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Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman is the author of eleven books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette (Henry Holt), Ain’t My America (Metropolitan), Look Homeward, America (ISI), and Poetry Night at the Ballpark (FPR Books). His next book, Upstaters, is due from SUNY Press in 2026. He is a columnist for The American Conservative and The Spectator World. Bill wrote the screenplay for the 2013 feature film Copperhead. He is a founding editor of Front Porch Republic and has served as a legislative assistant to Senator Pat Moynihan, editor for various magazines and publishers, and vice president of the Batavia Muckdogs, a professional baseball team that was euthanized by Major League Baseball. He lives with his wife Lucine in his native Genesee County, New York.

Articles by Bill Kauffman

Warren Oates, Constitutional Anarchist

From The American Conservative---you really should subscribe, you know---my piece (www.amconmag.com/article/2009/sep/01/00050/) on the great Kentucky actor Warren Oates.
August 17, 2009

Lookin’ Out My Back Door; Or Sounds From Boo Radley’s Porch

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---Caleb has proposed this beautiful rendition of “Our Town” by Iris DeMent as the Front Porch theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI (Anyone not moved by it is either dead or,…
July 30, 2009

Jesse Walker, No Depressor

Jesse Walker, managing editor of Reason, is one of my favorite writers on matters cultural and political. His fugitive essays for No Depression, the magazine of American music, have just been collected…
July 29, 2009

New York Green Fest

If you're lucky enough to be near beautiful Allegany County, New York, over the weekend of August 7-9, drop by Alfred University to check out the New York Green Fest…
July 23, 2009

Carolina is for Pig-Lovers

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--Here comes the Fourth, and instead of asking why Americans revolted against remote authority in 1776 yet countenance it today, let us now praise picnics and beer and…
June 30, 2009

The Old School

My review of Jonathan Zimmerman's Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory appears in today's Wall Street Journal ("In One Room, Many Advantages"). The book is well worth…
June 26, 2009

Michael Jackson’s Front Porch Moment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmXP9Y1HdWE  Okay, so he never did go back to Indiana, back to where he started from. And it's too bad the Jackson 5 didn't cover Meredith Willson's Gary, Indiana.
June 24, 2009

Play Ball! Tell Stories!

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---The Muckdogs open tonight against the cursed Auburn Doubledays. It's seventy years now that we've had a professional baseball team in Batavia, and no one knows more about…
June 18, 2009

Ray Bradbury of Illinois

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---"Here comes the summer!" as the Undertones rejoiced. The Muckdogs' home opener is next Friday, and two days later the sun makes the season official. In preparation, today I checked…
June 11, 2009

With Malice Toward None (Well, Maybe Toward the Thought Police)

Check out this exceptionally fine speech http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-maxwell/on-the-occasion-of-presid_b_212674.html by film director Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg, Gods and Generals), who refused to allow William ("inherited utility monopoly wealth means never having to say…
June 5, 2009

Sing that Dead Man’s Songs: The Music of Chris Gaffney

Thanks to Brian Frizzell, Brooklyn patriot and Americana music maven, this link  http://www.reverbnation.com/manofsomebodysdreamsatributetochrisgaffney to a new album paying tribute to the late Chris Gaffney, a dolefully beautiful voice of the American…
May 28, 2009

Stormin’ Norman, Decentralist

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--One of the precious and few political campaigns in recent years to embody Front Porch (or, rather, front stoop) principles was Norman Mailer's 1969 candidacy for mayor of…
May 27, 2009