Facing fuel crisis, Mainers should think inside the border

As if Halloween with all its ghouls and haunts isn’t scary enough. As if the end of daylight-saving time doesn’t cast you into darkness. As if the forecasts for a severe winter ahead don’t cause nightmares, just add to that the rising cost of fuel, the predictions of rolling blackouts – or brownouts – and the fact you may have waited too long to buy dry wood.

Energy concerns are real, as in REAL, in this neck of the Down East woods where folks are expressing anxiety that they won’t be able to keep up with the very basics: health, heat, home.

Just the other day, a mother of two confessed, sadly, she has no health insurance. Just the other day, an elderly friend worried aloud about paying for her prescriptions and her fuel bills. She wondered if there would be enough money for both.

At this beginning of November, it’s hard to focus on dire days ahead. The fall has been mild – no October’s bright blue weather, as the poet described – but unseasonably warm nonetheless. Heating costs haven’t become the problem yet.

On the plus side, no power outages to speak of, with the exception of a few hours here or there due to high winds that blew over with the fronts that brought them. No worry about wells drying up; there’s been enough rain to fill any vein of granite in these parts.

But the outlook ahead is a different matter, certainly not a plus. Predictions of a harsh New England winter have many people worried about power rate increases due to natural gas shortages and, primarily, about heating costs. Fuel oil prices are spiraling as fast as smoke out the vent.

Everywhere you look, news stories are screaming: Electric bills on the increase, area braces for rough winter ahead, fuel costs will overwhelm budgets of towns and schools, gasoline prices hurt commuters. The projected headline for the coming months: tough times.

All of this while major oil companies – Exxon comes to mind – are reaping record profits in the billions. Billions.

There is talk – ho-hum – in Congress about taxing such windfall profits, but we must remember these are the same species seeing their oil company stock holdings soar in the disastrous wakes of historic Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

On a closer, down-home approach, Gov. John Baldacci has reportedly started a fund to help low-income residents with their heating costs this winter.

Perhaps we should contribute to this fund rather than all others, including United Way, Salvation Army, Red Cross, Food for the Poor, Save the Children, etc. After all, we’ve been instructed since childhood that charity should start at home.

We Mainers can look down this road or that, across town, around the corner, over yonder, and know with unspoken certainty there are neighbors worried sick about menacing costs of winter. Especially this winter.

Not all of these people in need will come to “the town” for assistance.

It is incumbent on the rest of us to go to them.