Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (1993) is primarily autobiographical. It is a reflection on the author’s home and neighbourhood, where he has lived for the past twenty years, in order to understand his life. It is not in an environment of magnificent splendour or history or nature or beauty. Instead, it is a fine township in farm country Ohio, and the chance of a fresh start with his wife.
In the place
Scott Russell Sanders calls home, he explores his sense of community and sense
of place. He describes the people he is connected to and why, and of his
surroundings – the view from the windows, the seasons, the changing landscape,
its smells and impressions, and what makes a house a home. From its purchase in
1974 to the traditional settlers, and to the township’s development, he writes
of the construction of the channel that has made Ohio into a “chain of lakes.”
He writes of the birth and development of his daughter, to tornado memories, to
family, friends and visitors.
About half
way through the book, he philosophically reflects on some people’s need to
migrate and some people’s need to nest. “I quarrel with [author, Salman]
Rushdie because he articulates as eloquently as anyone the orthodoxy that I wish
to counter: the belief that movement is inherently good, staying put is bad;
that uprooting brings tolerance, while rootedness breeds intolerance; that
imaginary homelands are preferable to geographical ones; that to be modern,
enlightened, fully of our time is to be displaced.” Scott Russell Sanders
believes that people who root themselves in places are more likely to know and
care for those places than are people who root themselves in ideas. This view
is based upon nurture, durability, sustainability, and ultimately heritage – a
place to be passed on to descendants.
Scott Russell
Sanders discusses itinerant populations and migration routes, the writings of
poets, authors, scientists, and philosophers, and the influence of music and
the arts. The answers are his personal story, but in reflecting on his sense of
place, readers examine their own.
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