One of the most illuminating parts of Jenny Odell's book How to Do Nothing was her explanation of the value of bioregionalism.
I'd encountered the idea elsewhere, but Odell's insistence on its importance, about the value of place and location—if we are to resist the powerful lure of the attention economy—was just the angle I needed.
I think I'd been searching (without knowing it) for this framework ever since moving to Colorado in 2018. It's hard not to think about the actual place when you lie along the Front Range, and the foothills are in view almost anytime you're outdoors.
Compared to Colorado, Manhattan was like no-place—I could go weeks without thinking about how I lived on an island.
Odell cites environmental activist Peter Berg and his explanation of "where he's from":
I am from the confluence of the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River and San Francisco Bay, of the Shasta bioregion, of the North Pacific Rim of the Pacific Basin of the Planet Earth.
I wondered immediately: what would my version sound like?
No comments:
Post a Comment