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Apparently you are confusing the terms--"rural" and "small town"
The title of this thread is ---Rural and Small Town Living
There is a big difference from living in a rural area and living in a town that just happens to be surrounded by rural areas.
There is a reason people living in small towns have a city address ( or PO box) and people living in a rural area had a Rural Route address.
Very few people in NH have a PO Box regardless of how large or small the town they live in is. Most people live on marked rural roads of various classes. Most small towns of fewer than a few thousand people have very large rural land areas within the town boundaries. For example the town of 700 people in NH has large sections of town with very few people and roads of extremely poor quality. The point remains that one idiot city slicker can create exorbitant amounts of light pollution to be enjoyed by the nearest neighbors is quite inconsiderate.
We had a rural route address when we moved here. It was promptly, within a month (after we'd done all the address changes, of course!), 911'd to be a street address (well, county road address), so that EMS and the volunteer fire department could more easily find people living out in the country. There are no rural addresses out here, no matter how far out you get, as far as I can tell (and I look at addresses out in the country all day long as part of my profession).
Other states may be different, but here, you can be out in the boonies surrounded by hundreds or thousands of acres and you still have a street address, not a rural route address.
Fuzz, that sounds more like the "homesteader" complaining about his neighbor's lights
( I actually gotta laugh everytime I type that word--"homesteader" )
Me too Marmac. I was raised with Grandparents that were farmers but were the ultimate "Homesteaders".
They had a greenhouse they sold veggies out of. The had a huge garden. They heated entirely by wood. (25 cord per year...no joke). They raised chickens (50,000 broilers). Had a few dairy cows and made cheese which they sold for money and drank their own. Raised beef and hogs for themselves. Logged the woodlot as needed. Etc. They were as close to 100% self sufficient as possible.
People call that "Homesteading". We called it growing up poor!
Rural Indiana is starting to see the result of unabashed light pollution. There is an organization that's starting to get folks involved locally, maybe the more people read and see about this the more involved they will become in protecting their OWN rights for a change. Here's a couple of links to the org I mentioned: www.preserveourskies.org Light Pollution In Henry County, Indiana
When we first moved here for years you didn't see a light for miles.Now there is one across each holler.But there hasn't been Electric here but 13 years.Nor Phones.
When we moved to our rural property, there was a "dusk to dawn" street light in our private little lake community that we had to pay for each month. I thought it was nonsense until my hubby went out the otherside of our house (where there was no light) to a neighbors house, right next door and was attacked by a varmit that he couldn't even see. He went through a month of rabies shots, which aren't pleasant - so maybe the lights are so "we" can see what's outside if we have to go out in the dark. JMHO
I can see, for the most part, when I go out in the dark, IF my night vision hasn't been rendered unusable by lights. If it's a particularly dark night, go figure, I take a flashlight and use my ears to detect any possible approaching "varmints".
Sorry to hear about the rabies shots, though. I'm guessing he wasn't able to determine what kind of critter it was and obviously couldn't catch it so that it could be tested and avoid that.
The real reason for night lights (outside of creating power bills) is to prevent the vandals from tripping in the dark and suing you for "creating a dangerous situation" and "attractive nuisance".
I really am looking forward to living someplace with really dark skies.
Excerpt:Where I grew up, nearly every farm had a yard light that shone all night long. I never understood why. Was it so a sleepless farmer could look out at the tractor ruts or watch empty husks blowing past the corn crib? Was it to guide some wandering stranger? Or was it merely to posit one’s existence, compressed, as those farms were, between a prairie of soil and a prairie of sky?
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Sorry to disagree
