solastalgia
n.— «Solastalgia describes the pain experienced when the place a person lives is under assault and destruction, a loss of a sense of belonging to a particular place and a sense of desolation about its disappearance.…He uses the term, which has origins in solacium (solace) and algos (pain), to explain the impact of open-cut coal mining on communities in the Hunter region of New South Wales.» —“Drought prompts new type of mental stress” by Judy Skatssoon ABC Science Online (Australia) May 24, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...