Community stories

Dispatches from the porch

Short dispatches from the neighborhood, written by the people who were there. Have one? The newsletter committee would love it.

Neighbors talking over coffee and pie at a kitchen table

The pie ledger

When my husband was in the hospital in March, a pie appeared on our porch every Sunday for nine weeks. I never found out the rotation. There is apparently a ledger. Nobody will show me the ledger.

Marguerite Okafor-Lindqvist, Birch Lane

A small crowd gathered on a lawn watching a porch performance

Sixty-three acts, one extension cord

Porchfest runs on borrowed amps and the longest extension cord on Alder Street. This year the cord got its own thank-you card. It has earned it.

Dev Ramachandran, Porchfest committee

Neighbors celebrating together outdoors at dusk

The crosswalk took four years

Four years of meetings, two traffic studies, one petition with 400 names. The paint went down on a Tuesday. Forty people came to watch paint dry, and it was wonderful.

June Castellanos, Streets & Safety chair

From the photo archive

3,400 photos and counting — the digitization crew adds another box of slides every winter.

Long dinner tables set up outdoors for a community potluck — Summer potluck on the green

Hands repairing a small household appliance at a workbench — Repair café, Saturday morning

Paper lanterns glowing at a nighttime neighborhood gathering — Lantern walk, October

Trays of seedlings and seed packets on a wooden table — Seed swap at the Hall

Have a story?

The Reader publishes neighbor dispatches every month. Two hundred words about one true thing beats a thousand about everything.

Pitch the newsletter committee