Eclectic Reflections

We live in a residential “PUD” (”Planned Unit Development“) where the houses are, as I term them, “detached townhouses”, on relatively small lots. I.e. backyards are tiny. Since we have little traffic, kids go out and play in the front yards and the streets (think: basketball, kickball, bikes, etc). And thus we actually get to meet many of our neighbors and informally socialize outdoors. I’ve thought several times over the years that the one main thing I’d change on the home design in the development would be to incorporate front porches. I’ve felt that such a simple change would further foster our neighborhood’s community-building. And since our weather is mild pretty much year-round, they’d see a lot of use.

Lo and behold, I heard a recent NPR piece on front porches…

NPR : Porches Knit Together New Urbanist Communities

It seems that there is a “New Urbanism” “urban design movement” that incorporates and promotes front porches (and several other design characteristics). Cool stuff.

And there’s a few other apropos NPR pieces in the thread…

A Spell on ‘The American Porch’
Sitting on the Porch: Not a Place, But a State of Mind

If so, check out this recounting of a particularly nasty flight in 1989:

Hunting Hugo

…i.e. “Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution”

Yeah, yeah, this is so “old slashdot”, but I recently re-viewed the videos on that site and am reminded at how it helps me visualize how small a piece of the universe our galaxy is, and how big and uniform said universe is. The video downloads are “large” for those of us with < 100mb/s connectivity, but worth it IMHO.

Various family friends have (or had) cabins sequestered out in various rural portions of the state. Has always seemed like a good idea to me. Maybe someday. Running across this company..

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

..helps sustain this idea (for me) in that it helps enable an option of finding an empty site and relatively easily adding a relatively low-cost structure. Or simply using it (the “cabin”) as an oddly quaint travel trailer.