On A Shady Summer Porch
An original oil on canvas, 18" X 24"
Back in the days before TV, and video games, and home air-conditioning, the refuge
from summer heat was the front porch. In cities and towns across the country, on afternoons
when it was too hot to play ball, children would gather on porches to play board games for
hours. And in the evenings after dinner, the adults could take a little time to sit in their porch-
swings and try to catch a bit of a breeze. The front porch was the place where neighbor ladies
could talk about the weather and share a bit of gossip. And the porch was the welcoming
place for arriving guests to be greeted and invited inside.
Now our changing lifestyles and the costs of home construction have eliminated front
porches in newer neighborhoods; when you drive up to one of these houses, you are not
welcomed by a porch, you are greeted by by the blank face of a garage door, or two, or three
of them.
I have been eye witness to these changes, as well as many great, historic events. The
American citizens who are in their upper eighties, as I am, have witnessed a full one third of
the entire history of our country since it's founding in 1776. But that is just a blink of an eye,
in the long span of human evolution. Modern technology has changed our American lifestyles
in a myriad of ways, but people are still the same as we were two hundred and fifty years ago
or even two thousand years ago.
Most notably unchanged, is our human willingness to engage in populist movements which
give support to lying, narcissistic frauds, who only seek public office to benefit themselves,
rather than to work to help the people who elect them. The MAGA mob which put Donald
Trump in the presidential office, would have been the same people who gave support to
Adolph Hitler or Julius Caesar.
So what has Trump been doing as president, besides working to destroy our democracy
and turn our country into a fascist state? Well, he's been putting his name on everything he
sees, including our money and our federal buildings. He's torn down the East room of the
White House to build a room for parties, which is larger than the house itself. He turned the
White House and its grounds into a sports arena, to accommodate the lowest form of bloody,
fighting for profit, and sold it for mass entertainment. ( Does anyone else hear echoes of the
old Roman Colosseum? ) That ugly event, I believe, was billed as a part of Trump's idea of
celebrating our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
So, happy birthday, America.
Eugene P. McNerney
P. S. I found the painting in storage recently. It was a quick oil study of an old philodendron
in a crumbling, old terracotta pot, waiting on our porch, to be transplanted. I don't
remember the fate of the plant.
