Hospitality

Thoughts from and to the community-minded . . . Wendell Berry has spoken clearly and for such a long time about the ways industrialization and the consumer economy have caused the breakup of families, farms and communities. This quote gets...

...open the door, go out and have conversations. Recently I was having a conversation with a pastor from a local church, talking about our annual fundraiser for our community park. He had asked if there was anything he could do to help....

I have a friend who makes lists of barriers to neighborliness.  His list includes the new ranch houses that don’t have a front porch where neighbors can sit and talk and greet each other. Air conditioning is also on his...

In North Port, FL, a relatively new community, Don Vande Krol felt he needed to know his neighbors. He distributed an invitation to them to join him and his wife for a "getting to know one another" evening.  From...

I was born in 1931 during the Great Depression. We lived in a working class neighborhood in Cincinnati with many country people who had migrated from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee. Lots of men in my neighborhood were...

The Pew Research Center reports annually on social trends in America and recently reported that the number of Americans who believe that their children will be better off than they are is in decline. This was considered news and...

Meet a person who is uncovering a local world of hidden treasures. Her name is Allison ... She invites us to see the treasures of her neighborhood through the eyes of children. They are not interested in what is...

Advocacy Organizing and Neighborhood Organizing While President Obama was campaigning, he made the words “community organizing” famous as he told about his youthful days as an “organizer” in Chicago.  That experience in a low-income neighborhood taught him more, he said,...

Drafted by neighbors on a small stretch of Mead Street in Southeast Seattle. It's still a work in progress as you can see. People all over the country lament the loss of community, neighborhoods, local culture.  "Nobody knows their neighbors...

Our intent here is to reconstruct what is considered news. The traditional news is about extraordinary people working in systems and institutions doing special things. We especially call it news when those extraordinary things are illegal or titillating. What the...