Bitterroot Mountain Publishers releases Twentieth Anniversary Reissue of Rebuilding the Front Porch of America
by Patrick Overton, Ph.D.
From 2017 Author’s Addition to the Preface
Rebuilding The Front Porch of America: Essays on the art of community making by Patrick Overton, Ph.D.
Twenty years ago Rebuilding the Front Porch of America: Essays on the Art of Community Making was first published. Since then, 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.
Read what his colleagues and peers have to say about this book.
By Patrick Overton, Ph.D., educator, poet, playwright, author, speaker, workshop leader, nationally recognized rural & small community cultural developer, and author of the “Faith Poem.”
Purchase Now!
Signed Twentieth Anniversary Reissue