I reviewed Dee Williams’ The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir for Cities Are Now, the Winter 2015 issue of YES! Magazine. At 41, Dee Williams was a “normal, middle-class, middle-of-the-road woman with a mortgage and a job and friends.” She worked as a state hazardous waste inspector and owned a 1927 Portland, Ore., fixer-upper that…
Here’s my article about Portland’s food cart revolution, from the current issue of YES! Magazine. We’ve had a week straight of ice-cold fog, and these photos, taken last July, are making me delirious with summer longing (not to mention hungry). Portland’s Food Truck Heaven: How a New Kind of Fast Food Brings Jobs, Flavor, and…
Here’s my review of Good Morning, Beautiful Business by Judy Wicks, which appears in the current issue of YES! Magazine. The Economy of Smallness: Making Economic Exchange a Loving Human Interaction Philadelphia restauranteur and local economies movement leader Judy Wicks on making good and doing good. by Abby Quillen A few years after Judy Wicks…
Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. – Henry James Several months ago, I realized that money makes a lot of people miserable. In our household, paying bills was a source of anxiety, and many of my friends were feeling a similar financial squeeze. An older friend came into a…
The past two weekends, my neighbors held a yard sale. Apparently my boys could smell commerce happening nearby, because within moments of awakening, they were at the window. “The neighbor has a tent on his lawn,” Ezra announced. Both boys spent most of the weekends outside asking questions and fondling nicknacks or glued to the…
It’s March, and as I write this, it couldn’t be lovelier here. (March does have a way of surprising us, doesn’t it?) In these parts it came in with sunshine, daffodils, and birdsong. Last week I received my copy of the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine, which includes my review of Janisse Ray’s The…