Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (Concord Library)

I read an interview Sanders in the AWP Chronicle and liked his sensibility. Since I've lived in the same place for 40 years, I thought this would be an interesting read. This is not a book that one tears through. Rather it requires a slow thoughtful approach which is in keeping with Sanders perspective on staying put. It takes time and consideration to make a home in a restless world. Sanders writing and thinking is in keeping with Wendell Berry. Both require the reader to look at place with fresh eyes. The essay entitled the "Force of Moving Water" was meditative, descriptive, informative, and as powerful and soothing and disturbing as it's subject matter, the Ohio River. The piece on Sander's anxious late night wandering, "The Earth's Body," was evocative, highly personal, and deeply intelligent. Take your time with this book; you need to absorb Sanders through skin, breath, and the soles of your feet, in the same way you come to know the place you choose to make your home.

It was a nice read, just didn't appeal to my taste. He did have a fantastic use of detail though.

Awesome book!

Very nice book. Can in used, but good condition. If you are interested in a little history about the Ohio river its a good read. A little nostalgic,but worth the time to read it.

Someone who has inspired me greatly wholeheartedly believes "it's the landscape you learn before you retreat inside the illusion of your own skin" and I have faith in him and those words.

Great book!

Literally tore the facing of the drywall off our wall when we removed it .

Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World 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.