Windmills will change NNY lifestyle

Every time I am in Hammond, this is the question I think quietly inside my head: Where will the rest of you move to?

One thing I have always noticed about the people of St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties is that they are not part of the "rat race" that the rest of the East Coast is entrenched in. Life has a different kind of laid-back feeling. I feel it every time I am in Hammond and the surrounding areas. It's something you have a right to be proud of, and also something you are very lucky to have. It's extremely rare, and you are very fortunate.

When I drive by other towns that have whirling and spinning windmills in motion along their roads or in their towns, I cannot get away from a feeling of "moving-changing-pushing-propelling" inside of me. It is a "driving" feeling that one cannot escape in the presence of these massive structures. It's all around, the whooshing, the spinning, the motion. It dominates your entire visual area, which is an enormous visual area, since the spinning of these football-field-size windmills can be seen for miles and miles on your flat landscape.

For many of you who have something that the rest of the world does not — a non-rat- race life — I am sad to think how the rat race and its "pushing-vibrating" pulse could be coming to you. I am confident that if the windmills do come to Hammond, you will sadly see what I mean within a very short time.

And then I wonder, with all sincerity, where will the rest of you move to?

If you do decide to uproot and get out of the "whooshing, pulsing, constantly moving rat race" feeling, where will you go? How will it feel to move from the only place that you and your family have called home? Where will you move to, given you will not get as much from selling your property after the windmills have come?

I understand this is not a concern for the handful of farmers benefiting, but I am continually hearing this question in my head concerning the rest of you, who have been so lucky to have not been in the rat race that many others in the country endure.

Michael J. Cantrel

Bath, Pa.