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Nov 9 - 15, 2020

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Nov 9 - 15, 2020 Year 01 Online Issue 009

FR EE

GU ID E

ALL-INCLUSIVE NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE FOR PUERTO VALLARTA AND RIVIERA NAYARIT

WWW.VALLARTATRIBUNE.COM | FB/VTATRIBUNE | TWITTER @VALLARTATRIBUNE | INSTAGRAM @VALLARTATRIBUNE

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Welcome

Welcome to Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit

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t the Vallarta Tribune we want you to have the best experience possible while you explore Puerto Vallarta, the Bay of Banderas and Riviera Nayarit. Here are some helpful tips for traveling.

TIME ZONE: The entire state of Jalisco and the southern part Nayarit are on Central time – if you’re heading further north than Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, remember the time change so you don’t miss your flight.

BUSES: A system of urban buses can bring you from El Tuito in the south to San Pancho in the north and all the spots in between.

Fares vary according to distances travelled, but the base fare is 10 pesos. If you’re going further than San Pancho, head to the main bus terminal to catch a ‘Pacifico’ bus.

TAXIS: There are set fares within defined zones of town. Do not enter a taxi without agreeing on the price with the driver. Make a note of the taxi number in case you leave something behind. Drivers typically do not carry change.

UBER: New in 2017 to Puerto Vallarta, Uber is still experiencing some growing pains particularly in the state of Nayarit. Uber is cheaper than a taxi usually.

GETTING AROUND: In many places such as Centro Vallarta and Nuevo Vallarta there are paths for bikes and pedestrians. Please be respectful of these designations.

MONEY EXCHANGE: The most hassle-free way to exchange money is to use your debit card in the ATM to withdraw pesos.

Exchange houses offer higher rates and banks are remiss to change dollars to pesos if you don’t hold an account with them. Best to use ATM’s that are affiliated with a reputable bank located in well lit secure areas.

TIPPING: In general you should tip 10-20% in restaurants and bars. Taxi or Uber drivers – 10-20 pesos. The person who bags your groceries or helps load your car – 10-20 pesos. Don’t forget to tip

CALLING IN MEXICO

your maid, bell boy, masseuse, the band, the entertainment on your tour. And by all means, tip more if you want, wages are extremely low in Mexico.

DRINKING WATER: While Puerto Vallarta’s water has been awarded a certification of purity for the past two decades, the quality of the water tested at the source varies greatly from what comes out of the tap at the other end.

Don’t wreck your holiday – buy bottle water.

EXPORTING PETS: Falling in love with the street dog outside your hotel is easy to do and it’s also easy to bring them home with you.

The process is inexpensive and only takes a day or two. You only need a certificate of health from a local vet and check with your airline for additional requirements.

COMMON SENSE: Just as you wouldn’t walk around your hometown drunk and belligerent, it is not acceptable to do that here.

While Mexico is a tolerant culture, politeness is paramount. Don’t pee in the streets. Don’t flash your money or expensive gadgets. Pay attention to your surroundings.

Know where you are going. Pay your bills (and don’t forget to tip).

And have fun!

DRINKING AND DRIVING: First off – just don’t. The consequences are not worth it. Taxis or Ubers are cheap and plentiful. Fines are very expensive. You can go to jail and your vehicle impounded.

There are many checkstops on the weekends, and you will be asked to take a breathalizer test if they suspect you have been drinking.

LEGAL SYSTEM: Not knowing the law is not a valid excuse in Mexico, or anywhere. If you find yourself caught in a legal situation, be aware that often guilt is presumed until your innocence can be proven. This is a very difficult lesson to learn if you are visiting from the United States or Canada. Immediately contact your consulate for assistance.

Sept. 21 - 27, 2020 Year 01 Online Issue 002

FR EE

GU ID E

ALL-INCLUSIVE NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE FOR PUERTO VALLARTA AND RIVIERA NAYARIT

WWW.VALLARTATRIBUNE.COM | FB/VTATRIBUNE | TWITTER @VALLARTATRIBUNE | INSTAGRAM @VALLARTATRIBUNE

Teléfono: (322) 226 3870 Proa #111, Marina Vallarta, C.P. 48335.

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, México.

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

LOCAL CALLS WITHIN MEXICO All calls within Mexico can now be dialed using the 10-digit telephone number (usually a two- or three-digit area code plus an eight- or seven-digit number) from a landline or cell phone, eliminating the need for prefixes, such as 01, 044 or 045. In Mexico, most cities use a three-digit area code, notable exceptions being CDMX, Guadalajara and Monterrey.

LONG DISTANCE CALLS WITHIN MEXICO Same procedure as above applies.

LONG DISTANCE CALLS TO MEXICO FROM ABROAD If you are making a long-distance call to Mexico from abroad, simply add the country code (52) to the 10-digit number as described above.

CALLING TOLL-FREE NUMBERS (The following procedure predates the August 2019 update. We are waiting for specific information regarding toll-free calls within Mexico and to numbers elsewhere.)

Some toll-free numbers work from Mexico to the US and Canada, but many do not. Those that do work are often not toll-free. You need to dial a different prefix. To call the following toll free prefixes, dial as follows: 800 numbers Dial 001-880-then the number 866 numbers Dial 001-883-then the number 877 numbers Dial 001-882-then the number 888 numbers Dial 001-881-then the number

INTERNATIONAL LONG-DISTANCE CALLS FROM MEXICO US & Canada: Dial 001 + Area Code + Number Elsewhere: Dial 00 + Country Code + Area Code + Number

FIRE DEPARTMENT: 322.223.9476 AMBULANCE: 322.222.1533 IMMIGRATION: 322.224.7719 CONSUMER PROTECTION: 01.800.468.8722

Emergencies: 911 Red Cross: 065

The Vallarta Tribune is an activity and entertainment guide and publishes information as it is provided by the advertiser or event host.

We do not assume responsibility in errors or omissions other than to correct them as they are made known to us regarding event schedules, locations and/or prices.

In addition, we do not assume any responsibility for erroneous inclusion or exclusion of information except to

TOURISM OFFICES Jalisco: 322.221.2676 Nayarit: 322.297.1006 CONSULATES American Consulate 24 hrs 01-332-268-2100 Canadian Consulate 322.293.0098 322.293.0099 24 hrs: 1.800.706.2900

Photo by Nomad Family Photo Group

take reasonable care to ensure accuracy, that permission has been obtained to use it, and to remove it as soon as is practical upon receiving your notification of error.

We recommend you always confirm prior to attending or visiting an event or establishment. Weekly publication. * www.vallartatribune.com * www.facebook.com/VtaTribune/

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Obituary Ralph Dodd Osborne June 21, 1939 - August 18, 2020

An avid reader of history and biography, Ralph developed a lifelong love of travel, visiting every continent and one hundred fifty countries. Some of his adventures included receiving a machete-haircut in the Bahamas, being caught in a Civil War in Santiago, following Silk Routes from China to the Himalayas, celebrating New Year’s Eve at the true South Pole, and helping a budding entrepreneur start a t-shirt shop in Thailand. His homes were a tribute to his travels, containing unusual artifacts from afar and reflecting his interest in other people and cultures.

Ralph Dodd Osborne, III, of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, passed away after brief complications with the coronavirus. His parents were Ralph Dodd Osborne, Jr., and Ann Lea Osborne, of Llewellyn Park, New Jersey. Born with severe asthma, he left for school in Arizona at age nine in hopes that the dry air would fortify his lungs. By his senior year at the Southern Arizona School, he was elected president of the student body and was captain of the top polo team in the state. After graduation, he tried out for the three-day U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team and missed by one place.

After graduating from college in Arizona, he returned to the East Coast and alternated between living in New York City and New Jersey over the next forty years. He joined the family business, C.S. Osborne, originally a harness industry manufacturer that was started in 1826. Ralph, in collaboration with his father, expanded the business and developed close relationships with associates at home and abroad.

As president of the company after his father retired, Ralph was known for his kindness and empathy, and he frequently extended help to employees navigating difficult personal situations. Through the International Institute of New Jersey, of which he served as president in the 1990s, Ralph hired and supported many refugees looking to start life anew in America. Ralph also served on the board of Rosedale Cemetery in NJ, from 1971 to 2006, and was an active member of Newark’s Essex Club and the Union Club in New York City. As an enthusiast of the arts, he also backed off-Broadway plays.

In New Jersey, he lived near his sister, Lea Angell, and became the beloved “seventh member” of Lea’s six-person family, developing tight bonds with his brother-in-law and his three nieces and one nephew.

Before his full retirement from C.S. Osborne in 2012, Ralph moved to Mismaloya, outside of Puerto Vallarta.

This time marked his favorite and happiest years, and the dry air helped minimize his asthma. Here he made dear friends who were drawn to his fun-loving wit, his humor, and his kindness and generosity. He loved to entertain, and his home became a favorite place for his friends to gather. He also helped support young people of promise and furthered their education. No visit to his house in Mexico was complete without an afternoon at the Botanical Gardens, where he was a frequent visitor, a benefactor, and a garden advocate.

He was a founding board member of PEACEAnimals of Banderas Bay, and he served on the vestry as assistant treasurer of Christ Church by the Sea, in addition to helping guide the church to a new location.

He leaves behind his sister, Lea Osborne Angell, and her husband, Jack Angell. He was particularly fond of his sister's children, Jennifer Angell Biloski, her husband, Alan, and three sons; Jackson Angell, and his wife, Kate Jostrand Angell, and their son and two daughters; Jessica Angell Moore and her husband, Sean, and their two children; and his niece, Sarah Angell Jones and her husband, Oakley. He was affectionately known as UR (Uncle Ralph) by his nephew and nieces, and his eight great-nieces and nephews referred to him as "gruncle" (great uncle) and RTU (Ralph the Uncle).

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to one of Ralph’s favorite organizations: Banderas Bay Charities (please earmark PEACEAnimals) peaceanimals.org Christ Church by the Sea www.christchurchbythesea.org Vallarta Botanical Gardens www.vbgardens.org

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Local Voices

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Bucerías Life in the Slow Lane Kelly and Dennis Wilson

buceriaslifeintheslowlane.com

Kelly and Dennis moved from the chilly north to sunny Bucerias in July 2017. Together, they publish Bucerias Life in the Slow Lane, an online news outlet describing community events, eateries and arts, local history, human interest stories and more. They enjoy spending time volunteering for various organizations.

Adrian’s Gift

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aleria Monarca – 156 E SUR Lazaro Cardenas, Bucerias While watching a young man over several weeks as he applied colour to a large wall in town, we were in awe as his creation came to life. We would stop by every few days and say hello, and marvel at his work.

As it appeared, he was nearly finished, we asked if we could learn a bit about him. He graciously agreed, and we got to know him better over a cold cerveza.

Adrian Takano is originally from Mexico City and currently resides in Puerto Vallarta.

After finishing high school, he realized it was time to “leave the city and join the living.”

When he first arrived in Vallarta he painted inside people’s homes. Lucky for all of us, Adrian decided he’d rather focus on public art. “I put all my efforts there and that’s what I’ve been doing since.” When you see his art, you will think he was trained by the very best, and perhaps he was…Adrian is self-taught. He has no formal schooling in art but has become a muralist extraordinaire.

“All of that builds you.”

“People are really shocked when they learn I am self-taught when some of the best artists are self taught. There are no rules, that’s the only rule. It’s a great way to find your path. Puerto Vallarta gave me some harsh years. I was hungry. Nobody knows you. You don’t have a dime. All of that builds you.”

Adrian also paints on canvas and used to teach classes in his studio. Galeria Monarca owner, Sandra Nitchie, describes how she

met Adrian, “When I first moved to the area eight years ago, I was looking to revisit my painting aspirations and found Adrian’s class in Puerto Vallarta.” Sandra believes in supporting local talent and knew who to call upon when she decided on a mural for her own gallery. Adrian has stopped teaching since he began doing public murals.

Adrian Takano, Muralist Adrian said, “When I think of all those years, it was kind of crazy. There were many ups and downs, I was just going with the flow.

It wasn’t even my intention to start teaching, I just ended up somehow in a gallery and people started asking me questions. The next thing I know they’re calling me their teacher I’m charging for it. I used to teach for six or seven years in two or three different galleries. Then I moved it to my studio. I moved twenty times in two years. You know how it is here…you find a place then find a better one, so the studio was traveling.

Teaching is very valuable. I think teachers are very important so at some point I’d like to put together some kind of workshop. I want to teach the class that I would like to have been taught ten years ago.”

Our “interview” went something like this: How did you learn to speak English?

AT: I learned how to speak English by listening to Led Zeppelin and watching movies.

How many works do you have in Vallarta?

AT: I don’t know maybe 15, 20. I honestly

have lost track, but a few.

How do you decide what to paint?

AT: I usually like to paint my own ideas, come up with my own concepts. This time it was very lucky for both of us because she (Sandra Nitchie) wanted something very similar to what I had in mind. I just kind of fused ideas together and came up with this.

The way I put it together is by taking a bunch of pictures that are close to my idea then edit them together to create a digital sketch.

(The mural) looks very different to the sketch.

I mean, it’s the same feel, it’s the same essence, but as you create, it morphs. The way I’m progressing on the wall? I make the decisions here on the wall, not in the sketch or in my phone.

How do you know how big to make images, like the hands and nose? When you’re up so close you don’t have the same perception as somebody standing across the street.

AT: That took a lot of practice. In this case, I have as reference the windows and a few other things like those boxes (electrical).

They’re kind of imaginary lines for me to know where things more or less go. It’s a lot of just stepping back, looking at it, and going at it again.

When did you know that you were interested in art?

AT: I guess as soon as I was able to hold a pencil I was doing something related to it, you, know? I didn’t always know that this is what I was going to be doing, but I just decided pretty early on when I was about 14, 15 that I wanted to do this. In PV is where I found the opportunity to really do it in my own terms, which is what I wanted.

Do you have a favourite creation?

Adrian completed the front of Galeria Monarca previously.

AT: No. That would be like asking which

is your favourite kid. As far as the image itself, I don’t really have a favorite. I like them different, for different reasons in different ways. I (painted) a mermaid on a big building.

That one was super hard to paint. It was six stories of scaffolding. It was incredibly exhausting. It’s very rewarding when you see it finished.

What does art do for you?

AT: Well, it’s my lifestyle. It’s a connection with people and it’s a way to get to know myself. It’s like a journey into your own psyche, your own mind, I guess is the best way to say it. It is a strong connection, a way to connect universally with people, and it’s a strong way to send a message. Art is a thing that can heal, if you put the right image in the right place you can totally transform it.

It’s powerful. Argentina and Colombia had neighborhoods that were in deep trouble.

Murders, drugs. They just brought them back to life with art. In every house, on every building. That’s a great feeling. That’s one of the things that drive me. And the ancestral culture of Mexico is so rich and so poorly taught to us in schools as we grow up, so this is my way to contribute a little, so people ask themselves questions and are aware of the dignity of the indigenous people. We need to bring attention to that. The ancestral culture is so beautiful and colorful and is a steady source of inspiration.

“My goal has always been to make art available for everybody. That’s the whole point of doing street art. Take it out of the galleries and bring it big, for the people.“ We found Adrian fascinating, and we have even more of his story to tell as he works on a project painting murals in schools and encouraging students in the field of art. We’ll save it for another day.

In the meantime, look him up on Facebook and Instagram. He is highly accomplished, leaving murals behind in eight countries, including this one below.

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Local Voices

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uerto Vallarta this month is in view of United Airlines travelers, an airline that is making a strong return with flights from several cities in the United States. In a lengthy article published in November’s Hemispheres magazine, readers get a broad overview of the many activities they can do here, with pleasures for all the senses.

Hemispheres is a magazine that is distributed on board United Airlines planes, which now reaches more than 10 million travelers digitally, and is also sent to 400,000 homes of its premium customers for the care and prevention of Covid. -19; however, it maintains a wide reach of potential customers and frequent travelers.

The article, signed by journalist Nils Bernstein is titled “Three perfect days in Puerto Vallarta”, in it he comments that this destination is surrounded by the dense jungle of the Sierra Madre and remote beaches reachable only by sea, which gives it a particular charm.

Three days in paradise Reported as a three-day getaway to the port, the author refers that during his stay he enjoyed snorkeling in the Los Arcos National Marine Park, where he observed numerous species of fish and mollusks that he describes as: “a true Cirque du Soleil of species fighting for Attention”.

Regarding Los Arcos, the author mentions that despite being a popular destination for snorkeling and diving, and being close to the coast, it offers the most dense and colorful marine panorama in the region, given that it is protected as a natural reserve and He adds that even given the development of Puerto Vallarta, “this type of intact paradises are everywhere.”

With the curiosity of the marine fauna, the journalist visits southern beaches such as Garza Blanca, Palmares, Punta Negra, and Conchas Chinas; then he goes to a restaurant specializing in seafood where he savors a variety of aguachile and ceviches.

Also discover the architecture of the historic center full of “seductive cobbled streets and amazing views”, and marvel at the parish of Guadalupe and its crown, before starting a walk through the “gringo

News

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Puerto Vallarta receives height promotion with article in United Airlines magazine -Hemispheres magazine reaches 10 million travelers and 400,000 households in the United States Recovery connectivity The audience of Hemispheres magazine is frequent travelers, MileagePlus, Premier Platinum, Premier 1000 and Global Service members, the average income per household of the Hemispheres reader is $ 380,700 and with a high propensity to travel, particularly to the beaches.

United Airlines operated 145 flights in the month of October and as of November it will reintegrate its entire offer of destinations that include direct flights to Puerto Vallarta from the following cities: Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago and Newark.

Here is the article…

Three Perfect Days Puerto Vallarta

gulch” to Casa Kimberly, famous for the idyll that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lived there.

His visit includes the Vallarta Botanical Garden, as well as a stop at Boca de Tomatlán and a walk through the jungle to Colomitos beach, with extension to Quimixto to appreciate the waterfalls.

Upon his return from the heart of the jungle, he walks through the streets of the 5 de Diciembre neighborhood and along the boardwalk, where he enjoys the great atmosphere of the promenade, before going to dinner at one of the most famous restaurants in the port. On his route, he also visits the Los Muertos beach pier and tastes a traditional tuba to cool off.

By Nils Bernstein November 1, 2020 Puerto Vallarta’s incongruities are its charm. It’s a metropolis of almost 400,000 people that’s bordered on one side by a dense jungle in which jaguars run wild and on the other by remote beaches that are unreachable by land. It’s a region with centuries-old indigenous and colonial traditions, and it’s also a cutting-edge culinary destination and a global center of LGBTQ culture. Vallarta sits smack in the center of the perfect horseshoe that is the Bahía de Banderas (Banderas Bay), 60 miles of sandy shoreline running from Punta Mita in the north to Yelapa in the south. Yet it remained largely unknown until the 1964 film The Night of the Iguana broadcast its allure to the world. As Tennessee Williams wrote in the play that inspired the film: “Let’s go down and swim in the liquid moonlight.”

Snorkeling at Los Arcos National Marine Park Day 1: Porcupine puffers, “nothing soup,” and a bath with Liz Taylor I find out the hard way that it’s not a good idea to laugh while snorkeling. But it’s near impossible not to at Los Arcos National Marine Park, where tropical fish, eels, rays, and the occasional octopus, sea turtle, or seahorse perform among the coral reefs—a veritable Cirque du Soleil of sea beasts competing for attention.

A school of king angelfish enters my sight line like a liquid light show, their deep blue bodies streaked with white, ombréing to an iridescent blue at the edges, their neon-yellow tails flapping behind. As they mob a lumbering, oblong fish, it suddenly puffs up, more than doubling in size, like a balloon covered in spikes. I guffaw into my mask and get a mouthful of saltwater–an unexpected defense mechanism of the so-called porcupine pufferfish.

Aguachile at Lamara Los Arcos comprises three small granite islands just off Playa Mismaloya that jut abruptly out of the sea in natural arch formations. Despite its popularity as a snorkeling and scuba spot—and its location less than 200 feet from shore—it offers the densest and most colorful marine display in the region, thanks largely to its having been a protected marine reserve since 1984. There may be constant development in the Puerto Vallarta area, but these kinds of unspoiled paradises seem to be everywhere.

My guide is Texas-born, Mexico-raised Jet de la Isla, who’s been in Vallarta since 2016. “I made a quick stop here to check out the snorkeling and decided to stay for a month,” he says. “It wasn’t long before I

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

News

fell in love with the friendly people, beautiful beaches and marine life, lively streets, and nightlife that never stops. I took a side job as a tour guide and used any excuse to extend my stay—‘Whale season is in two months,’ and then, ‘They say the rainy season is beautiful…’—and decided I needed to keep doing what I loved.” (“I came to visit and ended up staying” is a common refrain among the people I meet in Vallarta, Mexicans and expats alike.) His company, Jet’s Private Boat Tours , now has an eight-guide team specializing in customized excursions, using boats ranging from small pangas for couples to luxury yachts for groups, and even offering the area’s only nude outings. De la Isla also runs a gay youth hostel in the heart of town.

Seeing all those fish made me hungry (although maybe not for the porcupine puffer), so I walk to Lamara, which was recommended by friends from Guadalajara. The restaurant’s menu consists mostly of aguachile (spicy shellfish ceviche) and ceviches of local whitefish or tuna. The effortlessly chic decor and stylish servers remind me of my part-time home of Mexico City, apart from the fact that the fish was caught a few blocks away. I order double-decker tostadas of aguachile Amora (shrimp, cucumber, jicama, peanuts, and hibiscus salsa), and ceviche Flat (sliced tuna with ginger, red onion, and serrano chile on a bed of avocado), washing them down with a Xakúa lager from the neighboring state of Michoacán.

Colorful buildings with wooden door and window shutters.

After our excursion, I ask him to drop me on the north side of town, which gives me a scenic survey of the beaches that sit within the city itself. By law, all beaches are public, even those that are part of large resorts. Heading up the coast, the 20-minute boat ride whizzes by playas La Garza Blanca, Palmares, Punta Negra, Las Estacas, Conchas Chinas, Los Muertos, Olas Altas, Rosita, Camarones, and finally Playa Tranquila.

The Parroquía de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe It’s a quick Uber ride to the Plaza de Armas, the oceanfront central square of Old Town Vallarta, a neighborhood that’s a maze of alluring cobblestone streets, peek-a-boo vistas, and crooked staircases lined with citrus trees, pomegranate bushes, and passion fruit vines. On the square stands the Parroquía de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, a stately edifice that looks at first glance like many of Mexico’s colonial

churches—albeit one bathed in ocean mist.

On closer examination of the building, which broke ground in 1903, I find an architectural hodgepodge of Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical styles, topped with an immense, ornate crown that was reconstructed in 2009 by sculptor Carlos Terrés.

Unlike many Mexican beach towns— Ixtapa, Cancún Puerto Vallarta wasn’t developed as a tourist hub. Nor was it the “sleepy little fishing village” that’s become part of its mythology. In the 1800s, it was an important port and administrative center for nearby silver mining towns, and starting in the 1920s it moved toward agriculture and commercial fisheries, with trickles of tourism. It only emerged as an international destination after the filming of The Night of the Iguana and the breathless tabloid coverage of the affair between its star, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor, who flew down to join him during production in 1962, despite both of them being married. Burton put Taylor up at Casa Kimberly, a beautiful colonial villa just across the street from his house in Old Town. He even built a bridge, the Puente del Amor (Bridge of Love), connecting the two homes so they could maintain a glimmer of discretion (he gifted her the home in 1964).

Now, the two homes make up a single hotel,

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and I’m lucky enough to be staying in Taylor’s original master suite—over 2,500 square feet of opulence overlooking the bay.

A stylish hotel room with marble pillars.

Casa Kimberly’s Velvet Suite, which pays homage to the Elizabeth Taylor film National Velvet I head to the hotel’s open-air rooftop restaurant, Iguana, to get my first glance of Vallarta’s famous sunsets. Iguana is a popular spot for Taylor-Burton fans, with views of the Sierra Madre foothills and the bay. There’s a seemingly endless magic hour until the sun dips below the horizon and the sky takes on surprising shades of orange, pink, violet, and lavender, with a halo of the palest lime green to match my margarita.

Once night has fallen, I take a taxi north to the Zona Hotelera, or Hotel Zone. This area is populated mostly with faceless resorts, but it’s also where one of the city’s most exciting restaurants is located. La Leche’s monochromatic interior looks like a milk-colored Louise Nevelson sculpture, a fitting backdrop for what Chef Alfonso “Poncho” Cadena calls cocina irreverente.

Cadena is part of a youthful, creative culinary clique whose restaurants stand in welcome contrast to the Señor Frog’s–type continued on next page

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continued from previous page party palaces that line the streets near the beaches. I start with parrotfish—one of the more colorful fish I spotted while snorkeling today—paired with an avocado vinaigrette and little pearls of lime tapioca. My second course, the “sopa de nada” (nothing soup), is actually an ethereal cauliflower cream, and I finish with the locally famed roast duck, one of the few dishes that rarely leaves the menu.

Back at Casa Kimberly, in a bathroom that’s twice as big as my apartment, I take a long bath in Taylor’s original, custom-made, heart-shaped pink-marble tub. Due supposedly to a translation mishap, the tub is shaped like an anatomical heart rather than a valentine, and it is all the more elegant for it.

A fish market in Colonia 5 de Deciembre Day 2: Discovering remote beaches, chasing chachalacas, and drinking tuba The appeal of waking up in Elizabeth Taylor’s bed can’t be overstated, but I have a long day ahead, so I force myself up and over to the private pool for an invigorating dip. Still, it’s tempting to linger over the view of Old Town, with its roofs of sunworn terra-cotta barrel tiles creating a mottled mosaic that reaches to the sea.

It’s a short walk from the hotel and past the Plaza de Armas to the waterfront Puerto Café, which a friend told me has the best coffee in Vallarta. I’m not disappointed with my dripped-to-order cup and fresh-baked banana bread. Even better, they’re blasting Queen’s bizarre, underrated Flash Gordon soundtrack on an old turntable, while the audiophile barista explains how the placement of the giant vintage speakers interacts with the acoustics of the century-old

space and its high, wood-beam ceiling. I get a bottle of coldbrew concentrate to go—fuel for the day.

A fancy pour at Puerto Café The 30-minute drive to the Vallarta Botanical Gardens follows the coastline south before cutting inland, into dense jungle. Established in 2004, it’s already one of the largest and most diverse gardens in Mexico, with extensive collections of orchids, bromeliads, agaves, and cacti among thousands of native plant species.

My favorite part is the vanilla plantation trail, along which hundreds of vanilla vines spiral up posts and trees, interspersed with cacao trees. (Both chocolate and vanilla are native to Mexico.) I learn that vanilla is the world’s second-most expensive spice, after saffron, largely due to the fact that each vanilla bean ripens at a different rate and must be individually hand-harvested.

I love seeing the plants but am truly seduced by the many birds that seem unfazed by human intrusion. “I can name at least 50 birds that hang out here,” a worker tells me as I shoo away a few butterflies and one pesky hummingbird. I spy parrots and woodpeckers and what I think are vultures and hawks. I consider it a good luck sign to spot a citreoline trogon, a bright-eyed, yellow-bellied stunner closely related to the rare quetzal, a sacred bird in pre-Hispanic culture.

A water taxi at Boca de Tomatlán From the botanical garden, it’s only a few minutes by taxi to Boca de Tomatlán, the hub for the so-called South Shore beaches, most of which are reachable only by the water taxis that congregate there. (They pick up on Los Muertos Pier, too.) Instead, I opt for a hike

to tiny Playa Colomitos. The walk is brief— about 35 minutes—and not too strenuous, alternating between well-marked trail and concrete steps, with views of the water almost the entire way. At one point I hear a jarring sound, like strained machinery, which I trace to a flock of turkey-like birds munching on fallen guavas. It turns out the sound is the quick-stuttering “song” of the West Mexican chachalaca.

Colomitos is the smallest beach in the area, a sliver of sand hugged by massive rock formations. The water is clear, warm, and shallow, and my swim feels like a spa bath. With no vendors or partiers in sight, it’s a postcard of the sort of Mexican beach that everyone looks for but that has been condoed and hoteled nearly out of existence. There are only four other beachgoers, and two of them invite me to nearby Playa Quimixto, which offers a 30-minute hike (or horseback ride) to waterfalls, but I’m getting hungry, so I grab a water taxi to the Los Muertos Pier.

A ceviche tostada at Mariscos La Tía Although Playa Los Muertos isn’t the most bucolic of Vallarta’s beaches, it’s great for people-watching, and the pier is an easy meeting place. Walking on the malecón, the waterfront promenade, I spot a white-suited man with a giant clay jug being swarmed by bees. He’s serving tuba, a traditional drink of fermented coconut palm sap that’s a remnant of the 250-year galleon trade between western Mexico and the Philippines. It’s slightly fizzy and gently sweet, garnished with chopped apples and pecans—a perfect partner for my leisurely 30-minute stroll along the beach to lunch.

Colonia 5 de Diciembre is a neighborhood full of markets, schools, and tiny taquerías, and it feels a little less touristy than Old Town, especially as you move farther from the sea. Mariscos La Tía is packed—a good sign, even though it means a 20-minute wait for a table—and I catch no English within earshot. It’s another all-seafood restaurant, and I order a steaming cauldron of marlin, shrimp, and octopus in a rich shrimp stock, along with a ceviche tostada topped with cueritos, or pickled pork rinds.

Wixárika art at Tierra Huichol Walking back down the malecón, I see Tierra Huichol, a gallery specializing in the folk art of the Wixárika people, natives of the

Nov 9 - 15, 2020 region who make vivid beaded sculptures and yarn “paintings” that represent shamanistic visions of the universe. I’ve seen these in craft shops elsewhere in Mexico, where there’s no assurance that the artists are being paid fairly or not being pressured to change their practice to fit commercial demand. Tierra Huichol has worked directly with Wixárika artists for years and is committed to compensating them properly and helping sustain the independence of their communities. I buy a beaded eagle, considered the messenger between the gods and man, adorned with images of peyote—which makes a lot of sense, given the kaleidoscopic color scheme.

Just up the beach from here, I’m meeting Erick Fierro, a friend of a friend, for mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio, a branch of a Havana restaurant that’s an oasis from the beachfront tourist traps that surround it. (Pro tip: It’s also where to buy Cuban cigars to bring home.) Fierro is a real estate agent who started a face-mask assembly project during the pandemic as a way to support women who had lost their jobs. By September, he had 12 women making masks, and they had sold more than 6,000 masks (with the money divided equally between the women).

Chile en nogada at Café des Artistes He notes that Vallarta is unique among vacation towns not just for its tight community of full-timers but because expats are both embraced by and eager to support the community. “One day, I needed three sewing machines,” he says, “and an hour later I had five.” As I enjoy my cocktail, I witness Fierro greet countless friends. “Socializing here is old and young and poor and rich and dark and white,” he says. “I’ve lived in many cities and never had this sense of belonging. It’s like a family—you can trash them, but if someone from the outside trashes them, you defend your people.”

I thank Fierro for the drink and head to dinner at Café des Artistes, which, over the course of 30 years, has morphed from modern French cuisine into one of the best Mexican restaurants in the country.

Chef-owner Thierry Blouet was born in Puerto Rico to French parents, came to Mexico in 1978, arrived in Vallarta in 1987, and never left. I order cactus aguachile, a cabeza (beef cheek) taco with dandelion greens, risotto with foie gras and Mexican

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News The scene-stealer is the hole on the Pacifico course known as the Tail of the Whale, a 181-yard par-3 whose water hazard is, well, the ocean. It’s an optional hole located on a black-rock island, said to be the world’s only natural island green, and it is accessible only at low mid-tide. (You can take your initial tee shot at high tide and return later to steer your cart across the ocean floor and putt it in.) After a few failed drives into the Pacific, I cart over anyway, for a quick scenic round-trip.

I tell myself that my golf failings are because I’m so distracted by the setting, even if I don’t see any actual whale tails out in the ocean. (Their migration won’t bring them here until December.) Anyway, I decide to stow the clubs and explore the coastline. The Riviera Nayarit stretches from the northern part of Puerto Vallarta to the port of San Blas, about 90 miles by car. Each coastal town has a distinct personality, and while I won’t get far today, I’m taking notes for my return trip.

Chile en nogada at Café des Artistes morels, suckling lamb two ways, and one of the most inspired and tasty desserts I’ve had in ages: a whole roast habanero chile draped over passion fruit mousse. Then it’s straight back to Liz’s bed.

The beach at The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort Day 3: The Tail of the Whale, chocolate clams, and sea turtle hatchlings on the Riviera Nayarit After enjoying a room-service breakfast of coffee and tropical fruit on my terrace, I hit the road, headed northwest to The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort. One of the most breathtaking peninsulas in North America, Punta Mita is surrounded almost entirely by the bay and the ocean (generally speaking, Punta Mita refers to the entire peninsula, and Punta de Mita to a nearby village), with most of the land on it taken up by the St. Regis and Four Seasons resorts, plus the two golf courses they share.

It’s early for the welcome drink I’m offered in the Altamira Lobby, but I can’t resist celebrating when I see the ridiculous panorama of palms and pools cascading down to the ocean. Any number of water activities are on offer, but even I, a non-golfer, have heard of the Punta Mita Golf Club, and I want to check out the fairways for myself.

In effect, the two adjoining courses here (the Pacifico borders the ocean; the more challenging Bahía, the bay) amount to a private national park, with some of the best views of my whole trip. My golf pro, Luis Ituarte, says that some call it “the Pebble Beach of Mexico,” and he notes that it’s entirely sustainable in terms of water use, thanks to treated wastewater and collected rainwater.

An ocean-side golf course from above.

The famed Tail of the Whale hole at the Punta Mita Golf Club’s Pacifico course.

Photo: The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort

A small street lined with restaurants.

Sidewalk restaurants in Sayulita. Photo: Vaughn/Alamy Stock Photo First stop: lunch. The long and winding dirt road to Litíbu Grill, located outside the tiny village of Higuera Blanca, doesn’t instill much confidence, but the reward is well worth it.

This hidden seaside gem lets you swim in the ocean or laze in hammocks between courses of giant charcoal-grilled chocolate clams (so named for the color of their shells), fresh caught fish, and octopus with spicy potatoes and olive salsa. Dog lovers take note: The host/mascot is an amiable, human-size Great Dane that adds to the restaurant’s mellow charm.

Although I’m tempted to spend the whole day on the beach, I manage to get myself up the road to the town of San Francisco, aka San Pancho. Considered the cultural capital of the Riviera Nayarit, it’s a colorful pueblo that offers as much inland as it does on the lively

white-sand beach. I pop into Entreamigos, a community center that has a library, gallery, eco-design center, and even a children’s circus school. The gallery sells crafts made locally from recycled materials, and I pick up a few wild-eyed stuffed octopuses made from bedsheets.

Fifteen minutes down the road lies the town of Sayulita, where about 2,000 full-timers enjoy the arc-shaped Playa Sayulita and a laid-back vibe that’s equal parts hippie and hipster. It’s a good place for surfers of all skill levels (the waves get bigger as you move north on the beach), with the prime season going from December to April.

Baby turtles crawling over sand.

Sea turtle hatchlings crawl toward the ocean. Photo: Big Cheese Photo LLC / Alamy Stock Photo I’ve heard that Playa Sayulita is one of the beaches where Olive Ridley sea turtles lay their eggs, and that “turtle releases”— ushering the hatched babies into the sea—are a fun sunset activity. I head over to Campamento Tortuguero Sayulita, a volunteer turtle protection and conservation organization, to learn more. It turns out that not all turtle releases are created equally. To suit tourist demand, some places put turtle eggs in sand-filled “hot boxes” that allow for a faster incubation period, potentially rushing turtles that may not be sufficiently mature to move to the sea. The boxes may also create more females than males, since turtle sex is temperature-dependent (warmer sands produce females), which is a problem, as there’s already a shortage of males, in part due to climate change.

The folks at Campamento Tortuguero Sayulita, meanwhile, relocate nests from all over the beach to protect them from poaching, predators, and unintentional human damage. They incubate the eggs naturally in beach sand until they hatch and the turtles can return to the sea on their

9 own. It’s estimated that the turtles from only about one out of every 1,000 eggs will reach reproductive maturity, making work like this all the more crucial, and I’m thrilled to help usher dozens of these little 3-inch babies to the sea—even knowing the sad fate that awaits most of them.

Chochoyotes (corn dumplings) at Carolina Walking back to the car, I pick up some souvenir raicilla (a type of mezcal typical of this region) at Sayulita Wine Shop and drive back to the St. Regis for dinner at Carolina, a fine-dining restaurant that attracts local foodies as much as hotel guests. Chef Miguel Soltero Rincón puts a spin on classic Mexican cuisine, sourcing ingredients as close to home as possible, including an extensive list of Mexican wines.

I start with a crab-salad tostada topped with oat-crusted soft-shell crab and served in a bowl of tomato broth. Grilled lobster comes with a “taco” of chorizo-stuffed plantain. For dessert, there’s an ice cream of totomoxtle, or burnt corn husk, which has a not-unpleasant flavor of hot dog.

Geomorphologists believe that Banderas Bay is roughly where the southern tip of Baja California broke off the North American Plate over 5 million years ago, creating the Baja California Peninsula and the Gulf of California. Effectively, it means that Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta were once the same place. In our current era of seismic environmental shifts, there’s something reassuring about how Vallarta has preserved its biodiversity and physical beauty even as it has become the most progressive city in Mexico. On my suite’s terrace, I ponder plate tectonics and sip a nightcap of organic Mexican rosé from the Solar Fortún winery while perusing real estate listings online. After all, whale season is soon, and they say the rainy season is beautiful…

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Through the challenge program

Comude and health sector promote healthy lifestyles • The activities of the CHALLENGE Reactivation program for everyone, will be broadcast on Wednesdays through social networks

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his Wednesday, in the Olympic pool of the Alfonso Díaz Santos sports unit, a series of virtual talks began on the CHALLENGE Reactivation program for everyone, a public policy aimed at creating healthy lifestyle habits to combat, through physical activation , the recovery of public spaces and integration as a society, the health problems that afflict the population.

The director of the Municipal Sports Council, José Amador Hernández Madrigal, pointed out that this program is promoted between the municipal government headed

by Arturo Dávalos Peña and the VIII Health Region, to have a positive impact on society.

He stressed that the work will be developing the nutritionists Gabriela Romero and Jessica Ramírez, who operate the Healthy Lifestyles program of the Jalisco Health Secretariat.

It was the responsibility of Gabriela Romero, coordinator of the program, to

present the details of this scheme, and said that the objective is to promote the culture of healthy habits in the population, promote the integration of communities through the recovery of public spaces, generate awareness on the importance of activation to address public health problems, in addition to strengthening healthy habits.

It is an activity shared between the

government of Puerto Vallarta, through the Municipal Sports Council and the VIII Sanitary Region of the Jalisco Health Secretariat, who will be addressing a series of topics of general interest.

Among the topics to be discussed on Wednesdays, through the social network Fecebook Comude Puerto Vallarta, the following stand out: the correct diet, hydration

and consumption of water, a plate of good eating and a jar of good drinking, as well as the correct diet by groups of age.

Other topics to be addressed are nutritional information and new labeling, hygiene and food safety, food handling, physical activity and exercise, physical activity and exercise in work environments, and the rescue of food culture.

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News The municipal government, through the IMAJ

They seek to contribute to the empowerment of young people from Vallarta • They successfully organize the event ‘Young People who Inspire 2020’, to recognize those who have stood out in different local areas

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n order to recognize and encourage young people, whose conduct and dedication to work, study and social work have been remarkable among the Vallarta community, the municipal government headed by Arturo Dávalos Peña, through the Municipal Institute for Youth Care ( IMAJ), successfully organized the recognition ‘Young People who Inspire’ 2020.

In a recent ceremony held on the esplanade of the Cuale Cultural Center, the organizers rewarded those who by their own merits have stood out in the sports, artistic, academic, entrepreneurship, social,

environmental and medical fields.

Gabriel Padilla Cuellar, head of the IMAJ, reported that from each of the areas the shortlist was mentioned; However, only the first place was entitled to receive the award that consisted of a statuette, recognition and economic award, in accordance with the provisions of the call.

In the academic field, the winner was José Alejandro López Sánchez, while in the artistic field the award went to Juan José Esparza Briceño; in the sports field Emilia Gabriela González Chanes; in entrepreneurship Ángel Salvador Ortiz de la Torre; environment, Alejandra Patricia Castelo Corona; medical staff, Yenith Barrón Bernal, and in the social sphere, Herova del Carmen Olmos Pérez.

With this type of event, the IMAJ seeks to contribute in the sphere of empowerment of the Vallarta youth; Talk about their own history and experiences, motivate new generations, guide and prevent the most vulnerable, get involved in participating in community projects that are sustainable and sustainable, inclusive, non-discriminatory and promote human rights.

The winners will be the distinctive banner, and example, with the purpose that the new generations amplify their voice and active participation, as established in the call.

At the delivery of these awards were also the councilor Eduardo Martínez Martínez; Marina de los Santos Álvarez, director of the Vallarta Institute of Culture; Dr. Gabriela Magaña López, director of the IMSS Clinic 179; Dr. José Oswaldo Ramírez Castellón, head of the IMSS 179 Clinical Department; José Amador Hernández Madrigal, director of COMUDE Puerto Vallarta; Helios Hernández Hurtado, Deputy Director of the Environment, and David de la Rosa Flores, Deputy Director of Social Development.

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Puerto Vallarta strengthens its alliances with important commercial partners in the El Bajío area

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erived from the past promotional caravans through the El Bajío region, recently the Trust for the Promotion and Tourism Advertising of Puerto Vallarta, received a couple of national familiarization trips (fam trip), both from San Luis Potosí, which gave the opportunity for more than 20 agents and executives to learn about the actions of the “Revive Puerto Vallarta” strategy; thus, they confirmed the biosecurity protocols applied by the different service providers in this “new normal”, to protect the health of local and visitors.

The first fam trip had the participation of 10 travel advisers and an executive, who to promote their “highway charter” to the destination, which leaves every Wednesday and Saturday of the year with 51 places available from San Luis Potosí, called their more productive agencies, with the intention that they would know first-hand the biosecurity protocols in this tourist destination in order to provide confidence to their clients.

This group stayed at a well-known Hotel in Puerto Vallarta, a robust agenda was made so that they could enjoy the destination, its beaches and take some tours. They also learned about the varied hotel offer, with options for all segments and budgets.

From the 5th to the 8th of this month, they are in Puerto Vallarta now with travel advisers from Guadalajara, León, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Morelia and Zacatecas in their “group outlet”, who come

to close businesses and contracts of this segment by 2021, with attractive offers and promotions offered by the local hotel industry.

Another ally of fate Advisors of another group that is another important commercial ally that supports Puerto Vallarta in different initiatives, their advisers were staying in a well-known hotel with nine travel agents and four executives from the wholesaler participating.

The agenda that was prepared also allowed them to get to know a sample of the variety of local hotel offerings.

This important wholesaler has offices in different cities in the center of the country such as Morelia, León, San Luis Potosí and Querétaro.

It is relevant to note that, in addition to the road connectivity from San Luis Potosí to the destination - approximately eight hours - they have two direct weekly flights to the destination on Thursdays and Sundays.

The travel agencies that visited Puerto Vallarta, in general, emphasize that the end consumer is increasingly open and receptive to quote their vacations and compare destinations; In these times one of their main concerns is that the place they visit complies with biosafety protocols, in order to make the decision to make a trip.

It should be noted that all the advisers agreed that there is high demand to travel to Puerto Vallarta, for the next weekend of November and during the December holidays.

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Jalisco consolidates presence abroad with commercial pavilion in China Jalisco represents Mexico at the China International Import Expo 15 Jalisco fresh food, processed food and beverage companies participate in the Jalisco pavilion.

Expected business for more than 8 million dollars for local companies. ith the aim of boosting the competitiveness of the fresh food, processed and beverage industry, Jalisco participates in the China International Import Expo (CIIE), the multisectoral purchasing fair of the Chinese government, which seeks to promote economic-commercial cooperation and thus developing

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suppliers with other countries.

Through the support and accompaniment of the Ministry of Economic Development (Sedeco), 15 local companies will have the opportunity to do business in China, one of the economies with the greatest potential in the world. In this way, Jalisco consolidates itself as a national leader in foreign presence, being the only participant of the Mexican Government, highlighted Ernesto Sánchez Proal, secretary of Economic Development in Jalisco.

“This is a great international event, it is the

second time we have participated as a state and last year we were able to do business for eight million dollars, this year is even more special because Jalisco is the only state in the Mexican republic that is participating as such, that is, we are representing Mexico, I think that this year we can easily exceed eight million from last year, “he shared.

Due to the health crisis caused by COVID-19, in this edition the Jalisco companies will have official Chinese representatives to promote their exportable offer.

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The participation of Jalisco with a Pavilion in the China International Import Fair takes on special relevance due to the current situation of China with the United States, which opens important opportunities for Jalisco, as detailed by the General Director of Foreign Trade of Sedeco, Claudia Villarruel.

“We prefer to go to this Pavilion because the requirements that China has now are predominantly food after COVID. The importance of this pavilion is that the Chinese Government has determined to supply provisional supply that came from North America due to the current economic and political conflicts, new suppliers are being sought and its government buyers have indications of developing new supply stores with other countries. to generate purchases in the same fair ”.

Despite not being in person, the Jalisco exhibitors have the full support of business drivers from China who will follow up on the daily agenda, as well as the Shanghai Consulate and the Mexican Embassy in China.

The entrepreneurs received advice and support from Sedeco, as well as support through the Reactiva program, because they applied to the Jalisco Exporta call to receive the support of 70% non-refundable cost of the Pavilion.

The CIIE will be held from November 5 to 10 at the Shanghai National Convention and Exhibition Center.

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News

The Technological University of Jalisco is the headquarters for the first time of the National Congress of Engineering • The second edition of the congress is held virtually and its main objective is to train engineers in topics focused under the axis “Challenges and strategies in the context of industry 4.0”

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he Technological University of Jalisco (UTJ) and the Mexican Association of Mexican Electrical Engineers (AMIME) Guadalajara Jalisco Section, carry out the 2nd National Engineering Congress, which is entitled “Challenges and strategies in the context of Industry 4.0”, which seeks to contribute to the training of Mexican engineers in technology issues and its application in different sectors, as well as the challenges and opportunities that this represents.

Through a management carried out between the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology (SICyT) and the AMIME, the UTJ, an institution sectored by this Ministry, was selected as co-host of the congress in its second edition, this due to its vocation and orientation in the practical training of engineers and graduates, with a strong focus on technology.

The event program is made up of conferences with experts on the topics, as

well as work tables where topics such as: Challenges and opportunities of renewable energy in Mexico, The challenge of electric power in Mexico, Business models in the industry will be developed 4.0, Metrology and standardization, among many others.

On this occasion the congress is held virtually, allowing access to participants from different regions of the country. On its first day, the congress reached the attendance of between 500 and 600 people in each of the conferences, which are being transmitted through the Zoom platform and the UTJ social networks.

“This is interesting because it allows the engineers who are currently being trained in the universities of our country, both public and private, to learn methods related to what these technologies are, which today have to do with transformation processes. companies ”, says Dr. Héctor Pulido González, Rector of the UTJ. The congress takes place from November 4 to 6 and you can find out about the program at http://utj.edu.mx/Congreso/index.php and follow the lectures live through the UTJ Facebook page at : https://www.facebook. com/UTJ.Universidad/

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News 16 The International Space Station at 20 offers hope and a template for future cooperation

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Wendy Whitman Cobb Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

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n Nov. 2, 2020, the International Space Station celebrated its 20th anniversary of continuous human occupation. With astronauts and cosmonauts from around the world working together, the ISS has demonstrated humankind’s ability to not only live and work in space but cooperate with one another. This remarkable achievement is significant as countries and companies around the world look to expand space exploration beyond Earth orbit.

The path to this anniversary was not easy; like most things done in space, the cost and the difficulty were high. Supported by the Reagan administration as part of the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, the ISS began its life in the 1980s. Following the Challenger disaster in 1986, planning fell by the wayside as costs increased. Facing delays and cost overruns, the space station – then known as Freedom – was nearly canceled by the House of Representatives in the early 1990s. While already bringing international partners aboard to lower costs, the Clinton administration invited Russia to participate, leveraging the station as a tool of foreign policy between former adversaries.

What began as competition has turned into fruitful cooperation not just between Russia and the United States but Canada, Japan, Italy, the European Space Agency and over 100 other countries. As a space policy expert, I argue that the achievements of the ISS to date are indeed significant, but they also point the way ahead for cooperation and commercialization in space.

Accomplishments and significance By the numbers, the International Space Station is indeed impressive. At 357 feet in length, it is just one yard shy of an American football field. More than 241 individuals from 19 countries have visited, and at least 3,000 research projects have taken place on the ISS. The ISS is the third brightest object in the night sky and can often be spotted worldwide. Even Lego has immortalized the station with its own building set.

The ISS has proven that humans can live and work in space. These experiences are key as countries look to longer term exploration.

The ISS has led to advances in understanding how the human body reacts to sustained microgravity and increased exposure to radiation. Other experiments have allowed researchers to study materials and chemicals in a microgravity environment. Astronauts have also learned how to grow food on the station,

The official portrait of the Expedition 1 crew (from left to right, Sergei K. Krikalev, William M. Shepherd and Yuri Pavlovich), the first humans to live aboard the International Space Station. Arriving on station on Nov. 2, 2000, they were the first of 64 crews to live and work aboard the orbital laboratory. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI leading to insights on how plants grow on Earth.

These accomplishments have not come without criticism. It cost more than US$100 billion to construct; some have questioned the amount and value of the science that has been conducted. More recently, limits on the the number of crew residing on the station have reduced the amount of time available for scientific experiments.

However, perhaps one of the most significant legacies of the ISS is the long-term cooperation that has enabled it. While the U.S. and Russia are the countries most closely identified with the program, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency also take part. While not always easy, sustained cooperation in a place where operations are difficult and costly is impressive.

For the U.S. and Russia in particular, this achievement is unique. While there was some cooperation between the two during the Cold War, the ISS is the first major space program in which the two have worked together. Even as relations between Russia and the U.S. have deteriorated over

the past several years, the partnership on the ISS has continued. While scientific and space cooperation does not solve all terrestrial issues, it can strengthen other diplomatic relationships.

The future of the ISS Though turning 20 may not seem like a milestone, for a complicated piece of machinery operating in the dangerous environment of space, the ISS is approaching old age. In recent years, it has suffered several problems, most recently an air leak in the Russian module, Zvezda. However, recent assessments support continued operation of the ISS for at least another 10 years.

In that time, the ISS will likely see an increase in commercial activity. Recently, cosmetics company Estee Lauder launched one of its products to the station to be featured in a commercial filmed there. SpaceX is looking to make the ISS a tourist destination following NASA’s 2019 decision making it easier for space tourists to visit. Another space company, Axiom, recently received a contract to build a

commercial module to be added to the ISS in 2024. The module would give additional living and working space to astronauts aboard the station as well as serve as the starting point for a future commercial space station.

Thinking beyond Earth orbit, international cooperation in the ISS provides a solid example for future cooperation in space.

As NASA seeks to return to the Moon, international cooperation will be a way of reducing costs, normalizing behavior in space and increasing national prestige.

NASA has made efforts in these areas through the Artemis Accords, an agreement outlining norms and behaviors for lunar exploration. Additionally, NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency and others on its plans for the Gateway, a mini-space station in lunar orbit. The ISS experience has been fundamental to all of these developments as it continues to launch the next generation of space endeavors.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Riviera Nayarit

Riviera Nayarit reinforces promotion in MICE, Romance and Leisure segments

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he Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (OVC) visited the city of Guadalajara, the natural market of this destination, where it trained 40 travel agents, 30 meeting planners, and 47 wedding planners.

The Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (OVC), in conjunction with the local Hospitality Industry, led a series of promotional events in the city of Guadalajara, with intense training actions aimed at the MICE, Romance and Leisure segments.

For three days, the OVC presented

to travel agents, wedding planners and meeting planners the wide hotel offer that the destination has, its natural attractions and, of course, its magical sunsets that are the perfect setting for a wedding ceremony, anniversary or honeymoon.

Security before everything The promotional actions were developed in conjunction with 12 hotels in the destination, whose representatives had the opportunity to exchange information and show attendees their offer in the three aforementioned segments.

In addition to this, a presentation was made of the sanitary protocols established both in the destination and in the hotels, in order for travel agents to stay updated. Here it is important to highlight that all events were carried out with strict adherence to healthy distance measures, on terraces and well ventilated spaces.

Boost to national tourism “With this type of action we are promoting the main national tourism markets for the winter in cities with very good purchasing power, such as Guadalajara, which is a

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natural market with excellent connectivity�, declared the general director of the OVC Riviera Nayarit, Marc Murphy .

In total, the OVC trained 30 meeting planners, 40 retail agents and 47 wedding planners, who were very happy to receive the news that the beaches of Nayarit are officially open and operating at 30%.

TO KNOW: The state of Jalisco is the main source of tourists to the Riviera Nayarit, representing more than 30% of the national market, so Guadalajara and its metropolitan area represent an important market for the destination.

Remember, The Mexican Pacific Treasure will be here when you can travel again.

We are ready!

19 Airlines increase routes and frequencies to RN in November Nov 9 - 15, 2020

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ogether, national and international airlines will be making 283 flights per week to the region, which is undoubtedly a positive sign for the Mexican Pacific Treasury.

The good news came “flying” in November with the increase in activity at the “Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz” international airport, which serves Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit, which will be receiving 1,132 flights during the month, with an increase of 21 % compared to October.

The Pacific Airport Group (GAP), operator of the air terminal, reported that this month 15 airlines will be flying to the region —5 national and 10 international—, with 42 daily flights on average.

Riviera Nayarit began the resumption of its tourist activities in the first days of June, and although it still manages an occupancy percentage of 30%, it has had a very good response from travelers.

New routes and frequencies Regarding the international airlines that provide service to the Destination, in the week of November 7 to 13, the US airline will offer two more frequencies on its Dallas-PVR / RN route and an additional frequency on its Phoenix-PVR / RN route, for a total of 37 flights. A total of 148 flights are projected during the month.

As well as another airline also resumes operations on its routes Atlanta-PVR / RN, with 3 weekly frequencies, and Salt Lake City-PVR / RN with 4 frequencies; the LAX-PVR / RN route is maintained with 7 frequencies, for a total of 14 weekly services.

Riviera Nayarit

It is estimated that during the month it will have 56 frequencies.

American airline maintains 31 flights per week, connecting Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, San José, Portland and San Francisco. In total it will have 124 flights in the month of November.

Similarly, another US airline from Dallas added 2 frequencies from Phoenix this week for a total of 9, and maintains 7 services on its Houston-PVR / RN route. It is projected that by the end of the month it will be providing 64 services.

From Chicago, a well-known airline that connects the cities of Chicago, Houston, Newark, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles - it is one of the companies that will add the most frequencies in a week, with 21, to make a total of 54 weekly flights or 216 during the month.

Similarly, at the airport there are already four Canadian airlines registered with operations with 9 weekly flights together, from Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal, for a total of 36 flights in the month.

On the national scene, Aerolinea Mexicana provides 6 weekly services to the region from Mexico City (one more than in October). Transportes Aéreos Regionales continues with 20 flights from Guadalajara, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua and San Luis Potosí. In the case of Aerolitoral and Aeromar, they are operating 37 weekly flights together, connecting this region with Guadalajara and Mexico City.

It will provide 29 services (3 more than

in October), which gives us a total of 116 in the month, connecting with Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Tijuana.

Another well-known airline will be operating 28 weekly flights (8 more than in October), from Mexico City, Tijuana, Bajío and Querétaro, and Magnicharters offers two flights per week to this region from the city of Monterrey.

“With satisfaction, we see that the Riviera Nayarit remains among the preferred

destinations for national and international travelers. Despite the global crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand that the region is generating is reflected in the number of flights and the growing arrival of passengers, ”said Marc Murphy, general director of the Visitors and Conventions Office from the Riviera Nayarit.

Remember, The Mexican Pacific Treasure will be here when you can travel again.

We are ready!

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Jalisco promotes the culture of peace in western states

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ith the call “Creators of peace” the State Secretariat of Culture and the Regional Fund for Culture and the Arts of Centro Occidente, will provide incentives to projects that contribute to building environments without violence The Ministry of Culture of Jalisco, through the Directorate of Linkage and Sector Development Planning, in conjunction with the Regional Fund for Culture and the Arts of Centro Occidente, invites cultural managers, workshops or cultural and artistic creators from 9 states of the Mexican Republic to participate in the Call “Creators of peace.”

This call is aimed at initiatives that contribute to the construction of peace with projects that have already been carried out on at least three previous occasions in communities in the states of Aguascalientes, Colima, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas.

Cristopher de Alba Anguiano, head of Municipal Development of the Directorate of Planning, Linkage and Sectorial Development of Culture Jalisco, explained that the participants must send evidence of their projects and those chosen as beneficiaries will make up the file Creators of Peace of the Central West Region.

“The call closes this November 16 and those interested can review the bases on the website of Cultura Jalisco. Likewise, they can send their proposals to the email creadoresdepaz.sc@ jalisco.gob.mx. The idea is that audiovisual products emerge from here that make up an archive of Creators of Peace, with content to be broadcast on different digital channels ”.

With photographs, videos and letters of recommendation, the participants must support their project to be presented. Those elected will be able to access incentives ranging from 6,000 to 25,000 pesos.

The projects sought are those cultural programs or activities with a social impact on the community to the extent that they promote awareness, respect, values, healthy coexistence and work with the channeling of emotions to prevent violence in immediate environments, be it family, school, friends or neighbors.

For Cultura Jalisco, the culture for peace has not only a preventive role for violence, but also functions as a tool to cut this chain of actions of destruction.

The culture for peace is an important axis of work in this agency that has promoted various projects on purpose, and this time, it is necessary to do so through this call from the hand of the Regional Fund for Culture and the Arts of the Central West.

It is in this context that “Creators of Peace” will recognize people or groups that have shared messages of peace and social cohesion from their products.

To know more The results of the same must be had at the end of November. There will be 50 projects to be selected as beneficiaries. The first 10 places will have their documentaries produced.

Creators of Peace Call | Secretary of Culture

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Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes – and they bragged about it Thomas Martin Professor of Classics, College of the Holy Cross

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n ancient Athens, only the very wealthiest people paid direct taxes, and these went to fund the city-state’s most important national expenses – the navy and honors for the gods. While today it might sound astonishing, most of these top taxpayers not only paid happily, but boasted about how much they paid.

Money was just as important to the ancient Athenians as it is to most people today, so what accounts for this enthusiastic reaction to a large tax bill? The Athenian financial elite felt this way because they earned an invaluable payback: public respect from the other citizens of their democracy.

Modern needs, modern finances Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. had a population of free and enslaved people topping 300,000 individuals. The economy mostly focused on international trade, and Athens needed to spend large sums of money to keep things humming – from supporting national defense to the countless public fountains constantly pouring out drinking water all over the city.

Much of this income came from publicly owned farmland and silver mines that were leased to the highest bidders, but Athens also taxed imports and exports and collected fees from immigrants and prostitutes as well as fines imposed on losers in many court cases. In general, there were no direct taxes on income or wealth.

As Athens grew into an international power, it developed a large and expensive navy of several hundred state-of-the-art wooden warships called triremes – literally meaning three-rowers. Triremes cost huge amounts of money to build, equip and crew, and the Athenian financial elites were the ones that paid to make it happen.

The top 1% of male property owners supported the saving or salvation of Athens –called “soteria” – by performing a special kind of public service called “leitourgia,” or liturgy. They served as a trireme commander, or “trierarch,” who personally funded the operating costs of a trireme for an entire year and even led the crew on missions. This public service was not cheap. To fund their liturgy as a trierarch, a rich taxpayer spent what a skilled worker earned in 10 to 20 years of steady pay, but instead of dodging this responsibility, most embraced it.

Running warships was not the only responsibility the rich had to national defense. When Athens was at war – which was most of the time – the wealthy had to pay contributions in cash called “eisphorai” to finance the citizen militia. These

contributions were based on the value of their property, not their income, which made them in a sense a direct tax on wealth.

To please the gods To the ancient Athenians, physical military might was only part of the equation. They also believed that the salvation of the state from outside threats depended on a less

tangible but equally crucial and costly source of defense: the favor of the gods.

To keep these powerful but fickle divine protectors on their side, the Athenians built elaborate temples, performed large sacrifices and organized lively public religious festivals.

These massive spectacles featured musical extravaganzas and theater performances

that were attended by tens of thousands of people and were hugely expensive to throw.

Just as with trieremes, the richest Athenians paid for these festivals by fulfilling festival liturgies. Serving as a chorus leader, for example, meant paying for the training, costumes and living expenses for large groups of performers for months at a time.

Proud to be paying In the U.S. today, an estimated one out of every six tax dollars is unpaid. Large corporations and rich citizens do everything they can to minimize their tax bill. The Athenians would have ridiculed such behavior.

None of the financial elite of ancient Athens prided themselves on scamming the Athenian equivalent of the IRS. Just the opposite was true: They paid, and even boasted in public – truthfully – that they often had paid more than required when serving as a trierarch or chorus leader.

Of course, not every member of the superrich at Athens behaved like a patriotic champion. Some Athenian shirkers tried to escape their liturgies by claiming other people with more property ought to shoulder the cost instead of themselves, but this attempted weaseling out of public service never became the norm.

So what was the reasoning behind this civic, taxpaying pride? Ancient Athenians weren’t only opening their wallets to promote the common good. They were counting on earning a high return in public esteem from the investments in their community that their taxes represented.

This social capital was so valuable because Athenian culture held civic duty

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

in high regard. If a rich Athenian hoarded his wealth, he was mocked and labeled a “greedy man” who “borrows from guests staying his house” and “when he sells wine to a friend, he sells it watered!”

Social wealth, not monetary riches The social rewards that tax payments earned the rich had long lives. A liturgist who financed the chorus of a prize-winning drama could build himself a spectacular monument in a conspicuous downtown location to announce his excellence to all comers for all time.

Above all, the Athenian rich paid their taxes because they craved the social success that came from their compatriots publicly identifying them as citizens who are good because they are useful. Earning the honorable title of a useful citizen might sound tame today – it didn’t boost Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign even though he describes his political role as “trying to make myself useful” – but in a letter to a Hebrew congregation in Rhode Island written in 1790, George Washington proclaimed that being “useful” was an invaluable part of the divine plan for the United States.

So, too, the Athenians infused that designation with immense power. To be a rich taxpayer who was good and useful to his fellow citizens counted even more than

Art & Culture

money in the bank. And this invaluable public service profited all Athenians by keeping their democracy alive century after century.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Nov 9 - 15, 2020 Chun Zhang Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Dayton

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esearch has shown people deemed attractive get paid more, receive better job evaluations and are generally more employable. It’s even been shown that good-looking CEOs bring better stock returns for their companies.

In part, this may be because companies believe consumers are more likely to buy things from beautiful employees, which is perhaps why retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch have used looks as criteria in their hiring process. Abercrombie says it stopped doing that in 2015.

There’s some evidence, however, that this worker “beauty premium” may be wearing off – at least when it comes to employees who interact with consumers. In television commercials, for example, retailers and other companies are increasingly using real people – with all their physical flaws – rather than photoshopped models to give their brands an “authentic” feel.

Research several colleagues and I conducted recently suggests that companies may be wise to take this approach with customers. Our studies show occasions where the beauty premium doesn’t hold – and can even backfire.

Beauty can create distance In our first study, we wanted to better understand how consumers respond to attractive service employees.

We invited 309 college students to read the same description of being served dinner at a restaurant and then look at an image of a person we described as their waiter.

Participants randomly viewed either a male or female server whose facial features were edited to depict high or low levels of attractiveness, based on prior research defining beauty. Separately, we used similar objective measures of attractiveness to rate participants on the same scale.

We then asked participants to rate the attractiveness of the server and how “psychologically close” they felt to him or her. Participants also graded customer satisfaction, the service quality and the likability of the waiter on a scale from low to high.

We found that how close a consumer felt toward the waiter correlated with how they rated the quality of service they received.

That is, if they felt distance from the waiter, they were more likely to give him or her poor marks. Furthermore, we found that people who thought the server was attractive but were themselves not good-looking – using our objective beauty assessment – were more likely to feel distance.

We wanted to know whether this distance was actually more about how they perceived themselves than any objective measure.

So we conducted a second similar study for which we recruited 237 people who were waiting to board a flight at China’s third-largest airport, located in Guangzhou.

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Beautiful people tend to have a lot more luck in the work world We asked them to read a scenario about receiving meal or other service from a flight attendant while aboard the plane and view a picture of the employee. Just as in the first study, participants randomly viewed either “attractive” or “unattractive” flight attendants.

They then rated the attractiveness of the attendant as well as themselves and indicated whether they believe there’s a connection between beauty and skill. They also rated the service received.

We found that participants who saw themselves as less good-looking felt more distance from an attractive flight attendant and were also more likely to perceive the service as lower quality. In addition, participants who said there isn’t a connection between beauty and skill also tended to assess attractive employees’ service as low quality.

A third and final study, in which we surveyed consumers at a shopping mall who had just had a face-to-face encounter with a service employee, further confirmed the results of the first two. In each study, we found a clear connection between beautiful workers and unpleasant customer experiences for people who are less attractive.

So in a world that admires and hires beautiful people, our research suggests there’s a potential downside, at least in the service sector.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Sean Connery: ‘Bond, James Bond’, but so much more Coverage of the passing of Sir Sean Connery has inevitably been dominated by his legacy as the screen’s first – and best – James Bond.

Connery’s “Bond, James Bond” moment near the beginning of Dr. No (1962) is one of the iconic moments of cinema history and has spawned countless imitations and parodies.

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erhaps the most persistent myth about Connery, who was 90, is that he was an “unknown” actor who was plucked from obscurity by Bond producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, who reportedly cast him against the wishes of author Ian Fleming and distributor United Artists. But this is to ignore the fact that Connery had already established himself as a television actor, drawing critical plaudits for lead roles in a 1957 BBC production of Requiem for a Heavyweight and in the 1961 TV production of Anna Karenina, but also appearing in a number of meaty co-starring roles in Hollywood films, including opposite Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place (1958).

It was reportedly his appearance in Disney’s fantasy Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) that drew Connery to the notice of Broccoli’s wife, Dana, while the British crime drama The Frightened City (1961), in which Connery as an underworld enforcer steals the picture from its nominal star John Gregson, was also evidence of a star in the making. Nevertheless Connery was inspired casting as James Bond. Connery made the role his own to such an extent that it is now impossible to imagine any of the other actors said to have been considered – including Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan and even Roger Moore – stepping into the shoes of “the gentleman agent with the licence to kill” in 1962.

In this context an important point to remember about Bond is that Fleming’s character was not an Old Etonian establishment figure: he is even described in Moonraker as being “alien and unEnglish”.

Connery’s working-class Scottish roots – he was born and grew up in Edinburgh, where his early jobs had included milkman, bricklayer and coffin-polisher – imbued his Bond with that sense of “otherness”.

To this extent Connery’s Bond has as much in common with the outsider protagonists of the British new wave – Laurence Harvey, Albert Finney, Richard Harris – as the tradition of British screen heroism incarnated by stars of the 1950s such as Richard Todd and Kenneth More.

Connery’s performance in Dr No is edgy and brusque: he really settled into the part in From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964) where he commands the screen with that indefinable quality of star “presence” that means all he has to do to dominate a scene is to be in it.

Beyond Bond Bond brought Connery fame and fortune.

He was paid a mere £6,000 for Dr No, four times that amount for From Russia With Love and a then-record US$1.25 million for his first Bond “comeback” in 1971’s Diamonds

Sean Connery and costar Honor Blackman in a publicity shot for the film Goldfinger 1964. PA PA Archive PA Images Are Forever (George Lazenby had taken the role for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969).

The lucrative remuneration meant that Connery was able to pick and choose his roles outside the Bond pictures. Indeed his non-Bond roles demonstrate just how versatile an actor Connery was. Alfred Hitchcock cast him against type as Tippi Hedren’s conflicted husband in Marnie (1964), and he excelled in two films for Sidney Lumet, as the rebel-with-a-cause in the hard-hitting military prison drama The Hill (1965) and as a vengeful policeman in the much underrated The Offence (1973).

Connery was particularly good at playing characters older than himself, including the potentate standing up to Teddy Roosevelt in The Wind and the Lion (1975) and an ageing

Robin Hood reflecting on his own myth in the beautifully elegiac Robin and Marian (1976).

He paired with Michael Caine as soldiers of fortune in 19th-century Afghanistan in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and was one of the all-star cast of suspects in Sidney Lumet’s lavish adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

There was, inevitably, the occasional left-field choice, but even the science-fiction oddity Zardoz (1973) now has something of a cult status. Connery famously said that he would “never” play Bond again after Diamonds Are Forever: hence the ironic title of his second Bond “comeback” Never Say Never Again (1983), a rival production outside the Eon Production series mounted by independent producer Kevin McClory.

Connery won his only Academy Award,

Screen gods Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King 1975. PA PA Archive PA Images

a popular choice as Best Supporting Actor for his “Irish” street-cop in The Untouchables (1987), after which his career enjoyed a second wind as the world’s most bankable sexagenarian film star in a sequence of superior adventure and caper movies including The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Rock (1996) and Entrapment (1999).

By this time Connery’s refusal to disguise his accent had become something of a trademark, whatever the part. When Steven Spielberg cast him as Harrison Ford’s father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), it captured the idea that Connery’s Bond was the symbolic “father” of a later generation screen hero.

Feet of clay Most stars turn out to have feet of clay: Connery was no exception. He attracted controversy for a remark made in an interview with Playboy in 1965 that legitimised hitting a woman (“An open-handed slap is justified if all other alternatives fail”). His Bond did this on screen in From Russia With Love and Diamonds Are Forever.

He also had a public falling-out with Broccoli, suing the producer and MGM for alleged non-payment of profit shares in the Bond films. Against this should be set Connery’s charitable work: he used his fee for Diamonds Are Forever to found the Scottish International Education Trust to provide financial assistance for Scots from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend university and college.

Proud ‘Scottish peasant’ Connery, who since the 1970s lived in Spain and the Bahamas as a tax exile, was proud of his Scottish roots. Ian Fleming warmed to Connery to the extent that he introduced a Scottish heritage for Bond into the later stories. Bond’s “I am a Scottish peasant and I will always feel at home being a Scottish peasant” – from The Man With the Golden Gun – might have been written with Connery in mind, although Bond was actually played by his successor, Roger Moore, in that film.

Unlike Bond, Connery did accept a knighthood, for services to film drama, in 2000. It is widely believed that his public support for the Scottish National Party had delayed his knighthood.

Connery’s last screen appearance was as Allan Quatermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), in which he leads a Victorian superhero team to save the British Empire. He confirmed his retirement when he was presented with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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He died in his sleep at his home in Nassau, and is survived by his second wife Micheline and son (by first wife Diane Cilento) Jason Connery.

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Finnish cinema exhibition at Centro Cultural Cuale • Admission will be free, with health protocols and limited space by function

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short film and five feature films, between fictions and documentaries, make up the Finnish Film Festival that, from Monday 9 to Friday 13 November at 5:00 in the afternoon, will be screened for free in the auditorium of the Instituto Vallartense de Cultura ( IVC).

This was announced by the director of the IVC, Marina de los Santos Álvarez, who highlighted that this cycle is part of the Cineteca Circuit, a program of the National Cineteca that seeks to link and disseminate the seventh art within the Republic and of which Puerto Vallarta forms part, and is made in collaboration with OKTOBER Films, the Finnish Film Institute and the Embassy of Finland in Mexico.

The exhibition is a kind of magazine for the Mexican audience, aimed at disseminating contemporary Finnish cinema, but also the ideology and social construction of a country where it tries to empower the early individuality of the subjects to guarantee the growth of groups, tribes and movements based on fairness and respect.

The Finnish Film Festival will begin on Monday, November 9 with “The Eternal Road”, a film based on real events about a man’s struggle to survive after the Great Depression of 1930.

On Tuesday, November 10, “Sauna” will be screened, an intimate portrait about the

illusions, thoughts and feelings of the Finnish man, which won the Jussi Prize (the Finnish Oscar) for Best Documentary in 2011.

From the prestigious director Aki Kaurismäki, his second feature film “Union of squids” will be screened on Wednesday, November 11, considered a classic by one of the most notable authors of Nordic cinema.

Experimental cinema will also be present with “M”, a reflection on the powerful

sexual magnetism of Marilyn Monroe, to be screened on Thursday, November 12.

The closing of the cycle, one day later, will correspond to “Fire Eater”, a fiction about a couple of orphaned girls who work in a circus.

Prior to each performance, “Birds on Earth” will be screened, a fascinating short film based on dance, which takes place through the performance of two Sami ballet

students (a people living in the Lapland region). The director of the IVC exhorted those attending to observe and attend to the current sanitary provisions. Space is limited by function and separate seats between attendees to ensure healthy distance. The program of the exhibition can be consulted on the social networks of the Instituto Vallartense de Cultura and Canal del Puerto, respectively.

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Butterfly photographed in Guanajuato had been tagged in Iowa It was tagged September 23 and found 39 days and 2,900 kilometers later

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fter flying 39 days and covering 2,900 kilometers, a monarch butterfly tagged in Iowa was recently discovered in Acámbaro, Guanajuato, a few kilometers away from Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

According to Monarch Watch, which runs a monarch tagging program from its

headquarters at the University of Kansas, the butterfly was tagged on September 23 in Dallas County, Iowa, by a member of a local citizen-science group.

Gilberto Ruiz Parra, a Mexican volunteer working with Monarch Watch, found the tagged butterfly on November 1 in the Sierra de los Agustino protected area.

“It’s male and is in excellent condition except for having a thin abdomen,” Ruiz told the newspaper Milenio. “It doesn’t have any significant injuries.”

Monarch Watch’s tagging program, founded in 1992, recruits volunteers from

Canada, the United States and Mexico to observe and better understand the monarch’s annual migration between the three countries.

Sighting a tagged monarch in Mexico is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

Each year, Monarch Watch distributes over a quarter million tags to volunteers across North America who tag the monarchs as they migrate through their area. The majority of the organization’s tags are then sighted again in central Mexico. Volunteers go to areas known to be overwintering sites for the butterflies.

During the 2019 migration season, volunteers in Central Mexico found just 658 tags.

Ruiz spotted the tagged monarch in a group he found spending the night in a cluster of California pepper trees. It took some effort to get close enough to it to take a picture for the organization, he said.

“It was difficult to get to them because they were very high and because we’re directed not to touch or disturb them,” Ruiz said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

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What to do with those Thanksgiving leftovers?

Look to the French Samantha Presnal Fellow, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Amherst College

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t’s the day after Thanksgiving, the tryptophan has worn off, and there are towers of Tupperware filled with turkey, stuffing and potatoes in your fridge.

If you rely on your microwave, you might simply resign yourself to eating the same meal, over and over again, until the leftovers run out.

But you don’t have to get stuck in a cycle of nuke and repeat. This Thanksgiving, take inspiration from the French, who saw leftovers as an outlet for creativity.

My research on the history of French home cooking reveals how restyling dinner scraps first became fashionable more than a century ago.

Reheating ‘with art and discernment’ In 19th-century France, leftovers were a way of life for the lower classes.

In the countryside, the broth from the evening beef stew would become the basis of breakfast the next morning.

In cities, street hawkers known as “arlequins” purchased dinner scraps from restaurants and rich households to resell them to the poor. For these Frenchmen and -women, repurposing previous meals wasn’t about style but survival. Because of their association with poverty, leftovers were stigmatized up until the late 19th century.

But by the turn of the 20th century, it had become hip to whip something up with the remains from last night’s meal.

In 1892, French chef Alfred Suzanne wrote that “there are dishes which, when reheated with art and discernment, transformed with taste and presented in an appetizing manner… can be as good as, if not better than, the first time they are served.” In the preface to his encyclopedic cookbook, “150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers,” the former chef to British royalty declared that the “deep-seated prejudice that many people have” against leftovers was “an error.”

Suzanne’s colleagues and culinary connoisseurs concurred. French food critic Fulbert-Dumonteil praised the chef for explaining “all the ingenious and charming ways to restore mutilated bits and pieces from epic feasts” and turn “cumbersome remains” into something that delights the palate.

Marketing to the masses Why did “leftovers” make the leap from insipid plates peddled by “arlequins” to inspired dishes perfected by culinary artists?

In 1882, France’s new republican government passed legislation mandating education for all children ages 6 to 13. Many public schoolchildren came from the lower and lower-middle classes, and educators designed home economics lessons with this in mind.

Girls learned how to preserve and prepare their leftovers safely, nutritiously and economically. They were also taught that their talent for accommodating leftovers was a reflection of their thrift and resourcefulness – the markers of

middle-class French femininity.

As the percentage of literate females spiked in France, the publishing industry pounced on this potential market. The late 19th century saw more and more domestic manuals aimed at “ménagères” – wives and mothers from the working and lower-middle classes. Many guides featured a chapter on fixing leftovers, while some, such as “100 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers” and “The Art of Accommodating Leftovers, Dedicated to Those of Meager Means,” made

revamping remains their central focus.

France’s top chefs join in In the 1890s top chefs also started to contribute recipes to domestic cooking magazines. This genre of culinary literature proliferated in the late 19th century during a period of rapid growth for the popular press.

Chefs wanted to appeal to a wide audience, and their contributions ranged from columns on economical cooking to instructions for assembling “pièces montées,” which are elaborate edifices

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made of confections. Many of these journals designated a special section for accommodating leftovers, with titles like “Utilizing Leftovers” and “Delicious Ways to Accommodate the Scraps.”

The repetitive nomenclature belies the range of the recipes printed under these rubrics. Some were simple and modest and reflected the original rationale for leftovers, which was economical.

For example, a July 1907 recipe for “Lisette’s Cake” in the magazine Family Cooking offered a sweet solution for

Cuisine

yesterday’s bread. The cook needed only to soak the loaf in sweetened milk, strain the mixture through a fine sieve, add two eggs and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

But some recipes got complicated and costly. Family Cooking also published a leftovers recipe for “Veal à la Russe,” which required, in addition to veal chops, a quarter pound of butter, anchovies, tomato coulis, jus and truffles for garnish.

The Cordon Bleu Magazine suggested repurposing leftover pheasant in a way that required an hour of boiling in fine

demi-glace and two hours of cooling on ice, before being pureed by hand, seasoned, molded and fried.

Such recipes would hardly qualify as time- or cost-saving. But practicality wasn’t the only point anymore. Scholars have shown how women at the turn of the century read popular and prescriptive literature as a “form of escapism” that encouraged them to “fantasize” about what modern domestic life could be.

By turning leftovers into an art form, early home cooking magazines inspired

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a modern generation of home cooks to be creative and think critically about cooking. And they left their legacy to us and our leftovers.

So this year, instead of scraping together another tiresome turkey sandwich, try a turkey recipe adapted from Alfred Suzanne’s “150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers.”

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Colleges and the Thanksgiving COVID-19 risk: Fauci’s right – holiday plans may have to change Walter Thomas Casey II Associate Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University-Texarkana Marcia G. Ory Regents and Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, Texas A&M University Rebecca S.B. Fischer Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Texas A&M University

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r. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, warned this week that families may need to change their Thanksgiving plans to keep everyone safe from the coronavirus. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, expressed similar concerns in a call with governors.

There has been an alarming increase in COVID-19 cases in most states in recent weeks, and we have seen cases rise in college towns in particular. Colder weather means more activities are moving

indoors, where the virus can circulate.

And people ho have been socially isolated for months feel desperate for connection.

As the holidays approach, one important question is what impact sending college students home for Thanksgiving will have on their home communities.

The Public Health Response Team at Texas A&M University, which the three of us serve on, has been documenting COVID-19 trends in Texas for the past six months and forecasting disease spread and the impacts on hospitals. With new cases ticking upward, we have been concerned about what the holidays will bring.

Dual hot spots In Texas, the most densely populated counties have a higher proportion of documented SARS-CoV-2 infections, and they contain a majority of the state’s colleges and universities. The intersection of these features creates challenges for controlling COVID-19.

Many of these counties were already COVID-19 hot spots before students

, h c a o pr p a s y n a o i d i t l s o e h u e q h t t n g s a t n A i r o d p n e one im t impact s ome for a h h s t w n n s o i e d e v u t a s h l e l i g e coll sgiving w unities. m k n m a o h c T e m o h their returned for the fall semester. In more crowded communities, the chance of random exposure to someone with COVID-19 is a lot less random and a lot more certain.

Reopening the campuses brought in an age demographic known to harbor the virus but often with only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. This

facilitated covert spread of the virus.

Nationwide, many universities reported a surge in cases shortly after students returned in the fall, and some had to stop in-person classes and shift back to online learning when those cases got out of control.

Soon, these students will be returning to their families around the country for

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College campuses bring a lot of people together in close proximity, increasing the risk of getting and spreading COVID-19. David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images the holidays, and bringing with them the possibility of a souvenir no one wants – COVID-19.

Cause for concern It’s not just campus activities that raise concerns. It’s also what students do when they aren’t in class, including going to bars and attending off-campus parties.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently relaxed the minimal restrictions for bars, allowing them to open at 50% capacity.

This likely means that bars – chafing from being treated differently from other places where people gather in groups – will be rarin’ to go.

With young adults, the likelihood of failing to remain vigilant about social distancing, mask-wearing and other precautions is already a concern. Such risky behaviors would compound the risk factors, facilitating extra opportunities for the virus to spread.

We hypothesize that factors such as college drinking, peer and social pressure to act as if everything is normal, as well as seasonal changes that make

Second, everyone needs to take COVID-19 public health preventive practices seriously. outdoor eating and drinking less feasible, will increase the likelihood of exposure to the coronavirus and subsequent infection.

As these young adults return home, some will probably have signs of mild illness.

Some may have no discernible symptoms but will still be infectious.

They could introduce the virus to communities that have had few infections so far and to the friends and family, including vulnerable parents and grandparents, they have been eager to reconnect with.

While we have been studying the dynamics of COVID-19’s spread in Texas specifically, many other states with large college populations face the same combination of factors, with potentially

infectious young adults heading home. It’s important to understand the risks. Nationwide, more than 215,000 people who got COVID-19 had died by mid-October.

So what can be done now?

First, university and town officials can prepare for these upcoming risks.

Efforts to contain and mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 on campuses and in surrounding communities are as important as ever.

Some campuses are planning to end the semester at Thanksgiving break or shift to online classes for the final weeks to avoid additional travel that could spread the virus. Others have implemented rigorous testing and contact tracing programs to help stop the spread.

Second, everyone needs to take COVID-19 public health preventive practices seriously.

That means avoiding large gatherings – and even smaller ones when new people are involved – wearing face masks, and following the recommended physical

distancing guidelines. When going to bars or restaurants, be aware of how well the customers and the businesses take precautions.

Third, everyone should realize the upcoming holiday season will be different from those in years past. Students whose semester won’t end until December should consider avoiding travel until the end of the year – or, if they are traveling earlier, to do it safely.

One strategy is to get tested before heading home and again before returning.

If you aren’t able to visit your grandparents and other family members in person, you can find remote ways to still connect, such as phone calls or video chats.

We wish everyone a good and safe holiday season – keeping yourself and others safe will mean knowing what the risks are and proactively taking steps to ensure many more happy family holidays to come.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Feeling disoriented by the election, pandemic and everything else?

It’s called ‘zozobra,’ and Mexican philosophers have some advice Francisco Gallegos Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University Carlos Alberto Sánchez Professor of Philosophy, San José State University

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ver had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a world on fire, struggling with pandemic, recession, climate change and political upheaval.

That’s “zozobra,” the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, leaving you with questions like: Is it a lovely autumn day, or an alarming moment of converging historical catastrophes?

On the eve of a general election in which the outcome – and aftermath – is unknown, it is a condition that many Americans may be experiencing.

As scholars of this phenomenon, we have noted how zozobra has spread in U.S. society in recent years, and we believe the insight of Mexican philosophers can be helpful to Americans during these tumultuous times.

Ever since the conquest and colonization of the valley of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, Mexicans have had to cope with wave after wave of profound social and spiritual disruption – wars, rebellions, revolution, corruption, dictatorship and now the threat of becoming a narco-state. Mexican philosophers have had more than 500 years of uncertainty to reflect on, and they have important lessons to share.

Zozobra and the wobbling of the world The word “zozobra” is an ordinary Spanish term for “anxiety” but with connotations that call to mind the wobbling of a ship about to capsize. The term emerged as a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century to describe the sense of having no stable ground and feeling out of place in the world.

This feeling of zozobra is commonly experienced by people who visit or immigrate to a foreign country: the rhythms of life, the way people interact, everything just seems “off” – unfamiliar, disorienting and vaguely alienating.

According to the philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book “Analysis of Mexican Being”: “Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on

Is it a lovely autumn day, or is America burning to the ground? Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images … indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.”

What makes zozobra so difficult to address is that its source is intangible. It is a soul-sickness not caused by any personal failing, nor by any of the particular events that we can point to.

Instead, it comes from cracks in the frameworks of meaning that we rely on to make sense of our world – the shared understanding of what is real and who is trustworthy, what risks we face and how to meet them, what basic decency requires of us and what ideals our nation aspires to.

In the past, many people in the U.S. took these frameworks for granted – but no longer.

The gnawing sense of distress and disorientation many Americans are feeling is a sign that at some level, they now recognize just how necessary and fragile these structures are.

The need for community Another Mexican philosopher, Jorge Portilla (1918-1963), reminds us that these frameworks of meaning that hold our world together cannot be maintained by individuals alone. While each of us may find our own meaning in life, we do so against the backdrop of what Portilla described as a “horizon of understanding” that is maintained by our community. In everything we do, from making small talk to making big life choices, we depend on others to share a basic set of assumptions about the world. It’s a fact that becomes painfully obvious when

we suddenly find ourselves among people with very different assumptions.

In our book on the contemporary relevance of Portilla’s philosophy, we point out that in the U.S., people increasingly have the sense that their neighbors and countrymen inhabit a different world. As social circles become smaller and more restricted, zozobra deepens.

In his 1949 essay, “Community, Greatness, and Misery in Mexican Life,” Portilla identifies four signs that indicate when the feedback loop between zozobra and social disintegration has reached critical levels.

First, people in a disintegrating society become prone to self-doubt and reluctance to take action, despite how urgently action may be needed. Second, they become prone to cynicism and even corruption – not because they are immoral but because they genuinely do not experience a common good for which to sacrifice their personal interests. Third, they become prone to nostalgia, fantasizing about returning to a time when things made sense. In the case of America, this applies not only to those given to wearing MAGA caps; everyone can fall into this sense of longing for a previous age.

And finally, people become prone to a sense of profound vulnerability that gives rise to apocalyptic thinking. Portilla puts it this way: “We live always simultaneously entrenched in a human world and in a natural world, and if the human world denies us its

accommodations to any extent, the natural world emerges with a force equal to the level of insecurity that textures our human connections.”

In other words, when a society is disintegrating, fires, floods and tornadoes seem like harbingers of apocalypse.

Coping with the crisis Naming the present crisis is a first step toward dealing with it. But then what is to be done?

Portilla suggests that national leaders can exacerbate or alleviate zozobra. When there is a coherent horizon of understanding at the national level – that is to say, when there is a shared sense of what is real and what matters – individuals have a stronger feeling of connection to the people around them and a sense that their society is in a better position to deal with the most pressing issues. With this solace, it is easier to return attention to one’s own small circle of influence.

Uranga, for his part, suggests that zozobra actually unifies people in a common human condition. Many prefer to hide their suffering behind a happy facade or channel it into anger and blame. But Uranga insists that honest conversation about shared suffering is an opportunity to come together.

Talking about zozobra provides something to commune over, something on which to base a love for one another, or at least sympathy.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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President-elect Biden promises a new White House agenda and style. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Biden wins – experts on what it means for race relations, US foreign policy and the Supreme Court Brian J Purnell Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History, Bowdoin College Morgan Marietta Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell Neta C. Crawford Professor of Political Science and Department Chair, Boston University

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isclosure statementThe American public has had its say and for the first time in a generation denied a sitting president a second term. President Donald Trump’s tenure lasted just four years, but in that time he dragged policy on an array of key issues in a dramatic new direction.

Joe Biden’s victory, confirmed by the Associated Press late morning on Nov. 7, presents an opportunity to reset the White House agenda and put it on a different course.

Three scholars discuss what a Biden presidency may have in store in three key areas: race, the Supreme Court and foreign policy.

Racism, policing and Black Lives Matter protests Brian Purnell, Bowdoin College The next four years under a Biden administration will likely see improvements

in racial justice. But to many, it will be a low bar to clear: President Donald Trump downplayed racist violence, egged on right-wing extremists and described Black Lives Matter as a “symbol of hate” during his four-year tenure.

Indeed, according to polls, most Americans agree that race relations have deteriorated under Trump.

Still, Biden is in some ways an unlikely president to advance a progressive racial agenda. In the 1970s, he opposed busing plans and stymied school desegregation efforts in Delaware, his home state. And in the mid-1990s he championed a federal crime bill that made incarceration rates for Black people worse. He bungled the hearings that brought Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court by allowing Republican senators to dismiss Anita Hill’s damning testimony of Thomas’ sexual harassment and by failing to allow other Black women to testify.

But that was then.

During the 2020 campaign, President-elect Biden consistently spoke about problems stemming from systemic racism. Many voters will be hoping that his actions over the next four years must match his campaign words.

One area that the Biden administration will surely address is policing and racial

justice. The Justice Department can bring accountability to police reform by returning to practices the Obama administration put in place to monitor and reform police departments, such as the use of consent degrees. More difficult reforms require redressing how mass incarceration caused widespread voter disenfranchisement in Black American and Latino communities.

“My administration will incentivize states to automatically restore voting rights for individuals convicted of felonies once they have served their sentences,” Biden told The Washington Post.

The killing of George Floyd earlier this year reinvigorated talk of addressing systemic racial discrimination through fundamental changes in how police departments hold officers accountable for misconduct and excessive force. It is unclear how far President-elect Biden will walk down this road. But evoking the words of the late civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, he at least suggested at the Democratic National Convention that America was ready to do the hard work of “rooting out systemic racism.”

Biden can help address how Americans think about and deal with unexamined racial biases through reversing the previous administration’s executive order banning

anti-racism training and workshops. In so doing, Biden can build on psychological research on bias to make American workplaces, schools and government agencies equitable, just places.

Making progress fighting systemic racism will be a slow, uphill battle. A more immediate benefit to communities of color could come through Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic response – the Trump administration’s failure to stanch the spread of the coronavirus has led to deaths and economic consequences that have disproportionately fallen on racial and ethnic minorities.

On matters of race relations in the U.S., most Americans would agree that the era of Trump saw the picture worsen. The good news for Biden as president is there is nowhere to go but up.

The Supreme Court Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell Despite the fact that American voters have given Democrats control of the presidency, the conservative Supreme Court will continue to rule on the nature and extent of constitutional rights.

These liberties are considered by the court to be “beyond the reach of majorities,” meaning they are intended to be immune from the changing beliefs of the electorate.

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After George Floyd’s death, how far will Biden go to address systemic racism?

Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

However, appointees of Democrats and Republicans tend to have very different views on which rights the Constitution protects and which are left to majority rule.

The dominant judicial philosophy of the conservative majority – originalism – sees rights as powerful but limited. The protection of rights recognized explicitly by the Constitution, such as the freedoms of religion, speech and press and the freedom to bear arms, will likely grow stronger over the next four years. But the protection of expansive rights that the court has found in the phrase “due process of law” in the 14th Amendment, including privacy or reproductive rights, may well contract.

The Biden administration will probably not agree with the court’s future rulings on voting rights, gay rights, religious rights or the rights of noncitizens. Ditto for any rulings on abortion, guns, the death penalty and immigration. But there is little President-elect Biden can do to control the independent judiciary.

Unhappy with what a strong conservative majority on the court may do – including possibly overturning the Affordable Care Act – many Democrats have advocated radical approaches to altering what the court looks like and how it operates, though Biden

himself has not stated a clear position.

Suggested options include term limits, adding a retirement age, stripping the jurisdiction of the court for specific federal legislation, or increasing the size of the court.

This strategy is known historically as court packing.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg opposed expanding the court, telling NPR in 2019 that “if anything would make the court look partisan, it would be … one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The Constitution does not establish the number of justices on the court, instead leaving that to Congress. The number has been set at nine since the 1800s, but Congress could pass a law expanding the number of justices to 11 or 13, creating two or four new seats.

However, this requires agreement by both houses of Congress.

The GOP seems likely to maintain a narrow control of the Senate. A 50/50 split is possible, but that won’t be clear until January when Georgia holds two runoff elections. Any of the proposed reforms of the court will be difficult, if not impossible, to pass under a divided Congress.

How will President-elect Biden respond to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court? Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

This leaves the Biden administration hoping for retirements that would gradually shift the ideological balance of the court.

One of the most likely may be Justice Clarence Thomas, who is 72 and the longest-serving member of the current court.

Samuel Alito is 70 and Chief Justice John Roberts is 65. In other professions, that may sound like people soon to retire, but at the Supreme Court that is less likely. With the other three conservative justices in their 40s or 50s, the Biden administration may be fully at odds with the court for some time to come.

Foreign policy and defense Neta Crawford, Boston University President-elect Biden has signaled he will do three things to reset the U.S.‘s foreign policy.

First, Biden will change the tone of U.S. foreign relations. The Democratic Party platform called its section on military foreign policy “renewing American leadership” and emphasized diplomacy as a “tool of first resort.”

Biden seems to sincerely believe in diplomacy and is intent on repairing relations with U.S. allies that have been damaged over the last four years. Conversely, while Trump was, some say, too friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a “terrific person,” Biden will likely take a harder line with Russia, at least rhetorically.

This change in tone will also likely include rejoining some of the treaties and international agreements that the United States abandoned under the Trump administration.

The most important of these include the Paris Climate Agreement, which the U.S. officially withdrew from on Nov. 4, and restoring funding to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If the U.S. is to extend the New START nuclear weapons treaty, the arms control deal with Russia due to expire in February, the incoming Biden administration would likely have to work with the outgoing administration on an extension. Biden has also signaled a willingness to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal

53 jettisoned by Trump, if and when the Iranians return to the limits on nuclear infrastructure imposed by the agreement.

Second, in contrast to the large increases in military spending under Trump, President-elect Biden may make modest cuts in the U.S. military budget. Although he has said that cuts are not “inevitable” under his presidency, Biden has hinted at a smaller military presence overseas and is likely to change some priorities at the Pentagon by, for instance, emphasizing high-tech weapons. If the Senate – which must ratify any treaties – flips to Democrats’ control, the Biden administration may take more ambitious steps in nuclear arms control by pursuing deeper cuts with Russia and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Third, the Biden administration will likely continue some Bush, Obama and Trump foreign policy priorities. Specifically, while a Biden administration will seek to end the war in Afghanistan, the administration will keep a focus on defeating the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Biden has said that he would reduce the current 5,200 U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 1,500-2,000 troops operating in the region in a counterterrorism role. The Biden administration is likely to continue the massive nuclear weapons modernization and air and naval equipment modernization programs begun under the Obama administration and accelerated and expanded under Trump, if only because they are popular with members of Congress who see the jobs they provide in their states.

And like the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden administration will prioritize the economic and military threats it believes are posed by China.

But, consistent with its emphasis on diplomacy, the Biden administration will likely also work more to constrain China through diplomatic engagement and by working with U.S. allies in the region.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Could Biden be the president who finally pulls all US troops out of Afghanistan? Wakil Kohsar/ AFP via Getty Images

Politic 54 Nov 9 - 15, 2020 Why Republicans and others concerned about the economy have reason to celebrate Biden in the White House William Chittenden Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Presidential Fellow, Texas State University

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n day one, a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden will have to address a devastated economy – much like he and former President Barack Obama did a decade ago.

What can the country expect?

Forecasting how the economy will perform under a new president is generally a fool’s errand. How much or how little credit the person in the White House deserves for the health of the economy is a matter of debate, and no economist can confidently predict how the president’s policies will play out – if they even go into effect – or what challenges might emerge.

Regardless, voters tend to believe it makes a difference. And going into the election, 79% of registered voters – and 88% of Trump supporters – said the economy was their top concern. Given that, historical data suggests that those who are concerned with the economy have reason to be fairly satisfied with the election results: The economy generally fares better under Democratic presidents.

Inheriting a struggling economy Biden will be inheriting an economy with serious problems. Things have improved markedly since the darkest days – at least, so far – of the pandemic back in the spring, but the economy remains in a dire state.

The latest jobs report shows that 11 million people remain unemployed – a third of whom have been without a job for at least 27 weeks – down from a peak of 23 million in April. Tens of thousands of small businesses and dozens of major retail chains have closed or filed for bankruptcy. Many states, cities and municipal agencies are reeling from the tremendous costs of spring lockdowns. And the economy has contracted 2.8% since the end of 2019.

And that doesn’t include the impact of what some officials – including Biden – have dubbed a “dark winter,” as severe coronavirus outbreaks in many regions of the U.S. prompt new economic restrictions.

Democrats have a better economic track record In trying to get a sense of what kind of impact the election result will have on the economy, the past is a useful guide.

I study how the economy performs depending on which political party is in charge. Earlier this year, I did an analysis of this question, focusing on 1976 to 2016, and recently updated the data to include 1953 through October of this year.

In general, since President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953, the economy

People in Philadelphia celebrate the election being called for Biden. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell – as measured by gross domestic product, unemployment, inflation and recessions – has typically performed better with a Democrat in the White House. GDP growth has been significantly higher; inflation – a measure of the change in prices – has been lower; and unemployment has tended to fall.

The stock market tends to perform better with a Democratic president, rising 11% per year on average compared to 6.8% for Republicans. Despite his claims to the contrary, the stock market’s performance under President Donald Trump has been about average.

Perhaps the most striking difference I found is in the number of months the economy was in recession, as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. From 1953 to 2016, Republicans controlled the White House for 432 months, about 23% of which were spent in recession.

Democratic presidents held the reins for 336 months in that period, just 4% of which were in recession. The 2020 recession began in March has not been officially declared over.

One suggested explanation for this dramatic difference is that deregulation implemented during Republican administrations leads to financial crises, which in turn cause recessions. Another is that factors a president does not have any control over, like a sudden increase in oil prices, are the usual causes of recessions.

Others suggest that the economy’s better performance under Democrats is simply due to luck.So even though voters tend to think Republicans do a better job steering the economy, historical data shows otherwise.

Whether Biden continues that streak, of course, remains to be seen, especially given

he’ll likely have a Republican-controlled Senate, which could frustrate his policy initiatives.

A silver lining in divided government In my analysis, I also examined the impact of Congress and how having all, part or none of the legislative branch controlled by the president’s party affected the economy’s performance.

Interestingly, the U.S. has not seen Democrats in control of the White House and the House of Representatives with Republicans in charge of the Senate since 1889, when Grover Cleveland was president.

So my dataset, going back to 1953, doesn’t shed any light on this particular legislative configuration.

However, I did find that the economy did pretty well when a Democratic president faces either one or both houses of Congress controlled by the opposition. During the 144 months when one of those conditions were true, the U.S. was never in recession. And when Republicans controlled Congress under a Democratic president, average monthly unemployment was the lowest of any condition, at 4.85%.

Of course, this doesn’t mean a divided government will lead to good results today. A pessimistic take is that there will be gridlock, and nothing will get done. In order to pass and sustain major initiatives, bipartisanship will be needed.

There’s an off chance that Democrats take control of the Senate if two runoff elections scheduled for January in Georgia both fall into the Democrats’ column. Historically, such a Democratic trifecta existed for 192 months, 14 of which – 7% – were in recession.

Tough road ahead

History also has a lot to say about recovering from an economic collapse, which keeps taking longer.

For example, it took only 11 months for the job market to recover from the 1980 recession, but 77 to recover the jobs lost in the Great Recession that lasted from 2007 to 2009. If this trend continues, it could be 2027 or later before the job market fully recovers from the pandemic-induced recession.

But the past doesn’t predict the future, and I believe the policies a president pursues and is able to implement still matter.

During the campaign, Biden proposed several ambitious spending plans, such as “build back better,” which would invest in American infrastructure and clean energy, as well as “buy American.” In all, Biden has proposed US$2 trillion to $4.2 trillion of additional measures to fight the pandemic’s economic effects, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget. His economic plan cannot be implemented without the cooperation of Congress. Investment in infrastructure has historically had bipartisan support so Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may find some common ground there. But although McConnell has indicated fiscal relief will be a top priority, he has opposed another large coronavirus bill.

It’s impossible to predict whether Republicans will choose bipartisanship or obstructionism, but I remain hopeful – given Biden’s history of moderation – that the new president and Congress will do what is needed to move the economy forward.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Nov 9 - 15, 2020 Jan Nijman Distinguished University Professor, Urban Studies Institute and Geosciences Department, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

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Georgia’s political shift – a tale of urban and suburban change

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ver the past 36 years, the state of Georgia has voted for Republican presidential candidates in every cycle except 1992, when voters backed Bill Clinton.

In the past 20 years, it voted consistently for Republican governors and for Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

But if the results, as currently reported, stand, Georgia will have helped elect Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. Control of the U.S. Senate, too, may be decided in Georgia, as the voters forced two Senate races into runoff elections to be held on Jan. 5.

Biden’s Georgia lead is only razor-thin and did not materialize until the morning of Nov. 6, as the final votes were tallied. A recount is set to take place.

U.S. Senate races in Georgia that do not deliver an absolute majority of the vote go into a runoff phase that pits the two leading contenders against one another.

Incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue faced challenges from Democrat Jon Ossoff and Libertarian Shane Hazel. Perdue’s share of the vote dipped below 50% on Nov. 5 and did not recover. In the runoff, he’ll face Ossoff.

In the other Senate race in the state – a special election for Republican Johnny Isakson’s seat – 20 candidates competed.

Incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, and Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock will advance to the runoff.

In some ways, these two candidates couldn’t be more opposite. Loeffler is a white, wealthy, suburban woman who campaigned on her close ties to Trump; Warnock is the progressive, grassroots-oriented, African American pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

Regardless of the final outcomes of Georgia’s two Senate races, the results from the 2020 elections reflect just how much the state’s political landscape has changed in recent years.

An outlier in the South The key drivers of Georgia’s changing electorate are ongoing demographic shifts, combined with urban and suburban growth.

Since 2000, the population of the Atlanta metropolitan region has grown tremendously, making it one of the three fastest-growing metro areas in the nation. It now contains about two-thirds of Georgia’s entire population. The rest of the state’s growth has been concentrated in other smaller metro areas, such as Savannah and Macon. At the same time, large swaths of rural Georgia have witnessed population decline.

The bulk of that growth has been in the suburbs, which have become increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and class.

In the suburbs that do remain majority white and middle class, women are now

Incumbent Republican US Sen. David Perdue wanted to avoid a runoff. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images more likely to be college-educated working professionals. These trends generally favor the Democratic vote, and it’s why the suburbs – in Georgia and across the nation – have become important electoral battlegrounds.

It is not just that many urban, historically Democratic, counties turned out the vote in 2020; it is that many outer suburbs became much less red. Take, for example, Fayette County, one of Atlanta’s large southern suburbs, which has about 68,000 votes: Trump won Fayette with a 19-point margin in 2016 but that margin shrunk to 6 points in 2020.

No other state in the South has such large urban and suburban populations relative to the overall state population. If Georgia is

demographically and politically becoming unlike neighboring Republican strongholds like Alabama and Tennessee, it has, in some respects, moved in a similar direction as Arizona, where the two major metropolitan regions of Phoenix and Tucson make up over 80% of the state’s population, and where Democrats have improved their standing in recent years.

Georgia on everybody’s mind This is not to overstate Georgia’s blue turn.

It is only the slightest shade of blue, based on the slimmest of margins. The state may have helped the Democrats back into the White House, but could just as well end up sending two Republicans back to the Senate, with the promise of federal government gridlock.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock will advance to a Jan. 5 runoff in Georgia. Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

Over the next two months, all eyes will be on these two runoffs. If Democrats can pull off two victories, they’ll assume control of the Senate.

In a 2017 special election, Ossoff ran for a House seat in Atlanta’s suburbs. It became seen as a referendum on Trump’s nascent presidency, and over US$50 million was spent, making it, at the time, the most expensive House race in U.S. history.

With not one but two races – and control of the Senate in the balance – money will likely pour into Georgia at an unprecedented clip over the next couple of months.

Perdue and Loeffler will find themselves as favorites – even if their close association with Trump may now be cause for some strategic repositioning. Perdue secured the most votes in the first round, and while Warnock had the largest share of the votes in the special election – 33% – the Republican candidates nonetheless outperformed the Democratic candidates in the 20-candidate field by a slim margin. Furthermore, Trump’s defeat will likely motivate Republicans to go all out to preserve their Senate majority. To both Democrats and Republicans, it could feel like Georgia gives with one hand and takes with the other.

That would be a fitting finale from one of the most divided states in a deeply divided nation, but the outcome is far from certain.

With Democrats energized, Georgia might just flip the U.S. Senate as well.

Source: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Charities

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Non-Profit and Charitable Organizations For visitors to Puerto Vallarta who wish to support the less privileged in our paradise, this is a list of some of the many organizations that could benefit from such kind gestures. If you would like your organization recognized here, please email details to cpsmedia.pv@gmail.com You can find all of our local charities online at vallartatribune.com Amigos de La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, A.C. – contributing to the quality of life in La Cruz through cultural, educational, environmental and charitable assistance programs.

Tax Deductible. www. amigosdelacruz.org Contact Amy Welch amywelchpdx@comcast.net Alcoholics Anonymous: In English Puerto Vallarta Alanon Club – Basilio Badillo 329 recoverpv.com Amazing Grace Missions Assisting families in Magisterio & Progreso with necessities and job training and English. slw2014nv@gmail.com American Legion Post 14: raises resources and manpower to improve facilities needing building maintenance americanlegion14.org Amigos del Magisterio – Food delivered directly to workers at the PV dump, their families and schools in Magisterio and Volcanes. Also, food to New Beginnings, Pasitos de Luz, and Caritas. 100% of donations to the people, no overhead. amigosdelmagisterio.com lysephilrioux@ hotmail.com Asilo San Juan Diego Home for the Elderly – Contact: Lupita Sanchez Covarrubias 222-1257 or malupita88@ hotmail.com or mexonline.com\ asilosanjuandiego.htm Asociación Down – Assistance to persons with Down’s Syndrome – Contact: Ana Eisenring at 224-9577.

Banderas Bay Women’s Shelter – Safe shelter for women & children victims of domestic violence. compassionforthefamily.org Becas Vallarta, A.C. – Provides scholarships to high school and university students. Tax-deductible in Mexico and USA. Polly Vicars at (322) 223-1371 or Buri Gray at (322) 221-5285.

CANICA – Centre for Children with Cancer. Provides aid for treatment and services including transportation to GDL. Contact Director, Evelia Basañes 322-123-5688.

Casa Hogar – A shelter for orphaned, abandoned, disadvantaged or vulnerable children. Luz Aurora Arredondo at 221 1908, casahogar_maximocornejo@hotmail. com Centro Comunitario SETAC-GLBT – Services the GLBT community, including treatment and referrals, education, English classes, HIV testing and counseling. Paco Arjona 224-1974

Photo by Nomad Family Photo Group

Clinica de Rehabilitación Santa Barbara – Rehabilitation of the handicapped.

Contact: Laura Lopez Portillo Rodriguez at 224-2754.

COLINA Spay and Neuter Clinic – Free and by-donation sterilization clinic in Old Town. Only open Saturdays, Contact: cez@rogers.com or 322-104-6609 CompassionNet Impact – Transforming the lives of people living in chronic poverty.

Job creation, education, emergency & more. Tax-deductible. Cell: (322) 133-7263 or ric@4compassion.org Corazon de Nina A safe, loving, home-environment for 40+ children and youth rescued from high-risk situations. Donations & volunteers always welcome! Totally self-funded. www. fundacioncorazon.mx Cruz Roja (Red Cross) – Handles hospital and emergency service in Vallarta.

It is the only facility that is authorized to offer assistance to injured people on the street. Contact: 222-1533, 222-4973 Desayunos para los Niños de Vallarta A.C. Feeding programs, education programs, day care centers for single mothers. 2234311 or 22225 72 Discapacitados de Vallarta, A.C. (DIVAC) association of handicapped individuals dedicated to helping one another. Ivan Applegate at 221-5153.

Ecology and Conservation of Whales, AC. National Coordination Network for the Assistance of Entangled Whales.

Biol. Astrid Frisch Jordán, Arce #541.

Col. La Primavera Puerto Vallarta, Jal. 48325, Mexico, Tel/Fax: (322) 29 37 851

fibbcatalogo@yahoo.com Families At The Dump: Supporting families living in the landfill or garbage dump thru education and sustainable opportunities. familiesatthedump.org Fundacion Punta de Mita LDG. Ana Lilia Medina Varas de Valdés. ana@ fundacionpuntademita.org Tel. (329) 291 5053 Friends of PV Animals Volunteers working to enhance the lives of shelter animals. For info and donations visit friendsofpvanimals.com Grupo Ecológico de Puerto Vallarta: Arq. Luz del Carmen Pérez A cayro_13@ hotmail.com grupoecologico.com Horizonte de Paz: Welcoming shelter for men of all ages who are troubled w/alcohol & drug addiction.In great need of cash or material resources Contact MAYNOR Tel 281 0644 horizontedepaz@live.com International Friendship Club – Provides medical, educational and social services to those in need in Puerto Vallarta. www. ifcvallarta.com La Brigada de la Basura: A weekly meeting of neighborhood children to clean Vallarta Streets. Contact Que?Pasa 223-4006 Mexico Ministries & Mission, Inc. raises funds to the poor in Vallarta. Contact Fr. Jack+ 044 322 229-1129 christchurchbythesea.org Navy League – assists in the transportation of donated medical supplies from the U.S., organizes work groups to paint and repair facilities New Life Mexico – Challenging Child Poverty with health and education

programs.

Philippa Vernon pvp@ newlifemexico.com Paraíso Felino AC Refuge and Adoption Centre for cats and kittens in the Bay of Banderas. Luis Donaldo Cel. (322) 120-4092 Pasitos de Luz – substitute home for low income children with any type of handicap, offers rehabilitation services and more.

299-4146. pasitosdeluz.org Purr Project – no-kill feline rescue located near Puerto Vallarta providing homeless cats and kittens a recuperative stay with the ultimate goal of adopting them out to loving homes, sterilized, vaccinated and disease free. www.purrproject.com PEACEAnimals – Free mobile spay/ neuter clinic operating 48 weeks a year, primarily in Puerto Vallarta. Tax-deductible. peaceanimals.org Refugio Infantil Santa Esperanza Orphanage for children aged 0-14. www.ccshf.ca SETAC - Effectively reduce the incidence of HIV / AIDS in Puerto Vallarta and ​promoting respect for human rights of people living with HIV / AIDS www.setac. com.mx SPCA PV – Provides long term no-kill shelter and vet services as well as rehabilitation and adoption to rescued animals. www.spcapv.com Vallarta Botanical Gardens - An award winning botanical garden that offers research & education of native plant life, city beautification programs, bird and butterfly watching, orchid garden and more etc. www.vbgardens.org

Nov 9 - 15, 2020

Games

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Nov 9 - 15, 2020