Sense of Place
An Eight-Session Course for the Workplace, Faith Center or Home

Purpose:

1. To understand the meaning of a bioregional perspective, and what it would mean to develop one.
2. To consider the benefits of consciously developing an intimate relationship with your place.
3. To explore what it might mean to protect the place we live.

Topics Covered:

• A Sense of Place: Wendell Berry, America's best-known bioregionalist, says if you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are. With a sense of place, your identity is defined (to a significant extent) by the natural features of the place you live. Without a sense of place, what will fill the void?
  
  
• Responsibility to Place: There is a difference between living on the land and dwelling in it (understanding its rhythms, its potential, and its limits). Those who develop intimacy with a place over time tend to accept responsibility for it.
  
  
• Knowing Your Bioregion: Your bioregion is a unique place with its own watershed, soils, climate, plants, animals, and history. How much do you know about it?
  
  
• Living in Place: Living in place means consciously trying to satisfy your needs and find your pleasures in your local bioregion and working to assure the long-term health of the bioregion.
  
  
• Mapping Your Place: Mapping can be learned by local groups and individuals to give a new sense of place. Whereas a typical map shows political subdivisions and transportation routes, a bioregionalist's map delineates regions based on watersheds, climate, and plant types, thereby helping people relate to their natural surroundings.
  
  
• Community: A bioregionalist assumes responsibility for the health and continuity of a place, not only its natural features, but also the social bonds of its people.
  
  
• Empowerment: Knowing a place can inspire and empower one to take action to preserve it or take part in its restoration. How important is individual and group action in modern society?

Course Readings :

I.A SENSE OF PLACE


1. "A Sense of Place" by Edward Behr (VT)
2. "Place Names as Footprints of History" by Esther Munroe Swift (VT)
3. "Living Where You Live" by Hannah Holmes
4. "The Sense of Place" by Wallace Stegner
   
   II. RESPONSIBILITY TO PLACE
   
   
5. "The Land Ethic" by Aldo Leopold
6. "Rediscovery of North America" by Barry Lopez
7. "Homeplace" by Scott Russell Sanders
8. "Notes on Living Simply in the City" by Marilyn Welker
   
   III. KNOWING YOUR BIOREGION (all from Vermont reader)
   
   
9. "The Nursery Rhyme and the Summer Visitor" by Genevieve Taggard
10. "The Original Vermonters: Native Inhabitants Past and Present" by William Haviland and Marjorie Powers
11. "Ojihozo Creation Myth" by Joseph Bruchac
12. "The View from the Hill" by Howard Frank Mosher
13. "Tracking as the Art of Seeing" by Paul Rezendes
14. "Mud Season" by Francis Colburn
15. "The Nature of Vermont" by Charles Johnson
    
    IV. LIVING IN PLACE
    
    
16. "Bismarck on Vermont" by Robert D. Benedict (VT)
17. "The Character of Vermont: Then and Now" by Michael Sherman and Jennie Versteeg (VT)
18. "Anson" by David Budbill (VT)
19. "Two Faces of Vermont" by Noel Perrin (VT)
20. "Marshall Washer" by Hayden Carruth (VT)
21. "Fast Lane on a Dirt Road" by Joe Sherman (VT)
22. "Growing Organic: Farming Without Chemicals Finds Fertile Ground" by John Dillon (VT)
23. "Town Meeting" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (VT)
24. "The Politics of Place" by Daniel Coleman
25. "Reweaving Our Soul Connection with Food" by Paul Conrad
    
    V. MAPPING YOUR PLACE
    
    
26. "Mapping the Biosphere" by Gene Marshall
27. "Raise the Grates" by Sabrina Merlo
    
    VI. COMMUNITY
    
    
28. "The Web of Life" by Scott Russell Sanders
29. "Back to We" by Amitai Etzioni
30. "To Learn the Things We Need to Know" by Freeman House
31. "Community-Based Restoration" by Christine Schneider
32. "Cohousing" by Diane Meisenhelter
33. "Help Groups" by Steve Whitson
34. Neighborhood Connections Worksheet
    
    VII. EMPOWERMENT
    
    
35. "Making a Difference" by Katrina Shields, "The Power of One" by Sharif Abdullah
36. "Church Creek" by Steve Yates, "Push for Change" by Ann Sihler
37. "Leatherbacks" by The Giraffe Project, "Facts About Geese" by Angeles Arrien