thinking of Ellsworth, are people xenophobic? (Bangor, China: to rent, new home, theater)

[heznc]

Hi,
I have an exciting job prospect in Ellsworth and am contemplating a move. I have no qualms about winter, or the lack of nightlife. We are a family of 4 and very oriented towards quiet, space and outdoor activities. I am eagerly leaving a small town in the South...and hoping that the culture might be less exclusive than the one we've been living in for a couple of years. The hatred here towards.....Yankees, blacks, gays, non-Baptists....is really such a turn off that I'm not sticking around to be vested in my retirement. I don't want to be around this kind of attitude and don't want my children exposed to it any longer. Is it possible to fuse rural with some progressive thought? Or at least with live-and-let-live? Is this a possibility in this part of Maine? Any communities around Ellsworth that might be better than others in these terms...(openness...tolerance to "outsiders")? Thank you for any input.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Blue Hill is much more progressive than Ellsworth. It's close by and you can still shop in Ellsworth for essentials. Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary has a place in Blue Hill and you don't get much more progressive than that. He has a studio in a converted chicken barn. You'll love it.

As you enter Ellsworth, the imposing building on the corner of Main Street is the Republican Headquarters.

[AustinB]

We consider the Blue Hill- Surry town line the start of the granola curtain.
Ellsworth is a quiet small, and I mean small, city. You shouldn't find any of the problems that you mentioned.
It's not cheap to rent in the Blue hill area.

[msina]

Granola belt? I just took a batch of granola bars out of the oven.

[AliceT]

What, no recipe to go with it? msina, I think you did that on purpose. You knew I'd read this and want it, didn't you? I'm... I'm going to pout.

[msina]

I DM'ed it to ya

[maine4.us]

Hum....the granola looks so good..... how about marketing MsIna's Maine Granola Bars?
Off topic....sorry, but I couldn't resist.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

Blue Hill is much more progressive than Ellsworth. It's close by and you can still shop in Ellsworth for essentials. Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary has a place in Blue Hill and you don't get much more progressive than that. He has a studio in a converted chicken barn. You'll love it.

As you enter Ellsworth, the imposing building on the corner of Main Street is the Republican Headquarters.

Man, have you ever been in way far northern Maine too long!

Blue Hill: progressive? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Peter, Paul and Mounds: ProGRESSIVE? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Oh, my sides are aching! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLROFLMAO!!!!!!!

Actually, Blue Hill and the entire Blue Hill peninsula is charming. I have owned property there for many years, and have just bought more on which my wife and I will build a new home. But PROGRESSIVE? LOLOLOLOL.

I still remember the battle that was fought about the horrors of a "new" Rite Aid pharmacy when Rite Aid wanted to move out of an antiquated building in the center of town. WOW. Can you say: armageddon? In the end, the company built a modern, new englandie pharmacy, near the new grocery store that needed to be built after the old one burned spectacularly one afternoon. Now, there is a bank, grocery store, and pharmacy in a little commercial center at the edge of town going toward Deer Isle and Stonington.

NOW, Ellsworth, on the other hand is sprawling itself to death. It is going to be the Bangor of th East, with every conceivable kind and form of "big box" imaginable. Ellsworth is progressive to a fault, thinking that more of every kind of development possible is good, and any kind of real community planning is to be avoided...that despite having a full time professional city planner to spend the townspeople's money.

Ellsworth is far more cosmopolitan than most other towns around in terms of the number and types of people moving here from away. During the late 1970's and 1980's, anyone who was dropping out of one of the country's cities would sort of end up somewhere in the Greater Ellsworth area, and generally, if they were below the age of sixty, they would wander in to the Grand Theater, which in those days was the ad hoc home of The Ellsworth Players. I have a lot of fun stories from those days, as I was one of those drop outs.

Today, there is still a growing population in Ellsworth of bright younger folks and I would have to say that generally, they are tolerant of others. Ellsworth is like almost all other towns around, family oriented, but with the same kinds of problems and troubles that exist everywhere in this country. There are a gazillion churches in Ellsworth and two different kinds of smash-mouth bars, so you can get pretty much whatever kind of "fix" you need to get.

Soon, Super Walmart will arrive and hopefully that will get Ellsworth a "real" grocery store, although in the end, it will probably only mean that Shaw's will go away, and the city will be left with little more than is there now.

Because the city has refused to take an active role in its own development, every summer the High Street and Main Street areas are jammed with traffic, and are very unpleasant places to be. Since I live in the area, I avoid all of that whenever possible, and after anyone has lived here for more than six months, you should know where all the little paths are that will enable you to avoid Main and High Streets, and the awful strip shopping center, that thirty years ago was called "The Miracle Mile".

I fear that in the short future, Ellsworth will be an ugly little center for all the worst of The American Experience: shopping and shopping and shopping for endless numbers of junkie plastic things from China.

It may be a place to find work, but it will be a place to live away from.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

"I still remember the battle that was fought about the horrors of a "new" Rite Aid pharmacy when Rite Aid wanted to move out of an antiquated building in the center of town. WOW. Can you say: armageddon?"

You misinterpret the word "progressive". A progressive is anti development, anti business and anti about anything that benefits working families.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

"I still remember the battle that was fought about the horrors of a "new" Rite Aid pharmacy when Rite Aid wanted to move out of an antiquated building in the center of town. WOW. Can you say: armageddon?"

You misinterpret the word "progressive". A progressive is anti development, anti business and anti about anything that benefits working families.

Ellsworth is extremely "progressive" by that definition. New schools, new commercial development, new tax rates to support it all.

Seems pretty "progressive" to me.