The rise and fall of virtually everything

"A Neo-Victorian Childhood" on my website: http://rodneymackay.com/ has now been expanded to include the post-year wars. It will, in due course, conclude with the year 1954 when I supposedly became an adult. Just now, it includes events between 1934 and 1950.

Attorney and economist Michael Shuman is the Vice President for Enterprise Development for the Training and Development Corporation, based in Bucksport, Maine.
He is the author of five books including The Small Mart Revolution and Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age. He has written numerous articles on the relationship between community and international affairs. His work has appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post.

"In his version of the future, Dhuman predicts a resurgance of local shops and industries, and perhaps not by choice. As oil prices continue to skyrocket, transportation patterns will change. Consumers will be less willing to drive long distances to the big box stores; global manufacturers will lose much of their cometitive edge because of the escalating cost of shipping their goods. According to Shuman, fuel prices will level the playing field for small business. And in the long run there is nothing to fear." -Tom Cruickshank, editor Harrowsmith Country Life. I can agree with most of this but think there is everything to fear in these cold lands of the north as new ways of doing things develop!

Cruikshank points to a simpler more self-sufficient world before the automobile era. Actually the 1940' saw a much reduced role for the automobile, and in these times, only a few decades ago, we have a model for what may lie ahead. In those six years of war practically everything was made locally or not far down the railway line. I was personally acquinted with a diverse number of artisan/merchants. There was a cotton mill in town, an axe factory, a candy factory, a massive lumber mill, an axe factory, and neighbourhood stores and blacksmith shops by the score. For items not avaliable in town there was mail order. My grandfather would have been aghast at the idea of driving more than a mile to buy clothing, groceries or hardware at a big box store. What a gigantic waste of time to save a few dollars!

featured on my home page.In any event, this concept has led me to an expansion of my Neo-Victorian Kids essay The time following World War II might be appropriately labelled, "The rise and fall of practically everything - traditional religion, standard political belief, local ownership of businesses, the good life. Briefly ascendent was a trust in technology and science which has since proven to be misplaced.