A Sense of Place

Happy New Year!!!  WELCOME 2017!!

For your listening enjoyment.....

HOME

HOME!!

My Father's Father

I realize this has been my journey over the past 4 years!!...Finding a sense of place...MY PLACE!! Glad the universe has provided some food for thought from the What is a Sense of Place article... and others....perfect timing!!

“My heart wants roots
My mind wants wings.
I cannot bear
Their bickerings.”
― E.Y. Harburg

A Sense of Place–Jennifer Cross

"Adventurous, restless, seeking, asocial or antisocial, the displaced American persists by the million long after the frontier has vanished. He exists to some extent in all of us, the inevitable by-product of our history: the New World transient. He is commoner in the newer parts of America – the West, Alaska – than in the older parts, but he occurs everywhere, always in motion.

To the placed person he seems hasty, shallow, and restless. He has a current like the Platte, a mile wide and inch deep. As a species, he is non-territorial, he lacks a stamping ground. Acquainted with many places, he is rooted in none. Culturally he is a discarder or transplanter, not a builder or conserver. He even seems to like and value his rootlessness, though to the placed person he shows the symptoms of nutritional deficiency, as if he suffered from some obscure scurvy or pellagra of the soul."

What the scientists say–definitions

• Anthropology: Setha Low, “Symbolic Ties that Bind: Place Attachments in the Plaza”  “Place attachment is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space of piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment.... Thus, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, and includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place.”
• Environmental Psychology: Fritz Steele, The Sense of Place “Sense of Place: the particular experience of a person in a particular setting (feeling stimulated, excited, joyous, expansive, and so forth).” “Spirit of Place: the combination of characteristics that gives some locations a special ‘feel’ or personality (such as a spirit of mystery or of identity with a person or group).” “Setting: a person’s immediate surroundings, including both physical and social elements.”
• Geography: Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia “the affective bond between people and place or setting.” Such ties vary in intensity, subtlety, and mode of expression. Responses to the environment may be aesthetic, tactile, or emotional.
• Landscape Architecture/History: John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time “A sense of place is something that we ourselves create in the course of time. It is the result of habit or custom.... A sense of place is reinforced by what might be called a sense of recurring events.”
• Sociology: David Hummon, “Community Attachment: Local Sentiment and Sense of Place”  “By sense of place, I mean people’s subjective perceptions of their environments ant their more or less conscious feelings about those environments. Sense of place is inevitably dual in nature, involving both an interpretive perspective on the environment and an emotional reaction to the environment.... Sense of place involves a personal orientation toward place, in which ones’ understanding of place and one’s feelings about place become fused in the context of enviromental meaning.”

Relationships to place

"Many people are likely to have more than one relationship with a single place, and those relationships are likely to change over time. Regarding the level of analysis, people have relationships to places as small as a favorite rock next to the river, or as large as a geographical region." 

Biographical–

historical and familial–being born in and living in a place, develops over time; The strongest and most enduring relationships...are attachments based on personal history with a place. They are characterized by a strong sense of identification with place and a relatively long residence. In these relationships, place is an integral part of personal history. As such, biographical relationships require time to develop, and are strongest in communities in which one has spent more time. People describe their relationships in terms of cognitive, physical, and emotional connections. Whether one is a long-time resident or a newcomer, spending time in a place creates memories and experiences, which become part of a person’s individual and community identity.

Spiritual–

emotional, intangible–feeling a sense of belonging, simply felt rather than created; having significant relationships to places based on something much less tangible than personal history...relating to place in a profound way, of having a deep sense of belonging or resonance that is difficult to describe and is often unexpected...more of a intuitive connection than an emotional, cognitive, or material connection...a profound sense of belonging, sometimes mystical, and often intangible. Most people who describe feeling a spiritual connection speak of something they “just feel” rather than something they looked for or chose. They do not seem to require time to develop, nor do people describe them as a conscious choice. Spiritual relationship may be formed with a community or region in which a person was raised, or they may be formed with a place encountered later in life. 

Ideological–

moral and ethical–living according moral guidelines for human responsibility to place, guidelines may be religious or secular; founded on conscious values and beliefs about how humans should relate to physical places. The defining characteristic of ideological relationships is a well-articulated ideology about how to live in a place. For some this comes in the form of religious or spiritual teachings. For others, it is secular ethic of responsibility. It should be noted that all relationships to place are based on ideology, but most Americans are not self-conscious of their beliefs that provide guidelines for how to live in a place. Although there are big differences between those people living in a spiritual community and people who have created their own ethic of relationship to place, their self-conscious relationship to place is an important similarity which is absent from mainstream American culture. 

Narrative–

mythical–learning about a place through stories, including: creation myths, family histories, political accounts, and fictional accounts choosing a place based a list of desirable traits and lifestyle preferences, comparison of actual places with ideal; American school children become familiar with national myths and political accounts as they learn about Thanksgiving and early American history. Native American children learn about their region through creation myths. Some of us learn connection to particular places through family histories rooted in one place for several generations while others learn connection to the larger world through family histories rooted in migration. Whatever our own personal and family history, we also learn about places and regions through fictional accounts in books, movies, and television. As Americans, we have been inundated with national myths about the history of the West. Those images in films and novels shape our perceptions and expectations about places and teach us how to relate to those places. We all grow up with stories of places that teach us both about the history of that place and of our relationship to it. The stories that inform us about places include: creation myths, family histories, fictional accounts, local lore, moral tales, national myths, and political accounts. The role of each type of story or narrative plays a different role in different cultural contexts.

Commodified–

cognitive (based on choice and desirability); The defining characteristic of the commodified relationship is choice, the ability to choose a place with the best possible combination of desirable features. In regards to personal history, commodified relationships have little or nothing to do with personal history. Because they are founded on choice and a list of desirable traits, commodified relationships typically result from dissatisfaction with one community and the quest to find a more desirable place. This relationship is based on the match between the attributes of a place and what a person thinks is an ideal place. These relationships are more cognitive and physical than emotional. In this relationship to place the most significant emotional connections are to things or commodities like upscale restaurants and boutiques, and the natural environment, rather than to the larger community or relationships with other people.

Amenity migrants are the stereotypical example of people with a commodified relationship to place. In this relationship place is a commodity to be consumed, rather than a part of a person’s identity and history or a sacred place.  

Dependent–

material–constrained by lack of choice, dependency on another person or economic opportunity; The defining characteristic of dependent relationships is the aspect of choice. Typically these relationships are the result of having either no choice or severe limitations on choice. Some examples are: children who are dependent on their parents and don’t have a choice about where they live; elderly who have moved to be near caretakers either in their own home or in some kind of retirement facility; and people who have moved for a job or to be with a romantic partner. People who have a dependent relationship to the place, may have made a conscious choice to move, but it is typically not their first choice. Dependent relationships are primarily physical relationships. The relationship with place is typically based on the need to be near a job or another person. These relationships are noticeable lacking a positive emotional or mental connection. People in dependent relationships are often highly conscious of the differences between communities in which they have lived in the past and their current community.

So now... 

...more from Jennifer Cross: A person’s community attachment consists of their experience in a particular setting as well as their feelings about that place.

Rootedness–

Cohesive and Divided; some people have a strong attachment, identification and involvement with one community and others with two distinct communities. People with a sense of cohesive rootedness have a strong sense of attachment, identification, and involvement in one community. They generally have a positive assessment of the place and expect to continue living there. In contrast, those people with a divided rootedness think of themselves in terms of two communities. They have strong attachments to two places (or more??) and often have distinct identities associated with each place. Typically these people have a strong attachment to the community in which they were raised and to the community they have lived in as an adult. The other group of people who fits this category is commuters. If they have commuted for a number of years, they often have two distinct sets of social ties and identities in their home and work communities.

Place Alienation–

People who are alienated often have a negative assessment of the place, do not identify with the place and are not highly satisfied with the place. This category actually has several different types of people in it. Some people are alienated from a place because they have been forced to move from a place in which they were rooted to a place in which they are not, such as: children whose parents move; elderly who move to be near caretakers; and adults who move for a job or to be with a significant other. Other people may be dissatisfied because the place they love and feel rooted in has changed around them. Although I think the word displaced better describes the experiences of these people. [Some] have similar feelings of displacement not because they have moved, but because so many people have moved in around them. This category is characterized by the loss of a deep sense of rootedness.  

Relativity–

Many people who fit into this category have lived in so many places in their life that they are not strongly rooted to any particular community. They are more likely to identify their sense of home with either their house or the world more generally than any particular community. They are also likely to identify with more than one place, such as people who are bi-coastal. They differ from people with a sense of rootedness in two ways. They feel “at home” anywhere instead of in a specific place, and their identity is not strongly tied to their community of residence. In this category, people are likely to think of their house and community as home, but their sense of home is highly mobile and lacks the biographical and emotional depth of those with a sense of rootedness. The ability of individuals to feel at home anywhere and in many places is likely the result of having learned to cultivate a sense of home in a variety of different communities. 

Uncommitted Placelessness–

Persons falling into this category are characterized by a lack of place-based identification and a lack of emotional attachments to particular places. The main difference between relativity and placelessness is that in relativity people have a mobile sense of “home” and can cultivate a sense of home wherever they are, in placelessness people do not have an articulated or place-based sense of home. [Maybe the least common category?? The author identified those] who expressed little identification or emotional attachment to places were people in their late teens and twenties [suggesting] that developing attachments to particular places is closely connected to the lifecourse. [Perhaps] many young adults have yet to become attached to or develop identifications with particular places.

Final thoughts–from Jennifer Cross

"Fritz Steele....summary of the relational nature of senses of place:
Relationships between people and places are transactional:

• The relationship between people and environment is transactional: people take
  something (positive or negative) from and give or do things to the environment;
  these acts may alter the environment’s influence on the people.
  
• The concept of place should actually be psychological or interactional, not just physical. The environment is made up of a combination of physical and social features; the sense of place is an experience created by the setting combined with what a person brings to it. In other words, to some degree we create our own place, the do not exist independent of us.
  
• There are, however, certain settings that have such a strong “spirit of place” that they will tend to have a similar impact on many different people. The Grand Canyon and the left bank of the Seine in Paris are excellent examples.
  
• Settings obviously have an impact on people, both short-term and long-term, and there are some patterns to this impact. "

Simple Living Initiative-money

When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.–Native American Saying

Simplicity Collective

"Although practicing simplicity is much more than just being frugal with money and consuming less – it is also a state of mind – in a market economy spending wisely plays a central role.

In Your Money or Your Life, Dominguez and Robin provide elaborate financial exercises for readers to undertake which seek to provoke reflection on the real value of money and the real cost of things.  Such exercises may sound mundane and a bit pointless – everybody assumes they are careful, rational spenders – but if it is carried out with precision the results may well surprise, and perhaps even shock. One might find that seemingly little purchases add up to an inordinate amount over a whole year, which may raise new and important questions about whether the money might have been better spent elsewhere, not at all, or exchanged for more time by working less. Then consider how much would be spent in each category over ten years. The aim of this exercise is not to create tightwads, as such, but smart consumers who are conscious of the time/life/ecological cost of their purchases.

After all, as Thoreau would insist, ‘The cost of a thing is the amount of… life which is required to be exchanged for it.’  When exploring voluntary simplicity in this light, one might well find that some reductions and changes to spending habits, rather than inducing any sense of deprivation, will instead be life-affirming.

When it comes to spending money in accordance with the ethos of voluntary simplicity, it is also important to bear in mind Vicki Robin’s profound democratic insight: That how we spend our money is how we vote on what exists in the world.

Purchasing something sends a message, consciously or unconsciously, to the marketplace, affirming the product, its ecological impact, its process of manufacture, etc. Simple living, therefore, involves shopping as conscientiously as possible, directing one’s monetary ‘votes’ into socially and ecologically responsible avenues and boycotting irresponsible avenues.

A tension can arise here, of course, because shopping conscientiously or ‘ethically’ tends to be (but is not always) more expensive.  If it is true, however, that market expenditure is a vote on what exists in the world then it would seem that the global consumer-class has the potential to become a non-violent revolutionary class and change the world, simply by changing its spending habits.  Simplicity is the new spectre haunting capitalism. Never before have so many people had the option of casting off the chains of consumer culture, stepping out of the rat race, and living (and spending) in opposition to the existing order of things. Money is power, and with this power comes responsibility.

Consumers of the world, unite!"

The Story of STUFF

Ethics and the Consumer

Fair Trade USA

Simple Living Initiative-work

The Simplicity Collective 

"Rethinking attitudes to work is central to the way many participants in the Simplicity Movement approach simple living.

Charles Siegel poses the critical question: ‘Should we take advantage of our increasing productivity to consume more or to have more free time?’

If people keep raising their material standard of living every time they come into more money – through a pay rise, for example, or through some new technology which increases productivity per hour – working hours will never decrease and may even rise. Indeed, many Westerners, especially North Americans, Britons, and Australians, are working longer hours today than they were in the 1970s, despite being considerably more productive.

Generally speaking, they have directed all their wealth and productivity gains into consuming more and have not taken any of those gains in terms of increased free time. But why, one might ask, should people always be working for more consumer products and services and not sometimes be content with less? Why should people not accept a lower material standard of living (e.g. old clothes, smaller house, no car, no luxury travel, etc.) and work half as much? Who can say what wonders such a cultural style might not bring!

Thoreau’s opinion on working hours seems to exemplify the perspective widely held among participants in the Simplicity Movement:
'Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. … I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.'

The basic idea here is that if people can embrace simple living and stop the upward creep of material desire, they can take some or all of their pay rises or productivity gains, not in terms of more consumption, but in terms of more free time. And this raises the questions: Are we forced by the ‘curse of labour’ to work so much? Or are we freer than we think we are?

The Simplicity Movement is an example of a social movement where people are enjoying the benefits of exchanging money and consumption for more free time."

Simple Living

Becoming Minimalist

The Possibility Alliance

Maybe we don't need MORE money!!

The 7 Step Path to Enjoying Work

Simple Living Initiative-food

The Simplicity Collective

"Eating locally, eating organically, eating out in moderation, eating less or no meat, eating simply, lightly, and creatively, and, as far as possible, growing one’s own fruit and vegetables – these are some of the key characteristics to food production and consumption in the lives of many simple livers.  Given some thought and a little discipline, a nutritious, environmentally sensitive diet can be obtained at a surprisingly low cost."

23 Year old Permaculture Food Forest

Liking Healthy Foods is a Choice!!

Salamander Springs Farm

Slow Food USA

Locavore Movement

Eating with the Seasons

Sustainable Agriculture

Simple Living Initiative-housing

The Simplicity Collective

"Housing (whether purchasing, building, or renting) is typically life’s greatest single expense, so simple livers must think especially carefully about where they live and why, and how much of their lives they are prepared to spend seeking a ‘nicer’ place to live.

Exactly what kind of shelter does one need to live well and to be free? Obviously, we must answer this question for ourselves – at least, within the constraints of our own socio-economic context – but again the words of Thoreau might give us a moment’s pause: ‘Most people appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have.’

The ‘McMansions’ which are so prevalent in the suburbs of North America and increasingly elsewhere are extremely resource-intensive and very expensive.  In opposition to that trend, participants in the Simplicity Movement are exploring alternative ways to accommodate themselves and their families, by embracing smaller, much more modest and energy-efficient homes. In particular, some are exploring co-housing arrangements, ‘green design,’ and other forms of low-impact development, including eco-villages and ‘transition initiatives.’

More radical participants are building their own straw-bail houses, making shacks out of abandoned or second-hand materials, or converting shipping containers into homes."

Family of 7 Off Grid

Living Simply Off Grid Tiny House

Off Grid In Alaska

From Finance to Farmer

Simple Living Initiative-clothing

The Simplicity Collective...Let us be pioneers once more!!
Thoreau

A Simple Year...12 months of guided simplicity!!

Project 333...Be More with LESS

UnFancy...the capsule experiment!!

The Simplicity Collective

"The historic purpose of clothing, as Thoreau pointed out, was to keep us warm and, in time, for reasons of modesty. Today its dominant purpose seems to be fashion and the conspicuous display of wealth and status. People can, of course, spend thousands and thousands of dollars on clothing, if they wish. But simple livers tend to ‘dress down,’ wearing functional, often second-hand clothing. Such clothing can be generally obtained at a minimal expense.

Dressing down, it should be noted, does not necessarily imply giving up ‘style’ or puritanically denying self-expression through what one wears. But it does seem to imply rejecting high fashion (and all its stands for) in favour of some ‘alternative’ aesthetic.  In this way, dressing down can be understood to be an outward statement of simplicity; an effort, however small, to express aesthetically one’s opposition to consumer culture.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each and every year in the fashion industry.  Just imagine if even half of that money was redirected toward green energy or humanitarian initiatives. We would lose so little and gain so much.

Again, how we spend our money is how we vote on what exists in the world."

Yuletide Celebrations!!

If I could make one wish for every person on this Earth, it would be that each of us finds that path we were meant to walk. And that we walk our path quietly and allow others to walk theirs as well. It is when we try to manipulate other people's lives to meet our own specifications that we make our worst mistakes. –Irwen Nightstar


The True Origins of Christmas

The Real Story of Christmas