Holland, MI…
The recent dispute between Joe Carter over at First Things and various occupants of the Porch has already received a good deal of attention, but also demonstrated a regrettable level of talking past one another. This, in no
Region & Place
In 1852, the first piano arrived in Stockton, California. Imported from Cincinnati, it was a gift to Mary Kroh from her father, a minister who had traveled west to preach to the thousands of gold miners in California. Shortly after…
One thing that has amused me in these first three years of FPR’s existence is the tendency of some readers to single out one or two articles and lament that FPR was once a promising venture but has now taken…
The answers we give may prove to be fatal rather than whimsical.
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY—Our daughter will be spending the snowy months rehearsing her role as Marian the Librarian in her high school’s production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man,” that tuneful Iowa-placed warhorse—no, parade horse—of community theater. (The flaw in community…
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
As Christmas and the end of 2011 approaches, I find myself thinking gratefully about what Leroy Hershberger has enabled my students and me to learn this year, and what that learning has meant to me.…
He was local when local wasn’t cool.
I’ve just finished Andrea Wulf’s beguiling book entitled “ Founding Gardeners, The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation”. Published this year by Knopf, it delves into already well-known territory but does so in a manner highly…
Queens, NY –… The idea was to design an English village from scratch, within railroad-commuting distance of Manhattan. It was meant to include homes for families of different income levels, and so in addition to the big houses, there are
Nashville, Tennessee — …This is a tale of two neighborhoods, a move from one to the other, and the inherent contradictions of gentrification.
Our old neighborhood, close to downtown, was one of Nashville’s first “streetcar suburbs,” full of cottage-style homes
We lived now in a wrecked forest, but this is only the beginning.
I think about giving a standing ovation—not for the singing but for the cessation thereof.
Mayville, North Dakota –… You’re looking northwest from our front porch in Mayville, North Dakota. The picture, taken Sunday afternoon, November 13, casts doubt on what everyone knows about the state. Where is all the snow? It’s too soon to
Lincoln, Nebraska — …When I first read about FPR’s View from Your Porch series, I immediately decided to submit something. Then I thought about the view from my front porch. Like much of Nebraska, its beauty doesn’t announce itself. You
Phoenix, Arizona — …Looking east from our front porch in Willo, you see the results of one of Phoenix’s bigger Big Mistakes: the distant office towers on Central Avenue.
Those towers mark the Phoenix “uptown” area (not that anyone calls
“I don’t care if you bring the president of Peru and a thousand police—we’ll be carried out dead before you dig here!” Thus was the position of the twenty or so irate villagers gathered around us. The intense Andean sun…
