Thanks, James, for a better distinction of love of place/nationalism than mine.

As for love of place/nationalism: the liberal smear that love of the particular has much in common with the modern nationalisms of the Russians (Pan-Slavs), Germans, or Italians (or of any of the other modern varieties of nationalism) is just that — a smear. Each of those movements is denoted primarily by its effort to deracinate people from more particular and experienced loyalties and to bind them to the far more abstract and general ones of “race.” The war-making they begot was not the product of intuitive love of place and community; it was, rather, the desparate project of nation building, the attempt to build conflict fires so hot they could forge a single nation-state out of myriad smaller communities.

There’s more to be said on this, but I hope this at least provokes a little questioning of that awful slander that quietly benefits the ultimate statist “nationalism”: the “world citizen” who must spread his “values” at the end of a smart bomb.

For these were simple men that loved with hands and feet and eyes,
Whose souls were humbled to the hills and narrowed to the skies,
The hundred little lands within one little land that lie,
Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex scales the sky.

And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen again,
Or ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of Lorraine,
Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English trees,
How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these –
How small a shriveled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and curled:
They died to save their country and they only saved the world.

As to who might be the “poorer” for the choice they make…we can argue that well past when the embers go dark. But then, I don’t think it’s much of an argument.

I’ve never understood age ghettoes either, Mr. Medaille.

I’d say the difference between rootedness and nationalism is the difference between affection and arrogance. Any virtue taken to an extreme will become a vice, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in its true form a virtue.

I suppose when people say small communities are more prone to “closemindedness” they mean there are fewer places for the odd man out to go. That’s probably true. But I’d guess he generally has a friend or two sticking by. I wouldn’t argue there are no challenges to small communities, but I would say the benefits outway the negatives, except in very unhealthy places, and it has certainly been my experience that smallmindedness flourishes in universities and big cities. We can’t talk as if the fault were unique to small towns in rural Connecticut or the upper South.

I do sometimes envy those locals whose lineage stretches back to Revolutionary and Civil War veterans in the Judea Cemetery but I would not diminish the story of my family’s various migrations a bit. What I do hope is that where ever I rock, the neighbors are hospitable and receptive to a fresh face and crackpot idea rendered in the proper spirit. Community is indeed a place and not simply a state of mind but there is no doubt that without a certain companionable state of mind, no community will be worth much more than a plug nickel. What a big city might lose in familiarity with one’s neighbors can often be equalled by the resentful insularity and nationalistic contempt for newcomers in a small town. So, it would appear that it is not merely a semantic revery….community is both a place and a state of mind….best summed up in another Mt. Aire Cabin Tourist Plaque: “To have a friend, be one.”

But there are better lines, as when Chief Brody’s wife asks when she gets to become an islander. The answer from one of the denizens of Amity Island is: “Helen, never. You’re not born here; you’re not an islander.”

Thank you. You eloquently expressed my attitude towards place and family.

Every winter as the snow piles high around the house, I gripe that I want to “go to Florida and get out of the cold.” However, having visited the “Sunshine State” several times; I can not say (as nice as the state is)that any area of Florida feels like “home” to me.

I’ve been retired for a few years; each year becomes another time to rejoice in the seasons, my family and the bonds of caring community that this wonderful place gives to those who are willing to make a commitment to it.

Dorothy was right, there is no place like home.

That said, I want to ask a question that has bothered me ever since I first encountered the stay-home ideas here at the FPR. Having done extensive genealogical research, I know that the best thing my maternal great-grandparents did for me was to get out of their West Virginia town. Among those who remained, the incidence of “father unknown” on the birth records is depressingly high.

Moreover, I noticed that each of my hated moving experiences they provoked growth in my life and that of others. In my own (highly-rated) high school the brightest, most interesting students were almost always those who had come from elsewhere, not because of any deficiencies in the local population, but because the non-locals had a wider range of experience from which to draw. I like to think our different perspectives brought enrichment to our fellow-students as well.

I wish we could have it both ways. Home, as my friends and family will assure you, sometimes with exasperation, is my favorite place to be — wherever home happens to be at the moment. I wish my entire family were no more than an hour’s drive away instead of spread across the country and the globe. But living, at least for a while, in Japan, and Costa Rica, and Switzerland, and Italy, and yes, Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, and many other states, too, in small towns and suburbs, in cities and on farms, has brought such richness to our family I wouldn’t have it otherwise.

How does the philosophy I see here at the FPR allow for such enrichment, such growth, such joys?

You might be interested in the Swiss system, which perhaps reflects, at least in principle, the rootedness you desire but which few have, even in Switzerland: you are not a citizen of Switzerland, per se, but of your family’s home town, even if no one in your family has lived there for generations.

I am very lucky that I have roots here. I can visit local cemetaries and see the graves of the my relatives that came here from Ireland, France, Switzerland and Germany. They all most likely missed their own homes greatly, but in staying here they gave me mine.

There are many gifts we can give our kids. One of the ones I have tried to pass on is a love of place. If my children feel that urge to stay or come back I know I will have succeeded.

The logic of a changing location based on your “stage of life” ends with the “retirement” community, a place isolated from the young, where the old–and even not so old–are pampered with money from a system of pensions and subsidies that constitute a burden on the young. As a person who is approaching retirement age, the last thing I want is to be around a bunch of old geezers like myself. Besides which, I feel an innate need to bore the young with stories of the old days, and this requires a community in which children are taught to listen respectfully to their elders, regardless of their level of actual interest.