Is there “there” there?
Gertrude Stein once said about a return to her hometown of Oakland, CA that there was no there there.
This past weekend, my husband Ray and I, were delighted that we were able to attend the Monadnock Institute’s symposium, “Where the Mountain Stands Alone”. What brought us to this gathering was my husband’s favorite author, Scott Russell Sanders, of which Ray has read every book he’s published, some several times.
Where James Howard Kunstler wrote, “The Geography of Nowhere,” which Ray and I have thumbed through parts, (it mentions our town of Lebanon as being quite a desirable place) Scott’s keynote address, “The Geography of Somewhere” had us looking at the varous places of our country that are “nowheres”, and how we can make them “somewheres.” Taken from Gertrude Stein, bringing back “the there there.”
Anyway, the symposium was quite interesting as discussions ran the gamut from “What is a Yankee, really?” to “How do we preserve a town that is so desirable and popular with tourists, so that it doesn’t get removed from what it is that made it special in the first place?” to Janisse Ray and her talk of her move from her family’s land (of seven generations) in Georgia, to Brattleboro, VT. All these discussions talked about Place, and what is it.
We also ran into Ray’s “distant relative” (Ray’s mom is a Hebert) who we met last Thanksgiving, Ernest Hebert, was a presenter on the panel. (See Thanksgiving ‘05)
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