I don’t know Susan and I’m new to this site but I find this completely unnecessary and offensive. Academia is not enhanced by snobbery.

Regarding American’s mobility, I’ve lived in Pretoria, Nome, Key West, and many places in between. But now I’ve peaked. I drive a big rig in 48 states and I don’t sleep well unless I’ve moved 500 miles.

Keep the boxes.

Moving is unmooring. It is unsettling. I wish, as William Butler Yeats wished for his daughter, to “live like some green laurel, rooted in one dear perpetual place.”

My life is one of constant moves – between first grade and junior high I attended five different schools and was home schooled. My father grew more and more successful the more we moved. I became more and more lost and “unmoored.”

Now I have a daughter, and my wife and I found that within the first year of our little girl’s life we had moved three times. Now we’ve stopped. I’ve reconciled myself to the idea that success is made up of much more than professional success or income. Living in the same place, growing roots, learning the people of a place for a long time – these are vitally important. Having our parents in the same city so our children can be raised by the extended family is vitally important.

An irony I stumbled upon while reading this post is also the fact that while my great-grandparents had very little in the way of technology to keep memories of them preserved, we most certainly do. The fingerprints of my existence are everywhere, in digital photos and blog posts – while at the same time it seems that culturally we place less and less value in remembering things, on tradition, on the past.