"The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness."
― David Foster Wallace
My grandfather's technique was simple yet deceptively effective. After dinner, while my grandmother cleaned and put away the dishes, he would step outside on the ample front porch that surrounded the front of their St. Petersburg home to have a smoke with his pipe. Taking one of the four yellow outdoor chairs that adorned his porch, he would drag it to just the right position, creating loud screeches as it passed against the painted cement floor. Within minutes, as if on cue, the next-door neighbor would pop out on to her porch and soon the air was filled with stories, comments and laughter. Yes, my grandfather was a PPS, or Professional Porch Sitter.
Porches were a necessity before air conditioning, especially in the South, whether it was the screened sleeping porch or ample veranda where iced tea or lemonade and gossip were plentiful. Author Anthony Robinson calls the metaphor of the front porch "an intermediate space between street and interior, a place for casual interaction that might grow." In the mid-1800s, a well-known landscape gardener named Andrew Jackson Downing began writing about his vision of the American home and how it could stand apart from English architecture. The porch, he wrote, was key. By diminishing the distinctions between indoors and out, porches invited families and friends to gather, exchange advice, tell stories and beckon passersby or neighbors to share in the conversation.
Today, many homes don't have that transitional space, and air conditioning, television, computers and other enticements draw people inside the home. The front porch, says author Ed Poole, has been "replaced by the back patio or deck, thus ensuring a more private existence where friends (and neighbors) cannot see us." But to build community, we need to meet people where they are, which gives us a capacity to identify with their pleasures and their sufferings.
So how can we reclaim the "front porch" in our community? The answers vary but, interestingly, one possible solution might be found in institutions such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. According to arts administrator Patrick Overton, community arts is "the new front porch of America," a place where family, friends and neighbors gather to share their stories. He suggests a significant shift -- from "art as product, citizen as patron" to "art as process, citizen as participant." He believes that hope, in the post-information age, lies in our yearning to be "makers," a search for simplicity, and a striving to reconnect with our stories and each other. He asserts that many of us are faced with an "internal values collision" -- we are unclear about the values that guide our society -- and critics have taken advantage of our lack of clarity by assigning values to us. To reclaim our voice in the community interaction with our fellow citizens is key, and venues such as Crystal Bridges can be a good place to start.
NAN Our Town on 08/19/2015