Rising Sun Mills, located down the street from Chris Freed’s building, was rehabed and converted into condos. At the time it was purchased for renovation, there were still several small businesses and artists with spaces in the complex.
During the housing boom earlier this decade, developers began scooping up abandoned or underused factory buildings to convert them into condos. But as I examined in this piece for the public radio show Marketplace, this trend may have been bad for business.
This piece originally aired on Marketplace on February 16, 2005.
You can listen to the piece on Marketplace’s website here.
This piece originally aired on the public radio program Marketplace on April 6, 2005. You can hear the piece on their websitehere.
Whatever the face value of the money in your wallet, chances are good it’ll be worth less – eventually. That’s what inflation tends to do to cold hard cash. One could invest in art, for example, but you’d have to part with your cash. Or would you? Robin Amer reports.
Visit the Noney website here, and Providence artist Alec Thibodeau’s other work here.
Hector (aka Lohan Addict) is an 18-year-old high school student who is crazy about making movies for an internet audience. He also happens to be openly gay. He uses his camera to bring attention to the difficulties and discrimination out gay teens like him face in school and the rest of the world. This video piece explores why he’s compelled to make media that tackles important social issues, despite the risks he faces from being so outspoken.
The Rau Fastner building before and after redevelopment. Photos by Teresa Mastrorilli courtesy of AIR.
WBEZ is embarking on a new series that I’m very excited about. They’re teaming up with other Midwest stations and the CPB to create a reporting initiative focused on the region’s economy. Specifically on its transformation from an economy that is “fundamentally industrial based” to one that can only be described as “post-manufacturing.”
Reading about this new project reminded me of similar reporting I have done on the post-industrial economy of southern New England. When I was in college I spent two and half years chronicling Providence’s fraught transformation from industrial powerhouse to post-industrial dead zone to supposed arts Mecca. The initial result was the documentary Reconstructing Providence.
In addition, between 2004 and 2005 I wrote several features pieces for the Providence Phoenix (their equivalent of the Chicago Reader) exploring “the new fight for Providence’s mills.”
Here are the pieces I wrote during that time, all edited by the excellent Ian Donnis.
City Watch Conley touts a face lift for Allens Avenue waterfront
(Editor’s Note: Six years later I’m cringing at all the confusing multi-clause sentences in these pieces. Ayee! How did Ian let me get away with that??)
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the fall of 2001.
Anna Goldman explains why, as a child, the way to her heart was through her stomach.
Jess Jones visits Geno’s Steaks in her beloved home town of Philadelphia to figure out what makes a genuine Philly cheese steak beat out all the imitators.
In a piece that Ira Glass once described as part musical theater, Gabriel Wildau muses on “the Ratty,” Brown’s dining hall, and their industrial sized vats of pasta sauce.
Robin Amer recreates a passage from Truman Capote’s short story, A Christmas Memory. Read by Seth Pipkin.
Hosted by Molly Messick with Executive Producer Robin Amer. Contributors include Rebecca Birnbaum, Louisa Lombard, Megan Hall, Selena Juneau-Vogel, Jess Jones, and Paul McCarthy. Oversight by Beth Taylor.
Editor’s Note: I have no idea where I came across that Capote story, or why I produced it for this show. Out of all the stories about food, why this? Especially when I could have chosen something more contemporary and er, meaty, like David Foster Wallace’s famous essay on the strange brutality of eating lobster. This Capote story seems so antiquated and arcane to me now, with its racist depictions of the village “Indian” they go to for rum, and its quaint phrasing like, “Anyone t’ home?”
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the spring of 2002.
In this episode we explore three people past and present for whom flying retains some of the wonder and sublime associated with the original generation of pioneers, eccentrics and visionaries included among the first fliers.
Robin Amer and Megan Hall profile a man so desperate to fly he built his own airplane from scratch.
Anna Goldman explores a lesser known work by France’s beloved aviator/mystic/author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Rachel Katzman on the lone kite flier.
Hosted by Gabriel Wildau with Executive Producer Robin Amer. Contributors include Rachel Terp, Owen David, Jenny Asarnow and Adam Florin. Oversight by Beth Taylor.
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the fall of 2001.
In this episode about our national pastime:
Louisa Lombard interviews her cousin, a top prospect for the Atlanta Braves, about the chutes and ladders of the minor leagues.
Rachel Katzman investigates the Slaterettes – the country’s only all-girl little league.
Samm Tyroller-Cooper asks why members of the Providence Grays (pictured above) want to play baseball like it’s 1879.
Hosted by Molly Messick with Executive Producer Robin Amer. Contributors include Megan Hall, Selena Juneau-Vogel, Doug Fretty, Rachel Terp, Matt Puntigam, and Gabriel Wildau. Oversight by Beth Taylor.
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the spring of 2001.
In this episode of Inside Out exploring the very human fascination with death, Anna Goldman and I reported on a laboratory promising to revive you after death, by freezing you in life. (We were so on the cryonics story before the whole Ted Williams thing.)
You’ll also hear stories about ritual Jewish burial preparation, a gorgeous portrait of a funeral home director produced before HBO’s Six Feet Under explored the same way of life, and an excerpt from Tim O’Brien’s classic Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried.
Hosted by Nathan James. Executive Produced by Paul McCarthy with original music by Chris Bell. Contributors include Cassie Tharinger, Elana Berkowitz, Leanne Hegg, Danielle Posen, Molly Messick, Anna Goldman, Robin Amer, and Chris Muller. Oversight by Beth Taylor.
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the fall of 2000.
As Providence prepared for its second Johnny Rockets, Inside Out contemplated what makes us revisit the past with such a Vaseline coated lens. Featuring an interview with nine time World Yo-yo champ Larry Sayco; hiring a ghost writer to write your autobiography; and finally, war stories. How veterans use them to live in the past, or turn away from them completely.
Hosted by Nathan James. Executive Produced by Paul McCarthy. Contributors include Elana Berkowitz, Dana Turken, Melissa Brough, Bart Green, and Cassie Theringer. Oversight by Beth Taylor
This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the spring of 2001.
The Met is a charter school in Providence that made its mark with an unconventional approach to education: no teachers, no classes, no grades. Only internships, mentors and “real world” experiences outside the classroom.
In 2000, Inside Out devoted an entire episode to exploring whether a school like the Met could serve its students better than a traditional public school.
Host: Molly Messick
Executive Producer: Paul McCarthy
Producers: Samm Tyroller-Cooper, Melissa Brough, Robin Amer, Caroline McCaughey, Megan Hall, Rachel Terp, Marshall Clement, Elana Berkowitz, Anna Goldman, and Carlos David.
Oversight: Beth Taylor
Robin Amer 
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