The San Juan Weekly 89th Edition

787-743-3346 / 787-743-6537

June 16 - 22, 2011

50¢

The

Historic Visit and the 2012 Election

Barea Torched The Heat With 15 Points

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Clemente’s 3,000th Hit Was Muted Milestone in P31 Ambivalent City Puertorrican Youth Recognized by the American Water Works Association

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N.Y. Parade

Power Demonstration P3 of Puerto Rican Vote

Buena Vista Plantation P24

Narciso Rodríguez Goes to the Prom

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The San Juan Weekly available on internet at www.sanjuanweeklypr.com

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The San Juan Weeekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

36 Hours in Stockholm

H E L LO !

Local News Mainland Petsw Travel Viewpoint Fashion & Beauty Kitchen Enigmatic Health & Science International

3 7 10 12 14 15 16 18 20 21

Wine Local Travel Modern love Advertising Business Games Horoscope Cartoons Sports

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U.S. Braces for Withdrawal Along Iraqi Road

Travel P12

Marilyn Monroe: Death of star spawns an enigma…

Enigmatic P18 Enigmatic 18

Roussillon, Into the Sunlight Wine P23

Mainland P7

A Love Affair With Obama That Cooled

Bringing Home the Wrong Race Modern Love P25

Mainland P9

Fed Chairman ‘For the Dogs’ View of a Slowly Has a Whole New Meaning Mending Economy Business P27 Pets P10 San Juan Weekly Star has exclusive New Times News Service in English in Puerto Rico

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

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New York City’s Puerto Rican Day Parade

Paradegoers enjoying the National Puerto Rican day parade along Fifth Ave. in Manhattan.

T

housands of marchers showed off their Boricua pride Sunday, taking over Fifth Ave. for the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Crowds decked out in red and white waved Puerto Rican flags or draped them around their shoulders, cheering and blowing horns.

“From generation to generation to generation, it’s important to continue our heritage and pass it on,” said Henry Guttierez, 34, who brought his 18-month-old son.

“It connect us back to the land ... Once a year we get together and everyone’s Puerto Rican, no matter where you come from.”

Maria Gonzalez, 56, waved a Puerto Rican flag as she danced to music from a passing float. It’s her 42nd year at the parade, a tradition that began when she was 14 and came with her mom. This year, the San Juan native brought her son and granddaughter.

“We come in all colors, all shapes, all sizes, and today everybody’s

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represented,” she said. “It’s my parade. Nobody can take this from me.”

The crowd was also thrilled about President Obama’s planned visit to the island Tuesday - the first trip to Puerto Rico by a sitting president in 50 years, when John F. Kennedy visited.

“The visit is long overdue,” said Tito Morales, 39. “Puerto Rico is so small, and doesn’t always affect the continental U.S. But he should have more presence there.

You don’t need a pawssport to go there. It’s about time!”

“They’ll welcome him with open arms,” added Luis Esvalona, 39.

Esvalona said he’s hoping for more than just a photo op. “Jobs are real bad out there,” he said. “Maybe [Obama] can find something to

make the economy better.”

Reggaeton and salsa music blasted from speakers amid a sea of Puerto Rican flags as kids scaled traffic light poles for a better view.

Puerto Rican band El Gran Combo and comedian John Leguizamo headlined the parade, and singer Eli Palacios serenaded the crowd from atop the Daily News float.

“I like the entertainment, the muwsic, but the best is the kids dancing,” said Monaia de la Garcia, 18. “Que bonita!”

Non-Puerto Ricans also joined in the fun. “It’s much better than on TV. I fell in love with Latin music,” said Anastasiya Lotokhova, 30, a native of Russia. “It’s a lot of energy. You just want to scream, too. It’s amazing.”

Dancers make their way down Fifth Avenue during the parade.

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The San Juan Weekly

Obama Visits Puerto Rico With Eye on 2012 Election

P

resident Barack Obama is making a rare presidential visit to Puerto Rico, the U.S. island territory, with a firm eye on Puerto Ricans back on the mainland who could help him win at least one key state during his re-election campaign next year.

About 4.6 million Puerto Ricans live on the mainland, boosting a fast-growing Hispanic population that is becoming increasingly important in American politics.

The first official visit to the island by a president in 50 years caps a two-day trip that took Obama to two crucial political battlegrounds — North Carolina and Florida — as he solidified his political outreach and defended his economic record against sweeping attacks from potential Republican foes.

Addressing donors at three Miami fundraisers Monday evening, Obama hit a recurrent theme: “Big changes don’t happen overnight” and, “The reason we’re here today is because our work is not done.”

By venturing into Puerto Rico, Obama is courting a population that is concentrated in the New York region but that also has established a foothold in Florida, where about 841,000 Puerto Ricans live, according to the 2010 census. Puerto Ricans living on the island can only vote in presidential primaries.

While there, Obama will make brief remarks upon arrival in San Juan, meet with the island’s Republican governor, Luis Fortuno, and attend another fundraiser.

About 20 pro-independence demonstrators kept an all-night vigil at a colonial fort in San Juan to protest Obama’s visit. They want the release of three Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned in the U.S. By setting foot on the island, Obama inevitably also steps into the decades-old debate over its status as a territory. Fortuno supports statehood. Others prefer the existing status, while a small but vocal minority in Puerto Rico favors independence. Island

residents have voted consistently to maintain ties to the U.S. While administration officials said the visit gives Obama a chance to interact with Puerto Ricans, he was only spending about five hours on the island.

Obama has stayed neutral on the status question and supports a referendum to resolve it. In an interview with The Associated Press, Fortuno said he intends for the question to be put to the island’s voters before his term ends in December 2012.

That schedule follows a timetable proposed by a presidential task force. If the island’s political leaders can’t agree on a process, however, the president and Congress could then weigh in with legislation setting down requirements on how to resolve Puerto Rico’s status.

The recession hit Puerto Rico harder than the mainland, with unemployment rising to nearly 17 percent. It had dropped to 16.2 percent in April.

Fortuno said the economy is the biggest issue among islanders. And because they are U.S. citizens, immigration is not as potent a political subject as it is with other Hispanic groups.

Still, he said, “Many issues cut across the different subgroups within the Hispanic community.”

The governor said he welcomed the attention his island is getting and credited a growing regard among politicians for the Hispanic vote.

“There is a heightened level of awareness about the importance of the Latino vote that hadn’t existed for a while,” he said.

He noted that both Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton courted the island during their intense contest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican candidates would do the same next year,” he said.

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

Puertorrican Youth Recognized by the American Water Works Association A

group of students also founders of a nonprofit organization, Project H2O Help to Others received today a Merits Award given by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), as part of its 130th Annual Conference and Exposition celebrated in Washington D.C. Cecilia Graña-Rosa, Nicole Ray and Carlos Nevárez were acknowledged by their contribution to influence on human conscience about water conservation at world level. A labor they initiated on 2007 and it took them to visit Kenya, Africa, and to take individual water filters to these communities, and since then they’ve been extending to their country, Puerto Rico.

“We still can’t believe it, this award is an honor not only to us as founders of this project, but also to Puerto Rico. We did not expect it, we did not imagine that our labor would generate so much interest and support of different sectors. We are very excited and we are grateful to the Puerto Rico Water & Environment Association (PRW&EA) Puerto Rico section, which nominated us to the AWWA for this award and to the PRASA, for the support given to this project”.

Commented Cecilia Graña-Rosa, 17 years old and recently graduated from high school.

This initiative began as a community service labor of the Saint John’s Private School seniors and it has transcend, actually they are working with various communities of San German y Patillas municipalities that have their own private aqueduct system. “ We found ourselves with the knowledge that people don’t know about what water resources and this project help us carry out that educational and social message” added Graña-Rosa.

Executive president of PRASA, engineer José Ortiz Vázquez, joined to the recognition of these young and highlighted its performance. “It is of great significance that puertorrican youth is demonstrating the conscience level that they have about the importance of the water resources so we can live a normal life. We congratulate this group and we call for more young people to join in order to carry the water conservation message and to make good use of it, let’s remind ourselves that water is a finite resource”, said Ortiz Vázquez Among the groups next plans there’s the planning of the Walk for Water Event that will soon be celebrated in the Island, and the presentation of a documentary that portrays the reality of the water crisis

at world level, which they hope to share with the students from all the schools around the country.

The Merit Award recognizes those outside the potable water industry that have demonstrated an outstanding labor in leading a better quality of this valuable resource to society. In the past the AWWA, the highest organization at global level that works and reunites the professionals of the potable water industry has given this award to various political figures such as congressmen, and today it falls on young puertorricans committed on educating others about water conservation.

Puertorican Star Made 15 Points and Gave Five Assists When the Mavericks Conquered Their Very First NBA Championship

H

e might be Dallas Mavericks’ smallest player, but José Juan Barea played big on game 6 contributing with 15 points in an historic night where the Mavs earned their first championship.

President Barack Obama, took time during his speech Tuesday to single out Dallas Mavericks guard J.J. Barea, a native of the U.S. commonwealth.

“That guy can play,” President Obama said. Barea averaged 8.9 points during the postseason, and torched the Miami Heat in Games 5 and 6 of the NBA Finals for 32 combined points. Those games he acted as starting Point Guard thanks to the respect he earned due his abilities.

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

7 Mainland

U.S. Braces for Withdrawal Along Iraqi Road

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

E

ven as the American military winds down its eight-year war in Iraq, commanders are bracing for what they fear could be the most dangerous remaining mission: getting the last troops out safely.

The resurgent threat posed by militants was underscored Monday when rockets slammed into a military base in eastern Baghdad, killing five service members in the most deadly day for American forces here since 2009. In recent weeks, insurgent fighters have stepped up their efforts to kill American forces in what appears to be a strategy to press the United States to withdraw on schedule, undercut any resolve to leave troops in Iraq, and win a public relations victory at home by claiming credit for the American withdrawal.

American commanders say one of the gravest threats to the 46,000 troops here is that they could become easy targets for insurgents when they begin their final withdrawal this summer and head for the border along a 160-mile stretch of road cutting through the desert into Kuwait.

“Our forces were attacked today, and we were just sitting still,” said Col. Douglas Crissman, who is in charge of American forces in four provinces of southern Iraq, and is overseeing highway security in them.

“What is going to happen to the threat when we line up our trucks to leave and start moving out of the country?”

Eight years in Iraq has taught the United States military a hard-learned lesson, that American forces cannot effectively secure large areas without the help of the local people. So commanders have fashioned an exit strategy which borrows a key element from the Awakening Movement, a successful tactical program carried out in 2006, just as the violence was peaking. The American exit strategy calls for the military to give cash payments of $10,000 a month to 10 tribal leaders.

Officially, the money is paid to have Iraqis clean the crucial roadway of debris, an apparent pretense because an Iraqi-American agreement bars outright payments for security. The sheiks keep some of the cash and use the rest to hire 35 workers each who clear the road of trash. The work does make it harder for militants to hide bombs.

But the military says it is aiming for more than a highway beautification project.

It is hoping for local people to help police the road and the area, and to provide inte-

lligence on militants.

“I can’t possibly be all places at one time,” said Colonel Crissman. “There are real incentives for them to keep the highway safe. Those sheiks we have the best relationships with and have kept their highways clear and safe will be the most likely ones to get renewed for the remainder of the year.”

So far, the contracts have proved to be a cost-effective method for improving troop safety, even at $100,000 a month. Roadside bomb attacks on American and Iraqi soldiers stationed in the area are down, officials said, as are rocket attacks on the military base from areas controlled by the sheiks.

The contracts, officials said, cost far less than nearly all the other measures the military has used in Iraq to ensure security, and sheiks provide the names of the workers so the military can conduct a security check.

“The cost of a damaged MRAP that gets hit by an explosive device is $400,000, and we are not even talking about the cost of a human life,” said Colonel Crissman, referring to an armored vehicle the American troops use. “Given the amount of money we have spent in this country, $100,000 to secure our highway a month is a small price to pay, especially given the importance of the highway to the withdrawal.”

On many days, workers can be seen raking up trash and throwing tires into pickup trucks. Several times a week, the military flies over the highway to ensure that the sections are clean. The value of the contracts — along with their limitations — is evident in roads neighboring the highway, where attacks are up.

That has prompted commanders to

begin to expand the program to include neighboring roads as well.

And local sheiks across southern Iraq are more than eager for the cash, jockeying for a chance to collect what may the last bit of military largess. The money also helps the sheiks solidify the loyalty of their own people by giving them the power to dole out jobs.

But the military says the Shiite militias are also aware of the influence cash payments can have with tribal leaders, and so they, too, try to buy allegiance, intelligence and access. “There are some sheiks who are working for the other team and are being paid well by the militants so they can operate in their land,” Colonel Crissman said, referring to Shiite militants who operate in southern Iraq.

Shiite militias and followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada alSadr have been some of the United States’ fiercest enemies in Iraq. The groups, which have close ties to Iran, have stepped up

their anti-American activities recently as Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad have debated whether to ask the Americans to stay past their scheduled departure date.

Last week, followers of Mr. Sadr, whose Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, was largely defeated three years ago, held a mass demonstration in Baghdad in which they marched unarmed in formations, trampling over American flags and calling for the Americans to withdraw.

Although the military is preparing to withdraw all of its troops, the State Department plans to maintain a massive embassy with several branch offices throughout the country.

The State Department plans to hire 5,100 private contractors to protect diplomats in the absence of troops, the department’s under secretary for management, Patrick F. Kennedy, said before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Washington on Monday.

The potential value of the highway cleaning contracts was illustrated last month when a reporter for The New York Times accompanied Lt. Col. Robert Wright to a lunch with tribal leaders.

The meeting, which took place in a tent in the middle of a barren stretch of desert, lasted for three hours, as the tribe’s leaders and Americans ate from large platters of rice and lamb and talked about their families and Iraqi politics. Then on the ride back toward the American base, one of the tribal leaders offered a bit of intelligence regarding Shiite militants who he said met regularly in an open field.

The colonel said he was interested — and then the local leader raised the topic of a contract, to clean the highway.

Mainland 8

Where Wisdom Lives

By DAVID BROOKS

S

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

ometimes life presents you with a basic philosophical choice. Americans are going to have to confront a giant one over the next several years.

It starts in the wonky world of Medicare. As presently constructed, Medicare is based on an open-ended fee-for-service system.

The government pays providers each time they deliver a service. The more services they provide, the more money they get.

The fee-for-service system is incredibly popular. Recipients don’t have to think about the costs of their treatment, and they get lots of free money. The average 56-year-old couple pays about $140,000 into the Medicare system over a lifetime and receives about $430,000 in benefits back. The program is also completely unaffordable. Medicare has unfinanced liabilities of more than $30 trillion.

The Medicare trustees say the program is about a decade from insolvency.

Some Democrats simply want to do nothing as Medicare careens toward bankruptcy. Last Sunday on “Face the Nation,” for example, Nancy Pelosi said, “I could never support any arrangement that reduced benefits for Medicare.”

Fortunately, more responsible Democrats are looking for ways to save the system.

This is where the philosophical issues come in. They involve questions like: Who should make the crucial decisions? Where does wisdom reside?

Democrats tend to be skeptical that dispersed consumers can get enough information to make smart decisions. Health care is phenomenally complicated. Providers have much more information than consumers. Insurance companies are rapacious and are not in the business of optimizing care.

Given these limitations, Democrats generally seek to concentrate decision-making and cost-control power in the hands of centralized experts. Under the Obama health care law, a team of 15 officials will be created to discover best practices and come up with cost-cutting measures. There will also be a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in Washington to organize medical innovation. Centralized officials will decide how to set national reimbursement rates.

Republicans at their best are skeptical about top-down decision-making. They are skeptical that centralized experts can accurately predict costs. In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee projected that

Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. It actually cost $110 billion. They are skeptical that centralized experts can predict human behavior accurately enough to socially engineer new programs. Medicare’s chief actuary predicted that 400,000 people would sign up for the new health care law’s high-risk pools.

In fact, only 18,000 have.

They are skeptical that political authorities can, in the long run, resist pressure to hand out free goodies. They are also skeptical that planners can control the unintended effects of their decisions.

Republicans point out that Medicare has tried to control costs centrally for decades with terrible results. They argue that a decentralized process of trial and error will work better, as long as the underlying incentives are right. They suggest replacing the fee-forservice with a premium support system. Seniors would select from a menu of insurance plans. Their consumer choices would drive a continual, bottom-up process of innovation.

Providers could use local knowledge to meet specific circumstances.

Representative Paul Ryan’s Republican plan is controversial because of the amount of public money he would dedicate to his premium support plan, but the basic architecture of the plan has been around for decades. In less rigidly ideological times, many Democrats supported variations of this basic approach.

Advocates, like Alain Enthoven of

Stanford, point out that competition-based plans have improved outcomes in many places. Such plans cover employees of the University of California and state employees in California, Wisconsin and Minnesota. They also note that the Medicare prescription drug benefit also uses a competition model.

Consumers have been adept at negotiating a complex marketplace, and costs are 41 percent below expectations.

The fact is, there is no dispositive empirical proof about which method is best — the centralized technocratic one or the decentralized market-based one. Politicians wave studies, but they’re really just reflecting their overall worldviews. Democrats have much greater faith in centralized expertise. Republicans (at least the most honest among them) believe that the world is too complicated, knowledge is too imperfect. They have much greater faith in the decentralized discovery process of the market.

I’d only add two things. This basic debate will define the identities of the two parties for decades. In the age of the Internet and open-source technology, the Democrats are mad to define themselves as the party of top-down centralized planning. Moreover, if 15 Washington-based experts really can save a system as vast as Medicare through a process of top-down control, then this will be the only realm of human endeavor where that sort of engineering actually works.

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

9 Mainland

A Love Affair With Obama That Cooled

By JOHN VINOCUR

W

hat follows here is not necessarily a description of a political epiphany or a bellwether moment.

But something interesting and, just maybe, politically indicative happened 11 days ago during a symposium on “Oberlin-based Perspectives on the Obama Presidency” in conjunction with Oberlin College’s commencement exercises and the 50th reunion of its class of 1961.

A professor of politics at the college, describing Oberlin students’ judgment of President Barack Obama, said it had cooled significantly — sometimes to the point of disillusionment. At the same time, a commentary in The Oberlin Review, signed by four of the newspaper’s undergraduate editors, bemoaned that “much of the campus community” had left political activism “to a small subset of engaged students.”

Oberlin is one of the United States’ most traditionally — read doggedly — liberal and distinguished small colleges. Always earnest, often estimable and not particularly wacky in terms of lifestyle, Oberlin, located 35 miles, or 55 kilometers, southwest of Cleveland with an enrollment of 2,800, describes itself as the first college in America to have had a policy of admitting students of color (1835), and the first to grant bachelor’s degrees to women (1841).

When it noted that a sparsely attended meeting of the Ronald Reagan Lecture Series took place on Oberlin’s “notoriously liberal campus” this spring, the college newspaper was not betraying reality.

But Oberlin students now being described as “disheartened” by the performance of their President Obama, or standing at a distance from Oberlin’s badge of honor of engaged, left-wing politics?

That’s a speck of confetti in a storm of pre-2012 election indicators in America, but it’s also a fact that Mr. Obama’s most diligent canvassers in 2008 often came from the country’s campuses. Without the enthusiasm and activism of millions of students — and their authenticating support for the would-be president’s pitch as the unifying candidate of change — Mr. Obama might not have found a bridge for bringing groups of independents and Reagan Democrats into his camp.

Michael Parkin, the faculty voice who described the Oberlin trend, placed the change of affection in relationship to the president in an emotional framework.

In a conversation after the symposium, he spoke of a love affair that, to a palpable degree, had wound down. “It started hot and heavy,” he said. “And with extremely idealized notions. Then a reality dawned in the way that a once charming laugh becomes an irritating giggle: He’s a politician who no lon-

ger corresponds to the grand ideas that many students had in their heads about him. And that’s deflating and disheartening for them.”

This is clearly not the student left’s wish-list president who would have closed down the Guantánamo prison, or put limits on bankers’ bonuses, or fought for liberalized immigration laws.

And it matches up with the student editors’ appeal for more activism on campus next year, a call that came without any reference to Mr. Obama — but with the implication that on his watch, the campus had been lulled into conventionality.

The writers compared Oberlin students “whose radical Abolitionism in the 1850s helped spark the Civil War” and who in the 1960s “threw themselves into the fight for civil rights and peace in Vietnam” with those of 2011. The current student body, the commentary insisted, “seems to lack either the desire for radical progress or a suitable method for fighting to make it happen.”

In the traditional Oberlin context of reverence and/or easy tolerance for radicalism, this judgment might apply to Mr. Obama, too.

By way of further explanation, Mr. Parkin noted that many Oberlin students came from “privileged backgrounds.”

He did not push the link, but unemployment, falling real estate values and narrowing expectations in general would appear to be much less intense issues for Oberlin students than an unhappy white working class — technically described as citizens without fouryear college degrees (and who are much less optimistic about the future than their black or Hispanic counterparts) — that constitutes the largest demographic slice of the work force in the United States.

These days, many of the themes of Mr. Obama’s early speech-making that could well stir the campus are gone from the president’s frame of reference.

Potentially pleasing to his campus acti-

vist supporters, his initial areas of focus — a world without nuclear weapons, or an apologetic refusal to hold up U.S. democracy as a model for the Arab and Islamic world — have been scaled down as presidential hallmarks.

The realities of Mr. Obama’s re-election next year are 9.1 percent unemployment, as opposed to 7.6 percent when he took office, and prices for houses that have fallen to 33 percent below their 2006 levels, decimating millions of families’ notional wealth.

But what about the supposed Big Plus effect of the killing of Osama bin Laden on the president’s base among young people?

Or a statement over the weekend by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the United States would put “its money where its mouth is” and widen the U.S. military presence, nose to nose with China, in Asia?

That self-portrait of toughness will go down perfectly, Mr. Obama might hope, in blue-collar constituencies where support for him is in doubt and where a we-will-win vision of America’s model for worldwide

success is cherished. Indeed, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. informed the nation that the raid to kill Bin Laden was the “boldest undertaking any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history.”

I can hear Oberlin gag. For a description of student reaction in his politics classes to Bin Laden’s end, I went back to Mr. Parkin.

Mr. Obama might not be overjoyed to know that he reported it centered on questions like “why were we shooting an unarmed man” and “violating the sovereignty of a foreign nation”?

That’s Oberlin, a college Camelot of the left whose opinions are probably more often in opposition to the country’s instincts than ahead of them. I should know, I went to school here.

Surely, it’s hasty to extrapolate from a unique Oberlin sampling. But if Barack Obama believes in 2011 that his student activist campaign base of 2008 is totally intact, he may be more than just a little out of touch.

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The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

‘For the Dogs’ Has a Whole New Meaning

By ANDREW MARTIN

L

ISA CORNISH is rattling off today’s menu: Pan-seared duck with brown rice and blueberry compote.

Roasted turkey with butternut squash and russet potatoes.

Salmon with black-and-white quinoa.

Delish. Just keep in mind that all of this, right down to those banana and yogurt health bars, is dog food. Not mere Alpo, mind you — not by a long shot. And to prove it, Ms. Cornish, who works for a company called Petcurean Pet Nutrition, will give you a taste.

If you’re wondering why anyone would even consider noshing on dog chow, you haven’t been to the Global Pet Expo here, where the impresarios of America’s thriving, multibillion-dollar pet economy profitably ply their wares.

If there is a pet heaven, this could be it.

Even as the economy for us humans bogs down again, the pet economy has proved remarkably resilient to a weak housing market, high unemployment and those diminished 401(k)’s. The industry has continued to grow through the recession, albeit at a slower pace, and last year, Americans spent a record $55 billion on their pets, according to the market research firm Packaged Facts, more than the gross domestic product of Belarus.

Wherever the stock market goes — and lately, it has been going down — this nation seems to be in the thrall of a great bull market for pets. And high-priced, “human grade” pet food is only the beginning.

Pet owners, or “parents” in industry parlance, are being sold on human-style luxuries and medical care. There are stylish rain slickers, organic foods and even antidepressants for today’s pampered cats and dogs. If more evidence of this boom were needed, consider Neuticles, prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs and cats, at about $1,000 a pair, which, their designers say, help “your pet to retain his natural look, self esteem and aids in the trauma associated with altering.”

Debbie Bohlken sits behind a table of brightly-decorated cookies and cakes that wouldn’t look out of place in a bakery. All of these treats are for dogs. She sells her products under the slogan: “Treat Her Like the Bitch She Really Is.” Manufacturers are marketing foods with ingredients worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant: pheasant, freshwater trout, yak’s milk, organic pumpkin — the list goes on.

There is much more to this than food. At the Petzlife booth, Steve Tibbetts, explains that his oral spray is made from “human-grade” ingredients that keep a dog’s teeth and gums healthy and fight dog breath. He says it works for cats, too.

The growth in the pet market last year was driven in part by a 7 percent increase in veterinary services. America’s

pet population, like its human one, is living longer. Human medical technologies are increasingly being used for pets.

Dogs’ and cats’ owners — particularly those without children at home — are taking better care of them, both medically and nutritionally, experts say.

“Pet owners aren’t just looking to provide a home for their pets,” says Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Association. “They are investing in their pets’ quality of life. Oftentimes they do this at their own expense, cutting personal expenses, but not those affecting their faithful companions.”

Blueberries and pomegranates, whose antioxidant wonders have been marketed to humans, will be the next big pet food.

THE pet industry has long considered itself ng recession-resilient, and it proved just that during ng the recent downturn, despite some bumps along d the way. For instance, shelters were swamped with pets that were given up by owners whoo apparently could no longer afford them. Fewerr people bought pets, in part because pets are of-ten acquired after a home purchase, and there were considerably fewer of those.

Sales growth of pet products slowed, among “hard goods” like leashes and bowls.

They were still up — which is more than you can say for many industries. Sales growth of natural pet products slowed to a relatively meager 6 percent in 2009, compared with 43 percent in 2007.

Analysts say the pet industry will coneritinue to rebound, driven by demand for veteriding premium nary care and health-related products, including treats and chow for dogs and cats.

“I’m still very bullish on natural and organic,” says David Lummis, senior pet market analyst for Packaged Facts, noting that such products account for about 7 percent of pet food sales. “There is still a lot of growth there.”

In addition, he notes that expected demand for luxury pet products is strong enough to lure companies and even celebrities into the business. Among them: Martha Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres, Fisher-Price and General Nutrition Center, which now offers health supplements for pets.

Wall Street is bullish, too. Shares of PetSmart, the pet store chain, are hovering near a record high, at $43.46 a share.

In its most recent quarterly earnings report same-store sales had increased 6 percent over the quarter a year earlier.

PetSmart’s main competitor, Petco, is privately owned and doesn’t publicly report its earnings. But Jim Myers,

Petco’s chief executive, says his company did not have a single negative quarter throughout the recession. Fewer people traded up to more expensive items during the downturn, but he said they didn’t trade down, either, sticking with a “premium and higher-level range of food products.”

At a Petco store natural and organic products occupy more than half the aisles set aside for dog and cat food. A sign hanging from the ceiling reads, “It’s all natural: the very best natural products for your pet.”

A representative for Blue Buffalo dog food, Gina Corbosiero, is to pitch an array of products, which she says are “holistic” and contain antioxidant pellets that are “cold pressed.”

Blue Buffalo’s dog food costs as much as $4 a pound, but it isn’t the most expensive line on these shelves.

Ro Canin makes dog food for specific Royal bre breeds.

Its Shih Tzu line sells for $6.80 a pou pound.

Pedigree costs 50 cents a pound.

It’s all too much for Mike Pinkard, w was dispatched to buy some food 46, who h daughter’s new pit bull-Labrador for his retri retriever puppy, Taz. Asked what he will buy, he says: “I have no idea. It’s changed mu from when I had a dog.” so much When Mr. Pinkard was a kid, he says, w regular dog food. Make sure you “It was th water and exercise and you are in give them s good shape.”

He settles on a bag of Nature’s Recipe a midprice natural brand.

Recipe, A our pets healthier for all of this?

Are B ngton, a professor of veterinary nuTony Buffi trition says his students studen studied the diet history of thousands trition, of animals and have not yet determined one pet food is better than another.

“We have been unable to distinguish an outcome in healthy animals eating a wide variety of foods,” he says. Asked about the variety at megastores like Petco, he says, “I don’t even go in there anymore. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

He adds: “If you put them all in a plain brown bag, you’d probably be fine with any one of them.”

ABOUT 62 percent of American households have a pet, with dogs accounting for 40 percent of the total. Cats are second, at 34 percent. Dog and cat ownership has continued to grow slightly in recent years, even as the popularity of other types of pets, like birds, fresh-water fish and reptiles, has declined.

But the vendors at the Global Pet Expo, held at the Orange County Convention Center here in April, are betting that pet owners will splurge again.

One vendor is offering treadmills and treadwheels — essentially oversize hamster wheels — that let dogs exercise indoors, without the indignities of cracked sidewalks or rain.

There are “eco-friendly” pieces of furniture, grooming products and wipes, the wipes made from organically grown bamboo. An Israeli firm hawks dog shampoo containing Dead Sea minerals. Another, Pet Pop of Australia, promotes a vitamin-infused “mountain-spring water” for dogs. The price: $3.30 a bottle, about as much as a gallon of milk.

“We actually saw that there was a gap in the market for beverages for dogs,” says Bonnie Senior, a manager at the company. Then there is Jenn Mohr, who says she combined her love of dogs and love of candles to create Sniff Pet Candles. Made of “100 percent organic natural ingredients,” the aromatherapy candles have names like “Day in the Hamptons” and “Field of Dreams” and “promote your dog’s

The San Juan Weekly optimum health and well-being,” her company says.

Ms. Mohr even designed a candle to address the flatulence of Rufus, her Rhodesian ridgeback. Made with floral ylangylang, white tea, myrtle and fennel, the “Fart & Away” candle “won’t completely stop them,” Ms. Mohr says. “But it will help.” The price: $28.

Aromatherapy candles aside, pet food, rather than pet extras, dominates the expo. Many vendors were pushing the idea of human grade pet food. Nummy Tum Tum, which sells canned organic pumpkin and sweet potato for pets, acknowledges that the line between pet and owner has been blurred. Last fall, amid a pumpkin shortage, people called to ask if it was O.K. to use Nummy Tum Tum to make pumpkin pies.

Answer: Sure. Daniel Stockton, national sales manager, says the company that makes Nummy Tum Tum makes canned pumpkin for pies, too. It simply switches the label. Both are simply pureed vegetables.

“What you can do is make some pies out of it, and leave the cans on the counter after everyone has eaten to freak people out,” Mr. Stockton says.

Canine Caviar Foods says it makes “the only alkalinebased dog food in America that was specifically designed to prevent cancer.” The ingredients include canned beaver, duck and venison tripe for dogs and cats, as well as a variety of “free-range, grass fed buffalo” treats for dogs.

The Honest Kitchen is offering dog food with names like “Zeal” and “Verve” and lists the provenance of the ingredients. There is organic, fair-trade quinoa from Bolivia and “wild, line-caught Icelandic haddock.” Its food is “gently de-

June 16 - 22, 2011

hydrated” to preserve it.

Hill’s Science Diet promotes prepackaged meals to help slim down tubby dogs and cats. American pets, it turns out, have weight problems just like many of their owners.

“We show you how to feed your animal to lose weight,” says Mike Gooch, a sales manager for Hill’s Science Diet. “It’s really kind of a paradigm shift in how you control the weight of the animal.”

Of course, it would be easier — and substantially cheaper — to feed pets less or take them for longer walks. But Mr. Gooch said that simply isn’t happening for pets or owners.

“I would like to see us eat less McDonald’s and Hardees,” Mr. Gooch quips.

Bravo Raw Diet is peddling raw food for pets, which, along with refrigerated pet food, is among the hottest trends in the business. Bette Schubert, a co-founder, says dogs that eat raw meat diets — much like their wild ancestors — are healthier than those that eat processed kibbles.

Over at the Del Monte booth, Don Terry and Daniel Caulfield take all of this in with an air of bemusement. Del Monte makes old-line dog food like Kibbles ’n Bits, Gravy Train, Milk Bone and Snausages.

Neither seems too worried about all these organic and holistic upstarts. “Do you know how many Milk Bones we sell compared to the-

11

se companies doing $2 million a year?” Mr. Terry asks. “Dogs have lived a long time on Kibbles ’n Bits and Gravy Train.”

Mr. Terry, however, isn’t about to pop a Snausage into his mouth.

THE idea of eating your dog food to prove its wholesomeness didn’t originate at the Global Pet Expo. Paul Newman sampled his organic dog food on “The Tonight Show” in 2006. The audience howled.

These days, pet food makers are eating their own products to make a point and close a sale, wisecracks aside. Ms. Bohlken, of Claudia’s Canine Cuisine, says she ate all sorts of dog treats while tweaking recipes for her products, which now include cookies and microwaveable cakes for dogs. Even now, she says, she will suck on a Puppy Pop when she has a sore throat.

Up in Brooklyn, Hanna Mandelbaum and Alison Wiener spent March dining on their dog food, Evermore, a brown mush made from beef hearts and chicken livers, among other things.

“My business partner really enj enjoys the taste,” Ms. Mandelbaum say “For me, it was a little bit more says. an acquired taste.”

The gimmick generated a huge spi in sales but came at a price: respike len lentless ribbing from friends. Says Ms. Ma Mandelbaum: “They want to know if we have a sudden urge to sniff each oth other’s butt.”

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The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

36 Hours in Stockholm

By STEPHEN WHITLOCK

S

TOCKHOLMERS revel in the long days of summer when the sun rises as early as 3:30 a.m. and doesn’t set until after 10 p.m. Many locals escape to their country houses, but those who remain in the city spend as much time as possible outdoors — an easy feat since water and parkland make up almost two-thirds of Stockholm. Situated on the Baltic at the mouth of Lake Malaren, Stockholm is built on 14 islands connected by bridges. On sunny days, waterside bars and cafes are packed with people wolfing down summer favorites like herring (served in a variety of ways) and toast Skagen (shrimp in mayonnaise with lemon and dill served with rye bread). Everywhere, visitors will find establishments — new and venerable — celebrating Nordic design, cuisine and culture.

Friday 4 p.m.

1) WALK IN A CIRCLE Get your bearings and work up an appetite with a bracing five-mile walk that loops around Riddarfjarden, Stockholm’s main body of water. Start at Stadshuset (the City Hall, where Nobel Prizes are handed out) and cross to Riddarholmen, visiting the church where generations of Swedish monarchs are interred. Carry on to Sodermalm, the large southern island,

taking ng beautiful cobbled Bastugatan.

Fortify fy yourself at Melqvist Kaffebar (Hornsgatan nsgatan 78; 46-76-875-2992), one of thee city’s best coffee bars (and the old haunt of Stieg Larsson, author of the Lisbeth Salander novels) before continuing over the high bridge that offers amazing views and then descending to the island of Kungshol-

men. Reward yourself with waterside drinks at Malarpaviljongen (Norr Malarstrand 64; 46-8-650-8701; malarpaviljongen.se), an open-air cafelounge with three floating decks, one of Stockholm’s most popular summer hangouts.

7:30 p.m.

2) LOCAL HEROES Stockholmers often seem to take a magpie approach to food, importing their favorite trends from abroad.

Right now the most popular spots include the French bistro Zink Grill (Biblioteksgatan 5; 46-8-611-4222; zinkgrill.se) and the sensational sushi bar Rakultur (Kungstensgatan 2;

46-8-696-2325; rakultur.se). Thankfully, there are several places that are committed to serving locally sourced food that takes Swedish cuisine to the next level. One of the most enjoyable is the city’s newest culinary star, Restaurang Volt (Kommendorsgatan 16; 46-8-662-3400; restaurangvolt.se).

Opened by four young men who have worked at many of Sweden’s top restaurants, the small space includes just one sparsely furnished room — all the excitement is on the plate. You can order à la carte, but it’s far better to opt for the three-, five- or seven-course menu, featuring dishes like rabbit with carrots and dandelion, and, for dessert, fennel with white chocolate and licorice (485, 685 and 785 Swedish kronor, or $78, $110 and $126, at 6.22 Swedish kronor to the dollar).

10 p.m.

3) STRAIGHT UP There are a couple of places where you can get a drink with a panoramic

view of the city. Gondolen (Stadsgarden 6; 46-8-641-7090; eriks.se) is part of a viewing platform on the edge of Sodermalm neighborhood that overlooks the Old Town (Gamla Stan) and harbor. For even more dramatic views, visit Och Himlen Dartill (Gotgatan 78; 46-8-660-6068; www.restauranghimlen.se), a bar and restaurant atop a Sodermalm skyscraper.

Saturday 11 a.m.

4) STORY TIME When it comes to iconic Swedish writers, not even Stieg Larsson can match Astrid Lindgren, the creator of Pippi Longstocking. Junibacken (Galarvarvsvägen; 46-8-587-23000; junibacken.se) is a sort of indoor amusement park where you can visit Pippi’s house and take the Storybook Train, which will carry you through a series of tableaux drawn from her books.

Even for an adult with no knowledge of Lindgren’s work, it’s great fun; for

The San Juan Weekly children, it’s thrilling. Afterward go for a rhubarb tart or a slice of mango-cardamom cheesecake (around 45 kronor) at nearby Helin & Voltaire (Rosendalsvagen 14; 46-8-664-51-08; helinvoltaire.com), a cafe that looks as if it came straight out of a fairy tale.

1:30 p.m.

5) ISLAND LUNCH Any visit to Stockholm should include an exploration of one or more of the thousands of islands that make up the Stockholm Archipelago. It takes several hours’ sailing to reach the heart of the archipelago but you can get a quick fix by taking a ferry to Fjaderholmarna, a group of islands just 20 minutes from downtown. Book ahead for lunch on the deck beside the water at Fjaderholmarnas Krog (46-8-718-33-55; fjaderholmarnaskrog. se). The midsummer menu includes plenty of herring, dill-smoked salmon and oysters. Expect to spend 250 kronor for lunch.

3 p.m.

6) MAIN STREET On Hamngatan, one of the city’s main shopping streets, two retail titans are squaring off, and national pride is at stake: on one side stands NK (Hamngatan 18-20; 46-8-762-8000; nk.se), the venerable Swedish department store that opened in 1902.

Almost directly opposite is the challenger, the Danish design store Illums Bolighus (Hamngatan 27; 46-8-718-5500; illumsbolighus.dk), established in Copenhagen in 1925, which opened its first Swedish store last fall. NK has the edge as far as food and fashion go, but

June 16 - 22, 2011

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when it comes to cool Scandinavian design, Illums is unbeatable. Here you will find pieces by all the big names of Danish design — Finn Juhl, Hans Wegner, Verner Panton — as well as international brands at all prices.

4 p.m.

7) NORDIC BY NATURE Book a treatment at the Raison d’Etre spa inside the Grand Hôtel (Sodra Blasieholmshamnen 8;

46-8-679-3500; grandhotel.se). The spa feels thoroughly Nordic, with blocks of granite underfoot in the shower and murals with pixilated views of the archipelago. Of course, treatments (from 930 kronor for a neck, back and shoulder massage) include classic Swedish massage.

5:30 p.m.

8) ANIMAL INSTINCT The Old Town, in the heart of the city, has no end of restaurants targeting tourists; it also has some of the best places to eat. Djuret (Lilla Nygatan 5; 46-8-506-40084; djuret.se), whose name means “the animal,” offers a meat-heavy menu that focuses on one meat-and-wine pairing at a time:

lamb with Bordeaux, for instance, or veal with Barolo and Barbaresco.

However, on June 27 Djuret closes for two months and instead offers a topnotch pork barbecue in the courtyard behind the building, weather permitting. Its name? Svinet, which means “the pig.” No reservations, so arrive soon after it opens at 5 p.m. A threecourse meal with wine costs around 550 kronor.

10 p.m.

9) VINTAGE DRINKS The restaurant-bar Riche (Birger Jarlsgatan 4; 46-8-545-03560; riche.se) has been going strong since 1893. It starts to fill up as soon as nearby offices close and is soon crammed with a glamorous, affluent crowd. You’ll most likely hear more Champagne bottles being popped open here than anywhere else in town. If the crush is too much, cross the road to KB (Smalandsgatan 7; 46-8-679-60-32; konstnarsbaren.se), a classic Stockholm restaurant that has a charming bar with murals dating from the 1930s of ale-swilling Vikings and tipsy monks sipping Chartreuse.

Sunday 11:30 a.m.

10) THE ART OF BRUNCH Stockholm can be a sleepy town on a Sunday, and few restaurants serve brunch. The restaurant at the Moderna Museet (Skeppsholmen; 46-8-5195-6291-5282; modernamuseet. se) has a lavish weekend buffet brunch serving Asian, African, American and European dishes (265 kronor). Reservations are essential as there are only two sittings, at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. If you don’t have a reservation, visit the cafe and enjoy a simpler meal alfresco on the large terrace.

1 p.m.

11) PICTURE PERFECT Fotografiska (Stadsgardshamnen 22; 46-8-5090-0500; fotografiska.eu, admission 110 kronor) opened last year in a former tollhouse on the quayside of Sodermalm. It has photographic exhibitions of varying quality (Annie Leibovitz was the opening show, but some subsequent exhibitions have been somewhat ho-hum), but it’s worth visiting the top-floor cafe where you’ll find enormous windows looking out over the Old Town. The view is so spectacular that even if you don’t like the photos on the gallery walls you’re bound to end up snapping a few yourself.

IF YOU GO Right now the 201-room Nobis (Norrmalmstorg 2-4; 46-8-614-10-00; nobishotel.se ), which opened in December 2010, is the hottest place to lodge. It’s got great service, a perfect location, and bedrooms (from 2,240 kronor) that manage to be stylish without sacrificing comfort.

Benny Andersson of the Swedish pop group Abba opened the Rival (Mariatorget 3; 46-8-545-789-24 00; rival.se) in 2003. The 96 rooms (from 1,595 kronor) have stills from Swedish movies over the beds, from Garbo in “Queen Christina” to, of course, “Abba: The Movie.”

When Nobel laureates come to pick up their checks for 10 million Swedish kronor (around $1.5 million), they stay at the 340-room Grand Hôtel (Sodra Blasieholmshamnen 8; 46-8-679-3500; grandhotel.se), a Stockholm landmark since 1874. Doubles start at 1,990 kronor but check in only if you can afford one overlooking the water (from 3,000 kronor).

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The San Juan Weeekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

LETTERS Twilight of Plutocracy Capitalism’s claim to virtue is its efficiency. But is that so?

While the automobile, would’ve been Adam Smith’s pet, gets you wherever, the expense of it, plus the road and parking capacity all over a city and the repairs and the traffic policing render it the crown boondoggle.

It’s only mass transit that makes any sense economically.

But that’s socialism.

Your health is unpredictable. So you can’t plan ahead, the swings of medical probability are inexorable.

And doctors/hospitals/insurers are out to bilk you, a safety net not in your wildest dreams intended. Only socialized medicine works. Again free enterprise can’t hack it.

Education is what assures a nation’s competitiveness and prosperity. In a pay-as-you-go socioeconomy, those who need it most get it least, which perpetuates underdevelopment, meaning poverty, drugs and crime.

Worldwide adequacy of public schooling and per capital GNP correlate dramatically.

Early in the 20th century socialism got off on the wrong foot. Marx and Engels had bastions of democracy like Britain and France in mind, certainly not a feudal backwater like Russia nor a hyperanthill like China, no one had figured out how such nations might go about getting socialism right. So the mess encountered drove Stalin and Mao into dictatorship. And when you’ve made yourself dictator, how do you step down? Gorbachev tried and brought everything asunder with him.

But let’s talk about second chances. Chinese might fumble their way toward democracy, having socialized the basics is working for Europe and the US voted Obama in. And an outback like Puerto Rico ought to eventually catch up.

Agustin Manzano, Guaynabo

vior here, after the Sheraton, Capitolio, the Altamira Burger King and UPR? Javier Acevedo, Ocean Park

Once Upon a Time In Puerto Rico In West Side Story the Jets and the Sharks battle to death over a strip of street. Joining their efforts they might’ve improved the neighborhood instead.

Just like our politicians, who figure grabbing and holding on to power is the only important thing and that’s all they do.

Little over a generation ago, there was in Puerto Rico a Luis Muñoz Marín, who whether rightly or not, gave the impression he cared about us, that he was working hard on our behalf. And he didn’t bother to campaign, yet didn’t lose an election ever.

Belisario Badillo, Hato Rey

Dogs Come First A couple of years ago, our do-nothing Legislature-to show they were doing something and to please the high-profile dog lobby--passed a law mandating shelters for stray dogs islandwide.

Meanwhile, Metro San Juan is teeming with homeless humans, tattered and filthy, mumbling incoherently and begging for quarters and gotten run over by motor vehicles, then ending up disected at UPR Med School.

Might all those sheltered dogs care to share their comfy abodes with all the unsheltered people?

Belisario Badillo,Hato Rey

Pols Feather Their Nests

To Robert Licalzi:

Norma Burgos monkey-saw, monkey-did mainland legislation against hate crimes. But over there the intent is to protect minorities. What minority do we hate here? Politicians!

I was bewildered by your unforgiving antistudent stance through the UPR unrest. You went so far as to impersonate a woman, and a squawky one at that.

Rereading, I came across one of you obdurate epistles, I noticed you’re a denizen of Garden Hills.

Little wonder! You’re a constituent of our evil oligarchy, so you’ve got the boodle to pack all three of Juanita, María and Edna off to Harvard or Stanford. It’s taxes you’re ruffled all over. How dumb of me not to see while the iron was hot.

Belisario Badillo, Hato Rey

Yes, Hate Crimes Cops in Puerto Rico don’t like the young. They call them mozalbetes, always uttered with an exhalation of contempt, something like nigger or kike. Bear in mind that police recruits are the rural poor, whose families couldn’t afford them higher education, and they end up in the Metro with power of life and death over those who got where they couldn’t. Enough to loathe somebody if you’re ignorant and immature. Now that hate crimes are the rage, shouldn’t the feds be looking into police beha-

Lisa Bay, Caparra Heights

More NPP Mischief The penepeístas continue to dismantle democracy here as they force Puerto Rico toward an obscene and ultimately dysfunctional merchant plutocracy. The purpo-

se of colegiatura or professional guilds is quality control, protection of the consumer and integrity of the socioeconomy.

First the NPP reptiles took on the Colegio de Abogados, ascribing them a political agenda. But it was a sham, the real targets were everybody else.

In the long run big business won’t be served by the accross-the-board collapse of professional comptence on the Island. And we consumers will be gutted by a generation of professionals who’ve not kept abreast, need not worry about any oversight and therefore don’t know much about what they’re doing and don’t care Crisálida Martínez, San Juan

Totalitarian Island I’m 17. I spend evenings around the neighborhood and get together with my friends to study, to fool around, to watch Law & Order together and with my girlfriend to smooch. Or they come to me. To get home by ten we’d have to break by nine thirty and we never do that. Weekends quiceañeros start at nine thirty.

And movies, the early show, finish at nine thirty and ditto games at the park and even extracurriculars at school. Where I live virtually all of the above is in the neighborhood and I can walk there. My father would be truly irked if he had to pick me up all the time so the cops wouldn’t fine him---or rough me up---for being out after ten.

On CNN we see that the whole world is striving toward democracy, toward freedom, toward not having a politician dispatch a cop to mistreat you when you don’t do what the government, out of sheer caprice, decides everybody ought to do. That’s what the Nazis and the Communists were like, or that’s what we’re taught in history class. And in a Puerto Rico where three people are murdered every day, a dozen cars stolen, half a dozen women raped, and so forth, does it make sense for the police to be chasing me if I stay at my friends’ or at my girlfriend’s till after a quarter to ten? What kind of priority is that?

In the movie Missing with Jack Lemon an earthquake starts after curfew time and people run out of the buildings and police start hollering and them and shooting.

Chucho Casiano Avilés, Guaynabo

The San Juan Weekly Send your opinions and ideas to: The San Juan Weeekly PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 Or e-mail us at:

sanjuanweeklypr@gmail.com Telephones: (787) 743-3346 · (787) 743-6537 (787) 743-5606 · Fax (787) 743-5500

San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

15

FASHION & BEAUTY

Narciso Rodriguez

By MARISA MELTZER

L

Goes to Prom

AST year, as a junior at the Latin School in Chicago, Colby Jordan wore a black silk gown designed by John Galliano with matching Dior heels to prom. “This year I’m switching gears,” she said on the phone from her home recently. “I’m doing a chartreuse Roland Mouret gown with purple snakeskin YSL Tribute sandals.”

As at the Oscars, the school has a tradition of students changing outfits for afterparties, so Ms. Jordan, 18, is also considering a white Herve Leger dress with silver heels

by Azzedine Alaïa bought during Paris Fashion Week last March, plus jewelry from a “dear friend,” the New York designer Eddie Borgo, who lent her pieces when she attended the Met Ball earlier this month.

While Ms. Jordan is a rare, jet-set teenager attending such exclusive events, she’s not the only one buying a designer dress, often costing in the mid-three figures or higher, for prom night.

Goodbye, Gunne Sax! So long, Zum Zum! Caroline and Philippa McCully, 18, identical twin sisters who grew up shuttling between Lattingtown, N.Y., and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, are also wearing Yves Saint Laurent Tribute sandals to their prom at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn.

They both ordered custom dresses online from Maria Lucia Hohan, costing $709 and $860 respectively and paid for by their father.

“I generally find what fits me and then speak to my dad,” Philippa McCully said.

An informal survey of high school boys found them oblivious to the designer trend, renting tuxes from local shops as they have for generations. “The only guys who are wearing anything designer are getting it from their father’s closet,” Caroline McCully said.

But despite the recession, and perhaps influenced by shows like “Gossip Girl” that incorporate designer clothes into their story lines, some young women say they are enjoying the full-service experience of luxury shopping as part of prom night, like a stretch limo.

Sara Weiss, a senior at Pope High School in Marietta, Ga., who describes herself as a “total fashionista,” went to Neiman Marcus to buy her dress, where “they are so accommodating,” she said. “They bring you water, there’s space in the dressing room, it’s just a nice experience.” She chose a white Sue Wong costing $530 that she plans to wear to sorority formals at college next year.

Midprice junior-size prom dresses are not languishing on the racks. Danielle Gordon, 18, a senior at Fontbonne Hall Academy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, said that her classmates would likely be wearing dresses

by Jovani, Sherri Hill, BCBG, Faviana, La Femme and Jessica McClintock. She instead chose a short royal blue dress from Notte

by Marchesa for $750. “My parents pretty much said to get whatever dress I liked,” she said. When asked if she would wear the Marchesa again, Ms. Gordon, sounding doubtful, said she would consider wearing it to a wedding.

And Lily Cohen, a senior at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, dismissed what she called the “traditional” dress.

“Those brands are more for bat mitzvahs,” she said. “At prom you’re graduating to a more sophisticated look.” Ms. Cohen, who will wear a simple red Moschino cocktail dress whose price she preferred not to disclose, was featured in this year’s Seventeen magazine prom issue. “I was wearing this crazy, puffy, polka-dotted sequin thing,” she said. “That was my taste of that kind of prom dress, and that was enough.”

For those without the means (or generous parents) for such frocks, the online service Rent the Runway, which rents designer dresses for a period of four days for 10 to 15 percent of the retail price, has taken aim at high school girls attending prom, which Jennifer Fleiss, a founder of the company, called “the first magical Cinderella-evening moment.”

Another founder, Jennifer Hyman, described wearing a designer dress to prom as a kind of sartorial gateway drug, priming a customer for the future moment when she is able to afford high-end brands. “It’s often your first taste,” said Ms. Hyman, who wore a Carmen Marc Valvo to her own prom (New Rochelle High School, 1998). “You will remember that brand you wore to prom and will want to have that brand in your closet.”

She added that designer prom style is regional, with Proenza Schouler, Prabal Gurung and Narciso Rodriguez popular among the New York City high school set, and Badgley Mischka and Temperley London in demand elsewhere.

Quincy Childs, who is 16 and attends the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., used Rent the Runway to find a pink stra-

pless Matthew Williamson dress with a sweetheart neckline and cinched waist that retailed for $2,500, which she is renting for $250. “I’m more excited about getting ready for prom than prom itself,” she said.

Ms. Childs remembered when the dress came out in 2008. “I think four different celebs wore it in ‘Who Wore It Best,’ ” she said, referring to a popular Us magazine column comparing celebrities wearing the same outfit.

Ms. Weiss of Pope High School also said she had been influenced by the infiltration of fashion into popular culture. “I’m a total stalker of celebrities online, and will see what they wear to red carpet events,” she said. “I love Vogue, I go through it every month, and I watch advice Rachel Zoe gives on her show and use it for myself.”

According to Ms. Hyman of Rent the Runway, “A 13-year-old knows about Louboutin shoes because she watches Kim Kardashian on TV and wants a piece of that lifestyle.”

Jane Keltner de Valle, the senior fashion news director at Teen Vogue, which showed Jill Stuart, D&G and Vera Wang Lavender Label among other designer lines for its annual prom issue, has noticed a change from decades past

(purely as an observer: “I thought it was un(p cool co at the time,” she said of her own prom).

“There were no Alexander Wangs then,” Ms. “T Keltner de Valle said. “Now there are all theKe se designers catering to the aesthetics of teenagers.

That has gotten girls more interested na in fashion. Every girl might not be wearing a Miu M Miu dress to prom, but there is a shift towards more fashion-forward dressing in tow general.” ge Kristin Prim, the 17-year-old founder of Prim Magazine, whose agents and parents did di not want her to reveal her high school, thinks the trend is harmless. “No one is buthi ying yin Chanel couture who would normally shop sh at J. Crew,” she said. (Ms. Prim was considering a dress from Versace’s fall 2010 co collection to wear to prom this year, but has co to skip the dance for work commitments.)

But the pressure to wear a designer has ha predictably caused anxiety at some high schools. sch Hazel Cills is a junior at Moorestown High School in New Jersey, where she expecHi ted most students would wear BCBG, Jessica McClintock and Betsey Johnson dresses to prom earlier this month. “When I realized there was a Facebook group for prom dresses that was up, I posted a picture of an Alexander McQueen dress as a joke,” Ms. Cills wrote in an e-mail.

“A few days later, girls were coming up to me in the hallway actually looking a bit worried, and kept asking me if I was really wearing the dress. I just laughed at them and told them it was a joke, assuring them I was not going to prom and that I couldn’t afford that dress even if I wanted to.

“But there were definitely some girls who took me seriously and freaked out about the fact that they weren’t wearing McQueen dresses.”

Kitchen

16

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

Asparagus and Eggs Take Center Stage

By MELISSA CLARK

A

SPARAGUS and eggs have an affinity for each other. The voluptuous yolk softens and

smoothes the grassy sharpness of the vegetable, while the asparagus brightens up the dull richness of the egg.

The pair’s most classic expression

is asparagus hollandaise, a dish I adore. But it’s fussy and time-consuming, and you end up with a side dish rather than dinner.

This asparagus season, I was so starved for the purple-tipped stalks that I wanted them to be my meal and not just accompany it. So I created three recipes celebrating asparagus and eggs that are substantial enough to serve as main courses but still light and springlike.

For the first dish, I prepared the asparagus like one of my favorite salmon recipes, with the vegetable standing in for the fish. I roasted the stalks in a hot oven, then topped them with finely diced hard-cooked eggs, melted butter and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt mixed with black and white sesame seeds for crunch and a nutty flavor.

Roasting the asparagus intensifies its flavor and caramelizes it, making the dish hearty enough to serve for brunch or a light supper without anyone wondering where the fish had gone. That said, it’s easy enough to slide a piece

Pan-Seared Asparagus Salad With Frisée and Fried Egg

1/3 cup heavy cream 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan Salt and black pepper, to taste Lemon wedges, for serving Flaky sea salt for sprinkling.

Time: 15 minutes 1 small garlic clove, finely chopped Salt 3/4 teaspoon finely chopped anchovy 2 teaspoons lemon juice 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces 3 cups (packed) torn frisée lettuce 2 large eggs Black pepper.

1. Mash the garlic and a pinch of salt into a paste with the side of a knife. Mix it in a small bowl with the anchovy, lemon juice and 2 tablespoons oil.

2. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat for 20 seconds.

Add 3 tablespoons oil. When it shimmers, add the asparagus.

Toss occasionally until golden brown and almost tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and cook until tender, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Transfer to a large bowl; add the frisée and the garlicanchovy dressing and toss gently.

3. Return skillet to medium heat and add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Crack in the eggs; season lightly with salt and pepper.

Cook until the eggs are just set, about 3 minutes.

4. Divide the salad between two serving plates. Top each with an egg.

Yield: 2 servings.

of salmon onto the asparagus pan and roast it at the same time, if you like.

For lunch a few days later, I wanted a salad based on the bistro staple, frisée aux lardons. But rather than using bacon lardons, I pan-fried asparagus and mixed it with the frisée and a pungent garlic vinaigrette laced with a little anchovy. Then, in place of the usual poached egg nestled in curling frisée leaves, I fried an egg until the edges were crisp and brown, which added a vaguely baconlike nuance without the meat.

Last, I got the idea to add eggs to a pan of sautéed dark green asparagus rounds and pale scallions. Scrambling some eggs right into the pan would have been the easiest option, and I’m sure that would have been lovely. But instead, I poured on a simple egg custard and baked it until it was creamy and set just on the firm side of liquid.

Its satiny smoothness reminded me of asparagus hollandaise, reinterpreted in a brand-new way.

1. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil until shimmering. Add the asparagus and the scallions and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until asparagus is browned and tender.

2. Whisk together the eggs, 4 tablespoons of the herbs, and cream. Whisk in Parmesan, salt and pepper. Pour the egg mixture over asparagus and place the skillet in the oven.

3. Bake for about 20 minutes, until set, but still slightly jiggly in the center. Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before serving. It is best warm, not hot.

4. Squeeze one or two lemon wedges over it, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with flaky sea salt and remaining herbs.

Cut into wedges.

Yield: 4 servings.

Skillet-Baked Eggs and Asparagus Time: 20 minutes 3 tablespoons olive oil, more for drizzling 3/4 pounds asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces 2 scallions, white and light green parts, thinly sliced 8 large eggs 6 tablespoons roughly chopped soft herbs like basil, cilantro, chives or parsley (use at least 2)

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

17

Kitchen

Roasted Asparagus With Hard-Cooked Eggs and Sesame Salt Time: 20 minutes 2 large eggs 1 1/2 pounds asparagus, ends trimmed 4 tablespoons unsalted butter Salt and black pepper 3/4 teaspoon black sesame seeds 3/4 teaspoon white sesame seeds 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt Chopped chives, for garnish.

1. Place eggs in a heavy pot.

Cover with 4 cups cold water.

Bring to a boil over high heat; cover, immediately reduce to a bare simmer, and cook eggs 9 minutes. Crack the shells and put in a bowl of ice water for 10 minutes, then drain.

2. Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Spread asparagus on a large ba-

king sheet. Dot with 2 tablespoons butter; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, turning occasionally, until crisp-tender, about 10 minutes, and transfer to a platter.

3. Meanwhile, in a small skillet over medium heat, toast the black and white sesame seeds until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Pour into a bowl and toss with coarse sea salt.

4. Peel the eggs and ďŹ nely chop. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in the skillet and cook until it starts to smell nutty, about 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped eggs.

5. To serve, spoon the egg mixture over the asparagus, then sprinkle with sesame salt and chives.

Yield: 3 to 4 servings.

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The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

Marilyn Monroe: Death of Star Spawns an Enigma…

by: Mulah Ishmaíl

I

t is well known the fact that the late actress, singer, model and pop icon, Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Baker), was found dead in her dorm in Brentwood California in august 5th 1962, she was aged 36. Official version assures that she committed suicide due drug abuse. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, an inexperienced in such cases validates that theory. Even so, the lack of solid evidence in the case leaves shadows of doubts, in investigainvestiga

for instance, ttors like lik Jack J k Clemmons Cl who was one of the very first officials to arrive to the crime scene. Three common theories of unsatisfied experts are the following: A) the angle that involves both, John and Robert Kennedy, the first one was said to have had an extra marital affair with Monroe and whose political career where endangered for the actress knows about his bonds with the teamster mafia. John “give up” Monroe to his brother Robert, making him a prime suspect for his zeal to obtain the journal Marilyn wrote. The famous details everything about diary de Kennedys and herself. Her the Ken psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, psychia advice her to jot it down as a therapy on her treatment. It’s therap believed that the pop icon believe blackmailed the Kennedys blackm whom were forced to contract assassins to “silence” nosy actress. the n B) Other theory points to Eunice Murray, poin her maid, as an accompliof the murder based in ce o her decision to clean up the scene and contradictions at the court. C) Lation ter investigations links mob leader called am a m Giancana. The grandson Gi of George Masters, the st stylist of the model and close friend, escorted cl

Monroe to the Lake Tahoe residence in Nevada property of singer Frank Sinatra. The event occurs the night before her death, Giancana was accompanied by two “hit men”, they spent time until Masters and Monroe came back to California in the morning of august 4th. The theory validating her death as murder was founded with the outcome of these rare facts: She had the phone on her hand, was lying on her bed up side down with bruises on her back, a later analysis of her rectum shows an enema provoked by a suppository which con-tained some sort of poisonous substance.

D) It is believed that Monroe had “dangerous” relations with a communist bythe name of Frederick Vanderbilt from Mexico, as a proof, theres a CIA document that makes the actress a goverment target.

A recent and stunning revelation on the case was revealed by June DiMaggio, niece of Louise and former Monroe husband, Joe DiMaggio. She reveals in her book “Marilyn, Joe & Me”, that Louise talked with Monroe the very moment she was getting murdered and was able to utter her killer name. June said: “Mother told me she knew who killed Marilyn…”, but in order to protect her family, she never told to a living soul what she knew. A break in the case burst in when

Alan Kimble Fahey, then phone repairman, went to Atascadero State Mental Hospital, a maximum- security facility. Kimble confessed that a prisoner spills that he worked for Giancana crime family and was ordered to shut Marilyn and retrieve the journal she had been keeping. He and his associated stalked Monroe got a duplicate of her keys and strike. He claimed that: “held her down, inserted a nembutol suppository into her rectum (to be not noticed in the autopsy) and within the minute, she was died”. They found the journal and deliver it.

Everything seems to fit perfectly to a murder case, but there still some questions like: Where he a mad man reading all about the case and made it up? If it true, who was behind it all? Giancana alone? The Kennedys worked with him? What about Sinatra? Former Country Prosecutor John Miller planned to exhume the body in 2006 to reconsider if it was suicide or not. Maybe for the sake of the Kennedys name, as yet, what is for sure is this…

A star dies and from her ashes, a dark legend has born…

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

19

HEALTH & SCIENCE 20

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

Waves of Warmth In a Penguin Huddle

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

T

Protein-Rich Diet Helps Gorillas Keep Lean

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

G

orillas don’t seem to be facing the obesity epidemic that humans in modern society are.

That’s because our primate brethren follow a lean diet with protein concentrations similar to the American Heart Association’s recommendations for humans, says Jessica Rothman, an anthropologist at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Dr. Rothman and her colleagues studied mountain gorillas in Uganda and found that they eat a protein-rich diet, supplemented with fruits. Protein makes up about 17 percent of their total energy intake, close to the 15 percent protein intake the heart association recommends for people.

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Biology Letters.

During certain times of the year, when fruits are not available, protein-rich leaves dominate the gorilla’s diet, the report found. About 31 percent of the total energy intake is protein during these times.

This is similar to the protein content in high-protein weight-loss regimens like the Atkins diet.

“What they are doing during these times is overeating protein in order to meet their energy requirements,” Dr. Rothman said.

Understanding the gorilla diet can help researchers better understand the evolution of the human diet, said her co-author David Raubenheimer a nutritional ecologist at Massey University in New Zealand.

Foods rich in sugars, starches and fats, once scarcely available to humans, are now abundant.

Modern societies “are diluting the concentration of protein in the modern diet,” Dr. Raubenheimer said.

“But we eat to get the same amount of proteins we needed before, and in so doing, we’re overeating.”

The research could also help in preserving and creating ideal habitats for mountain gorillas, which are endangered. Only about 800 are in existence today.

Dr. Rothman is in Uganda running similar nutritional studies on other primates, including red-tailed monkeys and baboons.

o stay warm in Antarctica’s bitterly cold conditions, emperor penguins are known to form tight huddles. Researchers now report that while in these huddles, the penguins move in a coordinated periodic wave.

This allows every penguin a chance to move from the colder outer region of the huddle into the warmer inner region.

Penguins form such tight huddles that it would be impossible for an individual to make an isolated movement, said Daniel P. Zitterbart, a physicist from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the study’s first author.

Instead, they move in a coordinated wavelike fashion every 30 to 60 seconds at a speed of about five inches per second, he and his colleagues write in the journal PloS One. The wave is much like the coordinated waves of spectators during sporting events, Mr. Zit-

terbart said.

But the penguins’ movement is so slight that it is invisible to the naked eye. The researchers captured high-resolution time-lapse images of an emperor penguin colony near the Neumayer Station, an Antarctic research facility, for several hours, recording images every 1.3 seconds. They were then able to track and analyze the movements of the penguins over time.

“We see that they definitely have to be altruistic in their behavior to survive,” Mr. Zitterbart said.

There are still unanswered questions about the penguins’ behavior. It is unclear, for instance, whether a single penguin or multiple penguins trigger the wave.

Mr. Zitterbart and his colleagues plan to set up a remote-controlled observatory in Antarctica that will allow for year-round observation.

Steep Vaccine Price Reductions Could Help in Reaching More Children

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

S

everal makers of children’s vaccines announced they would lower prices in the world’s poorest countries, a move that could save donors billions of dollars and help bring the vaccines to more children.

GlaxoSmithKline cut the price of its rotavirus vaccine by two-thirds. Merck offered to do the same with its cervical cancer vaccine and to reduce the cost of its rotavirus vaccine by an unspecified amount. Indian companies like the Serum Institute and Panacea Biotec said they would cut their prices on a vaccine protecting against five diseases.

The announcement — made jointly by vaccine manufacturers and the GAVI Alliance, which collects donor money — comes in anticipation of a pledging conference in London next Monday at which GAVI hopes to raise at least $4 billion.

It also comes 10 days after the United Nations Children’s Fund — which actually orders and distributes the vaccines bought by GAVI — for the

first time publicly posted the prices it paid each year for the last decade. That revealed wide disparities in prices charged by manufacturers and showed that prices drop when Indian competitors enter the field.

Daniel Berman, deputy director of the global access campaign for Doctors Without Borders, said the cuts “will really make a difference.” He did not know how much Unicef’s disclosure influenced the cuts, but said donors have a “growing awareness” of paying unnecessarily high prices.

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

21

Radiation’s Unknowns Weigh on Japan

By MATTHEW L. WALD

A

s officials in Japan agonize over what constitutes a safe radiation dose for people who live near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, the state of the science has been a daunting problem.

Studies on the effects of exposure are based mostly on large doses delivered quickly by atomic bombs, while radiation from the Fukushima disaster would more likely result in small doses delivered over many years.

So far the debate in Japan has centered on the risks to children. Government guidelines set after the disaster allowed schoolchildren in Fukushima Prefecture to be exposed to 20 times the radiation dose previously permitted. The new level is equal to the international standard for adult workers at nuclear power plants.

After a huge outcry from parents, the government promised that it would lower the permissible level and that it would pay to remove contaminated topsoil from school grounds.

But the debate is not limited to children; the authorities have to weigh the risks of allowing thousands of people, including the elderly, to be exposed to levels that remain far above natural background radiation.

The general assumption is that when people are exposed to small doses for decades, the incidence of cancer will rise over time. But that prediction is based on extrapolating from data on people who were exposed to acute brief doses when atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 — not on observing individuals exposed to small doses over decades.

Some researchers argue that all humans are regularly exposed to a low natural level of radiation, and that it is not harmful when below a certain threshold, although fetuses may be an exception. Another vocal minority argues that there is statistical evidence for higher cancer rates among people exposed to tiny incremental doses.

Still, the mainstream view is that extrapolating from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data is more prudent.

“There’s a point beneath which you just don’t know, and a straight line is the simplest assumption,” said Dr. Richard R. Monson, an epidemiologist and chairman of the committee that wrote an influential report released in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences on low-level radiation exposures.

His committee based its recommendations on a hypothesis known as the “linear, no threshold model.”

Under this hypothesis, if a given dose will cause fatal cancers in a certain number of people in a population, then half that dose will cause fatal cancer in half as many people, and a millionth of that dose will cause fatal cancer in a millionth as many people.

Dr. Monson’s committee largely extrapolated from the health records of thousands of Japanese civilians exposed to a sudden burst of high-energy gamma radiation by atomic bombs. Over the next 65 years,

most of those people died from cancers that may or may not have been caused by radiation, and others from causes common to old age.

Their death rate from cancer exceeded the one recorded for populations of Japanese not exposed to the radiation. But applying this data to the risks faced at Fukushima Daiichi is problematic, experts say, and could lead to overstating or understating the risk to people who live near the plant.

The most obvious difference is that the bomb survivors’ exposure in 1945 was nearly instantaneous.

People in the Fukushima area are confronting regular levels of contamination in the range of 5 to 10 times what people are normally exposed to in natural background radiation.

What is more, some of the radiation to which people are being exposed around Fukushima is inside the body; it comes from radioactive materials that contaminated their food or water. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many of the victims experienced only a quick external irradiation.

Evan B. Douple, the associate chief of research for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint Japanese-American science institute that analyzes health data from the bomb survivors, said that a dose delivered slowly over time was less damaging than an equal dose delivered quickly.

“It is well known in radiation biology that radiation-induced damage from a given dose of radiation is less effective if it is protracted or fractionated,” he said.

The reason, he said, is that the body’s repair mechanisms work during the extended period of exposure.

The 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that the effect of a given amount of

radiation is 1.5 times worse when the dose is given all at once than when it is extended. But there are no authoritative details on varying doses over time.

As if this were not complex enough, another school of thought suggests that the radiation effect on people exposed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was worse than the official statistics show.

This theory holds that weaker individuals were killed off by the bombs and by the hardships suffered in those cities at the end of World War II. The people who survived past that period, on whom the estimates are based, are not representative because they were stronger than average.

So the deaths counted in the following decades occurred among a hardier-than-average population, critics say.

In the United States, most of the policies involving radiation exposure involve people who are exposed to low levels on the job, like nuclear plant workers.

If the United States faced decisions like those now confronting Japanese officials, “there really isn’t any coherent policy,” said Robert Alvarez, a former senior staff member at the Energy Department who works as a consultant for groups worried about nuclear risks.

Kuniko Tanioka, a member of the Japanese Parliament who traveled to Washington to research how the United States government conducts independent inquiries after major technological disasters, said that advising the public after a nuclear accident poses grave challenges in both countries.

Ms. Tanioka suggested that the best course that Japan could take would be to distribute all the raw data it has on radiation exposure to the international community and allow outside interpretations.

22

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

An Awakening That Keeps Them Up All Night

By SUZANNE DALEY

A

s daylight faded, a cluster of young protesters sat in a circle discussing whether to support a new tax on financial transactions.

They had gathered most evenings this week, hoping to turn two weeks of demonstrations that have filled city squares across this country and taken the political establishment by surprise, into something more lasting — a set of demands.

“We need change in this country,” said Ruth Martínez, a member of the group who has been unemployed for nearly three years.

Until recently, young people in Spain were dismissed as an apathetic generation, uninterested in party politics. But the outpouring of young people who have taken to the streets since May 15 — at one point about 28,000 protesters spent the night in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square — has changed all that, forcing the country to take heed and reconsider.

The recession that has ravaged Spain, along with much of southern Europe, has had an especially hard impact on the young, with unemployment rates soaring to more than 40 percent for 20to 24-year-olds, about twice the national average and the highest in the European Union. Many of them see limited hope of improvement unless they reshuffle the political deck and demand a new approach to creating jobs.

“Suddenly people are talking about politics everywhere,” said María Luz Morán, a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid. “You go to have coffee or you are standing in the subway and you hear conversations about politics. It’s been years since I heard anyone talking about politics.”

Even young people who have jobs here are often caught in a system of poorly paid, temporary contracts. The contracts were once designed to help them break into the labor force, but they have served instead to put adulthood out of reach for many. Ms. Moran said that one survey showed that about 50 percent of 30-year-olds in Spain were still living with their parents.

“We call 32- and 35-year-olds young people in Spain, because they are forced to live like children,” she said. “Thirtyyear-olds should have their own homes.”

Few experts are willing to say what

the protesters might achieve. But already issues that were discussed only at the margins are being taken more seriously.

One major conservative daily newspaper, ABC, polled constitutional experts this week about what it would take to change the election laws, one of the principal demands of the demonstrators, who say the current system heavily favors the country’s two leading political parties.

“They have already had an impact,” said Rafael Díaz-Salazar, another sociologist at Complutense, who believes that the protesters may represent about two million voters. “They are forcing people to take a look at this impoverished generation. There will have to talk about precarious work contracts and housing in the next election. They cannot avoid it anymore.”

Experts say that there are two broad categories of unemployed and underemployed young people in Spain. At one end of the spectrum are relatively uneducated young people who left school in the past decade when the country’s economy was booming and they could easily find work in the construction industry. Now those jobs have disappeared and are unlikely to come back.

At the other end are workers who have one or more university degrees, who cannot find work either, or who get hired

on six-month contracts at low wages, often in menial jobs that have nothing to do with what they were trained for.

Lidia Posada García, 26, is one of them. She is active in ¡Democracia REAL Ya!, a group that helped rally protestors through the Internet. A lawyer, she is one of the few in her circle of friends who has a job. But she says she is paid as if she is doing administrative work.

“We all live at home,” she said. “We are the most prepared, qualified generation. But there is not much for us.”

One of the catchiest slogans to emerge from the protests is “no jobs, no houses, no pension, no fear.”

Many of the protesters were so excited by the turnout on May 15 that they cit decided to pitch their tents and stay on. de

By May 21, the day before regional and local elections, there were thousands more ca protesters in squares across the country, pr ignoring official decrees that they should ign leave. lea Since then, the numbers who camp out every night have dwindled, though ou nightly “general assemblies” in Madrid ni still draw thousands, including gawking sti tourists. The Puerta del Sol has taken tou on a circus feel. Some of the protesters sport dreadlocks, look ragged and lounge sp around on mattresses. ar Still, between the tents and handmade plastic lean-tos there is all manner m of activity, from massages to hardheaded efforts to organize, communicate and zero eff in on a list of demands. This week protesters have been trying to reach an agretes ement at the assemblies as to how and em

when to dismantle the tents and leave all but an information point in the square.

Historically, Spaniards have taken to the streets with some regularity, like most Europeans. But the events are usually organized by political parties and unions, organizations that the young have largely ignored. Many of the new protesters say they are disgusted with the unions that do little to represent their interests and with both of Spain’s main parties, which they view as corrupt and unresponsive.

Early participants say the protests bloomed over Twitter and Facebook, triggered by several events that gnawed at the younger generation, including revelations from WikiLeaks documents that showed government officials to be less than forthright, and opposition to a recent antipiracy Internet law, which aims to shut down previously legal Web sites enabling the free downloading of music and films.

“WikiLeaks and the antipiracy law were not the reasons for the outpouring,” said Enrique Dans, an economist and blogger at the IE Business School in Madrid, who became involved in protesting the antipiracy law and then helped to mobilize his followers. “But they were the spark.

Just like the man who set himself on fire in Tunisia was not the reason, but the spark for what happened afterwards.”

Mr. Dans arrived at the initial demonstration late and was stunned at the turnout. “I came around the corner and I thought, ‘My God, there are people here,’ ” he said. “There has never really been a grass-roots movement in Spain.”

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

23

Wine

Roussillon, Into the Sunlight

By ERIC ASIMOV

I

T’S not easy being an afterthought, yet that’s exactly what has happened to the tail of the fused French compound region commonly referred to in wine books as Languedoc-Roussillon.

Hyphenation, in this case, is unfair.

Ordinary usage directs attention to the firstmentioned while virtually amputating the second. But fashion has also diminished regard for Roussillon. The region has always been best known for its vins doux naturels, a misleading term for wines that are sweet because they are fortified, a natural process only by virtue of human intervention.

As sweetly captivating as they can be, fortified wines have seen a precipitous drop in demand. Roussillon’s centers for these wines, like Rivesaltes, Banyuls and Maury, sadly serve today mostly as answers to trivia questions.

Nonetheless, like its sibling Languedoc, Roussillon is an exciting place, if only for seeing how efforts to adapt to a changing world will turn out. Dynamic winemakers have taken the challenge of this ancient Mediterranean land of rugged, stony hillsides, gnarled vines, fierce wind and relentless sunshine at the jagged foot of France. There, the Pyrenees form a physical and political border with Spain, but culturally and spiritually, Catalonia embraces both sides.

Languedoc is perennially termed a region in ferment, yet for all its experimentation and dedication to improving quality, the wines have never really found an identity with American consumers. Producers have veered from wines that express a singular Mediterranean character fragrant of earthy wild herbs, to wines that are powerful, fruitdriven and tailored to appeal to a modern global market. Neither style has caught on, though one, at least, possesses the virtue of distinctiveness.

Roussillon begins with a similar lack of identity, and as an added handicap, it is less familiar as a source of dry wines than Languedoc. Yet successful producers from outside the region, like Michel Chapoutier and Pierre Gaillard of the Rhône Valley, have set up operations there, while ambitious natives to Roussillon are making wines with painstaking attention to detail, hoping for the same sort of lightning-quick recognition that has buoyed Priorat, its Catalan sibling in Spain.

It’s not necessarily a far-fetched no-

tion. Dry reds from Roussillon are often said to have more in common with Spanish reds than with French. Both regions have stands of old-vine grenache and carignan, although in Roussillon these grapes are increasingly supplemented by mandated levels of syrah and mourvèdre, while in Priorat international grapes like cabernet sauvignon and merlot have made inroads.

To get a sense of what Roussillon offers today, the wine panel recently tasted 20 dry reds from the region. For the tasting Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Hristo Zisovski, the beverage director of Ai Fiori, which has an extensive list of wines from Languedoc and Roussillon, and Byron Bates, a sommelier who plans to open a natural wine bar in the East Village this fall.

We had mixed feelings about the tasting. Not surprisingly for such a sunny region, many of the wines were powerfully fruity, dense and tannic, sometimes harshly so. Yet very few were jammy or had baked flavors, indicating that the grapes were picked ripe but not overripe. And very few left the impression of sweetness, meaning that the wines were well balanced, even with alcohol levels largely in the range of 14 to 15 percent.

Even so, I found few wines with complexity, a feeling the panel shared. Hristo suggested that some of the wines would become more complex with age. Byron felt that the wines had really progressed over the years, and if they weren’t complex, they at least showed nuances.

“I’m really excited about the region, though none of the wines were really exciting,” Byron said, neatly summing up a paradox.

The wines, purchased in various retail outlets, covered recent vintages from 2006 to 2009, with one 2004.

As with Languedoc, Roussillon does not yet have an appellation system that effectively communicates differences in terroir. Of our 20 bottles, we had three Côtes du Roussillons, the basic appellation for dry reds, and eight Côtes du Roussillon Villages, considered to be a step up because the grapes are generally farmed on slopes rather than the valley floor. We also had eight Vins de Pays (VdP) wines that don’t conform to the appellation rules for one reason or another. In Roussillon, the highest-level VdP wines are termed Côtes Catalanes. Our last wine was a Collioure, from around the picturesque port

of that name.

As it turned out, the Collioure, a 2006 Cuvée Serral from Domaine Madeloc, Mr. Gaillard’s Roussillon project, was our handsdown favorite, with its juicy, spicy fruit augmented by flavors of herbs and licorice. It was one of the few in the tasting with any degree of complexity, and it was a reasonable $26.

Reasonable? In fact, many of the wines were rather expensive. While eight of our 20 bottles were $20 or under, seven were $45 or more, culminating in the $85 2004 Muntada from Domaine Gauby, our No. 5 bottle, surprisingly fresh with flavors of sour cherry and herbs. Gauby also produced our No. 4 wine, the 2008 Vieilles Vignes for $45, which we liked slightly more than the Muntada.

Price may be a problem for the region.

Producers say the hard work necessary to improve quality is costly, but how many are willing to pay $85 for a Roussillon? Our best value was a $12 bottle, the 2009 Les Vignes de Bila-Haut from Chapoutier, an excellent deal for an inviting wine.

Allowing for our small sample, we did see a correlation between price and quality, with six of our Top 10 bottles costing $45 or more. We also preferred Côtes de Roussillon Villages wines over the basic Côtes de Roussillon, none of which made our Top 10.

I came away feeling hopeful about the region, especially if you like big, robust, lusty reds. I’m also intrigued by the good things I’ve heard about Roussillon’s dry white wines, though I confess I have not had too many of them. And I would be remiss if I did not mention those vins doux naturels. Why not revisit their honey-scented pleasures? I can think of no good reason.

Tasting Report

Domaine Madeloc Collioure, $26, ✩✩✩ Cuvée Serral 2006 Juicy, spicy fruit flavors tempered by aromas of tobacco and licorice. (Langdon-Shiverick, Los Angeles) Clos del Rey Côtes du Roussillon, $60, ✩✩ ½ Villages 2006

Lush, fruity, herbal, mineral flavors; you can smell the sunshine. (Massanois Imports, Washington) BEST VALUE M. Chapoutier Côtes du Roussillon, $12, ✩✩ ½ Villages Les Vignes de Bila-Haut 2009 Ripe and inviting, with sweet fruit, earth and menthol flavors. (HB Wine Merchants, New York) Domaine Gauby Côtes du Roussillon, $45, ✩✩½ Villages Vieilles Vignes 2008 Pleasant drinking with rich, ripe fruit and earth flavors and a touch of funk. (Peter Weygandt Selections/Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, Pa.) Domaine Gauby Côtes du Roussillon, $85, ✩✩½ Villages Muntada 2004 Fresh and bracing with flavors of sour cherry and herbs. (Peter Weygandt Selections/ Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, Pa.) Domaine Cazes Côtes Catalanes VdP, $16, ✩✩Le Chalet 2008 Flavors of bright, high-toned fruit and smoke.

(Monsieur Touton, New York) Domaine de L’Edre Côtes du Roussillon, $45, ✩✩ Villages L’Edre 2006 Bright, fruity and dense, with plenty of power and a little heat. (Hand-Picked Selections, Warranton, Va.) Domaine des Soulanes Côtes, $17, ✩✩ Catalanes VdP Cuvée Jean Pull 2009 Dense flavors of spicy fruit. (Peter Weygandt Selections/Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, Pa.) Clos Thalès Côtes Catalanes VdP, $45, ✩✩ Clos du Pêcher 2007 Ultra-fruity and powerful, with lots of oak and tannins; tastes ambitious. (Angels Share Wine Imports, New York) Clos del Rey Côtes du Roussillon, $45, ✩✩ Villages Mas del Rey 2006 Oaky and tannic, with rich, ripe, round and powerful fruit flavors. (Massanois Imports, Washington)

24 June 16 - 22, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Buena Vista Plantation

H

acienda Buena Vista, also known as Hacienda Vives (or Buena Vista Plantation), is a coffee plantation and estate in Ponce, Puerto Rico established in the 19th century. The plantation was started by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833. It is now owned by the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust (Fideicomiso de Conservación), who operates it as a museum.

It is located on 81.79 acres (331,000 m2) of fertile land that includes a humid subtropical forest some 7 miles (11 km) north of Ponce on Route PR-123, in Corral Viejo, a sub-barrio of Barrio Magueyes. The plantation house was built in the Spanish Colonial style, with the surrounding buildings being builtin the local Criollo style. It receives some 40,000 visitors every year.

The Hacienda is significant for various reasons. First, it contains the only remaining example of the Barker hydraulic turbine. The Barker hydraulic turbine was the first reaction type turbine ever made. It was nominated as a Mechanical Engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in July, 1994.

The second reason Hacienda Buena Vista is significant is that it offers one of the best remaining examples of a Puerto Rican coffee plantation. This is important because in the latter part of the nineteenth century the coffee produced in Puerto Rico and exported to Europe and the United States was considered among the finest in the world. It is said to have even been the favorite at the Vatican at the time.

Hacienda Buena Vista is also signi-

ficant because it shows the evolution of the coffee industry in the region. Various periods can be appreciated. These range from the cultivation of produce such as plantains (1833–1845); to the production of flour (from rice and corn) (1847–1872).

These products were staples for the subsistence of the local population.

The manor house is a 2-story 60x50ft building. It was built in 1845. The ground floor was designed to be used for storage.

The second floor contains three bedrooms and a living room. The eastern half of the manor house is made of brick and includes a courtyard, the kitchen, two more bedrooms and a bathroom. The manor house also has garden surrounded by a wrought iron-and-brick fence. The garden served two purposes: “Historically, this garden served as the formal entrance to the hacienda complex; however, it was most often used as a private family place.”

Dependent on horses for managing the hacienda, its administrators also built a carriage house, stables, and a smal caretaker’s house. In addition mule stables

and caretaker’s office were also built.

Located opposite the manor house, is the hurricane shelter. It is a solid brick structure measuring 15 ft (4.6 m). x 25 ft (7.6 m), and built 3 ft (0.91 m). above ground. Its walls, floor and ceiling were made to withstand or dissipate the destructive tropical storms that are common in this region.

A main attraction of the Hacienda is the brick-and-mortar canal which is (18 in. deep by 12 in. wide) and runs some 2,600 feet (790 m). A water drop of 360 meters provides the energy needed to run the mills in the hacienda. Vives paid 360 Spanish pesos for the 58 acres (230,000 m2) that comprise the area of the Canas River to pride for his canal. The use of the River for the hacienda was authorized by the Spanish Colonial Government in Puerto Rico. The canal and aqueduct were finished in 1851. A series of manifolds are used for diverting the water according to the needs of the hacienda agricultural production: one gate diverts water to the

water wheel and the corn mill water turbine, another gate diverts water to the fermentation tank, the ornamental washbasin, and the bath, and a third gate diverts water to a race which sends water back to the Canas River.

In 1956, the government of Puerto Rico expropriated most of the lands of Buena Vista, as a result of a new law to provide land to local farmers. Only 87 acres of land remained with the Vives, including the manor house and the water channel system. But even these were also acquired by the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico in 1984. The Trust restored the hacienda to much of its past glory and turned it into a museum. It opened in 1987.

The museum has operated continuously for 23 years. It is the only such museum in Puerto Rico. The coffee mill was entirely reconstructed, to its 1892 look. The Vives family rebuilt their coffee mill after 1928.

The coffee mill was reconstructed, by the Trust, in 1988, to resemble the coffee mill of 1892.

San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

25

modern love

Bringing Home the Wrong Race

By DIANE FARR

I

T was the morning after our first “I love you,” and I was filled with happiness on my way to breakfast with Seung Yong Chung. I couldn’t yet pronounce any of his three names better than many of you just did, but I called him “Sing,” like all his friends did.

For weeks, Seung and I had been spending our nights together, but in the transient city of Los Angeles, waking up next to someone (even regularly) is not a sign of commitment. Our mutual willingness to blow off work, however (or at least roll in late because we were lingering over breakfast), did make me feel certain that Seung would soon become my boyfriend.

As we entered the Santa Monica breakfast bar, I noticed a young, attractive Asian woman looking at our clasped hands with apparent displeasure. When she then looked up at Seung and scowled, I gave her a big bright smile as a gentle warning to refrain from girl-on-girl hating.

Once seated, I began to dissect my burrito, looking to expel anything that might singe my half-Irish, half-Italian and wholly American palate. While running my fork through the black beans, I asked my Korean-American suitor, “Do you intend to leave me for an Asian girl someday?”

Seung paused for just a moment too long.

As my smile began to wane, he finally replied, “I’m supposed to marry a Korean girl.”

My mind raced: What? Do you have another girlfriend? And was that her friend outside?

Seung added, “My parents have been clear about this my entire life.”

Your whole life? Does that mean that you, Seung Chung, a football-loving, former fraternity brother who grew up in Maryland, are to be part of an arranged marriage?

Maybe Seung could tell I was on the verge of rescinding my earlier “I love you,” so he jumped to the bottom line: “My parents are not going to easily accept this relationship. And I’m afraid they will never accept you.”

Finally the catastrophizing in my head stopped. Not because this news couldn’t become any worse, but because I saw in Seung’s face that he was willing to fight for me. I put down my fork and took Seung’s hand — to fight for us, too.

I told him that as a 35-year-old woman who had already made my way in the world, I didn’t need his parents to accept me. They lived far away, we were not financially dependent on them, and I could be respectful to them no matter what, because I respected the man they’d made.

Seung then smiled and said, “That’s good to know because I have a plan.”

He explained that, weeks before, he had begun a campaign to make his parents like, accept or at least not hate me, and to not disown him. This campaign included systematic leaks of information to his parents by family members who were sympathetic to his affection for someone outside of their race.

“Terrific strategy, honey,” I said, trying to hide how

unsettled I felt. I also began to formulate my own strategy.

First, I felt the need to conduct some thinly veiled research, hoping to understand how Seung’s parents saw me.

As casually as possible, I began to question my friends who were in interracial relationships, asking them questions like, “Were there any hoops you had to jump through with either of your parents when you first started dating outside your race, religion or culture?”

I asked people of all races and backgrounds. I had never realized how widespread the issue was and how many families had had that same hidden conversation with their children about who was worthy of their love and who, specifically, was not.

My parents were certainly guilty of this. When I began middle school, my mother told me that I could marry anyone I wanted: German, Irish, French or Jewish, as that was the world she knew in our part of New York. She then added, “No blacks and no Puerto Ricans, though, or you are out of my house.”

That may seem just as random and hurtful as “they will never accept you” had sounded to me over breakfast.

But at least I knew the context of my mother’s racism. As a first-generation American, my mother had grown up in various Irish and Italian neighborhoods throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the people she judged were from the bordering areas, where the population was generally poorer, less educated and less able to assimilate than her foreign-born parents had been back then, in the 1950s. It was people from these groups whom she regularly saw beating up her grandfather over groceries.

What I soon found out was that my friends of all colors, faiths and traditions had had a similar talking-to from their parents. Despite having been in this country for generations longer than mine, their parents, too, had been told there was a right and an “over my dead body” choice for love.

I continued asking questions: “And how much did your parents’ initial disapproval impact your decision to marry? And does it persist or affect your relationship now?”

By phone, over dinner and through e-mail, people’s honest responses started flooding in.

“I have to marry Jewish or I’m cut off,” my Jewish friend said.

“Cut off from what exactly?” I wondered aloud, knowing he had plenty of money of his own.

“Their love and support,” he answered.

“For my father, black was out of the question,” said my olive-skinned Persian friend with a wave of her hand, as if she were trying to push away the very idea of it.

Another friend of mixed Indian and German descent said, “I’m a half-breed, so my parents were fine with any race, but they preferred — really told me — not to marry an American.”

“While you were being raised in America?” I said, aghast.

She giggled at the ridiculousness of the statement, but nodded her head yes nonetheless.

“Well, I was only told that I couldn’t marry a Japanese

man,” a Korean-American friend wrote by e-mail. “My parents would be disappointed if I brought home a white guy, but they’d eventually be fine with whomever, unless he was Japanese.”

What shocked me was less my peers’ admissions of their parents’ restrictions than their willingness to abide by them. Over the years, my mother and I had many heated discussions about her boundaries for love.

My parents only started seeing my perspective around the time I brought home my first black boyfriend, whom they liked despite themselves. Years later, when I became engaged to a Puerto Rican man, their prejudices had evaporated — so much so, in fact, that when our union did not last, my parents did not utter one ill word about his heritage or culture.

But these stories from my peers were different. They described boundaries set by parents who were mostly educated, progressive and democratic. Parents who taught their children that all people should be given the same opportunities in education, real estate, business and friendship, but who later, around the time their children hit puberty, started amending and tarnishing those values with an exception that went something along the lines of: “But you can’t love one of them.”

Even with a black man in the White House, it’s a fairy tale to claim we are a “post-racial” country. Not when young people still think they need to honor ugly and antiquated boundaries restricting which of their fellow Americans are worthy of their love and commitment, even if it’s only to conform to the previous generation’s biases. Because if we live by boundaries that don’t conform to our personal beliefs, aren’t we still furthering them?

THESE were questions I was asking of myself more than of my friends, because I was trying to decide if I should move forward with Seung Yong Chung — and his family.

Knowing they were against me from the start, did I want to deal with their lifelong disapproval of us, or worse, of the mixed-race children we might someday have together?

At least in our case, I’m thankful to say, it turns out that people are easier to accept than an abstraction. In real life, Seung’s parents soon came to love me, and he and I made it way past that breakfast. In fact, I woke beside him again this morning, seven years later. We didn’t have any time for breakfast because we now have three kids to shuttle off to school before we rush off to work.

But sometimes, as I watch my husband and our children pile into the minivan, I worry, and it’s a worry that can keep me up at night: Will someone, some day, tell our half-Asian, half-Caucasian children that they are not an acceptable race to love?

Advertising

26

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

Ronzoni Borrows From Sports for New Pasta Campaign

By JANE L. LEVERE

A

dvertising by Ronzoni, the pasta company, has come a long way from its decades-old slogan, “Ronzoni sono buoni, Ronzoni is so good,” familiar to Americans of a certain age.

The company’s Ronzoni Garden Delight brand is now introducing a new campaign that uses the Internet and social media, as well as traditional media, to raise awareness and get consumers to try the product during the summer entertaining season.

Established in New York in 1915 by an immigrant from an Italian fishing village, Ronzoni is now part of New World Pasta and is owned by Ebro Foods, a Spanish company. New World Pasta introduced Ronzoni Garden Delight on a test

basis in the New York market in the fall of 2009, extended distribution of it to the East Coast last year, and began national distribution this spring.

The red, green and white pasta contains dehydrated tomatoes, spinach and carrots, which New World says provides a full serving of vegetables in every fourounce portion. It joins three other Ronzoni products, the original Ronzoni pasta, packaged in blue boxes; Ronzoni Healthy Harvest, a whole grain pasta; and Ronzoni Smart Taste, a white pasta that contains calcium, fiber and vitamin D. Officials of Ronzoni and its advertising agency, Millennium Communications, based in Syosset, N.Y., said they were introducing the new Ronzoni Garden Delight campaign during summer, when pasta salad consumption was on the rise and people were more concerned with healthy eating.

Aimed at women age 25 to 54 who frequently entertain, the campaign is divided between traditional and new media. The former includes regional advertising in publications like Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Every Day With Rachael Ray, as well as 30- and 60-second radio spots in markets like New York, Boston, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Miami.

The full-page print ad features a woman holding a huge bowl of Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad; the headline says “Bring It!” while copy says, “Summer dish most likely to disappear?

A Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad.

It’s beautiful, delicious and surprisingly healthy.”

One radio spot plays up the competitive tone set by the “Bring It!” tagline: It has sports-themed music and the voiceover is delivered by a man who sounds like a sports announcer. He describes the “epic showdown” at the “Oak Street block party,” where “smoked sausages have a strong start. Corndogs are flying,” and where “the Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad is running away with it. The colors grab you first, but it’s the taste.

And they are piling it on.”

Accompanied by the sounds of birds chirping and dogs barking, a second radio spot observes “the grazing patterns of the summer herd in their natural habitat: the backyard barbecue. Instinctively, the males gravitate to the meat. The females

pick. But one irresistible prey attracts all.

Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad.”

The national digital campaign includes banner advertising, with flash and rich media, on sites like AllRecipes.com, About.com, Evite.com and Google. There is also a 15-second YouTube video in which a woman talks about bringing her Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad to a summer party, where “it’s a little competitive.” She urges viewers to “bring this.

Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad. Totally delicious, with a full serving of vegetables.”

The video ends with the announcer urging viewers to “Bring it!”

Patrick Macri, president and chief executive of Millennium Communications, said the “Bring it!” concept was developed to “evoke a sense of friendly competition. People can up their game, make a meal more special with Ronzoni Garden Delight.”

“We are trying to borrow from the competitive spirit of sports; reality TV shows are also pushing competition,” he added.

Another part of the campaign is a sweepstakes contest, which is being promoted through banner advertising; consumers can enter this via Ronzoni’s Facebook page or the Ronzoni Garden Delight Web site. The sweepstakes invites contestants to vote for their favorite Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta salad for a chance to win one of 10 weekly $100 prizes or a $2,500 grand prize, which will be awarded in early July.

Mr. Macri, whose agency’s roots are in the digital and promotional fields, said the sweepstakes enabled Ronzoni Garden Delight to develop a database of customers to which it could send its monthly “Pasta Pulse” newsletter, created by Millennium Communications.

The newsletter lets Ronzoni “reach out to people and begin a dialogue,” said Dave Heimbecker, senior director of marketing of New World Pasta, which is based in Harrisburg, Pa. This is “key to establishing a relationship with consumers, more direct than advertising on TV only. It establishes a two-way dialogue, and lets us understand consumers and provide what they want.”

The campaign, which will run through early July, is budgeted at more than $4 million.

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

27

Fed Chairman Sticks With His View of a Slowly Mending Economy

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

programs despite concerns about inflation.

The economy has expanded much more slowly this year than the Fed predicted. Last month, private employers added only 83,000 jobs, reducing the average so far this year to about 180,000 jobs a

F

ederal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said on Tuesday that recent signs of economic weakness had not altered his basic view that the economy was mending slowly and that the pace of recovery “seems likely” to increase during the rest of the year.

Mr. Bernanke also said that he continued to see no evidence of broad and enduring inflation despite recent increases in the prices of oil and other commodities.

“Over all, the economic recovery appears to be continuing at a moderate pace, albeit at a rate that is both uneven across sectors and frustratingly slow from the perspective of millions of unemployed and underemployed workers,” Mr. Bernanke said in remarks that he planned to deliver Tuesday afternoon to a gathering of bankers in Atlanta.

His speech followed related remarks by President Obama, who told reporters that he was worried about the pace of growth, but saw no possibility of another recession.

“I am concerned about the fact that the recovery that we’re on is not producing jobs as fast as I want it to happen,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Bernanke’s speech, which came just before the financial markets closed for the day, was awai-

month — barely enough to maintain the current rate of unemployment.

“Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established,” Mr. Bernanke said.

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ted by investors looking for any indication that the Fed might consider additional steps to enhance growth. The Fed chairman alluded to that possibility only once, noting that “monetary policy cannot be a panacea.”

Stocks quickly headed lower after he spoke, after spending most of the day in positive territory. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been up more than 70 points, closed the day down 19.15 points at 12,070.81.

Mr. Bernanke spent more time explaining why the central bank planned to continue its existing

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Games

28

June 16 - 22, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Wordsearch

Answers on page 29

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

If you have come to the end of your tether, let the coming developments be a lesson. Possibly you have run out of words or your pride may have got the better of you. Whatever; whichever!

Gather your support system around you, because a long-standing goal is within reach. Recoup your losses.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Accept the error of your ways. You have learned some useful lessons after all! An agreement you assumed was ongoing may suddenly evaporate. Put the past behind you and prepare for something a little bit different. Do not leave someone hanging. If you are trying to make a point, find a way.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Clear up a bone of contention discreetly. Talk your way through misunderstandings as opposed to running for cover. Silence is indeed golden, but occasionally it can become quite rotten! Remember, evasive behaviour is the retreat and haven of cowards; so do not be tempted to play silly games.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

You can expect to be rewarded handsomely as Karma returns your best actions to date. Expand your horizons and think more expansively.

However, proceed with caution when it comes to taking action. Do not do anything on a whim. There is no point in sabotaging your life just because you feel restless. You should resist the temptation to do something drastic, for the moment.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Forgive and forget to win the universal accolades you so richly deserve. May you create a clear conscience! It is surely about time you did! Keep communication lively and fun. Then discreetly clear up a messy problem. Stay optimistic and appreciate every good thing. Keep a clear head.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

It is a case of least said, soonest mended. So do not push for answers. Let someone come to you. Give love room to breathe and you will enjoy it all the more. Distrust is a poison- so is jealousy. Catch up with yourself and put those feet up. Ditch expectations and try to redefine what you want.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You may have been misguided, but so what?

Tomorrow is another day and all that. There are no mistakes. So learn from your lessons and move ever onwards and upwards. Use your charm to good effect- it will take you further than raw ambition ever could! Smile on and build on recent events.

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Your well-honed skills should take you far. But look for ways to ‘up the ante’. Ever the perfectionist, you are formidable. Be philosophical about bad feeling. As long as you do not start something it cannot touch you. So turn a blind eye and let the perpetrator self-combust. Concentrate.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Make exciting and radical decisions: not stupid ones. Use your brain and work things out in your own fashion. You are all set to be pleasantly surprised by a new idea. A change of perspective will serve you well. Let a sticky ‘moot’ point resolve itself. But as for the rest, mix it up in grand style!

Love will find its way back into your heart and soon. This is a progressive stretch of time. So do not miss out on what is going down. Move quickly and stay ahead of the competition.

Keep your dignity intact though. Remember that if something is not for you, well then, it cannot be right!

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Access a new way of working that makes sense.

Everything will go just fine, as long as you do not force it. Words spoken from the heart will turn up the heat in love. Be brave enough to tell it like it is. Relax and do not get wound up by inconsequential details. There are more important things.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Be formidable and impressive. You are quite a catch- so act accordingly! But, of course, let dignity prevail. Your restless streak could be a source of amusement- not! Build on a good thing and do not allow space invaders to tread on your patch. Think big and be magnificent.

29 Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 28

30

June 16 - 22, 2011

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

Two Cows And A Chicken

Cartoons

The San Juan Weekly

Ziggi

The San Juan Weekly

June 16 - 22, 2011

31

Sports

Palmas Athletic Club hosts PRGA Championships T

he spectacular golf courses at the Palmas Athletic Club in Humacao - The Flamboyán & The Palm - hosted the most recent competition of the Puerto Rico Golf Association, which defined the local top positions in the sport. In the event, held until last Sunday in the largest residential resort of Puerto Rico, Rafael Campos, revalidated from start to finish with a total of 280 hits, 8 under par.

The Palmas Athletic Club, PAC for short, is responsible for the administration and operation of all recreational facilities of Palmas del Mar - two internationally renowned golf courses of 18 holes each, putting green and driving range, main clubhouse with locker rooms for ladies and gentlemen, pro-shop, formal restaurant, Members Lounge and snack bar; the largest Tennis Club in Puerto Rico with 20 tennis courts, snack bar, full serviced pro-shop and fitness center, and the Beach Club, a tropical paradise setting with breathtaking views of Vieques, a huge water park - the most complete in the eastern region – lap pool, ping pong tables, restaurant

and pool hut. PAC is a nonprofit organization created by the property owners of Palmas del Mar to rescue the recreational facilities which had been declared bankrupt by its previous owner. The Club has proven to be a successful one, since as of today the PAC has over 1,100 members.

One of the biggest changes that came with the philosophy of empowerment by the community, is that related to memberships of the PAC. Now, thanks to a window that PAC Board of Directors approved until next August 31, you need not be a property owner to apply for Palmas Athletic Club’s membership, without the requirement of initiation fee. This membership opening is a tremendous opportunity for dozens of families that reside in the neighboring municipalities to enjoy these outstanding recreational facilities with family and friends.

Other winners in the PRGA Championship

included Robert Calversbert as Amateur Champion and Israel Ortiz in the Senior category; the First Flight was won by Jonathan Rodriguez.

Clemente’s 3,000th Hit Was Muted Milestone in Ambivalent City

By TYLER KEPNER

W

hen Derek Jeter reaches 3,000 career hits, he will achieve more than a milestone. At that moment, Jeter will match the career hit total of Roberto Clemente, the Hall of Famer who stands forever as the greeter to the club.

Clemente collected exactly 3,000 hits before dying on Dec. 31, 1972, in a plane crash off the coast of Puerto Rico while delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. His final at-bat in the regular season came that Sept. 30, against the Mets at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

The night before, Clemente had reached base against Tom Seaver with a chopper that bounced off an infielder’s glove.

The scoreboard flashed hit, but the official scorer ruled it an error, keeping Clemente on the verge of history. Yet the Pittsburgh fans were largely oblivious.

The next day was an overcast Saturday, with televised college football perhaps a more appealing entertainment option. Just 13,117 fans went to the ballpark, and even the Mets’ starter was unaware of what could happen.

“I was a 22-year-old rookie that had absolutely no clue this baseball icon was sitting on 2,999 when I went out to pitch that game,” Jon Matlack said. “None.”

Matlack, 61, was speaking by phone from Lakeland, Fla., where he was preparing a minicamp for pitchers drafted by the Detroit Tigers. He has spent 15 years as the Tigers’ minor league pitching coordinator

and has found that his name resonates with many Latin American prospects, who know him for his Clemente connection.

Before the 1972 season, Matlack had played for the Senadores in San Juan, P.R. One night, Clemente welcomed several players to his home.

“Every part of me was awe-struck,” said Matlack, who recalled Clemente’s gathering the players in his trophy room to talk baseball.

“This bat was leaning in a corner,” Matlack said. “Somebody asked about hitting, and he picked up the bat to demonstrate. I remember thinking, ‘That’s a On Sept. 30, 1972, Roberto Clemente pulled a curveball off the Mets’ Jon Matlack to the wall in left-center for his 3,000th hit.

big bat,’ and I asked about it, and he said it had the maximum dimensions. He set it back down, and when everybody sort of moved on, I grabbed hold of it. I could barely pick it up. It led me to believe how strong this guy really was.”

Matlack had faced Clemente six times before they met in the fourth inning on Sept. 30, and Clemente was hitless off him, with one walk. Matlack’s strategy, he said, was to avoid a mistake on the inner half while hoping Clemente would take a quality strike on the outside corner. On a 2-2 pitch this time, he spun a curveball, outside.

“As it left my hand, I was a little upset, because I realized this thing’s not going to make the strike zone,” Matlack said.

“But he took that long stride, kept himself back and pulled it off the left-center-field wall for a double.”

Matlack did not recognize what had happened until the second-base umpire, Doug Harvey, presented the ball to Clemente. Jim Fregosi, the Mets’ shortstop who retrieved it, remembered Clemente’s understated reaction. He raised his helmet briefly to the fans.

“He was pretty cool about everything he did,” Fregosi said. “That’s how he was.”

Fregosi said he understood the importance of 3,000, a level only 10 others had reached before Clemente. But although meager crowds were not uncommon for milestones — just 23,154 showed up at Yankee Stadium to see Roger Maris’s 61st homer in 1961 — the lack of fanfare for

Clemente seems incongruous for a player so revered.

The author David Maraniss, who wrote the definitive biography of Clemente in 2006, said that the emerging Steelers were drawing fans from the Pirates, and that Three Rivers Stadium was not an appealing place. But those were not the only reasons for the apathy.

“A lot of it had to do with the social mores of that time and place,” Maraniss wrote in an e-mail. “Pittsburgh was the quintessential white working-class steel town, and the Pirates were seen as ‘too black.’ Only the year before, they had fielded the first all-black and Latino team in major league history.

“After Clemente died, he was martyred in Pittsburgh and everyone said they loved him, but that was not the case when he was alive. He had to overcome a lot in terms of race and language in Pittsburgh, and did not really win the city over completely until he died.”

Jeter long ago won over New York, and even the recent scrutiny of his relative decline should not dull the celebration when he becomes the 28th member of the 3,000-hit club. The stands will be packed, the news media will be buzzing, and the players will all know what is happening.

Fregosi, now a top scout for the Atlanta Braves, laughed at the memory of that lonely, gray afternoon in Pittsburgh.

“It certainly wasn’t the atmosphere that Jeter will get for his 3,000th hit,” Fregosi said. “But baseball was different back then.”

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June 16 - 22, 2011

The San Juan Weekly