Tag: front porch

I fear that neither liberals nor most self-styled conservatives want to reexamine the habits, both economic and sexual, that have impoverished the working class, set the middle class on the wheels of a machine that literally sends their extra income up the chimney, and eviscerated neighborhood life.

There is a significant difference between staring at a computer screen and seeing the world through a porch screen. Hailey emphasizes the benefits of seeing from the “threshold between stability and precariousness,” which is nothing like viewing the world from the comfort of a couch in an air-conditioned room, even if the porch is also comfortable.

Here emerges the stoop as neither an architectural adornment nor a fleeting trend, but as a central social locus for the people of New York. It is here where our neighbors’ joy and laughter and special moments come to light, brightening up the city street and making the neighborhood feel whole. 

Perhaps, just perhaps, COVID has restored some of the beauty and desirability of the front porch.

Where do the porchers from across the Pond go to escape the entrapment of a modern, concrete, urban sprawl?

To paraphrase an observation of Chesterton on the subjects of poets, silence and cheese:  Political scientists have been mysteriously silent on the subject of soap,...

JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS.  The review below was first published in the Intercollegiate Review in the fall of 2006.  Look Homeward, America was my first...