"It's like therapy to me ... I like to see the vacant lots beautiful," says Howard King, Jr., in a Wall Street Journal piece by Alex P. Kellogg (7/6/10). Howard is one of a number of Detroit residents who is taking care of basic services that the city can no longer afford. He hires neighborhood teens to mow vacant lots, which not only makes the neighborhood look better, but also keeps the kids busy and out of trouble. Howard is not the only one.

Eddie Edwards chops weeds and cleans alleyways near his home. He also "routinely takes care of the street sweeping, using just a broom and dust pan ... In the winter, he also pays out of pocket for snow removal for most of his tiny block. Another neighbor has agreed to cover the rest of the block. That keeps residents from being snowed in at home, neighbors say." Eddie says his reward is that his neighbors "thank me all the time." Detroit's mayor, Dave Bing, is thanking him, too.

The city has "a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars," and the last thing he wants is to cut grass cutting and street cleaning "which tend to shape people's perceptions of neighborhood quality and safety." Right now, Detroit's ability to avoid closing some parks depends on volunteers pitching in "to shoulder much of the maintenance burden." And according to one city services official, that's not a problem. When requests come in, he says, "they're not saying send in 20 lawnmowers ... They're just simply saying we need some trash bags."

Building as many as 24 new Walmart stores figures heavily into Chicago's economic policy, reports William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal (7/6/10). Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, is, in fact, "a strong Walmart supporter " who believes "the retailer will help bring relief to a city suffering from declining tax revenues, high commercial vacancy rates, and unemployment nearly a point above the national average."

The twist is that the first of these new Walmart stores -- which is only the second in the city of Chicago -- will be built in the Pullman Park area (link). It's a twist because, more than 100 years ago, "the famous Pullman Strike began in this neighborhood in reaction to wage cuts after the depression hit in 1893." An aversion to a "non-union, big box retailer" like Walmart is just about part of the community's DNA.

But now, while still in the grips of the Great Recession, its residents are mostly agitating for jobs. The tide apparently turned in Walmart's favor as the locals learned that even Walmart's part-timers "have access to health coverage," and that some "70 percent of Walmart's store managers started as hourly associates." For Walmart, the bottom line was that Chicago's residents were already spending "nearly half a billion dollars at suburban Walmarts." And for Chicago, it's the prospect of "as many as 10,000 new jobs" in the years ahead.

If you've ever complained about the high price of movie-theater popcorn, Richard B. McKenzie thinks you should stop whining already (The Wall Street Journal 5/28/10). Richard is author of a book called "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, And Other Pricing Puzzles." And while it's true that a tub of movie-theater popcorn costs more than ten times as much as home-made popcorn, Richard suggests that a little perspective is in order.

For starters, he notes that the real cost of popcorn is "in the time spent popping and cleaning up, and then smuggling the result into a movie theater. (The fact that BYOP is rather easy to get away with, but very few people even try, is an indication that movie popcorn is not as overpriced as the grousers say)." If you think your time is worth $20 an hour, and it takes a half hour to pop it yourself, that would bring the cost to $10.55 -- with the 55 cents for kernels and oil.

That's more than the $8 a large tub costs in Southern California movie theaters -- and you'll also be sacrificing the experience of movie-theater popcorn. Now, you could buy pre-popped popcorn at Costco for less, but Richard thinks this is nowhere near as satisfying an experience. Then there's the reality that when you buy popcorn at the theater, you're really paying for its "sound systems, restrooms and lobby glitz." The bottom, line, says Richard, is that theaters could lower the price of their popcorn, but they'd have to compensate with higher ticket prices.

A consumer boycott of sugar helped put an end to slavery in England and "inspired abolitionists in the U.S.," writes Fergus M. Bordewich in a Wall Street Journal review of Sugar: A Bittersweet History, by Elizabeth Abbott (3/31/10). Of course, it was consumer demand for sugar that created "the trans-Atlantic slave trade, wrecked the lives of millions of Africans, and brought fabulous wealth to white planters and absentee investors." Slaves, as Elizabeth Abbott puts it, were "sugar machines."

The sugar trade "was an economic pillar of the British Empire, part of the triangular trade by which British ships carried trade goods to Africa; slaves from Africa to the West Indies; and sugar, rum and molasses from the Indies back to England." The slaves, according to Elizabeth, survived only an average of seven years in the field, between the brutal Caribbean sun and the regular whippings for those who didn't work fast enough. Sugar, writes Elizabeth, was "literally polluted with slaves' blood."

Abolitionists figured that a sugar boycott might change things, calculating "that if every family using five pounds of sugar and rum per week refused to consume slave-grown sugar, every 21 months they would save one African from enslavement and death. Cynics scoffed. But by the 1790s, 300,000 English were abstaining from West Indian sugar, while grocers and importers sought new sources of 'free sugar' in East Asia. Parliament voted to abolish slavery in Britain in 1807 and then in the West Indies in the 1830s," which further emboldened abolitionists in the United States.

"A fruit that tastes like dirt is suddenly a sweet money maker in Brazil," reports Seth Kugel in the New York Times (2/24/10). We're talking about acai, long a dietary staple of poor, rural Brazilians, and now "riding the wave of the antioxidant craze and rain-forest chic." Demand for acai, which grow on palm trees and look like great, big blueberries, is way up in recent years. Traditionally, it is served as porridge, but now it is finding its way into everything from Snapple beverages to pizza crusts and even beauty products. Surfers use it in smoothies, for an energy boost.

Leticia Galvao, a Brazilian, finds this funny, since acai tends to make her sleepy. "Generally, when you have acai here, you take a nap," she says. Maybe it depends how much sugar you add -- locals, especially older, more rural folks, like their acai straight up, which is said to "taste like dirt. Making matters worse, the manioc flour that's often mixed in to thicken it has the consistency of sand." But acai's growing popularity has been a real boon, economically, for Brazil's acai growers. "Two or three years ago, we had a lot of trouble selling the product," says Orisvaldo Ferreira de Souza, an acai farmer.

That's all changed: "Just yesterday, six buyers came by," he says. "We sold 10 baskets each to two of them." Orisvaldo can now afford to "buy meat and chicken in town," put a motor on his boat and acquire a television set. Such success has had a negative effect, however, on urban poor families, for whom acai is "a valuable source of nutrition." Prices have gone up, although for now, acai consumption among the poor hasn't slowed; they simply thin it down a bit. "Fifteen years ago, it was like beans for us," says Joao Manuel. "Now it's more expensive than beans. We eat it just the same; it's only now that we feel it in our wallets."

Now that the recession is nearly two years old, it could end simply because we decide it's time for it to end, suggests Robert J. Shiller in the New York Times (11/22/09). After all, most recessions last about two years, and the whole psychology of a recession is that it's part of a normal cycle that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Unless, of course, it isn't. The term "recession" emerged in 1938, as a less fearsome alternative to "the Great Depression, which received its name ... from a 1934 book with that title (link) by Lionel Robbins."

President Roosevelt wasn't exactly into the semantics: "It makes no difference to me whether you call it a recession or a depression," he said at the time. The Chicago Daily Tribune, meanwhile, dismissed recession "as a new word for depression, coined by those who don't like to admit that we're still in one." But there is a difference between the words, if only in our heads. A "recession" sounds like it "can be shrugged off as something from which you recover, as though your doctor had just diagnosed an illness as a common cold."

A "depression," however suggests a far more serious condition, and one that probably won't end anytime soon, if ever. "In important ways," writes Robert, "we are still using that 1930s pattern of thinking. We are instinctively fearful of reckless talk about depressions, and we try to support one another's confidence ... For now, our common efforts at building confidence appear to be working somewhat." And perhaps the only thing we have to fear is not fear itself, but rather "the nagging doubt afloat that the current event is really just another example in that long sequence of recessions."

Corner grocery stores, long viewed as a cause of obesity, are increasingly seen as a solution, reports Kevin Granville in the New York Times (11/2/09). In Newark, for instance, city officials are treating Francisco Baez to two new refrigerators, to be installed at the front of his small grocery store and filled with fruits and vegetables. Because of his can-do attitude, Francisco was chosen from among 80 local grocers as the first to try replacing junk food with fresh food. He simply likes "the idea of offering customers an expanded selection of produce."

He also likes the new, checkout scanner system he was given to sweeten the deal. The Newark program is similar to those in other cities, in which "public health organizations and economic development agencies" offer "new equipment, marketing expertise or neighborhood promotions to encourage them to stock more fresh produce, whole wheat bread and other healthy offerings." In New York City, for example, the "Healthy Bodegas" program so far "has reached out to 1,000 stores in a variety of ways, including helping owners secure zoning permits to allow fruit and vegetable displays on the sidewalk."

Such programs have gained currency because cities have largely failed to attract major supermarkets that might introduce healthier grocery options into poor, city neighborhoods. Newark, a city of 279,000, has just three supermarkets, for example. It's a lot riskier selling fresh produce than packaged chips, obviously, and not necessarily more profitable. But Francisco Baez isn't worried about that: "Will I make any more money? I have no idea," he shrugs. Anne Gross, a participating grocer in Cleveland is similarly altruistic: "Even if it changes a couple of people's habits it would be a huge benefit," she says.

Loretta Gendville is building her own retail empire in her own Brooklyn neighborhood, reports Diane Cardwell in the New York Times (9/21/09). Within the space of just a few blocks of her home, Loretta has opened a yoga studio, day spa, children's clothing shop and a toy store -- all under the brand name, "Area." Loretta is not the only one: "Little empires of restaurants, bars, clothing stores and other establishments started by homegrown entrepreneurs have multiplied in this patch of Brownstone Brooklyn, sending up sprouts every few blocks."

Raymond Keating, chief economist of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, says the idea of "opening related but slightly different outposts in close proximity has allowed owners to diversify and 'tap into these customers in a variety of different ways' without necessarily cannibalizing their existing trade. In addition, he said, diversification can help business owners survive in tough times, as gains in one shop offset declines in another." Loretta isn't sure the idea would work as well elsewhere, though.

"In Brooklyn, people stay in their neighborhood -- you have your one or two parks you go to and your coffee shops," she says. Her neighborhood also is home to affluent, educated types, while offering lots of small storefront space at affordable rates. However, Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, would like to "spur similar kinds of economic development in his borough," because, he says, this type of local enterprise is better for the local economy than having national retailers. "The cluster retail model really works," he says.

"Vietnam is one of the most exciting beer markets in the world today," says Walter Bocker in a Wall Street Journal piece by James Hookway (9/15/09). Walter is with Gannon Group, which is "Anheuser-Busch's Vietnam-based partner." He is joined in his enthusiasm by Carlsberg, Heineken and SAB Miller, each of which has a joint-venture going in Vietnam. Collectively, these foreign brewers have put Vietnam's state-run beer enterprises on the run, but not for long, perhaps. Never underestimate the potential of socialized beer.

Local, "state-invested Vietnamese brewers," such as "Hanoi-based Habeco and Ho Chi Minh City's Sabeco are readying themselves for a fight." Their strategy centers on providing something the imports do not -- specifically a local specialty called "bia hoi, which translates as 'fresh beer,' a relatively low-alcohol, bitter brew with a shelf life of a few days that makes up 30 percent of the beer market" in Vietnam. Bia hoi costs "about a third the price of an international brand," and first became popular during the U.S. Vietnam war, when there wasn't enough glass to make bottles.

To this day, Bia hoi is "sold only in kegs, delivered early each morning to hundreds of side-street restaurants in Hanoi. By lunchtime, people are tossing back chipped-glass-tumblers of the beer while munching dried squid, fried tofu and other snacks." Habeco, founded in 1890 by French colonials, has seen its sales double between 2004 and 2007. Sabeco's sales have increased to 900 million litres from 500 million between 2006 and 2008. However, foreign brewers see in bia hoi only a quagmire of "low margins and different route-to-market characteristics," and plan to continue to rely on "deep pockets" and traditional marketing techniques.

Woody Tasch thinks "small local farms are the ultimate hedge fund," reports Stephanie Simon in the Wall Street Journal (9/16/09). Woody is a former venture capitalist who believes investors should "put some of their assets into businesses they can see, smell and even taste -- to measure growth not by the flashing numbers on a stock ticker, but by the slow ripening of a tomato." He doesn't pretend that "investing in sustainable local agriculture will yield an enviable return," maybe 3-6 percent over the very long term. He says the real dividend is "diversity."

As Woody sees it, investing in small farms is a way to introduce something different into a marketplace dominated by industrial farms, "where millions of acres are planted with the same variety of corn and millions of pigs are bred to be genetically similar." Small farms meanwhile "preserve heirloom seeds and quirky breeds; strengthen the soil with organic nutrients; create local markets that connect producer directly to consumer." A few investors are buying into the slow-money idea, although cautiously.

"I won't lie -- it's a scary thing," says Martin Lindstrom, a Rockefeller heir, who says that giving his money to a goat farmer feels like "jumping off a cliff." Even some of the farmers aren't so sure about they idea: "Specifically, they fear deep-pocketed local investors will demand a say in management decisions." They're also afraid that "small-sum investors" will swamp them "with requests for tours and samples." Some feel they're better off with a traditional bank loan. But Woody Tasch, who has written a book about his idea, "Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money," seeks a million people to join him. "We must bring money down to earth," he says.