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The Dominican Colmado from Santo Domingo to New York
The Dominican Colmado from Santo Domingo to New York
- Christian Krohn-HansenChristian Krohn-HansenDepartment of History, Sosialantropologisk Institutt (SAI), Norway
The colmado, or the small village or street-corner store, is a Dominican institution. It is typically a general store for basic foodstuffs, cleaning products, toiletries, soft drinks, beer, and rum. When Dominicans from the early 1960s onward started migrating to New York City in large numbers, they took with them a version of the colmado. On the way, they altered the original colmado. The result became the "Dominican" bodega or corner grocer's in New York City, a new type but nevertheless not so unlike the colmado on the island. This essay explores the making and remaking of Dominican colmados and bodegas. The goal is twofold: firstly, to provide some answers to the questions "How have these businesses been created and run?" and "What are their most important and most striking characteristics?" and, secondly, to demonstrate that the Dominican colmado can be good to think with—more specifically, the hope is to show that the problematic of "the Dominican colmado / the Dominican bodega" offers a window for tracing and understanding in which ways the Dominican social formation has changed since the mid-20th century, that is, since the last years of the Trujillo regime. The patterns of the colmados and bodegas have mirrored broader historical transformations. But these businesses have also helped give the latter processes their form. Businesses and social configurations have been two sides of the same historical process.
- History of the Caribbean
- Cultural History
- Urban History
Until recently, a majority of Dominicans purchased groceries and food in colmados and in public markets. El colmado, the small village or street-corner store, is a national institution. It is typically a general store for basic foodstuffs, cleaning products, toiletries, soft drinks, beer, and rum. Some offer more items. The colmado continues to be extremely important in today's Dominican Republic—it is still the most common small business in the country—but especially in the largest cities, including in the capital's working-class barrios, independent and chain supermarkets have since the late 20th century become far more important and increasingly taken over the selling of groceries. A number of colmados now sell relatively little food and have grown correspondingly more dependent on sales of drinking water, soft drinks, beer, and rum in addition to sandwiches, biscuits, and snacks.
Trade has for a long time played a key part in Dominican society, and to become a colmadero, owning and running a colmado, has often been a dream, carrying a certain prestige, not to mention a certain power in the local community (whether a rural hamlet or few streets or a barrio in a large city). In the mid-1990s surveys indicated that there were around 320,000 small businesses in the country and that over 70,000, or more than a fifth, of these were colmados or smaller versions of the colmado classified as pulperías and ventorrillos; 40,000 were colmados.1 A decade later, in 2005, the number of small firms had grown to about 615,000, and the number of colmados had increased significantly, to almost 67,000.2 Put another way, whether one wishes to understand the history of Dominican food retailing, the Dominican popular economy, widespread Dominican forms of exercising power and authority, or simply Dominican imaginaries, forms of consumption, and everyday life, one ought to take an interest in the colmado.
The colmado resembles a "total" phenomenon (in the Maussian, or classic anthropological, sense of this expression).3 The processes and relationships that give the colmado its characteristic shape should not be reduced to mere economics. They also have cultural, affective, aesthetic, recreational, and political components. The typical colmado is a site for production and sustenance of forms of kinship and gender—and of relationships between friends and neighbors. It is also an arena for the experience of lo criollo, or of what it means to be Dominican, in landscapes shot through with marked and growing globalization and transnationalism. Today the colmado appears economically threatened. But it continues to be massively and conspicuously present in Dominican society. It is a flexible, elastic form. The objective of every colmado owner is quite simply to sell, to make money. He or she adapts to the surroundings.
When Dominicans from the early 1960s onward started migrating to New York City in large numbers, they took with them a version of the colmado, or, put differently, Dominican immigrants in a way replanted the typical Dominican colmado in the Big Apple. On the way, of course, they transformed the original colmado. But they also changed those stores, originally bought from Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Italians. The outcome became the "Dominican" bodega in New York, a new type. (In Puerto Rico and Cuba, a small neighborhood grocery store is referred to as a bodega, and New York's Latinos similarly call the city's small groceries bodegas.) But in many ways the colmado on the island and the Dominican bodega in New York are fairly similar. In 1991, Dominican immigrants owned around 80 percent of the approximately nine thousand bodegas and independent groceries controlled by Latinos in New York City.4 In some areas of the city, like Upper Manhattan and parts of the southwestern Bronx, there are today Dominican bodegas on almost every street corner.
This essay explores the making and remaking of Dominican colmados and Dominican bodegas.5 The goal is a twofold one: firstly, to provide some answers to the questions "how have these businesses been created and run?" and "what have been their most important and most striking characteristics?," and secondly, and more ambitiously, to demonstrate that the Dominican colmado can be good to think with—more specifically, the hope here is to show that the problematic of "the Dominican colmado / the Dominican bodega" offers a window for tracing and understanding the ways the Dominican social formation has changed since the mid-20th century, that is, since the last years of the Trujillo regime.6 The patterns of the colmados and bodegas have mirrored broader historical transformations. But these businesses have also helped give the latter processes their form. Businesses and social configurations have been two sides of the same historical process.
In sum, this examination of the Dominican colmado and the Dominican bodega seeks to avoid a model of "the economy" (or of "capitalism," or for that matter, of "neoliberalism") as an economic order governed by universal laws. Instead, it sets out from the premise that all forms of economic action and consumption practice are shaped by, and articulate, historically specific imageries and sentiments—that is, forms of culture and desire. One always needs a cultural analysis of economic projects and activities.7
The Colmado as a "Total" Phenomenon
The word "colmado" is probably derived from the verb colmar ("fill to the brim").8 In a few areas in the Dominican countryside, people use the word "bodega," or even "pulpería," instead of colmado. But most often the category pulpería is associated by Dominicans with a smaller and simpler store than the colmado.
According to Gerald Murray, there are two significant reasons why the colmado historically developed into the important Dominican institution it is today.9 First, urbanization created a market for food. Substantial urban growth started in the 1950s, and it gained major momentum in the 1960s and 1970s.10 In 1920, the Dominican capital had barely more than thirty thousand residents. In 2012, greater Santo Domingo had become the largest Caribbean city and was home to nearly three million people, corresponding to around 28 percent of the nation's population. Today, over 70 percent of the Dominican population lives in cities. Second, the rapid urban expansion and the creation of new neighborhoods resulted in a situation where more and more people lived and worked far away from what had previously been the principal urban supplier of food to families and households: the public market. The Dominican state's policy was to provide the many new working-class barrios with streets and parks, but not markets. The niche was filled by the colmados; their owners purchased vegetables, fruit, and víveres (the green plantains and native starchy roots that for a long time have been a staple of the Dominican diet—cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, etc.) in the public markets and sold the products in the barrios.
The colmados were often based on the family's labor. Often a boy or a young man left the countryside and started working in a relative's colmado in one of Santo Domingo's new barrios. It was a pattern—a form of chain migration. As one man in Santo Domingo, an owner of several colmados, put it, earlier, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a poor young man in the countryside generally had two options if he wanted to leave the village and try his luck: joining the armed forces or going to work in a colmado. In the city he slept and ate in the colmado. After a trial period of half a year, his relative started paying him a tiny salary. They worked almost continuously; the store opened at seven in the morning and closed late in the evening or around midnight, seven days a week.
Manolo Troncoso in 2012 was the head of La Federación Nacional de Comerciantes Detallistas, the national association of colmado owners. In addition, he ran two colmados in one of Santo Domingo's old working-class barrios, San Carlos. He had left his village and begun working in a colmado in San Carlos in 1963 when he was twelve. Eleven years later he had managed to put aside a little and borrowed some money from a brother and a friend, and he purchased his first business, a colmado in San Carlos. Edwin Gómez is approximately twenty years younger than Manolo and owns and runs two small supermarkets in Santo Domingo. He was thirteen when he relocated in the mid-1980s from the hamlet where he had grown up to Los Trinitarios, a poor neighborhood in the eastern part of Santo Domingo. His father, who already lived in Los Trinitarios, had sent for him. Together they established a small colmado—first in the same house where they lived, and then in new, rented premises.
A Dominican colmado is never a self-service shop. Customers enter the store and are attended by those behind the counter. Most often one or two persons work behind the counter, and most, if not all the goods—canned food, rice, bread, beverages, cleaning products, sweets, and so on—are stored behind the counter. Usually the store is small and packed, with boxes of fruits or vegetables or some other commodities occupying a part of the space in front of the counter. More goods may be stored on the pavement in front of the store. The colmado's bottles of rum and whiskey are typically put a very visible place, for example, just behind the counter.
In order to be able to open or buy a colmado one needs capital. When Manolo Troncoso bought his first colmado in San Carlos in 1974, he paid only six thousand pesos. A good or large colmado in those days, he continued, cost only ten thousand, perhaps twelve thousand. Forty years later, one needed at least half a million, and perhaps between one and two million pesos. Many have raised capital with the aid of relatives and friends. A number have resorted to prestamistas, or moneylenders, although the interest rates are high. A few, especially since the 1990s, have been able to borrow from a bank. Those with established reputations in the business whom the suppliers trust can stock the store on credit.
The colmados in Santo Domingo have mainly been run in two different ways. Some are operated as family businesses, or mom-and-pop stores. Other colmados are run by "un administrador"—an administrator. Some men own several colmados in various barrios—five, six, seven. They use administrators to operate their stores. The latter are not paid a wage. Instead, they have an agreement that gives them a percentage of the colmado's profits.
Owners who run their colmados through administrators described a constant challenge, a dilemma even. A man is recruited as an administrator because he is regarded as serio (honest) and enjoys the owner's confianza (trust). He may be a friend or a close relative. But the colmado works almost entirely with cash. Not infrequently the absentee owner may be a bit uncertain or start nurturing suspicions. Do people in the colmado steal from him? Is he being cheated? Edwin Gómez explained that he and his father had owned five colmados when they decided to sell four of them and just keep one and instead gradually develop the latter into an independent supermarket. The reason, he said, was that it had been difficult to find good people to run their colmados and that they had been dissatisfied with the results. As he put it (exaggerating), "The colmados lack control. There is no registration. What you do, quite simply, is leave the money in the cash register, put two or three people to work there, and everybody does as he pleases." Put another way, sentiments or affective forms operate as forces of production. Colmados are established and developed based on feelings of trust and loyalty. But distrust and feelings of betrayal are also sentiments—and such feelings may result in changes or closings of colmados.
Until the late 1990s and early 2000s, the colmados in the Dominican capital got their merchandise from the city's wholesalers—the owners and operators of the almacenes. Many of those who were wholesalers had themselves once run a colmado. But this has changed. Many almacenes in the Dominican capital have disappeared. Instead, the colmados are now regularly visited by representatives of the industry or distributors and thus purchase directly from them. However, colmaderos still go at least weekly to one of the public markets to buy víveres, vegetables, and fruit.11
The majority of the colmado owners are men, and most of the employees are men. But this does not mean that a colmado owned or operated by a woman is surprising; far from it. Many Dominican women run small businesses, and many own and run their own colmado. In the mid-1990s, research indicated that 42 percent of the country's small businesses (outside of the colmados) belonged to women, while only 18 percent of the colmados were owned by women.12 There are at least two reasons why the business has been, and continues to be, dominated by men. To be able to open a colmado, one needs a certain amount of capital, more than what is required in order to be able to start in a number of other businesses. Women have generally had less access to capital than men. Second, employees and assistants in the colmados not only sell the merchandise but also carry, transport, and store it.13
Many customers are women and children from the area buying food for the day's meals. The majority purchase only few things, often just one or two items, and in small amounts. The Dominican colmadero opens bags, boxes, and cans and sells, for example, a single cigarette, a few spoons of coffee, or a bit of tomato paste in a paper. Often a small boy or girl is sent to the colmado to get a single missing ingredient. Those in the colmado know their customers, or at least many of them. Often there is a sign on the wall that states that the store does not provide credit. But in spite of this, many colmaderos offer some their customers (such as those who live in the area and have a form of income, such as a regular weekly or monthly wage) credit.
Some go to the colmado to eat a biscuit and some cheese or salami or a sandwich, and in the evening, particularly on the weekends, some barrio colmados function as a meeting place for the neighborhood's men. They chat, joke, play dominos, drink beer and rum, and listen to popular music. Some colmados have a couple of chairs and perhaps a table, or a place right outside in the shadow, and they play music. The colmado has always been a key site of popular culture. People discussed the local and national politics, elections, religious life, and sports. The colmados played a significant part in the historical transformation of the popular Dominican bachata music into the influential transnational style that it is today. This guitar-based music with its melancholic ballads, so popular among the rural and urban poor, up until the late 20th century was not viewed as a musical genre worthy of respect and attention by the nation's elites or music industry. In addition, bachata was for many years excluded from FM radio and from television. Therefore, one of the few opportunities for listening to and enjoying this music in public was in neighborhood colmados. According to Deborah Pacini Hernandez, "In the 1950s almost every colmado (neighborhood store) and barra (bar) throughout the country was equipped with a jukebox . . . Trujillo's brother-in-law Francisco Martínez de Alba imported thousands of these jukeboxes and placed them in colmados, free of charge, in exchange for 50 percent of the earnings. It was a highly desirable arrangement, because the jukeboxes did not require any capital investment by the owner of the colmado except for the cost of buying records."14 The colmados with their records players, sound systems, and jukeboxes served, in other words, as key locus for the cultivation and dissemination of bachata music.
As should be apparent, the colmados were, and remain, above all neighborhood institutions. In the colmados, ordinary Dominicans make and remake neighborhood relationships, reproduce already established friendships, and develop new ones. The owner of the store and the customers greet one another and find time for a chat. Through the conversations news and gossip about the area's families and businesses circulate. The stream of encounters in the colmado helps convert the small rural village or the immediate vicinity in the barrio into a community—a loosely organized order of shared pieces of information and meanings.
Writers on the Hispanic Caribbean have argued that there is a cyclical theme in many Cuban and Dominican national discourses that culturally constructs the nation (or what happened/happens on the island) in terms of complex encounters or struggles between two sets of historical forces—on the one hand imperialism, slavery, and foreignness and on the other independence, freedom, "nativeness," and lo criollo.15 In the Dominican case, Lauren Derby has traced a powerful vernacular discourse on forms of food and the nation. This discourse shaped and used an opposition between big sugar and the conuco, the peasant's small plot of land, a source of independence and of Dominicans' preferred foods.16 Small farming produced, and continues to produce, the Dominican víveres—roots, tubers, and green plantains. The plantain continues to be perhaps the most important, the most creole or Dominican, foodstuff. Historically, the colmados sold these products. A set of strong connections exists in many ordinary Dominicans' cultural and affective world between nativeness, the conuco, the víveres, the plantain, the colmado, lo criollo, and Dominican identity.
One sees the traces, and the lasting power, of these visions and stories in today's Dominican society. The anthropologist Steven Gregory in the early 2000s studied an area of the country that since the early 1980s has changed radically and strikingly through development of international tourism. The colmados in Boca Chica, he writes, "were viewed by residents as particularly Dominican cultural spaces and contrasted to the tourism-oriented bars and entertainment venues."17 Few foreign tourists and expatriates frequented the colmados, even those located in the heart of the tourist area.
The Situation after 2000: A Changed Landscape
The years from 1991 to 1993 signaled the beginning of a restructuring and significant opening of the Dominican economy under IMF stabilization programs supported by a series of neoliberal reforms,18 and in 2004, the Dominican Republic, along with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, signed DR-CAFTA, a free trade agreement with the United States.
A handful of larger independent supermarkets were opened in some of Santo Domingo's "nicer" central areas in the period from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, but more significant change did not begin before the early 2000s. From the early 2000s onward, the Dominican capital saw the creation and development of a rapidly growing number of large supermarkets owned and operated by chains. These large stores were first opened in the central parts of the city but during the last years have increasingly conquered the barrios and the outer and poorer areas as well. That said, the food retailing system in Santo Domingo and the country as a whole remains highly diverse and fragmented. Large and small independent supermarkets, tens of thousands of colmados, a large number of pulperías and ventorrillos, and a multitude of public markets continue to play a part, and the chain supermarkets are not all owned and run by only one company. The two market leaders, respectively, are the Grupo Ramos (which runs the hypermarkets La Sirena, the supermarkets Súper Pola, and the discount chain Aprezio) and the Centro Cuesta Nacional (with the labels Nacional, Jumbo, and Jumbo Express). Both are Dominican-controlled companies (although both were started by a Spanish immigrant, one in 1935 and the other in 1965). In 2015, the Ramos group operated forty-seven food retail establishments in various parts of the country, and the Centro Cuesta Nacional twenty-seven. The majority of the stores were located in greater Santo Domingo.
What this means is that the economic condition of the majority of the colmados in the largest cities, and especially in the capital, has become significantly more difficult and precarious. The supermarkets, which outcompete the colmados through lower prices and high-profile marketing, are increasingly taking over the sale of groceries and food, not only to the middle class but also to significant parts of the urban masses. Many colmados in Santo Domingo's barrios now sell relatively little food. As Manolo Troncoso, the president of the national association of colmado owners, put it: "The colmado today isn't like it was previously. Today the neighborhood only uses the colmado to buy water, soft drinks, juice, bread, biscuits, many small things." But in spite of this perhaps exaggerated claim, Manolo nevertheless remained convinced that the colmado does have a future in the Dominican society—that it will continue to adapt and survive, albeit in altered forms.
Two such adaptations are already visible. First, a large number of colmados in the Dominican capital now offer delivery service. The colmado has one or two light motorcycles and one or two young men who deliver merchandise to the house or apartment. The customer calls the colmado from her home, and the man arrives with the order shortly afterward. The latter is paid a low salary by the colmado owner and is from time to time given tips. Colmados in Santo Domingo began to develop this delivery service in the early 2000s. Supermarkets do not deliver. The population in the Dominican capital buys drinking water, most often in containers. Today in many barrios, the colmados typically deliver the drinking water to nearby households. Some customers live in apartment buildings, perhaps on the fourth or fifth floor of a building without an elevator; the man carries the water into the kitchen and replaces the empty container with the new one.
The other adaptation has existed much longer, at least since the 1970s or 1980s. Dominican law does not prohibit consumption of alcohol in the store. Some colmados, a minority, have been converted into what Dominicans call súper colmados. These are colmados cerveceros, cheap, popular places to drink beer or rum, almost like bars. The music from the súper colmado may be heard in the vicinity till late in the night. The súper colmado, in brief, is a place not only of recreation but also of considerable discussion, negotiation, disagreement, and moral nuisance in Santo Domingo's neighborhoods.
The conditions of the colmados have changed, and the future of the colmado appears uncertain—but the country nevertheless continues to be dotted with colmados. As one interlocutor, a man in his thirties and an owner of a small supermarket in a working-class quarter in the eastern part of the capital, put it: "The colmado will survive! This country has a kind of colmado culture."
The prices are indeed a bit lower in the supermarkets than they are in the colmados, and a large proportion of the Dominican population remains poor. In such a landscape, the colmados have three advantages compared to the supermarkets. First, the colmado continues to open boxes and bottles and to sell merchandise in small quantities. Second, in order to be able to take advantage of the supermarkets' offers, one needs cash; the colmado provides credit (at least to some). If you are paid your wage once a month, you may lack money the last week before your next payment; the owner of the colmado near where you live knows your situation and your family and lets you purchase foodstuffs on credit. Third, the colmado is situated close by, often on the same street, if not in the same building. If one lacks one's own vehicle, this is a considerable advantage. In addition, the colmado has other qualities. It is a place to meet, to hear news, to eat, and to cultivate friendship and belonging.
From Santo Domingo to New York
Large-scale emigration from the Dominican Republic to the United States began in the early 1960s after the assassination of General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, who ruled the country as a dictator from 1930 to 1961. Most of these Dominicans settled in New York City. Since then the growth of the city's Dominican population has been staggering, now accounting for around 7 percent of the total population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2007 more than two-thirds of the city's Dominicans lived in the Bronx (38.9 percent) and Manhattan (28.8 percent). Most Dominicans residing in Manhattan live in the neighborhoods north of Harlem, in Washington Heights and Inwood—and most Dominicans residing in the Bronx are found in the borough's southern and western parts.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a significant number of Dominicans in New York were factory workers, employed in light manufacturing, particularly in the garment industry.19 But during the 1980s, Dominican immigrants in the manufacturing industry declined. In 1979, 49 percent of all Dominican workers were engaged in manufacturing; in 1989, only ten years later, the number of Dominican immigrants in manufacturing had declined to 26 percent.20 After that the figure continued to drop. But more and more Dominican New Yorkers moved on to other parts of the economy. A growing number found jobs in the service sector, and many became self-employed. In 1991, the sociologists Alejandro Portes and Luis Guarnizo estimated that twenty thousand businesses in New York City were owned and operated by Dominican immigrants. Dominicans particularly owned bodegas, small and medium-sized supermarkets, car services, beauty parlors, restaurants, travel agencies, and sweatshops.21 Until the early 1980s the number of businesses in the city owned by Dominicans remained small.22 Most have therefore been bought or opened since then. But there is no doubt that Dominican immigrants have been developing their own small stores and enterprises for quite a long time. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dominicans ran businesses in Queens, particularly in Corona, and Dominican-owned businesses were found in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Upper West Side and in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn.23 In a 1976 New York Daily News article about the new Dominican core areas in Washington Heights, journalist John Lewis claimed, "Evidence of the changes can be seen everywhere. Irish grocery stores are now Spanish [sic] bodegas. Along the central shopping district on W. 181st St. several older, well-known stores have closed because the merchants said that they could not compete with Hispanic merchants who cater to the needs of the growing Hispanic population."24
A central part of the history of how New York ended up with a considerable number of Dominican-owned small businesses is the history of the Dominican bodega. A Dominican veteran bodeguero and small-business activist and leader in Upper Manhattan claimed in the early 2000s: "Yes, I've always said that the basis of the emergence of today's strong Dominican community in New York was the bodega. The bodegas produced the large homes that Dominicans now own in New Jersey. The bodegas created the large [Dominican-owned] supermarkets."25
Dominican immigrants entered New York's small-business economy at a time when it was undergoing significant change. During the 1960s and 1970s, many neighborhoods were losing their traditional retail businesses as white owners retired or moved away to the suburbs. But at the same time, the population of potential customers in these same neighborhoods was growing owing to new (post-1965) waves of immigration.26 In other words, the city was a profitable frontier for immigrant entrepreneurship, and among those who were willing to pioneer were Dominican immigrants.
The Dominican immigrants have in a way transplanted the Dominican colmado to Manhattan and the Bronx. On the way, they have changed the original colmado, but the differences between the colmado on the island and the "Dominican" bodega in New York should not be exaggerated. Dominican New Yorkers typically contrast them along four dimensions: 1. The two stores do not look the same; they have dissimilar storefronts, and the bodega in New York is usually located in a five- or six-story building. 2. The bodega in New York is largely self-service; the colmado is not. 3. In the Dominican colmado, a person may come in and ask for, for example, "ten pesos' worth of sugar." In the bodega it is different; here, a customer must buy the whole bag. 4. The typical bodega in New York preserves the food it sells better, since regulations are stricter.
But some of the more basic social and cultural features are almost identical. Like his colleague on the island, the Dominican bodeguero in New York greets customers when they enters, often by name. Sometimes he asks a customer, "And how's the family doing?" José Delio Marte, a Dominican immigrant who in 2002 had operated bodegas in Washington Heights for over three decades, said of the colmado and the bodega: "Look, it is the same thing. Physically, they are different. But the practice to greet the customer, to chat with him, to sell some of the same products that we have there [in the Dominican Republic], and the wish to sell—this shows that it is the same thing."27
The Dominican bodegas in New York's core Dominican areas display and sell commodities that remind people of the homeland—products like the typical Dominican víveres, Dominican biscuits, Dominican casabe (bread made from bitter tapioca flour), and Dominican sweets. At the same time the Dominican bodega in New York has become a hybrid—or an entirely practical, historical, and transcultural entity. The dominant language in the store is Spanish, but customers can also shop in English. In arranging their signs and storefronts, many Dominican bodegueros in the core Dominican areas in Washington Heights and Inwood draw on national identity. Quite a few storefronts employ the word "dominicano," or Dominican. Others use the name or logo of a Dominican product, the name of a Dominican place, or the Dominican flag. But even where a storefront exploits the word Dominican or a Dominican symbol, it usually advertises in English as well as Spanish. The result is that the typical "Dominican" bodega storefront in Upper Manhattan is replete with mixtures of Spanish and English, with a Dominican name, image, or flag in between.28 Take the Tenares Supermarket, a large Dominican bodega in the heart of Washington Heights, for example. In the early 2000s, a green banner bearing the characteristic logo of Presidente, one of the Dominican Republic's most popular brands of beer, decorated the storefront. Other Dominican bodegueros employ another strategy; they have storefronts using the U.S. panethnic terms hispano and/or latino.29
The Dominican Bodega
It would not have been possible for Dominican immigrants in New York to obtain bodegas to the extent they have had it not been for their capacity to raise initial capital by mobilizing family members and friends. Often, one first managed to save some money, then raised more with the aid of relatives and friends, and finally got a loan at high interest from a moneylender. Not infrequently two people were socios, or business partners; each owned half the bodega. Dominican sociedades, or partnerships (on the island and in New York), are essentially based on trust, not legal documents, though some forms and other paperwork documenting the existence of the partnership often exist. The following is an example. Benito Paulino is from the southeastern Dominican Republic and immigrated in 1984. In the Dominican Republic, one of his uncles had run a colmado, and, having been more or less raised in that store, Benito already knew a good deal about operating a corner grocer's when he emigrated. From 1985 to 1989, he worked as a manager of a Dominican bodega in the Bronx. Soon, however, he sought to obtain his own business. The bodega he purchased in 1989 was located in Williamsbridge in the Bronx, and he bought it together with a socio, his stepfather, who was his half-sister's father. In all, he and his stepfather had $11,000. They borrowed the rest of what they needed, $45,000, from Cuban moneylenders; for the next two years, they repaid the moneylenders weekly. They paid back more than $74,000 for the $45,000, but after the two years the loan was repaid. In addition to Benito and his stepfather, Benito's mother worked in the store. It was open seven days a week, from seven in the morning until midnight.30
Dominican bodegueros in New York have generally put in long hours. Some do almost nothing but work in the store and go home to sleep.31 Benito and his family are typical in this way. One week Benito and his mother opened the store each day at seven; at two in the afternoon Benito's stepfather began his shift, and Benito went home to get some sleep. At four he returned to the bodega, his mother went home, and Benito and his stepfather kept the business open until midnight. The next week Benito started to work at two in the afternoon, while the stepfather and mother opened the store, and so on.32
Like the colmado on the island, the Dominican bodega in New York has been a site of popular culture and the making and remaking of belonging. People share gossip and news from the area and the homeland and visit the bodega to pause over a snack or a drink.33 In the early 2000s, Mario Solano ran a small bodega on a street corner in Washington Heights. The area was mainly residential but also had a few small shops and commercial establishments. Most of the customers were Dominican immigrants; they lived in apartments close by or worked in the vicinity. Mario allowed neighbors to post small papers with advertisements inside the store. Most advertised a room for rent. He also distributed advertisements for events and fiestas organized by Dominican New Yorkers with ties to the Dominican community of Cotuí. Although Mario had lived mostly in Santo Domingo before he came to New York, he had ties to Cotuí, and some of his close friends were from that town. A Dominican woman who lived close by made empanadas in her home and sold them to Mario. Another woman made chicharones. He sold the empanadas and chicharones in the bodega. He himself prepared ham-and-cheese sandwiches in the store. His most important commodity, however, was beer, and he allowed customers to consume their beer inside the store, although he knew that this was illegal and therefore constantly feared a sudden inspection by the police. On Saturdays and Sundays, men from the neighborhood dropped in or gathered for hours at the back of the bodega to drink and listen to bachata.34
If there has been a center in the making, remaking, and transformation of the Dominican bodegas in New York, it has been this relationship between making money and making and remaking ties between kin, friends, and neighbors. Dominican immigrants who have obtained and developed bodegas have drawn on their personal networks. Many of the stores function as neighborhood institutions: they have helped produce and sustain the same kinds of informal bonds—ties between kin, friends, and neighbors—that made it possible to start and develop them to begin with.
However, this does not mean that the Dominican bodega economy has constituted an "enclave," a form of isolated or parallel sociocultural universe. Dominican bodegas and other small businesses have been purchased, sold, and run not in isolation from New York's ethnic and racial diversity but as part of it. Bodega owners and employees have had to interact with representatives of the city's police and other authorities, with representatives of large and small companies, and with landlords and moneylenders, and these have most often not been Dominicans.
Many of the relationships that have given shape to the Dominican bodegas have been transnational. Dominican bodegas have been bought, sold, and operated through practices and processes that connected communities and households on the island with stores, individuals, and networks in Manhattan and the Bronx. José Delio Marte illustrated this through drawing a colorful picture:
If we analyze it, we can see that our businesses, the sort of businesses we all do, go from hand to hand. If you are my brother and I have a business and the business is good, and if you would like to obtain your own business, then—what I do—I say: "Well, let me give them a call, let me go to the bank and ask them to give my brother a loan." Or I say to my brother: "I sell you 50 percent of the business and keep the other half. You give me a sum weekly—you send it to me in Santo Domingo." In the Dominican Republic, there are hundreds of people like that, people who have retired and own 50 percent of a business here, or they own one third, and they are sent their money monthly. So, the last one who has arrived is the one who remains, he's the one who is here. And when he leaves, a new person begins. When he is finished, a new person comes, and that's how it is. The family—all the members of the family are dreaming. I have seen families in Santo Domingo—for example, in San José de las Matas I met a boy, he's fifteen years of age. When he is twenty-two, he will take over a bodega in New York. He said, "That's how we do it. Carlos has finished. He gave the bodega to Juan. Juan will give it to Francisco, who is now nineteen." Then Francisco must give it to the fifteen-year-old I met. Juan gave me my 50 percent. Francisco will give Juan his half. In Santo Domingo, there are businesses which operate that way.35
The bulk of New York's Dominican bodegueros, like so many others in the post-1960s United States, have made only modest sums. Many have mostly only managed to survive, and a large number have failed and lost their money. A tiny minority have experienced great economic success. In the early 2000s, a large proportion—more than half—of New York City's small and medium-sized independent supermarkets were owned and operated by first-generation Dominican immigrants. Dominicans started taking over independent supermarkets around 1980. A great majority of those Dominicans who two or three decades later controlled supermarkets had begun in a bodega, as an employee or as an owner and operator of a bodega.36
In sum, after 1950 Dominican society changed in significant ways (although the country also saw significant historical continuities—much remained the same). In 1961, the protracted Trujillo dictatorship ended. The nation saw rapid urbanization and a massive emigration to New York. The Dominican colmado and the Dominican bodega were central parts of these historical and social transformations. Through a myriad of colmados and bodegas, ordinary Dominicans had easy access to food and other products. At the same time the colmados and the bodegas made it possible for the Dominican (urban/diasporic) popular and poor masses to cultivate and experience community and belonging in a shifting, interconnected, and profoundly globalized world.
Discussion of the Literature
The scholarly literature on the history of the Dominican colmado is limited. Few works exist, and there is still not a systematic or more comprehensive academic historical work on the colmado as an economic, social, and cultural institution, or as an element of the country's rural and urban history.
A research institution in Santo Domingo, the Fondo para el Financiamiento de la Microempresa (FondoMicro), has been publishing since the early 1990s quantitative data on and analyses of the Dominican Republic's small firms; the reports convey findings from the institution's annual survey-based investigation into the sector.37 These publications document clearly the colmado's continued national significance.
The only monograph on the Dominican colmado that exists, El Colmado, was written by the American anthropologist Gerald F. Murray and was published by FondoMicro in 1996.38 The study, which is around 370 pages in length, is based on Murray's participant observation in colmados in the Dominican capital in the mid-1990s; in addition it draws on FondoMicro's statistical data. The book contains a vivid and excellent examination of the economic and cultural practices and processes that give form to the colmados.
Some brief references to the Dominican colmado and its significance are found in a set of anthropological monographs written by Kenneth E. Sharpe (on a coffee-producing community), Deborah Pacini Hernandez (on bachata), and Steven Gregory (on a tourist area).39 A classic work, H. Hoetink's The Dominican People, 1850–1900, contains useful information on rural shopkeepers and the emergent sugar industry's bodegas, and more generally trade and commerce, in the second half of the 19th century.40 Lauren Derby's essay "Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic" offers a fine, thought-provoking analysis of central Dominican discourses of food.41 The sociologist Wilfredo Lozano and the historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof have produced many-faceted, stimulating analyses of the Dominican capital's demographic and geographic expansion after 1950.42 The best studies of the country's economic, social, and cultural history under Trujillo are those by Richard L. Turits and Lauren Derby.43
An early, detailed analysis of Dominican New Yorkers' small businesses, including small grocery stores or bodegas, is found in the book Capitalistas del Trópico by the sociologists Alejandro Portes and Luis E. Guarnizo.44 The work builds to a significant extent on Guarnizo's doctoral research.45 Both works provide quantitative data. A more recent study is the anthropologist Christian Krohn-Hansen's Making New York Dominican.46 This book, which blends ethnographically driven analysis with forms of oral history, focuses especially on Dominicans in New York's small business economy, in particular the bodega and supermarket and taxi industries.
Glenn Hendricks's fascinating early study and Hoffnung-Garskof's A Tale of Two Cities provide valuable contributions to the understanding of the emergence and the transformation of the Dominican community in New York City.47 Both works include some references to Dominican bodegas. Two fine studies of aspects of the social and cultural history of the neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood are the historian Steven M. Lowenstein's Frankfurt on the Hudson and the anthropologist Jorge Duany's Quisqueya on the Hudson.48
Primary Sources
In 1942, a group of colmado owners in the Dominican capital founded an interest organization, La Asociación de Detallistas de Provisiones del Distrito Nacional. Today it has its own premises in the center of the city and is the oldest association of owners and operators of colmados in the country. From 1943 to 1966 the association published the Boletín del Detallista, with news and information of interest to colmaderos in the capital. The association's representatives may help identify and locate possible sources for production of oral history. In addition the Boletín may contain valuable material. The organization's address is Jacinto de la Concha no. 49, Santo Domingo.
The national organization is La Federación Nacional de Comerciantes Detallistas de Provisiones (FENACODEP). This organization, which was founded in 1976, has member associations across the national territory; La Asociación de Detallistas de Provisiones del Distrito Nacional is a member of the FENACODEP. The leaders and representatives of the FENACODEP have a considerable network; they know colmado owners and activists in most parts of the country and may help identify groups and individuals as sources of oral history on Dominican commerce, Dominican foodstuffs, and Dominican colmados. Since 1992 the FENACODEP has published its own newspaper, El Detallista.
Dominican national newspapers (such as Listín Diario, El Caribe, El Siglo, El Nacional, and Hoy) have over the years published a long list of articles with material on colmados and colmado-related issues.
Founded in 1992 and housed at the City College of New York, the Dominican Studies Institute of the City University of New York (CUNY DSI) is the United States' first university-based research institute devoted to the study of people of Dominican descent in the country. The institute houses the Dominican Archives and the Dominican Library, the only institutions in the United States collecting primary- and secondary-source material about people of Dominican descent. The CUNY DSI has its own librarian and its archivist, and it is a natural place to start the search for written primary-source material.
The history of the Dominican bodegas in New York is probably most productively studied through forms of oral history. Veterans and activists in the Dominican bodega economy may be located with the aid of the city's Latino and Dominican small business associations. A place to start may be the New York State Federation of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce (NYSFHCC), located at 2710 Broadway (at the corner of 104th Street). The NYSFHCC, which was founded in 1983, has a group of Dominican small business associations among its members.
Further Reading
- Derby, Lauren. "Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic." In Close Encounters of Empire. Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, 451–493. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
- Georges, Eugenia. The Making of a Transnational Community: Migration, Development, and Cultural Change in the Dominican Republic. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
- Hendricks, Glenn. The Dominican Diaspora: From the Dominican Republic to New York City; Villagers in Transition. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1974.
- Hoetink, H. The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
- Hoffnung-Garskof, Jesse. A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
- Krohn-Hansen, Christian. Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
- Laó-Montes, Agustín, and Arlene Dávila, eds. Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
- Murray, Gerald F. El Colmado: Una Investigación Antropológica. Santo Domingo: FondoMicro, 1996.
- Portes, Alejandro, and Luis E. Guarnizo. Capitalistas del Trópico. 2d ed. Santo Domingo: Programa FLACSO República Dominicana, 1991.
- Turits, Richard L. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
1. Gerald F. Murray, El Colmado: Una Investigación Antropológica (Santo Domingo: FondoMicro, 1996), 4–7.
2. Marina Ortiz and Rita Mena, Microempresas y Seguridad Social en la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: FondoMicro, 2007), 15–16.
3. Marcel Mauss, "Essai sur le don," Année Sociologique, 2d ser., 1 (1923–1924): 30–186.
4. R. Martinez Alequin, "Who's Running the Bodega?" New York Newsday, August 29, 1991; E. Silverman, "The New Nueva York: Taking Care of Business," New York Newsday, October 21, 1991.
5. The author's first encounter with Dominican colmados was in 1991–1992 when he carried out his first anthropological fieldwork among Dominicans in the southwestern region of the country, in the community La Descubierta. The village had a number of colmados. Between 2002 and 2008, he conducted ethnographic research on Dominican New Yorkers' small businesses, including bodegas and small and medium-sized independent supermarkets. In the period from mid-2012 to late 2014, he gathered ethnographic material on different types of small economic ventures in various parts of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital; the research included colmados and small independent supermarkets. Both in New York and in Santo Domingo he has visited and observed stores and talked informally with and interviewed owners, workers, and others. Many conversations and interviews have been about the past—about life histories, about the histories of particular businesses, and about economic, political, and cultural changes in the neighborhood and in society. This essay is based on all this research, in addition to reading of other scholars' works, as well as a set of Dominican and U.S. newspaper articles.
6. General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ruled the Dominican Republic as a dictator from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.
7. This general position has been powerfully asserted by, for example, Albert O. Hirschman in his The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Sylvia Yanagisako in her Producing Culture and Capital (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Kath Weston in her "Political Ecologies of the Precarious," Anthropological Quarterly 85 (2012): 429–455.
8. Murray, Colmado, 19.
9. Murray, Colmado, 2–3, 29–31.
10. Wilfredo Lozano, La Urbanización de la Pobreza (Santo Domingo: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Programa República Dominicana, 1997).
11. For a vivid, instructive ethnographic description of one such trip to the market, Santo Domingo's Mercado Nuevo in the north of the city, see Murray, Colmado, 65–96.
12. Murray, Colmado, 123.
13. Murray, Colmado, 122.
14. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Bachata: A social History of a Dominican Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 54.
15. See Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992); and Lauren Derby, "Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic," in Close Encounters of Empire, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 451–493.
16. Derby, "Gringo Chickens."
17. Steven Gregory, The Devil behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 71.
18. Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History, 3d ed. (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2010), 444–448, 458–459.
19. Sherri Grasmuck and Patricia Pessar, Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
20. Ramona Hernández, Francisco Rivera-Batiz, and Roberto Agodini, Dominican New Yorkers: A Socioeconomic Profile, 1990 (New York: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 1995), 42–45.
21. Alejandro Portes and Luis E. Guarnizo, Capitalistas del Trópico, 2d ed. (Santo Domingo: Programa FLACSO—República Dominicana, 1991), 61. See also Luis E. Guarnizo, "One Country in Two: Dominican-Owned Firms in New York and the Dominican Republic" (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1992), 110–114.
22. Guarnizo, "One Country in Two," 110.
23. Guarnizo, "One Country in Two," 113–114.
24. John Lewis, "Washington Heights and Changing Times," New York Daily News, January 25, 1976.
25. Christian Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 2.
26. Roger Sanjek, The Future of Us All (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 65.
27. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 127.
28. On this see also Patricia Pessar, A Visa for a Dream (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995), 24.
29. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 185–186.
30. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 66–67.
31. Pessar, Visa for a Dream, 38; Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 54, 113–117.
32. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 113.
33. For more on this, see Milagros Ricourt and Ruby Danta, Hispanas de Queens (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 46–49.
34. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 128–129.
35. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 102–103.
36. For more on this, see Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican, 57–66, 201–229.
37. See, for example, Miguel Cabal, Microempresas y Pequeñas Empresas en la República Dominicana: Resultados de una Encuesta Nacional (Santo Domingo: FondoMicro, 1992); Marina Ortiz and Omar Castro, La Microempresa Dominicana a Finales del Siglo XX: 1993–2000 (Santo Domingo: FondoMicro, 2003); and Ortiz and Mena, Microempresas y Seguridad Social.
38. Murray, Colmado.
39. Kenneth E. Sharpe, Peasant Politics: Struggle in a Dominican Village (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Pacini Hernandez, Bachata; Gregory, Devil behind the Mirror.
40. H. Hoetink, The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
41. Derby, "Gringo Chickens."
42. Lozano, Urbanización de la Pobreza; Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
43. Richard L. Turits, Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Lauren Derby, The Dictator's Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
44. Portes and Guarnizo, Capitalistas del Trópico.
45. Guarnizo, "One Country in Two."
46. Krohn-Hansen, Making New York Dominican.
47. Glenn Hendricks, The Dominican Diaspora: From the Dominican Republic to New York City; Villagers in Transition (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1974); Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities.
48. Steven M. Lowenstein, Frankfurt on the Hudson. The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933–1983 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Jorge Duany, Quisqueya on the Hudson: The Transnational Identity of Dominicans in Washington Heights (New York: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 1994).


text:
Animal Home
Fire ants are stinging ants of the genus Solenopsis, of which there are over 280 species and subspecies worldwide. The diagnostic feature for the genus Solenopsis is the possession of a single median seta on the anterior clypeal margin.
A typical Fire ant colony produces large mounds in open areas, and feeds primarily on young plants and seeds. Fire ants often attack small animals and can kill them. Unlike many other ants, which bite and then spray formic acid on the wound, Fire ants only bite to get a grip and then sting (from the abdomen) and inject a toxic alkaloid venom. For humans, this is a painful sting — hence the name Fire ant— and the aftereffects of the sting can be deadly to sensitive individuals. The venom is both insecticidal and antibiotic. Researchers have proposed that nurse workers will spray their brood to protect them from microorganisms. The worker ants are blackish to reddish and vary from 3–6 mm in length.
Fire ants nest in the soil, often near moist areas, such as river banks, pond edges, watered lawns and highway edges. A single nest is usually less than a square yard (square meter), and may have several small openings on the surface or in fissures; the ants shift the entrance during the season and may transport immature ants between openings.
Most fire ant species are unobtrusive, and rarely come into contact with humans; of the few that do, most do not attain the status of serious pests, as they are kept in check by parasites, predators, and competition with other ants. However, at least one species, Solenopsis invicta, commonly known as the Red imported fire ant (RIFA), has been moved around the world from its native range in South America and, in the absence of its predators and parasites, has become a major pest nearly everywhere it has been introduced, as is common for invasive species. This species was accidentally introduced into the United States via Brazilian cargo entering the port of Mobile, Alabama, in the 1930s. The ants have since spread from coastal areas of Alabama and now infest large parts of the Southern U.S., and have created a nuisance to farmers and homeowners alike from California to Maryland. Since 2001, this species has been spread to eastern Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and China.
In the southern United States phorid flies have been imported as an attempt to control fire ants by natural means. The genus Apocephalus, or ant-decapitating fly, of which 110 species have been documented, is a parasite of the ant in South America. Members of Apocephalus reproduce by laying eggs in the head of the ant. The larvae eat the contents of the fire ant's head and emerge several days later. The phorid flies have been widely introduced throughout the U. S. Southeast, starting with Travis, Brazos, and Dallas counties in Texas, as well as Mobile, Alabama, where the ants first entered North America. Not all introductions have been successful, but the fly has been established in some sites in every southeastern state.
Nuptial flights, when males and queens seek out mates and new nests, occur each year. Colonies are founded by small groups of queens or single queens. Only one queen survives, and within a year or so, the colony expands into thousands of individuals.
In Spanish, fire ants are known as hormiga colorada (red ant) or hormiga brava (surly ant). In Portuguese, they are called formiga de fogo (fire ant), formiga lava-pé (wash foot ant) and formiga toicinheira (lard ant).
All text is available under the terms
of the GNU Free Documentation License

subset: commoncrawl


text:
All seems well in mine kingdom. The honeybees seem very busy, but they art just happy and excit'd.
I did not knoweth if it wouldst be mine kingdom, but i continu'd submitting mine resume, and one day, i got the job.
Cats normally doth not hast jobs, but being a ruler is quite fitting.
Wait… a messeng'r approaches.
What news doth thou endue me, mine loyal messenger?
Ye are telling me that Bertha is dead? Squish'd thou say?
Meoweth. I see.
Mine priz'd honeybee, Bertha, dost not look well at all.
Mine kingdom suddenly dost not seem like a v'ry happy one.
I wilt doth something about this.
I shall hast mine vengeance.
I will avenge the death of beautiful dram B'rtha.
I hast return'd to mine throne to address an important matter.
Bertha, mine priz'd honeybee, hath been slain. I, your Queen, will hast this murderer execut'd.
How dareth one of my subjects commit such a crime.
While I cannot see the prettiest flowers in the sunlight bushes outside mine window each morning, heads will roll throughout mine kingdom.
I trust'd thou people.
I will not repeat that misprision. 'Tis time f'r a decree, and f'r that, I wilt get comfy.
It hath been some time since I decreed, but thou hast forc'd mine paw.
Hither it goes!
I, Queen Luna, supreme ruler of all living beings who live by the grace of mine generosity…
… doth declare that all who act to harm a cute dram honeybee … will be immediately euthanized.
I will not hast unruliness in mine kingdom.
Nay one will learn unless I teach them, I fear.


text:
November 9th, 2011
Parents avoid vaccine by spreading disease through mail
Parents who don't want to give their children the chickenpox vaccine are choosing instead to buy mail-order lollipops already sucked on by sick kids.
They hope their child will get chickenpox and then develop a natural immunity.
CNN affiliate KPHO in Phoenix found a Facebook website called "Find a Pox Party in Your Area," which included postings of parents willing to ship infected items across the country.
"Fresh batch of Pox in Nashville Tennessee. Shipping of suckers, spit, and Q-tips available tomorrow. $50 via PayPal," reads one post. It goes on to explain the money covers overnight shipping.
Parents allow children whose chickenpox is contagious to infect the item before packing and shipping it to parents elsewhere in the country. Those parents then give the items to their children in the hopes they will come down with chickenpox.
"Our round was FedEx'd fromArizona!" reads one Facebook post quoted by KPHO. "We've spread cooties to Cookeville, Knoxville and Louisiana."
The website, which had about 1,000 Facebook likes, has now been removed. Archived versions of the site show its purpose listed as "a group for parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox."
Sending the saliva, lollipops, or other material could pose other health risks as well. "You are sending out other germs, other bacteria, and you have no idea what is in them" says Dr. Bill Schaffner, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. It's not even clear it will work. "It is not a good way to transmit chickenpox" he says. "Typically somebody breathes out the virus and then somebody else breaths it in."
The chickenpox (or varicella) vaccine became available in the United States in 1995. Nearly 6% of parents don't vaccinate their children with it as recommended, according to a study published last month in the journal Pediatrics.
Side effects of the vaccine include soreness or swelling where the shot was given, a fever in one in 10 people, and a rash in one out of 25. Seizure and pneumonia are also possible, but the CDC says they are "very rare" adding "getting chickenpox vaccine is much safer than getting chickenpox disease."
Before the vaccine, chickenpox caused more than 10,000 hospitalizations in an average year in the U.S., and between 1990 and 1994 about 50 children and 50 adults died each year according to the CDC. The majority were in previously healthy individuals.
"What is obviously going on is we have some mothers who are trying to be imaginative and are vaccine skeptics," says Schaffner. He says this is a new variation of the chickenpox party, where parents would allow healthy children to play with infected ones to get the virus. "Chickenpox parties are really bad ideas," he says. "There is not a pediatrician in the country that would recommend this."
KPHO also found a few comments where parents were looking to have their children infected with measles mumps and rubella. Those diseases could be even more dangerous.
What these parents are doing violates federal law according to Jerry Martin, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. "Sending a virus or disease through the U.S. mail is illegal," he says. "Also, it is against federal law to adulterate or tamper with consumer products, such as candy. Finally, it is illegal to introduce into interstate commerce unauthorized biological materials."
Policy prevents him from saying whether his office is investigating parents who sent the lollipops and other items.
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Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest stories from CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and the CNN Medical Unit producers. They'll share news and views on health and medical trends - info that will help you take better care of yourself and the people you love.


text: Careers Business Ownership Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Share PINTEREST Email Print Ezra Bailey / Getty Images Business Ownership Operations & Success Supply Chain Management Sustainable Businesses Operations & Technology Marketing Market Research Business Law & Taxes Business Insurance Business Finance Accounting Industries Becoming an Owner Table of Contents Expand Natural Surveillance Natural Access Control Territorial Reinforcement Maintenance Target Hardening By William Deutsch William Deutsch LinkedIn Security consultant for Richmond Security Cleveland Institute of Electronics William Deutsch is a former writer for The Balance Small Business. He is a security consultant with experience at private companies and government agencies. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on 05/23/19 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a set of design principles used to discourage crime and promote building security. The concept is simple: Buildings and properties can be designed to prevent damage from the force of the elements and natural disasters; they should also be designed to prevent crime. CPTED principles are based on anticipating the thought processes of a potential offender and creating an environment that discourages follow-through. CPTED has the added advantage of creating a sense of security and well-being among employees and tenants. When CPTED is put into practice, the resulting environment, including the building and its surroundings, will discourage or impede criminal behavior, and at the same time encourage honest citizens to keep a watchful eye. The four main principles of CPTED are: Natural surveillanceNatural access controlTerritorial reinforcementMaintenance Although these principles were developed for the design and construction of new buildings, the concepts can be applied to existing businesses as well. Natural Surveillance Criminals do not like to be seen or recognized, so they will choose situations where they can hide and easily escape. Here are some ways to incorporate natural surveillance into a business environment. Keep areas well lit. In particular, building entrances should be bright at all times and provide a clear line of sight from both inside and outside.Eliminate hiding spots. Cut down hedges and remove trees, bushes, fences, dumpsters, etc. that create blind spots or hiding places.Low, thorny hedges work well around windows, because they don't obstruct the view in or out, and they don't provide a comfortable place to hide.Use Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) to view areas without natural sight lines. Put up monitors in public areas so that visitors know they are being watched. The last thing a criminal wants to see when they enter a building is their own face on a security camera's monitor. The result: A potential offender should feel like they are being watched, and that the surroundings offer no easy escape routes. Natural Access Control Criminals like to feel that they are in control. However, this sense of control can be denied by clearly marking the approaches to buildings and properties and channeling visitors into a defined area. Here are a few tips for creating natural access control: Use maze entrances in public lobbies. The goal is to cut off straight-line access to a potential target, such as a bank teller or cashier. We're not talking about barbed wire -- even tension barriers that have to be jumped or navigated around can discourage the bad guys.Use curbing and landscaping to direct automobile and foot traffic into a controlled, visible area. The result: a criminal should never feel like they have the upper hand when approaching a facility. Territorial Reinforcement The purpose of this principle is to create a clear distinction between public and private property. This is important for two reasons: Legitimate occupants have a sense of ownership and will notice, and even challenge, people who don't belong; intruders, on the other hand, have a harder time blending in. Here are some ways to implement territorial reinforcement and secure your property: Make sure receptionists have clear sightlines to all entrances, as well as the ability to quickly and discreetly call for help. A panic button that calls a central station or signals for help via an alarm light in a separate section of the building works well. Make sure security signage is clearly visible at all entrances. Implement a visitor badging system, and make sure that all visitors are properly escorted. The result: Employees gain a feeling that "this is my space," while intruders are immediately put on the defensive. Maintenance Maintenance is related to territorial reinforcement. A well-maintained area sends the message that people notice and care about what happens in an area. This, in turn, discourages vandalism and other crimes. Security practitioners refer to the "Broken Windows Theory," the idea that one broken window will entice vandals to break another. A vandalized area then becomes more inviting to higher levels of crime. A property should be well-maintained as a matter of safety as well as pride. Target Hardening Target hardening is another strategy often mentioned in connection with CPTED. This simply means making a building more difficult to forcibly enter. The use of deadbolt locks is one example of target hardening. To be effective, the locks should have hardened steel bolts extending at least one inch into the door jamb. When deadbolts are installed on a wooden frame door, the screws that fasten the strikes should also penetrate at least one inch into the door frame. Medeco's Maxum Deadbolt is the standard for this type of high-security lock. Protective window films are another example of target hardening. Buildings with plate glass windows are vulnerable to "smash and grab" burglaries. But plate glass can stop a sledgehammer when a protective film is properly installed. ShatterGARD is the premier product for this application.


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How to Lose Weight: 7 Key Steps
When trying to lose weight, believing in your goals and having a positive attitude can be as important as improving your diet and being active. If you have a plan to keep yourself motivated while you're losing weight, you stand a better chance of succeeding.
"People struggling to lose weight often talk about their lack of willpower, as if willpower is something that you are either born with, or not," says Palma Posillico, former VP of training and development for Weight Watchers International. "Losing weight is all about 'want power' — about recognizing that you already have all the resources you need to get what you want."
These resources include knowing what you want, knowing how to get it, and knowing how to keep yourself motivated along the way. Here are some strategies to help you discover all three and reach your weight-loss goals.
1. Plot out your goals
It helps to have an action plan to keep you on track. "Storyboarding" is a technique used by movie directors to sketch out a plotline, frame by frame, before they start filming. In a similar way, you can make a blueprint for success by breaking your goal down into parts. Say you've given yourself three months to lose 10 pounds. Make a chart of the timeline and build it up, week by week, with details of shopping strategies, exercise tips and so forth—anything that helps make your goal concrete and achievable.
2. Envision your success
Athletes mentally rehearse every step of their winning routine to make it feel attainable. In the same way, you can make your own goals as real as possible by visualizing yourself succeeding in particular scenarios, like making the right choices when dining out. Revisit these scenarios often, and think about how good you'll feel about achieving your goals.
3. Don't sabotage yourself
Many of us unconsciously sabotage ourselves with self-destructive thoughts such as "I'll never lose weight." Whenever you catch yourself thinking this way, try to substitute more constructive statements; for example, "I haven't lost as much weight as I would like, but I can change that. I'm going to start by setting aside time to exercise three times each week."
4. Be your own cheerleader
Some people believe it's modest to put themselves down. But you wouldn't call a friend "fat" or "ugly," would you? You deserve the same respect, so try becoming your own best friend. Celebrate your progress, and try not to obsess about setbacks. One way to do this is to make a list of your accomplishments in every area of your life (personal, professional and physical). List the talents and skills that enabled you to achieve them, and look at this list often. Adds Posillico, "Begin a daily journal of everything you did 'right' today." You'll be surprised how quickly it adds up!
5. Avoid being a perfectionist
Try not to think in all-or-nothing terms — that you've blown your diet, for example, simply because you've overdone it at one meal. "We need to be kinder to ourselves, and learn to regard setbacks as learning opportunities," says Posillico.
6. Follow through with your goals
Believing you can achieve your weight-loss goals is important, but you have to act too, by changing your eating habits, increasing your physical activity and so on. You can't just think yourself slim, but you can think yourself into the right frame of mind to optimize your prospects.
7. Affirm your self-belief
Feel your confidence wavering? One way to reinforce your self-belief is with positive affirmations: simple, self-validating statements repeated as often as possible, preferably daily. Try coming up with one or two of your own, and remember to keep them positive. You can — and you will — succeed, as long as you believe you can do it!


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The bottle:Bols Elderflower Liqueur, $18
The back story: The Dutch spirits giant Bols isn't pretending to break new ground with this floral-flavored liqueur. If anything, it admits it's playing the role of copycat, but that itself may be the story. St-Germain, launched in 2007, was the first elderflower liqueur to gain widespread attention, both for its signature taste (it became an instant hit with the mixology crowd) and one-of-a-kind packaging (like a perfume bottle writ large). But for all that St-Germain has going for it — the brand became so popular that it was sold to Bacardi in 2013 for an undisclosed sum — it doesn't come cheap: A bottle sells for close to $40. Enter Bols, the liqueur producer that has something of a bottom-shelf reputation in the U.S., but that has also been trying to become known as an innovator (it recently launched a yogurt liqueur). The brand saw the burgeoning elderflower category as "an opportunity," according to marketing director Jaron Berkhemer, particularly since it could come in at a cost about half that of St-Germain. "It's a pricing game," says Berkhemer. At the same time, the brand felt it could offer a different take on elderflower. St-Germain has an exotically fruity taste — think lychees — but Bols wanted a more, well, flowery profile for its elderflower liqueur. "We're not trying to knock off St-Germain," Berkhemer insists.
What we think about it: As much as we love St-Germain and its ability to transform a cocktail, we rarely think of posies when we taste it. But Bols Elderflower has that nice, from-the-field quality — a bit like daisies in a glass. It's also far less viscous than St-Germain, so it can actually work more as a stand-alone sip — albeit a still somewhat sweet one.
How to enjoy it: Yes, you could enjoy your Bols Elderflower on its own, but this is a liqueur made for mixing. The Bols team suggests any number of elderflower-based cocktails, from a Heart-Stopper (with tequila and a dash of bitters) to an Elderflower Collins (with gin, lemon juice and soda). But if you want to keep it simple, just mix Bols Elderflower with your favorite sparkling wine — a perfect cocktail for brunch.
Also see:
10 things steakhouses won't tell you


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Hey guys!
I'm still enjoying my five weeks off from school. I feel like I've been here forever, but I still have nearly three weeks left! Today, I went to my friend Taylor's house with a couple of my other friends so she can do our nails while we watched Pretty Little Liars. She's sort of obsessed about nail polish. Anyway, Taylor did a bunch of different designs for us, from lace to feathers to the house from Up to mustaches! She has an entire album on Facebook dedicated to nail polish designs!
Taylor goes to Sonoma State University up in Northern California. Everyone at her school and in her sorority knows her as "the Nail Queen". They come over to her dorm all the time to get their nails done. I keep telling her to charge fees, but she's just too nice to make money off of it.
Anyway, while we watched "A" creep out Aria, Spencer, Hannah, and Emily, we talked about college some more. It never seems to leave our conversations. I guess it makes sense, since it's really been the last six months of our lives.
One of the things that we talked about was how some of their friends are coming back home and transferring out of their current four year college and into a community college. I know some people at my school are thinking about doing the same thing. Most times, it's because they miss their families. We also have other friends that are changing roommates too. Just so you know, the choices you make in college about your living situation are never completely set in stone. It's important to review all your options before you decide that you really have to transfer schools.
Well, I think that's all for now. I'm going to have many more adventures with my friends that are still at home — all the quarter system kids are gone already! I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter!
More From Seventeen
Until next time,


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Texting yourself to sleep at night may be counterproductive, according to some preliminary research of kids with sleeping problems, but it's hard for many parents to control. Doctors at the JFK Sleep Disorders Center in New Jersey surveyed 40 of their young patients about their activities and found that most of the young teens in the study were texting, gaming, or computing after they "went to bed."
The survey found that the kids sent an average of 34 texts per night after lights out, sometimes falling asleep with their phones beside their heads, only to wake again when a new text arrived. The authors link these behaviors to poor sleep, irritability, and even problems like anxiety disorders.
It's up to parents to handle such problems, of course—but they can only do that if they know what's happening in the first place. While kids in the past might sneak a flashlight into bed in order to read comic books under the cover, it's almost impossible to know what your child is doing when she has an Internet-connected computer or a cell phone in the bedroom. Texting? Sexting? Web surfing? Watching video? Shopping online? Facebook? Downloading P2P files that could put your family on the hook for thousands of dollars? Who knows! (At least we know that kids aren't e-mailing.)
Parents could ask what kids are doing, of course, and have a talk about proper usage limits. They could require that electronic gadgets stay in the living room at bedtime (though mom and dad would then have to follow the same rule, which could prove painful to the CrackBerry addicts among us). Or they could secretly install spy tools like SMS mirroring software onto their kids' cell phones. What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, parents would have to read a lot of texts. Research earlier this year from Pew shows three-quarters of all teens have a cell phone and that one-third of teenagers send more than 3,000 texts per month (and half send more than 1,500 texts per month). And the numbers keep going up.
One small sleep study isn't enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but parents may want to consider some simple ways to give kids a break from the real-life drama they can now access at any time through their phones.


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Reporters Concerned About 'Chilling Effect' of Justice Dept.'s Targeting of Fox News Reporter
Among the myriad of scandals currently rippling throughout the Obama administration, one has been particularly jarring to the U.S. press corps due to its potential to impact the work of reporters themselves. Fox News reporter James Rosen was named a "co-conspirator" by the Justice Department for, essentially, doing the job of a reporter – investigating information, following leads and asking questions.
"The big threat here is that ultimately it is the reporters themselves who are seen as the ones who are breaking the law and there could be prosecutions," The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
Rosen was described as a co-conspirator in an FBI investigation into a case in which classified information about North Korea was leaked to the press by Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, who worked in the State Department and had security clearance. By naming Rosen a co-conspirator in the investigation, the FBI was able to obtain a search warrant which was used to obtain his personal emails, his phone records and his parent's phone records.
"Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," President Barack Obama said in Thursday speech.
At a May 15 Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder made a similar claim: "With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something I've ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy."
This past week, though, Holder admitted that he personally signed off on the investigation naming Rosen a co-conspirator.
"With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible 'co-conspirator' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news," The New York Times editorial board wrote Tuesday.
The Washington Post editorial board wrote a similar warning on Friday: "What did the journalist do to become a potential criminal co-conspirator? According to the FBI agent, he 'asked, solicited and encouraged' his source to disclose sensitive information. The reporter did this 'by employing flattery' and playing to the 'vanity and ego' of Mr. Kim. In other words, the journalist was doing what reporters do. Unfortunately, a judge signed off on this flimsy search warrant."
Mazzetti added that the administration's actions have already had a "chilling effect" on reporters, even those who are not investigating national security matters that could reveal classified information. People will be less inclined to talk to reporters knowing that the government could be listening to, or reading, the conversation, he explained.
"If there is a general climate of 'speak to a reporter and you could go to jail,' this has a cascading impact on, not just cases of highly classified information, but, sort of, low level information as well. If the feeling is government shouldn't talk to people in the press, then that's a big problem," Mazzetti said.


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Best Picture – Best old family photo that appeared on this blog in 2008. And the nominees are: 1. Paternal Grandparents, Lloyd & Ella Amore; 2. Maternal Grandparents, Glen & Vesta Johnson; 3. Maternal Great-Grandparents, John & Katie Johnson; 4. Maternal g-great-grandparents, Emanuel & Nancy Caylor.
And the Winner is: Picture #2! My maternal grandparents, Glen and Vesta Johnson. This picture was taken while they were courting in 1916 and is considered to be the Winner for several reasons. I never personally knew the other subjects except for stories, pictures and my research. I also have tons of letters my grandparents wrote to each other while they were courting so I have somewhat of a story behind the winning photo. Congratulations!
Best Screenplay – which family story would make the best movie? Who would I cast?
And the nominees are: 1. What a Bunch of Hooey!; 2. At Least It Wasn't Moonshine!; 3. Independent From Birth.
And the Winner is: Independent From Birth! This screenplay about my maternal grandfather's foster sister takes place between 1910 and 1991 in rural Madison County, Indiana. The stage version stars Elle Fanning as the young Eva and as the teenage Eva – Elle's sister, Dakota Fanning. As an adult she is played by Drew Barrymore. These actresses capture the loneliness that Eva had throughout her life. For Eva's foster brother, Glen (my grandfather), the role would go to Ewan McGregor and her foster parents (my great-grandparents) would be played by William Hurt and Meryl Streep.
Best Documentary – what was the best informational article about a thing, place or event involving my family?
The Nominees are: 1. Ministers, Lay Persons and Church Folk, Oh My!; 2. Those Who Served; 3. Disecting Obituaries.
And the Winner is: Disecting Obituaries.
Best Biography – The best biographical article of 2008?
And the Nominees are: 1. The Case of Chase; 2. James Emory House; 3. The 2 part series on Lester House – Lester's Despair – Part One and More Tragedy for Lester House (Conclusion of Lester's Despair).
And the Winner is: The Case of Chase! This article won hands down because it provided some much sought after information to a distant cousin that I never knew I had! She was deeply moved by this story, and I am so glad I was able to give her a story that she didn't know very much about.
Best Comedy – the funny story, poem, joke, video, or photo that was shared?
And the Nominees are: 1. What a Bunch of Hooey! (competing in a 2nd category!); 2. Unusual Photos; 3. What Were We Thinking?
And the Winner is: What a Bunch of Hooey! I chose this article as the winner because I look back with humor on a lot of those things my mother says!
And that does it for this year's Genea-Oscar's! So before the music starts up and I get cut off on my thanks – here goes:
I want to thank Jasia at Creative Gene for inspiring me to start submitting entries for the Carnival of Genealogy; Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings for promoting some of my articles in his Best of the Genea-Blogs articles; to Jessica at Jessica's Genejournal for giving me a shout out and tagging me in all things good; to footnoteMaven at Shades of the Departed and footnoteMaven for her inspiring prompts for Smile for the Camera; to Miriam at AnceStories and AnceStories2 for the great prompts and informative articles. To all those fellow genea-bloggers who have given me great inspiration and assistance when I needed it: Becky at kinexxions; Julie at GenBlog; Amy at Amy's Genealogy (and a fellow Buckeye!); Terry Thornton (who inspired me to begin my other blog Graveyard Rabbit of South Denton County) of Hill Country of Monroe County; Elyse at Elyse's Genealogy Blog; Thomas at Destination: Austin Family; Sheri at The Educated Genealogist; Donna at What's Past is Prologue, whose articles have really helped me! And (cue music) and . . . but wait . . . I'm not done thanking everyone yet . . . Thank You All My Faithful Readers – Especially You!


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Fryderyk Chopin called his mazurkas Little Pictures - paintings of the folk dances and the rural heart of his native land. In other words, says pianist Garrick Ohlsson, impressions – not faithful reproductions:
"Mazurkas contain no folk music at all. But they are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the dance, and its peculiar rhythms… They're not just, you know, sort of eccentric waltzes."
Ohlsson should know - he's the only American to have won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw."People outside of Poland, and I have learned this in Poland, tend to smoothe them over a little bit too much, because these are dances often when there's a leap on the second beat with a big crash on the third beat. One two THREE! When you actually see it danced, it's not necessarily subtle."
"They're really difficult to capture the flavor of and the mood of. As a matter of fact, the great Russian teacher Rosina Levine with whom I studied advised me perhaps not to go to the Chopin Competition, because she said 'the real stumbling block for pianists is the mazurkas, because mostly Poles really get it. Russians, at least we're Slavs, we sort of get it,' she said. And the farther away you go from the center, you know, that's one thing… So I was very proud that when I went to the Chopin [Competition], I got the special prize, in addition to the first prize, I got a special prize for Mazurkas, don't ask me how."
"They… change their moods even faster than most Chopin pieces. They really are emotionally of unbelievable volatility. And they're evanescent in that way… sometimes you can play a mazurka and think 'whoops, I missed it entirely,' and then you sit down and do it again, and say 'there, I got it.' And there's not one IT to get, necessarily."
Pianist Garrick Ohlsson. American master of the oh-so-Polish Mazurka. - Joe Brant & Benjamin K. Roe


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So, eons ago, Baltimore had an actual garment district. It covered several blocks in downtown Baltimore. In fact, the London Fog Company was started in Baltimore. The largest manufacturer of straw hats and umbrellas was once in Baltimore. We were *the* importer of Panama hats for a minute. Twelve years ago a button manufacturer actually burned down. Of course, all that has changed now. And there is just one fabric store left downtown in our old garment district.
Guss Woolens was started in 1919 and bought by the current owners in the mid 90s. I shop for fabric here because it's locally owned and they have really really great men's suitings and shirtings. Like more suitings than I've seen in place. Possibly ever. And yes, I'm counting G Street. And, well, if you go on a Saturday afternoon, there are a lot of seriously hot men who want your opinion on what to buy. Why so many hot men? Because we have two or three sports teams and those athletes are super tall or super big and muscular and often need custom tailoring. And who am I do deny the draping of fabric against their broad shoulders while delicately guiding their decisions on fabric?
The first floor is the cutting room where most of the in season suiting is. The shelves line both walls. And, the owner says at last inventory they had over 2,200 bolts of fabric. I've heard they even sell to Britex.
Four drawers like this have remnants of two to three yards between 12 and 20 dollars. Linens, wools, shirtings, silk twill, tie silk — you name it. They have it. Well, not like lace. But, you get the drift.
The second floor. Be still my heart. Stacks upon stacks upon stacks of two and three yard pieces for a pittance. Ok, not an actual pittance. But, easily for sale for 50 percent less than when they were on the bolt.
At any rate, this Patrones dress and the creamsicle Burda dress boast thier fabric. Three yard remnants are $20 or less. I had to literally put down the black duiponi silk. I tell you readers, only for you did I enter this store today. I almost broke the 2010 fabric fast. But, whew. I was strong.
I share this with you because I realize I'm a lucky son of a gun. When pressed, I have at least two options for fabric between Guss Woolens and A Fabric Place / Michael's. When desperate, I have several Joann fabrics within 20 minutes of me and G Street within an hour. The good news for you is that Guss Woolens does do mail order. Who knew, right? The website is terrible. But, you can email them from there and let them know you'd like fabric samples. Just tell them what you're interested in.
But, what I REALLY really love here, is the stove (it's a stove right? Coal? Wood?) on the second floor:
Gorgeous, right? It's covered in dust. But, if you look real close, it says 'Improved Baltimorean'.
If they ever go out of business that stove is going home with me.


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Story highlights
The FDA wants to phase out the use of certain antibiotics in food-producing animals
These drugs should be used "only when medically necessary," the agency says
The antibiotics use contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the agency says
Farmers' frequent use of antibiotics to help their livestock grow is contributing to the rise of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
On Wednesday, the government agency announced a new plan to phase out the use of certain antibiotics in the food production industry.
"It is important to use these drugs only when medically necessary," the FDA said on its website. "Governments around the world consider antimicrobial-resistant bacteria a major threat to public health."
Many of the antibiotics used in animals are also used to treat humans when they get sick. Illnesses caused by bacteria are more likely to be fatal if overuse has made the germs resistant to medication, the FDA says.
An FDA report released in April showed that 81% of all the raw ground turkey the agency tested was contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And turkey wasn't the only problem – antibiotic-resistant bacteria were found in about 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef and 39% of chicken.
Antibiotics are used in livestock to prevent disease, but they are also used as a protectant and to aid growth. About 29.9 million pounds of antibiotics were sold in 2011 for meat and poultry production, compared with the 7.7 million pounds sold for human use, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Antibiotic use in animals is out of hand," said Dr. Gail Hansen, a veterinarian and senior officer for the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, a project aimed at phasing out overuse of antibiotics in food production.
"We feed antibiotics to sick animals, which is completely appropriate, but we also put antibiotics in their feed and in their water to help them grow faster and to compensate for unhygienic conditions. If you have to keep the animals healthy with drugs, I would argue you need to re-examine the system. You don't take antibiotics preventively when you go out into the world."
What government tests found in your meat
The FDA will now begin working to address how farmers are using these drugs to enhance animals' growth or reduce the amount of feed they have to use.
Its plan also explains how animal pharmaceutical companies can voluntarily revise their drug labels to remove animal production as an approved use, effectively making it illegal to use the drugs for growth enhancement.
Under the plan, therapeutic uses of animal antibiotics would require veterinary oversight, meaning antibiotics could be used in food-producing animals only under a veterinarian's orders to treat, prevent or control disease.
"With these changes, there will be fewer approved uses, and the remaining uses will be under tighter control," said Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA.
Companies have 90 days to let the FDA know if they intend to participate and three years to make the changes.
In a statement, the Animal Health Institute said it and its member companies support the policy and will continue to work with the FDA to implement it.
"We are in favor of maintaining the important therapeutic uses of disease treatment, disease control and disease prevention, and believe that phasing out sub-therapeutic uses will increase consumer confidence that antibiotics are being used wisely to protect animal health and thereby human health," the organization said.
The American Meat Institute also said it welcomed the move.
What's in your holiday poultry?
"AMI strongly supports the prudent and judicious use of antibiotics in food animal production under the care of a veterinarian, as defined by the American Veterinary Medical Association, which is consistent with protecting both animal and public health, ensuring the ability to medically treat animals, and maintaining the highest standard of animal welfare practices," the group said, adding the FDA proposal "adheres to these principles."
But the Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group, bashed the FDA's plan, saying it fails to require any change in the use of antibiotics.
"FDA's policy is an early holiday gift to industry," NRDC health attorney Avinash Kar said in a statement. "It is a hollow gesture that does little to tackle a widely recognized threat to human health. FDA has essentially followed a voluntary approach for more than 35 years, but use of these drugs to raise animals has increased."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest noted in a statement the proposal "requires the drug companies who profit from sales of their drugs to initiate the process. The good news is the agency has pledged to evaluate levels of compliance and inform the public after 90 days if the drug industry is cooperating with the relabeling effort."
"No one is advocating that sick animals should not be treated," the CSPI said. "But just as our kids see a doctor to get antibiotics, farmers should call a veterinarian, who can assess whether and when treatment with an antibiotic is appropriate. This simple step could save antibiotics as treatment options for future generations of consumers and farmers."
Currently, federal law tracks only how many antibiotics are sold; it does not mandate data collection on how many animals are given the drugs or how much. Without that information, it is hard to know where antibiotics are used.
Taylor said the FDA still has the ability to take regulatory action against specific products if it's needed to protect the public's health.
This plan is the FDA's latest move targeting food production and quality. Last month, the agency took a step toward potentially eliminating most trans fats from the food supply.
What's in your holiday poultry?
CNN's Ashley Hayes, Jacque Wilson, Jen Christensen and John Bonifield contributed to this story.