Saturday, January 12, 2013

Solastalgia-got it

sō-lä-stál-jə n.: A pain or discomfort caused by the present state of one’s home environment.

 Solastalgia ia a kind of distress: a homesickness felt at home. Glenn Albrecht coined the term “solastalgia” — a mash-up of “solace,” “desolation,” and “nostalgia” — to describe the inability to derive comfort from one’s home environment due to negative environmental change. Originally coined to describe what Australians were experiencing due to the intensive coal mining in their region. I can very much relate, many are experiencing this today due to the threat to our homes and environment from the toxic extraction process known as fracking.

 from:http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/01/30/solastalgia-and-the-ecopsychology-of-our-changing-environment/...
  "The debilitating effects of Nostalgia can occur when you are physically displaced from somewhere you call home. Solastalgia occurs when the environment you call home changes unrecognizably for reasons beyond your immediate control. Solastalgia can lead to distress, but I believe that this distress is felt by people who care... to my mind, a psychological defense to the debilitating emotion of ‘care’ in a world that has taken away even the most fundamental security of ‘home’ and removed all sense of place. In subtle yet alarming ways, I can see a similar culture of indifference creeping into societies who are beginning to understand that “In a world that’s quickly heating up and drying up, you can’t go home again — even if you never leave.”

Monday, January 7, 2013

The Klines can’t afford hundreds of dollars in EPA tests. They are relying on volunteers , who test the water’s temperature, total dissolved solids, conductivity and salinity before passing the samples along for subsequent chloride tests." http://www.ohio.com/news/local-news/portage-county-residents-test-water-amid-concerns-of-oil-field-contamination-1.363107