A Front Porch for All People


Book Description

This book offers inspirational guidance for any reader who yearns to live in a sustainable mixed-income community—and cares enough to do something about it. Rev. John Edgar, the founder of the United Methodist Church for All People and Community Development for All People, tells the story of laboring alongside low-income residents across two decades to transform the South Side of Columbus into an opportunity-rich community where everyone may thrive. Starting with an outreach ministry called the Free Store, people came together and launched the Church for All People, the most diverse United Methodist congregation in the nation in terms of the intersection of race and social class. Each year, direct service ministries provide over 35,000 individuals opportunities to touch grace and experience positive transformation in their lives. Having developed over 100 million dollars of affordable housing, Church and Community Development for All People is forging a radically inclusive neighborhood, where everyone can dwell in unity on a front porch for all people. The chapters in this book set forth key principles which shaped this journey, beginning with the affirmation that scarcity is a myth and all of us dwell inside a divine economy of abundance.




No More Front Porches


Book Description

Front Porches. Once they were a vital part of American society. Whether you had a large verandah that circled the house, or little more than a front stoop, you adorned it with comfortable chairs and spent hours there, talking with friends and relatives, watching what was going on in the neighborhood, looking out for others, and keeping in touch with your world. Front porches symbolized relationships and being involved with life beyond your front door.Today, life has changed. Few new homes offer a place to nestle as twilight sets in and few people have the leisure time for this lifestyle, or even for the relationships that it represents. We’ve moved ahead and left front porch attitudes behind as quaint relics.But in recent years, as the nation has reeled from tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, and the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans are again scurrying to regain that closeness, care, and compassion we found in communities that sat on front porches. Perhaps, we’re finding, we need the stability of those front porch attitudes in our lives. In No More Front Porches, sociologist Linda Wilcox looks at how and why communities, churches, and lifestyles have changed. She evaluates the nostalgia for the ’good old days,’ and explores the offerings of today. Though we can never regain the idealized past, she gives us help and hope for building emotional and community ’front porches’ in the frantic society we now zoom through. She helps us learn how to avoid isolation and refocus our methods for building those close, front porch relationships.Let No More Front Porches help you discover a little bit more about this society in which we live. And in the process, you’re bound to learn how to better enjoy people in your home, neighborhood, church and world.




Alabama, One Big Front Porch


Book Description

"Many of Alabama's finest stories used to begin with a reference to 'the night the stars fell,' and even now there is an inclination among some residents to divide local history into two segments: before the stars fell and after the stars fell. That would make November 13, 1833, the dividing line. "Thousands of Alabamians, thinking the end of the world was at hand when they saw the heavenly spectacle, fell to their knees to plead for mercy and forgiveness. Others promised eternal renunciation of sin (card playing, dancing, whiskey drinking, cursing, and associated vices) if they were spared whatever catastrophes were in the offing. Still others jumped upon horses and tried to outrace the fearful menace they believed was pursuing them.




Little Cliff and the Porch People


Book Description

Little Cliff's grandmother sends him off to get a pound of butter, but all the front porches he must pass are full today--of neighbors who want to help him with his errand. Full color. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.




The American Porch


Book Description

A fascinating look at an American institution-a place where public life meets private.




The Great Night


Book Description

Acclaimed as a "gifted, courageous writer"(The New York Times), Chris Adrian brings all his extraordinary talents to bear in The Great Night—a brilliant and mesmerizing retelling of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On Midsummer Eve 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, become trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park, the secret home of Titania, Oberon, and their court. On this night, something awful is happening in the faerie kingdom: in a fit of sadness over the end of her marriage, which broke up in the wake of the death of her adopted son, Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos that ensues will threaten the lives of immortals and mortals alike. Selected by The New Yorker as one the best young writers in America, Adrian has created a singularly playful, heartbreaking, and humorous novel—a story that charts the borders between reality and dreams, love and magic, and mortality and immortality.




Front Porch Politics


Book Description

"An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal. It is widely believed that Americans of the 1970s and '80s were exhausted by the upheavals of the '60s and eager to retreat to the private realm. When they did take action, it was mainly to express their disillusionment with government by supporting the right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows, neither of these assumptions is correct. On the community level, the 1970s and '80s saw vibrant new forms of political activity emerge. Tenants challenged landlords, farmers practiced civil disobedience to protect their land, and laid-off workers asserted a right to own their idled factories. Activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. In all these arenas, Americans were propelled by their own experiences into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of "left" and "right," they turned to political action when they perceived an immediate threat to the safety and security of their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a people's history told through on-the-ground experiences. Recalling crusades famous and forgotten, Foley shows how Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Their distinctive style of visceral, local, and highly personal activism remains a vital resource for the renewal of American democracy"--




The Front Porch Prophet


Book Description

What do a trigger-happy bootlegger with pancreatic cancer, an alcoholic helicopter pilot who is afraid to fly, and a dead guy with his feet in a camp stove have in common? What are the similarities between a fire department that cannot put out fires, a policeman who has a historic cabin fall on him from out of the sky, and an entire family dedicated to a variety of deceased authors? Where can you find a war hero named Termite with a long knife stuck in his liver, a cook named Hoghead who makes the world's worst coffee, and a supervisor named Pillsbury who nearly gets hung by his employees? Sequoyah, Georgia is the answer to all three questions. They arise from the relationship between A. J. Longstreet and his best friend since childhood, Eugene Purdue. After a parting of ways due to Eugene's inability to accept the constraints of adulthood, he reenters A.J.'s life with terminal cancer and the dilemma of executing a mercy killing when the time arrives. Take this gripping journey to Sequoyah, Georgia and witness A.J.'s battle with mortality, euthanasia, and his adventure back to the past and people who made him what he is - and helps him make the decision that will alter his life forever.




Front Porch Tales


Book Description

“Part Mark Twain, part Garrison Keillor, Philip Gulley is a breath of fresh air in an over-sophisticated and often jaded world.” —Gloria Gaither, singer and songwriter Master storyteller Philip Gulley shares tender and hilarious real-life moments that capture the important truths of everyday life. When Philip Gulley began writing newsletter essays for the twelve members of his Quaker meeting in Indiana, he had no idea one of them would find its way to radio commentator Paul Harvey Jr. and be read on the air to twenty-four million people. Fourteen books later, with more than a million books in print, Gulley still entertains as well as inspires from his small-town front porch. “Perhaps more things were resolved on America’s front porches than in any other place, and yet so few are being used today. With this delightful collection of stories, told in a warm and easy style, Philip Gulley invites us to sit again on the front porch—a place of hearth, home, and folks we’ve known.” —Gary Smalley, bestselling author and family relationship expert “The tales Philip Gulley unveils are tender and humorous . . . filled with sudden, unexpected, lump-in-the-throat poignancy.” —Paul Harvey, Jr., American radio broadcaster




Rebuilding the Front Porch of America


Book Description

In the twenty years since this book was first published, our nation's communities - from urban centers to rural and small communities dotting our landscape - have had their foundations rocked to the core. Yet, despite the economic, social, and cultural challenges they have experienced, communities all across our country are showing their resilience by reinventing themselves. This is especially true for many of rural and small communities whose persistence and self-determination show the same creativity, the same grit, the same shared values that brought them into existence. One of the ways these communities are doing this is by engaging in community making through the arts. The arts invite us to tell our story and listen to the story of others. As we work together and celebrate our community creativity, the arts bring people of all ages, genders, races, religions, and economic backgrounds together for the common good of reconnecting with each other and celebrating who we are as individuals and communities. Community arts provide a new gathering place, a cultural and spiritual touchstone that is a source of community revitalization and neighborhood revival. I believe our rural and small communities are creating the map our nation is searching for that will help us navigate the challenges awaiting all of us as we work together rebuilding the front porch of America.