true and lasting wealth for more housing, more industry, more robots, more AI and Crypto factories, not to mention the increased erosion of rural community life?
In a time when it appears that so many people are losing sight of what our country has stood for since its beginnings, I am saddened by this willingness to destroy the real wealth we as a united people of many generations have worked for since the early immigrant ancestors came here, and that many still keep vibrant and alive.
We don’t need another taxpayer-funded “study” to determine whether taxpayers could afford both the new highway and keep the old one. We don’t need more of anything that money alone can buy. What we really need is a reorganization of priorities. In a world of increasing hate, prejudice, fear, and growing inequality, as well as a central government that is clearly falling apart and is not working for a huge number of the American people of all ages and backgrounds, what we need is to focus on keeping our local area vibrant and livable not just for us today, but productive for the next generations.
However, until we change our short-term attitude from one of greed, vengeance, envy, and hate to one that fosters humility, kindness, and concern for each other and all our fellow creatures, things will not go well for America. As the song goes, if we wish to prosper, we need to mend every flaw, “confirm our soul in self-control, our liberty in law” so that we can realize the true American dream of creating a society that works to “crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea” and be a model not only for our children, but for the rest of the world.
Sincerely,
Jeanne Melchior
Jasper
