2010 Draw An Ad

Thank You to All the Participants in our 39th Annual

Draw An Ad Winners!

Grand Prize

Katie Deakos Hawthorne Animal Hospital Age: 9 Grade: 3 St. Boniface School

1st PLACE

Austin Reeves Annie’s Frozen Custard Age: 8 Grade: 3 St. Boniface School

1st PLACE Katie Gierer Drda Electric Co. Age: 11 Grade: 6 St. Mary’s School

1st PLACE Nick Posey Dr. Charles Borden Age: 12 Grade: 7 St. Mary’s School

2nd PLACE

Emma Tegert First Bank Age: 8 Grade: 3 Woodland Elementary School

Page – Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

Draw An Ad Winners!

2nd PLACE

Gwyneth Cross Therapedics Speech Therapy for Kids Age: 11 Grade: 6 Lincoln Middle School

2nd PLACE

Mitchell Pearson Buffet City Age: 13 Grade: 7 Lincoln Middle School

3rd PLACE

Lane Allison Pantera’s Pizza Age: 8 Grade: 3 Worden Elementary School

3rd PLACE

Jackie Zimitsch Hawthorne Animal Hospital Age: 14 Grade: 8 St. Mary’s School

3rd PLACE Ellie Taylor Wendy’s Age: 11 Grade: 5 St. Boniface School

Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD – Page

The best wine region you may not know PASO ROBLES, Calif. (AP) — The February issue of a respected wine industry trade publication gives only one of the world’s wines both a rarefied 98 score and the top spot in the “highly recommended” section.

Near perfection came from Saxum, a well-regarded but obscure winery in Paso Robles, a one-time California cow town becoming a superior wine-producing region known by few non-aficionados outside the state.

Located on California’s Central Coast, the Paso Robles viticultural area’s consistent quality and relatively moderate land prices have combined for phenomenal growth.

In fewer than 20 years, the number of wineries has grown from 30 to 250 and counting, plus at least 600 hopefuls making boutique bottles at custom crush co-ops to hawk at restaurants and local wine bars.

Esteemed reviewer Robert Parker has said the region of rolling, oakstudded hills holds California’s greatest potential. Winemakers swear by a climate and limestoneinfused soils that mimic the southern Rhone region of France.

Most are family operations that make fewer than 5,000 cases a year, which make them impossible for distributors seeking consistent availability to market nationally. Saxum bottles fewer than 3,000 cases and its wine club has a wait list. (The winery’s 2007 James Berryhill that earned Wine Spectator’s 98 — and 100 from Parker in October — sells for $67, compared with $375 for a French 98 in the same issue.)

“The reason people don’t know Paso is because they don’t see it in the marketplace. Maybe 20 are distributed now; it would help the region to have more,” said Deborah Baldwin, co-owner of Justin Wine Co., founded in 1981 when there were seven wineries in the region.

Hugging the coast midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the 666,618 acres of the Paso Robles Viticulture Area is California’s largest — three times the size of Napa. It comprises just

Associated Press

In this photo taken Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, a winery and specialty shops are shown near the main square in Paso Robles, Calif.

Located on California’s Central Coast, the Paso Robles viticultural area’s consistent quality and relatively moderate land prices have combined for phenomenal growth more than half of the Central Coast wine region that stretches 250 miles from San Francisco to Santa Barbara.

Grapes have grown there since the Mission padres settled in the late 1700s. In the 1980s, the flat and sprawling east side became home to large commercial wineries such as Eberle and Meridian and later Gallo, Robert Mondavi and KendallJackson farming 25,000 acres. But the cooler west side, where 5,000

acres are planted across hilly terrain, is where winemakers are scoring with critics.

With a production of 70,000 cases, Justin has tallied international accolades and become the region’s vaunted behemoth and image maker: its 1994 Isosceles, the iconic blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot, was named “Best Blended Wine in the World” at the London International Wine & Spirit Competition. Wine

Spectator named its 1997 Isosceles No. 6 in the world.

There is a wait for Isosceles reserve, but prices range from just more than $60 for Isosceles to $18.50 for the winery’s screw top “Orphan” blend of leftover juices from the hand-harvested single vintages.

Justin draws 40,000 visitors a year, many of whom meander the wine trails to discover a new favorite or obscure winemaker. Or, not obscure: Miss America 1957 Marian

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McKnight owns Carmody McKnight with her husband. Former NFL defensive back Terry Hoage produces 2,100 cases of Rhone-inspired wines nearby.

“We realize we’re all in this together,” says Justin Baldwin, who believes the success of one

increases exposure and recognition for the others.

Paso Robles has half as many wineries as Napa, but like Napa its climate includes coastal breezes and stifling inland valley heat.

The wine boom and influx of oenophiles have transformed downtown Paso from an ag town of 18,000 in 1990 to a bustling tourist mecca of 30,000 with a lineup of sophisticated restaurants lacking in other cities its size.

“The wine here just kicks butt,” says Bruce Davison, visiting Gray Wolf with his wife, Genevieve, from Los Angeles, three hours away by car.

In a state known for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, the new crop of vintners in Paso Robles are self-described “Rhone Rangers,” plumbing limestone soils of the Pacific Plate with Syrah, Grenache and Mouvedre vines from the southern Rhone region of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

The terroir is so similar, when wine importer Robert Haas went looking with the sixth generation of France’s Perrin family of Chateau de Beaucastel fame for a New World site, their four-year search ended in 1989 at a 120-acre site west of Paso Robles.

For their Tablas Creek they imported clones of the French winery’s prized 13 varietals that could be legally blended into Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines (today the number is 20), and pioneered the organic growing movement.

Growing organically “is an important part of making wines that reflect place,” said Jason Haas, Robert’s son and general manager. As if on cue he bent over to pick a lady bug from a clover leaf in a vineyard of Grenache Blanc.

This is the 39th Anniversary of the

DRAW AN AD CONTEST! Over 600 entries were assigned to kids in our community grades 3-8. Once again, the contest was a huge success and it was obvious students worked long and hard to produce their best possible work.

We would like to express our appreciation to everyone who helped with this year’s contest:

Country Hearth Inn Ernst Heating & Cooling

Lydia Roniger - Columbus Elementary School -5th Grade Lukas Bixen - Worden Elementary School -3rd Grade

Lincoln Middle School Columbus Elementary School Woodland Elementary School St. Boniface Catholic School St. Mary’s Catholic School Trinity Lutheran School Trinity St. Paul School Worden Elementary School N The Advertisers N The Teachers who made this a class project N Adam Celuch, Judge N Amy Ligibel, Judge N Sherrie Hickman, Judge N Alfonzo’s N McDonald’s

But Most of All...

The kids who took the time and energy to submit their entries. Without them, this would not be possible.

congratulations to our winners and we hope to see you all again next year!

Page – Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

Mother-in-law likes White House life

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s mother-in-law lived her entire life in Chicago, so it was only natural that her move to the White House came with some resistance. Try it for three months, her son-in-law says the family suggested.

A year later, it seems Marian Robinson is here to stay.

She spends a lot of time looking after granddaughters Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, but has been carving out a new life for herself, too. In the words of the president, she’s become “quite the lady about town.”

The widowed Mrs. Robinson has made friends and has had friends over to the White House. She goes shopping on her own, enjoys visits to the Kennedy Center and takes Malia and Sasha to and from school just about every day — all while enjoying a level of anonymity that has Obama and her own daughter, first lady Michelle Obama, feeling both pleased and a bit envious at the same time.

“She’s quite the lady about town,” Obama said. “But the nice thing is that she just walks out the gate and goes.”

Mrs. Robinson has given few interviews since moving to the White House. But she has made it clear that she was cool to the idea of moving and that she only did so reluctantly.

She left several siblings behind in Chicago.

“They’re dragging me with them, and I’m not comfortable with that,” Mrs. Robinson, 72, told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” last year. “But I’m doing exactly what you do: You do what needs to be done.”

Mrs. Obama recently said her mother seems content in her new home.

“She wasn’t completely kicking and screaming, but it was clear that her preference would be to remain in her old life, and that this new White House, all this stuff, she could just hear about,” the first lady said.

“So I’m happy that she’s really settled in and feels like this is home for her, as well,” Mrs. Obama said.

For anyone, life in the White House is, well, life-changing, and it has been for the first mother-in-law as well.

Mrs. Robinson took her first trip abroad last year, flying aboard Air Force One with the family to Russia, Italy and Ghana. With the family, she

Associated Press

In this July 22, 2009 file photo, Education Secretary Arne Duncan listens at left, as Marian Robinson, mother of first lady Michelle Obama, reads books to children gathered at the Education Department in Washington. President Barack Obama’s mother-in-law lived in Chicago all her life, so it was only natural that her move to the White House came with some kicking and screaming. Just try it for three months, her son-in-law says the family suggested. A year later, what had been described as a temporary relocation is looking permanent. got to meet the pope, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and inspect a former slave holding compound on the coast of Ghana.

She joins the family for weekends at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. But she did not join them in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., for summer vacation, or in Obama’s native Hawaii at Christmas.

Her bedroom is on the third floor of the White House (the First Family occupies the second floor), and she doesn’t eat dinner with the Obamas every night so that “Michelle’s family” can have time together.

Mrs. Robinson is protective of her privacy, yet seems to enjoy being out

and about, too.

She attends many White House functions, including musical events in the East Room — such as a celebration last week of music of the civil rights era — the annual Easter Egg Roll and November’s black-tie, state dinner for India’s prime minister.

Her only solo public appearance came last summer when she and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a family friend from Chicago, read storybooks to elementary school pupils.

Answering some of their questions, she described her life as “wonderful” and said the White House is “much bigger than anything I’ve

ever been accustomed to.”

She even has an unofficial nickname: FGOTUS (pronounced fuhGOH’-tus), an acronym for First Grandmother of the United States.

Obama told radio host Tom Joyner that his mother-in-law has been having fun hanging out with Betty Currie, former President Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, and

using the president’s box at the Kennedy Center. She recently saw the Alvin Ailey dance troupe there.

Mrs. Obama jokes that her mother has gotten so busy doing her own thing that “pretty soon she’s going to come and say, ’You know, I can’t pick up those kids. I’ve got so much going on.”’

Those kids were a big reason the

Obamas wanted Mrs. Robinson to move in with them.

She had become kind of a surrogate parent to the girls because their own parents traveled so much during the 2008 presidential campaign — their mother mostly on day trips, their father for longer stretches at a time. A gold medalist in the 50-meter and 100-meter runs in the 1997 Illinois Senior Olympics, Mrs. Robinson retired from her job as a secretary at a bank to shuttle them to play dates and after-school activities.

She helped her granddaughters get settled in a new city, a new home and new schools. Like their grandmother, Chicago is the only place they had ever lived.

And although she spoke last summer of “beginning to feel left out” because the girls are growing up, she remains an important presence in their lives, as much as they are in hers.

Mrs. Robinson’s other three grandchildren live out West, where son Craig is the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

He has a teenage son and daughter, Avery and Leslie, and 6-week-old son Austin.

Her husband, Fraser, who worked swing shifts at Chicago’s water plant despite crippling multiple sclerosis, died in 1991.

Mrs. Robinson’s move to the White House puts the Obamas in the same category with at least 1 million American families in which the head of the household shares the home with both his or her parents and children, according to AARP, which represents people age 50 and older.

Many of these arrangements aren’t because the grandparent can’t live on their own anymore, but because being there somehow makes life better, said Elinor Ginzler, AARP’s senior vice president for livable communities. That includes looking after grandchildren.

Multigenerational living arrangements are becoming more common, rising to 6.2 million households in

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Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD – Page

Winter road clearing requires snowphistication CHICAGO (AP) — The forecast: a mighty winter blizzard sure to dump a record-setting blanket of snow that will grow from inches to feet overnight, just in time for rush hour.

When it happened this month in Washington, they called it “Snowpocalypse” and an overwhelmed city couldn’t keep its streets clear. When it happened last week in Chicago, they called it “Tuesday” and kept the blacktop black from first flakes to final drifts.

“I’d take my plow drivers and put them up against anyone in North America,” said Bobby Richardson, Chicago’s snow removal boss. “Ten inches, a foot of snow? That’s nothing for us. Nothing.”

That’s not the case outside of Chicago and other cities in the American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of winter’s wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won’t fall where snow usually doesn’t. Most years, that gamble pays off. But this winter, historic blizzards have struck cities where traffic-snarling snowfalls are rare or even unheard of, exposing the dangers of counting on the Big One not to hit.

“You won’t see bare pavement for at least three weeks — and that’s if we don’t get another snow next week,” Steve Shannon, an operations manager at the Virginia Department of Transportation, said late last week about suburban Washington’s Fairfax County.

To be fair, the one-two punch of storms that socked the East Coast this month were record-setting, with snow falling so fast and deep Washington pulled its plows from the road. A quarter were knocked out of commission entirely by the struggle of trying to move so much snow off the streets.

And yet Richardson and his legendary snow-clearing legions argue that keeping a city moving during such a blizzard isn’t an insurmountable task. Should as much snow fall on Chicago as it did in Washington this month, more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers — hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters — are prepared to wipe it all away.

“Chicago would get through such a storm, and while it would not be total normalcy, the city would still function,” said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Buried by snow this month, cit-

Associated Press

In this Feb. 10, 2010 file photo, two pedestrians make their way along 14th Street in Washington, as two plows struggle to keep up with the falling snow in blizzard conditions. Many cities in the American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of winter’s wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won’t fall where snow usually doesn’t. Most years, that gamble pays off.

The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously from state to state, region to region. ies across the Mid-Atlantic states were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states. No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the Washington area: The federal government shut down for days as District residents complained of a spotty, haphazard response that left some streets all but abandoned.

And in the South, where even a light dusting is enough to paralyze commuters until the weather warms up and melts away the problem, most major cities have only a handful of plows — if any at all. In Dallas, a city of 1.2 million people but not a single dedicated snow plow, authorities count on snowflakes melting the minute they touch the ground.

That didn’t happen last week, when the worst storm in nearly five decades dropped more than a foot of snow in northern Texas. All the city

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For Judging Draw An Ad! from: Edwardsville Intelligencer

could do was send reconnaissance teams to identify slick spots and direct trucks to spread sand.

“Historically, that has handled every situation we face,” city spokesman Frank Librio said.

So, which city is best at cleaning up after the Big One? Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., or some other snowy locale? Those who study the business of providing such services say looking at comparable data is the only way to credibly assess whether one snow removal strategy beats another. But not only does such information not exist, the hundreds of variables involved complicate any effort to devise a master strategy.

For example, St. Paul, Minn., is far hillier than its Twin Cities counterpart of Minneapolis, which is filled with more alleys and more cars —

obstacles plows must dodge. Each snowfall is different, too: light, powdery snow falls when the temperatures drop close to zero, and wet, heavy snow comes when the temperature hovers around freezing.

“The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously from state to state, region to region,” said Caleb Dobbins, a state maintenance engineer at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

What can be measured is preparation. With an annual average snowfall of 38 inches, Chicago maintains a fleet of 300 trucks specifically designed for removing snow, 200

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others that can be fitted with plow blades and budgeted $17 million for the work this winter. Washington, with an average of 19.4 inches of snow each year, has 200 trucks that can be fitted with blades and a snow budget of $6 million.

Some Washington residents say the district is in a no-win situation: slammed for not being prepared when the Big One hits, but likely to face criticism if it spent much more on snow removal.

“I don’t know how prudent it would be to throw millions of taxpayer dollars at a problem that may not rear its head in a century,” said Mike DeBonis, a columnist for the Washington City Paper.

If the already cash-strapped city wanted to spend more on snow, he added, it would be forced to cut

other, arguably higher priority services, such as garbage collection or tree trimming.

Head farther South and the preparation naturally gets even thinner. In Pensacola, Fla., there is no budget for snow removal. The city has a fertilizer spreader that can work with sand, but no snow-clearing master plan that in snowbelt cities typically includes target times for clearing streets.

“If we knew a cold front was coming in, I’d have to go to a pool company and buy some sodium chloride,” said Pensacola public works director Al Garza. “Every time we take precautions, (we) stockpile some masonry sands in different locations and end up not using it.”

Then comes a month like February, when snow covers some ground in 49 states; two-thirds of the nation’s land mass had snow cover Friday.

While Garza was safe, snow fell just 40 miles north of Pensacola last week. After brief respite over the weekend, it was snowing again in Washington on Monday.

The consequences of failing to clear that snow can be deadly. Each year, more than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,000 injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. A storm that shuts down roads also closes the door of business, costing communities hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales taxes and revenue from income taxes.

“The benefits of being better prepared far outweigh the costs — because it costs so much when the Big One does hit,” said Greg Cohen, executive director of the Roadway Safety Foundation, whose own street in Washington was still unplowed several days after the storms hit.

Then there’s the politics of snow: Mayors know failure to remove it can cost them their jobs.

Every mayor knows the story of Chicago’s Michael Bilandic, the incumbent who lost in the 1979 Democratic primary after the city failed to clear streets fast enough after a storm. These days, voters embrace Mayor Richard M. Daley in part because the crews at Streets and Sanitation keeps the city in business every winter: The city’s public schools haven’t had a “snow day” in more than a decade.

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Page – Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

Miniatures attract crafters of all types NEW YORK (AP) – Every month, Darlene Patrick sets a special table to reflect any upcoming holidays or occasions. No one ever dines at the table, because it’s made out of a plastic foam soup container.

It’s part of a miniature centerpiece she created for her dining room table during a class at Just Miniature Scale, a dollhouse store near her home in Greensburg, Penn.

February’s table features roses and chocolates made of clay resting on a red tablecloth with white hearts. The March display celebrates St. Patrick’s Day and includes tiny steins filled with green beer made from colored resin. She displays the tables on a glass cake stand.

For Patrick, the tables are a creative outlet for her interest in miniatures.

“I’ve always liked doing craft projects,” she said. “I just like doing it on a smaller scale because you can complete more things.”

Making miniatures attracts a variety of crafters because it incorporates so many different skills, said Gwen Campbell, first vice president of the Carmel, Ind.based National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts, which holds classes and conventions for about 5,000 members.

Beyond assembling a dollhouse, many hobbyists make furniture, sew curtains or create tiny decorations, she said.

“If you’re into any craft at all, you can do it in miniature,” Campbell said from her home in Gainesville, Fla. Over the years, Amy Rauch has incorporated a number of interests — basket

weaving, cross stitching and painting — into her dollhouses.

“I always have lots of projects in progress,” said Rauch, of Evans, Ga. She made her first house when she was 17, and estimates that she has made more than 400 dollhouses in the 33 years since then.

“We don’t have a formal living room in my house,” said Rauch. “It’s my dollhouse room.”

She enjoys the challenge of getting the scale of objects right. The scale for most dollhouses is 1 foot to 1 inch. Rauch also takes pleasure in turning everyday items into dollhouse furnishings. She has used beads as miniature vases and lamps, for example.

Patrick has turned tiny binder clips

into purses, and Tic Tac dispensers into hampers.

After she built her dollhouse 10 years ago, Patrick started making miniature displays as holiday decorations or to commemorate special occasions. She also bought each of her children a keepsake glass dome designed to hold miniatures.

“Every year I add something of significance that represents their interests,” she said.

Miniatures are a good way to mark special events, said Judy Mizikar, owner of Just Miniature Scale. Her son-in-law proposed to her daughter by creating a miniature version of her college dorm room with the addition of a miniature engagement ring box.

The hobby often evokes sentimental

feelings, Mizikar said; it’s common for fathers and daughters or grandparents and grandchildren to bond while constructing a dollhouse.

Volunteers with the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts do projects with the Girl Scouts of America and at assisted living facilities, Campbell said.

“It definitely creates intergenerational relationships,” she said.

Still, the organization tends to attract mainly older women, added Rauch, who serves as regional coordinator.

Startup costs for miniatures vary, she said. It’s possible to buy a dollhouse for $100.

“You could spend $1,000,” she said.

“Some people spend almost nothing. They use all found objects.”

Last U.S. sardine cans packed in Maine PROSPECT HARBOR, Maine (AP) — The intensely fishy smell of herring has been the smell of money for generations of workers in Maine who have snipped, sliced and packed the small, silvery fish into billions of cans of sardines on their way to Americans’ lunch buckets and kitchen cabinets.

For the past 135 years, sardine canneries have been as much a part of Maine’s small coastal villages as the thick Down East fog. It’s been estimated that more than 400 canneries have come and gone along the state’s long, jagged coast.

The lone survivor, the Stinson Seafood plant here in this eastern Maine shoreside town, shuts down this week after a century in operation. It is the last sardine cannery not just in Maine, but in the United States.

Lela Anderson, 78, has worked in sardine canneries since the 1940s and was among the fastest in sardine-packing contests that were held back in the day. Her packing days are over; now she’s a quality-control inspector looking over the bite-sized morsels in can after can that passes by her.

“It just doesn’t seem possible this is the end,” Anderson lamented last week while taking a break at the plant where she’s worked for 54 years. She and nearly 130 co-workers will lose their jobs.

Once considered an imported deli-

cacy, sardines now have a humble reputation. They aren’t one species of fish. Instead, sardines are any of dozens of small, oily, cold-water fish that are part of the herring family that are sold in tightly packed cans.

The first U.S. sardine cannery opened in Maine in 1875, when a New York businessman set up the Eagle Preserved Fish Co. in Eastport.

Dozens of plants soon popped up, sounding loud horns and whistles to alert local workers when a boat came in with its catch from the herring-rich ocean waters off Maine.

By 1900 there were 75 canneries, where knife-wielding men, women and young children expertly sliced off heads and tails and removed innards before packing them tight into sardine tins.

These days most of the canning is automated and the fish are cut with machines, though still packed by hand. The Stinson packers are all women because they are thought to have stronger backs and better dexterity than men, according to plant manager Peter Colson.

Inside the spacious Stinson plant, dozens of workers in hairnets, aprons and gloves sort, pack and cook the herring that stream along flumes and conveyors. The fish are blanched in a 208-degree steamer for 12 minutes and later, cooked in sealed cans at about 250 degrees for 35 minutes.

Ear plugs muffle the cacophony of clanking cans, rattling conveyor belts, rumbling motors and hissing steam. A fishy smell hangs in the air.

Outside, a billboard-sized sign of a fisherman in yellow oilskins holding an oversized can of Beach Cliff sardines, the plant’s primary product, serves as reminder of Maine’s long sardine history.

Colson has been in the sardine business for 38 years. He got his first job as a youngster at another cannery, an hour’s drive away, where his father was the manager.

“This is it. We don’t have any more,” Colson said as he watched workers swiftly pack cans in assembly line fashion. “It’s not easy seeing this go.”

Production at Maine canneries has been sliding since peaking at 384 million cans in 1950. Faced with declining demand and a changing business climate, the plants went by the wayside one by one until, five years ago, the Stinson plant was the last one standing. Last year it produced 30 million cans.

Still, it came as a surprise to employees when Bumble Bee Foods LLC — which has owned the facility since 2004 — announced in February that the plant would close because of steep cuts in the amount of herring fishermen are allowed to catch in the Northeast. The New England Fishery Management Council set this year’s herring quota at 91,000

metric tons — down from 180,000 tons in 2004 — because of the uncertain scientific outlook of the region’s herring population.

Shortages have forced San Diegobased Bumble Bee to truck in much of the herring needed at the Maine plant from its other cannery in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, and from herring suppliers as far away as New Jersey.

Even without the quota cuts, the plant was under pressure from shrinking consumer demand, increased foreign competition from countries with lower labor costs — primarily from China and Thailand — and thin margins and low prices on the retail market.

Sardines at one time were an inexpensive staple for many Americans who packed them into their lunchboxes and enjoyed a can or two — or perhaps a sardine sandwich — for lunch. The fish — usually packed in oil or in sauces such as mustard, hot sauce, tomato or green chilies — can still be had at supermarkets for a little over $1 a can, but they’re not in too many lunch pails these days.

Ronnie Peabody, who runs the

Maine Coast Sardine History Museum in the town of Jonesport 35 miles up the road from the Stinson plant, has a cookbook published in 1950 called “58 Ways to Serve Sardines.”

It includes recipes for sardine soup, sardine casserole, baked eggs and sardines, and creamed sardines and spinach.

Sardine consumption began falling decades ago, he said, after canned tuna came on the market and Americans’ tastes changed. The closing of the last U.S. cannery is the end of an era, he said.

“It’s like reading an obituary in the paper,” he said. “It’s really sad, but what can you do?”

When the last sardine can is packed on Thursday, plant workers say it’ll be like a family being split up.

Many of the employees have worked together for decades.

Anderson, a tiny woman with strong hands and a strong back from years of packing small fish pieces into cans, said she’ll be leaving behind close friends when the plant closes.

But she won’t much miss the sardines, which she doesn’t eat.

“I’m not saying I hate them,” she

said, “I’m just saying I’m not a big eater of them.”

Talks are in the works to sell the plant to another company to process lobster or other seafoods.

Bumble Bee has invested more than $11 million in the plant in recent years, and there’s a work force at the ready.

Bumble Bee operates one of the last two U.S. clam canneries, in Cape May, N.J., and of the last two domestic tuna canneries, in California. But the days of sardine canning in the U.S. are probably gone, said Chris Lischewski, Bumble Bee’s president and CEO. “I would never say never, but I’d say it’s pretty unlikely,” Lischewski said in a phone interview from California.

In Monterey, Calif., a group of self-described “sardinistas” has taken on the task of trying to get Americans to eat more sardines. It was in Monterey where sardine canneries were made famous in John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel, “Cannery Row,” about the misfits and outcasts on a street lined with sardine canneries.

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Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD – Page

Myrtle Beach offers a wallet-friendly option MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) — Myrtle Beach has a reputation as a family beach — a workingman’s destination where a week of sun and fun with the kids won’t break the bank.

In a time of layoffs, high unemployment and recession, that makes the Grand Strand — the 60 miles of shoreline from Georgetown, S.C. to the North Carolina state line — especially attractive.

The area offers a bit of everything: weathered beach bungalows at Pawleys Island and mom-andpop hotels amid pricier high-rise condos in Myrtle Beach; amusement parks where you pay by the ride; and golf challenges ranging from tilting at mini-golf windmills to making the green on windswept layouts winding through stands of oak. But the main attraction is, and always has been, the beach.

Start your visit at the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce — better yet go online before you arrive: http://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com. The main office is a few blocks off the shore in the heart of Myrtle Beach. There’s a second visitor center at the airport and a third in the fishing village of Murrells Inlet to the south. The chamber folks are invaluable at helping with reservations and sorting through an array of options.

GETTING AROUND: Most visitors arrive by car. On busy beach weekends, that can mean traffic snarls. New roads in recent years have helped. The Carolina Bays Parkway, state Route 31, and the Conway Bypass, state Route 22, now provide expressway alternatives to what was once stop-andgo traffic. An interstate link, I-73, is also in the works.

On the visitmyrtlebeach.com site, you can click on a city of origin and get an estimate of gas costs for the trip. That can help ensure your budget isn’t bushwacked even before you arrive.

FREE, OR NEARLY FREE, FAVES: A new mile-long, $6 million boardwalk, set to be completed this spring, is being built along the shore in the center of Myrtle Beach. It will have green spaces to sit and old-fashioned street lamps. During the summer, there are street performers, face painters and free concerts; http:// www.myrtlebeachdowntown.com Broadway At the Beach, between the shore and the Intracoastal Waterway, is a 350-acre entertainment and shopping complex featuring everything from an IMAX 3-D theater to Ripley’s Aquarium and from Hard Rock Cafe to burger restaurants and pubs. As the weather warms up, there are free concerts with regional acts followed by fireworks; http://www. broadwayatthebeach.com.

A change of pace from the lights and bustle of downtown Myrtle Beach is the free Murrells Inlet Marsh Walk in nearby Murrells Inlet. It offers picturesque views of the fishing boats and wildlife such as heron and gulls in a quiet walk along the inlet. On the mainland side, the walk connects with a string of eight seafood restaurants in the town locals like to call “The Seafood Capital of South Carolina;” http://www. murrellsinletmarshwalk.com Festival season along the Grand Strand includes concerts, parades and other free events, kicking

Associated Press

This photo taken Feb. 10, 2010 shows the Market Common shopping and entertainment complex on the site of the old Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in Myrtle Beach, S.C. During the summer season, The Market Common offers activities including free concerts. off with the annual CanadianAmerican Days Festival, March 13-21 — which is only fitting, since Canadians and other Northerners are the only ones in the water that early in the year. The Sun Fun Festival takes place in June and the Beach Boogie and BBQ Festival winds up the season at Labor Day; http://www.grandstrandevents. com.

From June through August, the Market Common, a shopping complex on what was once the old Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, offers a KidZone every Monday with jumping castles and the like. Kids can jump all day for $10. Friday nights the complex’s Valor Park has free live music; http://www. marketcommonevents.com If you’re looking for something beyond sand and surf, stop by the Franklin G. Burroughs Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum. The museum, also free, has displayed contemporary art by Southern artists since 1977; http://www.myrtlebeachartmuseum.org FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE: The Myrtle Beach area offers a variety of amusement and water parks.

Family Kingdom Amusement Park is the only seaside amusement park in the area. Dating to 1966, it features the signature Swamp Fox wooden roller coaster and the largest Ferris wheel in South Carolina.

There’s no admission to the park itself, so parents won’t have to pay if it’s only the kids who want to ride. There are individual ride tickets or a $33 combo pass for unlimited rides for a day at both the amusement and water parks; http://www.FamilyKingdomFun. com The famous beachfront Myrtle Beach Pavilion closed down sever-

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al years back. But a number of the smaller rides, and the funnel cake stand, have been relocated to the smaller Pavilion Nostalgia Park at Broadway at the Beach.

A newcomer to the amusement park scene, Freestyle Music Park, formerly known as Hard Rock Park, is looking for investors and it’s unclear whether operators will come up with the money to open this year.

During spring and fall, you’ll find more people on the golf course than on the beach. With 100 regulation golf courses, there’s something for every golfer and most courses are public. More than four million rounds of golf are played annually and each fall the PGA Tour Superstore World

Amateur Handicap Championship is held on 70 different courses along the Grand Strand. One place to start is the Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday Web site, where you can log in with details about your trip plans and get quotes on golf packages with accommodations; http://www.golfholiday.com.

Golfers not trying to pitch out of a bunker are often trying to putt past buccaneers. The Grand Stand has more than 50 miniature golf courses, many with nautical themes. Full-price tickets run $8 for adults and about $6 for kids — but most courses offer discounts if you play during the day rather than during the busier evening hours.

Another big draw is shopping.

You’ll find outlet stores, national chains like Victoria’s Secret and everything in between. The Grand Strand has 326 gift, novelty and souvenir stores, including the ubiquitous beachwear shops. The most popular souvenir? Anything from gym shorts to T-shirts and from paperweights to drinking glasses with “Myrtle Beach” on them, says Kimberly Miles, the public relations manager for the chamber.

The Grand Strand also boasts 1,700 full-service restaurants. And it’s not just seafood. You’ll find everything from pancakes and country cooking to ribs, barbecue, and international cuisine.

LODGING: With 60 miles of coastline, it’s not hard, or expen-

sive, to find a room with a view of the water or one within a block or two of the shore.

The Grand Strand has nearly 90,000 rooms for rent, from upscale hotels to mom-and-pop motels to villas and condos on golf courses. For the latter, the chamber can direct visitors to a half-dozen agencies that rent to vacationers.

Or book your own online: Online rates for many condos and hotels in late March and April range from under $100 to over $200 a night.

Many hotels in spring and fall offer specials, giving visitors a free night or two if they stay a specified number of nights. You can also stretch your dollar by looking at amenities. The Dunes Village Resort has a full-fledged 15,000-square-foot indoor water park, free for guests, with a slide big enough for adults, so there’s no need for a trip to an amusement park; http://www.dunesvillage. com. If the ocean is too cold for you in spring, many condo towers on the beach have free indoor-outdoor water complexes with pools, hot tubs and lazy rivers.

For camping out, Myrtle Beach State Park offers 350 campsites along with nature programs and hiking trails. Huntington Beach State Park, farther south, has 133 campsites and features a castlelike home, Atalaya, once the winter home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband; http://www.SouthCarolinaParks. com.

If you’re bringing the RV, the Lakewood Camping Resort offers 1,100 campsites and 85 villas on a 200-acre oceanfront campground. The resort is said to be the eighth-largest camping resort in the world; http://www.

Lakewoodcampground.com.

TRAVEL TIPS: Fall and spring are increasingly popular times for golfing and shopping, and you’ll find plenty of vacationers from cold places like Buffalo, N.Y., or Vermont who think the weather ’s perfect here for the beach in April.

But the most popular season is still summer, with July Fourth as the busiest weekend. July is also the hottest month; temperatures average 87 degrees and the seaside humidity can make it feel hotter, but often the afternoon brings a sea breeze or even a thunder shower.

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Page –Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

Restored gardens bloom on the Rock SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Scoured by wind and steeped in criminal history, Alcatraz has a forbidding face. But look a little closer and you see a gentler side to this old fortress, the gleam of flowers blooming brightly on the island’s rocky slopes.

These are the gardens of Alcatraz, once tended by prisoners and the families of the guards who watched them, now being revived by a band of conservationist sleuths who rely on old photos and long memories to recreate an almost forgotten piece of horticultural history.

“It really is a jigsaw puzzle — it takes some detective work,” says Shelagh Fritz, project manager of the Gardens of Alcatraz.

“Our goal is to turn a place of neglect and harshness into something that’s beautiful and worth taking care of.”

Kathe Poteet remembers how the gardens used to look. Her father, Al Kaeppel, was business administrator on the island in the ’50s and she lived on the island until she was 7.

“It was a great place to grow up,” says Poteet, now a teacher in Central California.

She remembers playing on the parade grounds, picking berries in the fall and chewing on sour grass, the tasty weed known as oxalis. A ground cover plant known as Persian carpet covered the slopes near her house, making a display that could be seen from the boat when traveling back from trips to the mainland. “When that was in bloom the whole island just would look pink as you were coming home.”

Originally a bald lump of an island — they don’t call it The Rock for nothing — Alcatraz became an Army fortress in the 1800s and a military prison in 1861. From 1934 to 1963, it was the federal penitentiary commemorated in a slew of Hollywood films such as “Birdman of Alcatraz” and “Escape from Alcatraz.”

In the early 1900s, military and civic projects brought trees, shrubs and seeds to the island. The movement got a boost in the ’30s when Freddie Reichel, secretary to the warden, persuaded the prison leader to allow inmates to garden, a privilege granted only to the best-behaved.

It was uphill work. “I kept no records of my failures, for I had many,” Reichel wrote in a letter chronicling his efforts.

It doesn’t appear the island’s most infamous resident, mobster Al Capone, showed

Associated Press

Shelagh Fritz, right, project manager of the Alcatraz Historic Gardens Project, tends to flowers along Officers Row as Dawn Stranne, left, of the Gardens Conservancy, takes pictures in the gardens on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010. any flower power. But in the ’40s, prisoner Elliott Michener left his mark, working in the gardens on the island’s West Side where he laid out flower beds and put together a tool shed from odds and ends.

The shed, recently refurbished by National Park Service carpenters and volunteers, still stands.

Michener liked his work so much that for a while he turned down parole to stay on,

says Fritz, although he eventually left and went to work at a dairy farm in Wisconsin.

After the prison closed in 1963, partly due to high operating expenses, the gardens fell into disarray — flowers died back, shrubs grew into misshapen monsters and weeds ran wild. But more than 200 species — shrubs, succulents, bulbs and perennials — survived.

The restoration dates back about six years

when the Garden Conservancy, a national nonprofit group dedicated to saving significant gardens, opened a West Coast office.

They started looking for a project and someone suggested Alcatraz, says Antonia Adezio, president of the Garden Conservancy. “We just became tremendously excited about the potential to show the public how important gardening is. Here they were in this desolate place and finding ways to connect with it.”

The conservancy is working in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the National Park Service.

Late last year, the gardens were recognized with the California Preservation Foundation Trustees Award for Excellence.

Gardening on a rock’s not easy. All fresh water still has to be brought in by boat.

This year, a 15,000-gallon water cachement system went in, which should provide enough water to keep the gardens irrigated year-round.

As spring beckoned, flowers in bloom included the bright blaze of yellow narcissus and the softer lavender of iceplant climbing up a West Side bank. Gardeners are doing battle with another import to the island: the weedy oxalis that apparently seemed a good idea back in the early 20th century.

Other highlights include a rose garden, in which restorers found a Welsh rose, Bardou Job, that hadn’t been seen in Wales for years.

Welsh gardeners were given a cutting.

Along the way, workers have uncovered more than botanic secrets. One of the resources being used by restorers are some paintings done by a former inmate that show views of the West Side gardens looking toward the San Francisco skyline. The inmate’s family, who never knew about the man’s time in prison, found the pictures after he died and puzzled over them for a while. Where could they have been painted?

Slowly, it dawned on them, he had to have been on Alcatraz — at a time when the island wasn’t open to day excursions.

Poteet’s island memories live on in her backyard.

When they left the island, her parents took some cuttings from their gardens.

Descendants of those plants now grow at her home in Central California and Poteet, who has worked as a volunteer on the garden project, gave restorers some of the cuttings.

“Full circle,” she says.

IF YOU GO: Docent tours are offered Friday and Sunday at 9:30 a.m., except holidays. Interested visitors must take the 9 a.m. boat from Pier 33. Garden tours are free, but visitors must purchase ferry tickets through Alcatraz Cruises. Be sure to book ahead in the summer. http://www.alcatrazcruises. com. A viewing of the Officer’s Row garden is offered midday on Wednesdays. More information at http://www.alcatrazgardens. com

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Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD – Page

Population of 1 towns count in census MONOWI, Neb. (AP) — The founding fathers must have chuckled at the impossibility of the job when they etched it into the Constitution: Count every man, woman and child along every back road and big-city avenue in the entire country.

From Key West to Nome, today’s Americans will largely get the founders’ joke yet again as the U.S. Census embarks on its once-a-decade count this year — they’re accustomed to approximations of how many people plod their shared corner of the world.

Why does it really matter, after all, that a Nebraska town comprised of a tavern, a few crumbling houses, four street lamps, and one drivable, dirt street be counted exactly right?

Or even at all?

“Because I live in it,” said Elsie Eiler, who is Monowi’s entire population. Yet Census estimates from this summer say that there are two Monowians.

“Where’s this other person?” Eiler said. “Let me know. ... I don’t want to come back to my house at 11 or 12 and see someone else there.”

Others across the country who live in the tiniest of tiny towns, from Indiana river country to the wind-swept Wyoming plains, feel the same way as Eiler about Census counts and estimates. Proudly holding onto their identities, with the line between existence and disappearance of their villages so narrow, they insist every person counts.

So they want them counted right.

The Census estimates that there are four incorporated towns with just one person. But when contacted

by The Associated Press, residents in three of those places say they aren’t the lonely souls the Census says they are. The population of the fourth — Hoot Owl, Okla. — could not be verified by the AP. “Who’s that one?” said Thomas Saucier of Goss, Miss., one of the supposed one-person towns. “There’s 50 right here in Goss!”

Told that some estimates of the country’s most microscopic towns haven’t gone over too smoothly, an official of the federal count got a bit chapped herself.

“We’re doing the whole country,” said Barbara Vandervate of the Census Bureau. “If we could do one state a month, it’d be much easier to count everybody.”

Associated Press

In this Sept. 20, 2009 photo, Elsie Eiler stands near the bar and grill she owns in Monowi, Neb. Eiler is Monowi’s entire population, yet Census estimates from this summer and a road sign outside the town say that there are two Monowians.

And another thing: “If people don’t answer the questions, guess what? They don’t get counted.”

A resident of one of the supposedly one-person towns — New Amsterdam, Ind., listed that way in the 2000 Census and in last summer’s bureau estimate — concedes that people there may have something to do with the statistical snafu. Mary Faye Shaffer cut the Census little slack, and said the town is bent on getting an accurate count this time around.

In the general store that she owns — the only business in town, unless you count “a bait shop that’s there if they want to be there” — Shaffer tallies residents of New Amsterdam until she reaches 19.

She proudly mentions the couple who moved to town after retiring

from Wal-Mart, and she brags about the beauty of the area, mentioning how she can see the scenic Ohio River from her backdoor.

But bring up the Census, and her melodic Southern accent hits some sharp notes.

“It’s embarrassing — ’You live in a town with one person?”’ Shaffer says people say to her.

“People call here just because they think there’s only one person.

You wouldn’t think the government would screw up this bad.”

Shaffer surmises that the count went wrong in 2000 because the town doesn’t have a post office.

That means residents have listed nearby towns that have post offices as their addresses.

Townsfolk met with a Census official last year and spread the

word for everyone to write on their Census forms that they live in New Amsterdam, regardless of different mailing addresses.

Will this year’s counts straighten out such things? They aren’t holding their breath in Lost Springs, Wyo. Last year, a man with the Census came to the town, which is located in eastern Wyoming.

“He seemed very confused,” said Leda Price, who runs a bar, hunting camp and catering business, “among other things,” in Lost Springs. The only other business is a general store across the street that also has a post office. A big annual event in town is a pitch tournament, which recently drew a couple dozen people.

Population estimates from last

summer repeated the finding of the the 2000 Census: Pop. 1, as it says on the road sign entering town.

But Price says she’s lived there 37 years and there’s always been more than one person. The town actually had five people when the 2000 Census was done, she said, though there are population ups and downs.

In fact, the tally recently spiked 33 percent: A woman moved in with a man who has lived in Lost Springs for some time, increasing the population to four from three.

People ask Price why she doesn’t scratch out the road sign and put in the correct number. It’s become a sign of her frustrating dealings with the Census.

“I tried for a long time to straighten it out and it was like talking to a brick wall,” Price said of her discussions with the Census Bureau in recent years.

There’s not always someone around to fight an inaccurate count.

Take Erving’s Location, N.H., said to have one resident in both the 2000 Census and the estimate last summer.

“There’s never been anyone there,” said Sue Collins, county administrator for Coos County, N.H., who has lived in the area that includes the alleged town for 25 years.

The Census’ Vandervate said the bureau will try its best this year to rid the count of population ghosts that spook residents of the tiniest towns. But she acknowledges, as any reasonable person must, that there will be mistakes.

“And the minor mistakes,” she said, “can look huge to people in a tiny place.”

Back in Monowi, tucked in the rolling hills that abut the Missouri River in northeast Nebraska, Eiler sits in the Monowi Tavern where she sells beer for $2 a bottle and makes $2.50 hamburgers on a 35year-old, four-burner stovetop.

She describes a previous battle with the Census to be counted right: After the 1990 Census, she wrote to the now-deceased broadcaster Paul Harvey, enlisting his help. He mentioned the miscount on his popular radio show.

But nothing changed.

Eiler became the town’s only resident when her husband, Rudy, died six years ago. She lives in a mobile home next to a library constructed in memory of her husband, and makes the short walk past a longclosed grocery store every day on her way to the bar. She stays until at least 10 p.m.

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Page 10 – Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

The town that stirred Twain's memories ELMIRA, N.Y. (AP) — Huckleberry Finn sprang to life in a swirl of cheap cigar smoke at Mark Twain’s cozy hilltop cabin in upstate New York far from the Mississippi River.

On the centenary of the author’s death, Twainiacs will swarm Hannibal, Mo., the river town of his boyhood that inspired a raft of literary gems, and Hartford, Conn., where in celebrated middle age he moved his family to a 19-room mansion transformed now into a tourist magnet.

Only a few thousand visitors typically show up in Elmira, a small Rust Belt city in New York’s bucolic Chemung River Valley where much of his best-known fiction was actually written.

Tough times aside, civic boosters think this is one year when a bump in attendance is all but assured.

Elmirans in period costume will ride in black horse-drawn carriages to Woodlawn Cemetery in an April 24 centennial reenactment of Twain’s burial. And Hal Holbrook will reprise his “Mark Twain Tonight!” impersonation at a renovated vaudeville theater that bears the humorist’s real name, Samuel L. Clemens.

“If there was ever a town that needed a tourism boost and to get on the map, it’s Elmira,” said Martha Horton of Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery, a non-profit group. “We had much more grandiose plans but, shoot, the economy just whaled us.”

Twain was lured to Elmira by romance, marrying wealthy coal merchant’s daughter Olivia Langdon in 1870. For the next 20 summers, at Quarry Hill farm atop East Hill with its entrancing view of the valley and a receding range of blue-hued hills in distant Pennsylvania, he excelled in his craft like no place else.

“The setting worked a magic on his mind in his ability to remember” his early life along a more grandiose river, said Barbara Snedecor, director of Elmira College’s Center for Mark Twain Studies.

Here, he wrote virtually all of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,”

Associated Press

In this photo taken Feb. 23, 2010, Barbara Snedecor, director of Elmira College’s Center for Mark Twain Studies, opens the doors to the Mark Twain Study on campus in Elmira, N.Y. “The Prince and the Pauper,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — novels that heralded him as an early icon of distinctly American literature.

“The Mississippi River is the inspirational memory, Elmira is the place that helps him tap into that memory, Hartford is where he refines all of those manuscript pages and makes them ready for publication,” Snedecor said.

In a nod to Hartford House, which draws 60,000 visitors a year, she added: “Half of writing is revision.”

At his most productive, Twain practically chain-smoked cigars, and his craving for a quick burn was conspicuous at 250-acre Quarry Farm, a nest of solitude away from the social hurly-burly of Hartford.

Mindful of her health, perhaps, sister-in-law Susan Crane had a windowed study built specially for Twain in 1874 not far from her Victorian farmhouse. Equipped with a writing table, wicker chair, cot, fireplace and cat door, it was designed to resemble the pilot house of a Mississippi steamboat.

After a steak breakfast, Twain

would saunter 300 feet across a lawn flecked with buttercups and blackeyed susans and climb the stone steps to a promontory where the octagonal cabin was perched. Amid the chirp and crackle of nature, overlooking a panorama he called a “foretaste of heaven,” Twain often churned out as many as 2,600 words a day.

“Why, it’s like old times to step right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and ... sail right on the whole day long, without a thought of running short of stuff or words,” he wrote.

Near twilight, his wife, three

daughters, in-laws and servants gathered on the farmhouse porch as Twain read aloud his day’s work.

“He’s gauging reaction, looking for maybe a pat on the back,” Snedecor said.

Among his best-known works-inresidence were his memoir “Life on the Mississippi” and “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It,” which captures the agony household cook Mary Ann Cord endured in slavery being forcibly separated from her children. His creation of Jim, Huck’s heroic companion, was influenced by his friendship with

pig farmer John T. Lewis, a black neighbor he befriended.

To thwart vandals and accommodate tourists, the cabin was moved down to the Elmira College campus in 1952. Twain’s great-nephew, railroad executive Jervis Langdon Jr., gave Quarry Farm to the liberal arts school in 1982 — to be used only for scholarly work.

“He didn’t want any bit of commercialism,” said Irene Langdon, whose husband died in 2004 at age 99. “It’s an old farmhouse, and having lots of tourists troop in there just wouldn’t do it.”

A national historic site, the farm remains the type of haven that stoked Twain’s “red hot” writing streak.

Academics can apply for residencies, and “56 books have been published by the men and women who have stayed here,” including Ron Powers and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Snedecor said.

A free lecture series attracts a few dozen visitors to the farm grounds each spring and fall. The college also has a Twain archive featuring books he enjoyed with quirky notes scribbled in the margins.

While it retains its Victorian grace, Elmira has fallen a long way from its 19th-century manufacturing heyday when it was the fire-engine capital of the world and, later, the typewriter capital. A flood ravaged downtown in 1972. By 1985, it ranked sixth among America’s most economically distressed areas.

Elmira lost out on staging a popular Twain musical in 1995 and its annual tourist throng has dropped from around 10,000 to 3,000 a year.

But it still banks on the appeal of its adopted son. This year, it is offering extra trolley rides around town, a Twain nature trail and a theatrical reading of his personal correspondence.

Born in 1835 in the year of Halley’s comet, Twain predicted he would die when it returned. He slipped away in his bed at his estate in Redding, Conn., on April 21, 1910, a day after it appeared.

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Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD – Page 11

Walking in the footsteps of Moses

By CHARMAINE NORONHA Associated Press Writer ST. CATHERINE, Egypt (AP) — In the Bible, Moses climbs Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.

But he was the chosen one, and I am a mere mortal. Divine intervention seemed unlikely as I stood at the base of the mountain, chilled to the bone at 2 a.m., with only the faint light from a spattering of stars and sliver of moon on the dark rocky terrain.

I’d decided to head to the fabled mountain peak while frolicking in the sun in the azure waters of the Red Sea, where the temperatures were warm and balmy. I would retrace Moses’ footsteps on a hike to witness the sunrise from the summit. If Moses could do it, why couldn’t I? But once I arrived for this overnight trek, sleepless and in temperatures that felt like North American winter, I wasn’t so sure.

Then out popped our guide, a sprightly young Egyptian man with a yellowtoothed grin. He was dressed in little more than a galabeya, the traditional long men’s shirt, while I felt cold wearing almost all the clothing I brought with me on my trip, including a borrowed jacket and my woolliest socks from Canada, where I live. His garment billowed in the wind as he led me and a group of travelers from around the world up to the summit.

As we began our ascent up the 7,500-foot mountain (2,285 meters), I searched the black sky for a glimpse of our endpoint.

But the only thing visible to me was my vaporous breath and what appeared to be the shadows of camels lumbering up the mountain. I wondered for a moment if I was hallucinating.

We followed in step with our guide as he led us through the darkness, up the winding trail, over granite crags and slippery rocks. I’m not religious, but the irony of the moment hit me: I’d literally put all my faith in this man I’d just met.

For others on the hike, the expedition had deep religious significance. The Bible says this is where God gave Moses two stone tablets inscribed with the commandments. Moses received these laws after leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt, a story that is retold during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins this year at sundown March 29. But Sinai is

Associated Press

This Oct. 15, 2009 file photo shows Saint Catherine’s Monastery, founded by the Emperor St. Justinian the Great in 527, at the foot of Mount Sinai in Saint Catherine, Sinai, Egypt. The monastery is Greek Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. an important site for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, and every night, hundreds of pilgrims make the climb.

There are two routes for the 4.3-mile (7 km) round trip: The camel path, which was our route, or a steeper, more direct route of some 3,750 stairs to the top, sometimes referred to as “God’s Stairmaster.”

For me, the camel route was challenging enough. I could feel my heart pounding

through layers of clothes, and the sweat trickling on my forehead felt like a fever chill. The Bible says Moses made two sojourns here to receive the tablets, spending 40 days on the mountain each time, but we would be up and down in 4 1/2 hours.

The sanctity of the hike was disrupted by scores of other hikers vying to reach the top quickly to mark their spot to watch the sunrise, and the constant calls of, “Camel

ride, camel ride” from Egyptian entrepreneurs. But I preferred following the guide on foot rather than trusting a camel on the messy, pebbly trail.

The hours rolled into each other. At about 5 a.m., the sky began its slow transformation, turning from black to shades of gray, our cue to get to the top, where the sun could be seen slowly rising. Our guide stopped short of the final ascent; we were

to lead ourselves up the last 750 rocky steps to the summit.

As we climbed the last bit, stone silhouettes began to form in the distance. The summit appeared to be blanketed with mummified people tucked in sleeping bags and camel blankets. The wind was treacherous; my fingers were too frozen to unzip my sleeping bag. I took my spot on a jagged piece of rock face, too cold to do much except pray for the warmth of the sun. My prayers were answered slowly as a dusty orange light filtered through the sky.

As the sun came into view, a group of Romanian pilgrims broke into a hymn.

Their booming voices provided an almost eerie soundtrack to the sunrise. The rest of us stared quietly across the Sinai desert as the light began to cast a warm glow, unveiling rocky peaks all around us.

The mountains turned crimson, gold and orange, and I felt my spirits lifting with the heat of the sun.

I almost expected the Romanians to start singing “Hallelujah.” They didn’t, but I did, in my head.

——— If You Go...

MOUNT SINAI, EGYPT: Mount Sinai can be reached from the Red Sea resort towns of Dahab and Sharm El Sheik (about 1.5 to 2 hours by car to the mountain).

TOURS: You can easily join or organize tours from either of these resort towns or hire a taxi to drive you out and wait for you (about $75 or 400-500 Egyptian pounds). If you don’t go with a tour, you can hire a local guide when you arrive for a few U.S. dollars. Expeditions to Sinai can also be arranged from Israel.

TIPS: Most hikes take place in early afternoon to reach the peak for sunset, or more often, in early morning for sunrise, which means you’ll be jostling for place at the summit due to the sheer number of like-minded hikers. Bring a sleeping bag and/or blanket to keep warm at the summit and layer your clothing so you can easily add or remove items as you heat up and cool down. Wear trekking shoes if you can, as it’s easy to lose your footing in the dark and on the rocky trail.

NEARBY ATTRACTION: St. Catherine’s Monastery, at the base of the mountain, houses a pictorial story of Moses and a large bush that believers identify as the Burning Bush from the Bible.

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Page 12 – Thursday, April 22, 2010 – DRAW AN AD

Smokies pancake restaurant hits milestone NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — With the majesty of the Smoky Mountains as a backdrop, the Pancake Pantry in Gatlinburg has been serving locals and visitors alike for 50 years.

Located in an endless row of T-shirt shops, candy stores and hotels, it’s offered a tasty start for tourists in the resort town before they head out to play miniature golf, explore a quiet mountain trail or try to spot an elusive black bear.

It’s easy to spot on busy U.S. 441, the town’s main street: Just look for a line of people waiting outside with fidgety anticipation. Inside, patrons attack piles of pancakes with the persistence of a woodpecker.

The restaurant touts itself as the oldest pancake house in Tennessee. It turns 50 on March 17, and will celebrate by using the original menu and charging 1960 prices — mostly under $1.

“After 50 years, we’re serving our fourth generation,” says owner Jim Gerding. “Kids who ate here 45 years ago, now bring their great-grandkids. We are still feeding these same families.”

“I don’t know what they do but the pancakes are better than any place else,” gushed Ron Byars of Gatlinburg, who had eight silver dollar pancakes. “I’ve eaten other places, but these are altogether different.”

The lines at the restaurant are legendary in the resort town that’s the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where 9.4 million tourists visit yearly. The wait usually is around 20 minutes for one of the valuable 190 seats, but customers have been known to stand outside for an hour.

The experience is pure Americana, embraced by mountain mist, where you feast on wallet-friendly food served with down-home accents.

“It’s a hand-crafted operation,” Gerding says.

Most of the pancakes run $6 to $8.

Associated Press

In this undated photo released by the Gatlinburg Department of Tourism, waitress Robin Plunkett taking orders at the Pancake Pantry in Gatlinburg, Tenn.

There are 24 varieties on the menu with buttermilks the most popular.

What would you like on ’em or in ’em?

There’s whipped cream, whipped butter, pineapple syrup, black walnuts, choc-

olate chips, lingonberry butter, lemon wedges, diced apricots, peach and apple cider compote, mountain blueberries, sweet potatoes, red raspberries, coconut, strawberries, pecans, raisins, cherries,

peaches and a lip-smacking array of other toppings.

Secrets?

Fresh ingredients. Batter is prepared daily and refrigerated carefully at special

temperatures. Syrups and compotes are prepared diligently. When business tails off in winter, less batter is prepared to ensure its freshness.

“One of our strengths is we pay close attention to details,” Gerding said. “If things aren’t right, we don’t serve it.”

And, for sure, he’s a picky eater. His cooks come up with special recipes regularly but they have to pass his taste test.

“Maybe one in 10 makes the grade,” Gerding said. To that end, some of the recipes are 50 years old.

Waitresses get birthday cards from outof-town customers, and patrons bring in cakes and pies for the staff.

“The waitresses know many of them on a first name basis,” Gerding said. “We see familiar faces year after year.”

Fifteen of the 40 employees have been with the restaurant at least 20 years. One waitress began serving pancakes in 1963 and five cooks have worked at the restaurant at least 32 years.

Gerding, at age 81, is there three or four days a week.

“I like to interface with the customers and be with the employees,” he said.

His personal touch may be something he learned at Indiana University, where he earned two degrees in business.

Ninety percent of patrons are repeat customers.

“People love to tell us how long they’ve been coming to Gatlinburg and have eaten with us,” Gerding said.

——— If You Go...

PANCAKE PANTRY: 628 E. Parkway, Gatlinburg, Tenn.; http://www.pancakepantry.com or 865-436-4724. Open daily 7 a.m.-3 p.m.(June-October, until 4 p.m.). Breakfast menu served all day; lunch after 11:30 a.m. Cash only. Regular menu items under $10. On March 17, menu will feature 1960 prices to celebrate 50th anniversary.

Sarah Palin – candidate, pundit or celebrity?

By JOCELYN NOVECK AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — For more than a year, Sarah Palin has been one of the most famous political and cultural figures in the country. Even by that standard, though, last week was an extraordinary one.

On March 4 came word that the former Alaska governor was working on a TV series about her home state, currently being pitched by one of television’s top producers.

A day before that, her publishers announced she was embarking on a second book, a follow-up to her blockbuster “Going Rogue.”

And a day before THAT, she was the prize guest on Jay Leno’s second day back as host of “Tonight” show, along with Olympic champion Shaun White and “American Idol” star Adam Lambert. She ruminated on politics, praising the Tea Party movement, and on journalism, discussing her gig as a Fox analyst.

Then she went behind a curtain and returned to perform a full standup comedy routine.

“The truth is, though, I’m glad that I’m not vice president,” she said.

“I would not know what to do with all that free time.” Ba dum bum.

A little politics, a little journalism, and a whole lotta celebrity, all in a week’s work. (Her foray to an Oscar gift suite made news, too.)

But toward what end? A 2012 presidential bid? A daily talk show? An Oprah-like dominance of the pop culture sphere? Everybody’s dying to know Palin’s plans, and that makes her celebrity all the more potent.

But beyond that, many see her as just the most prominent example of a phenomenon that is larger than even her: the gradual blurring of the worlds of politics, celebrity and the media.

The shifting boundaries of politics and media have been apparent for some time. The networks, especially cable news, have opened doors — sometimes revolving ones — for former speechwriters and campaign operatives. More recent, though, are the trips through those doors of the candidates themselves. Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has his own show on Fox, for example.

MSNBC pundit Harold Ford Jr., a former congressman, recently decided not to run for the U.S. Senate from New York, but said he hopes another opportunity presents itself. MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, who worked as a Democratic congressional staffer and a presidential speechwriter, has talked about a Senate run from Pennsylvania.

To analyst Marty Kaplan, who often examines the nexus between politics and culture, the phenomenon is troubling. Equal time rules don’t come into play for those merely considering running.

“The question becomes, when does this turn into a conflict?” asks Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School of Communication. It’s especially dicey when a former politician is using the platform to mull a reentry into politics, he says. “The networks are in effect being used by these people to rebuild their political futures. There’s enough evidence

that they should be thinking twice about this.”

But there would seem to be little incentive for Fox to think twice when they have a ratings draw like Palin.

As for her, where’s the downside?

Fox gives her a platform larger and more potent than her Facebook page, with its nearly 1.5 million fans.

“I wish there WAS a downside for some of these politicians,” Kaplan laughs. “But experience has shown that’s not the case. There’s just no downside to being famous these days.”

In other words, it’s all about exposure. Sometimes literally. Consider Scott Brown, the recently elected senator from Massachusetts, who as a law student posed nude for Cosmopolitan, a strategically placed magazine fold his only fig leaf.

“In the past something like that would have been a nail in the coffin for a politician,” says Kaplan. “Now it’s just seen as humorous and colorful.” (And maybe even helpful.)

Not that celebrity has always been viewed as a strategic asset to a candidate.

In the 2008 election, Sen. John McCain and running mate Palin tried to use Barack Obama’s celebrity and pop culture status — how many candidates had bikini-clad models serenading them on YouTube? — as a strike against him. In a famous ad, they interspersed footage of him speaking to adoring crowds with images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

The ad brought some ridicule, but former McCain-Palin campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace says it worked.

“That was one of our most effective ads,” Wallace said in an inter-

view. “The Obama people admitted it threw them off their game a bit. It was effective in driving the conversation.” Indeed, Obama’s campaign worked hard to downplay the celebrity factor at the convention later that summer.

Of course, it’s not lost on Wallace or anyone else that Palin has captured her own spot in the pop culture pantheon. “She was an instant celebrity the moment she stepped on the world stage,” says Wallace, who has left politics for now and is working on a novel.

For Kaplan, the cultural analyst, the melding of the worlds of politics and celebrity is a process that’s

gone hand in hand with a redefining of the kind of people we want our leaders to be. It used to be that we wanted a seriousness, a reserve that put a clear distance between them and ourselves, he says.

“Now, though, the quality everyone seems to want is a person we could see having a beer with,” he says.

A pioneer in that regard was Bill Clinton, who readily answered the question of whether he wore boxers or briefs, and went on Arsenio Hall’s talk show as a candidate to play his saxophone — a clever move that personalized him and led to a long history of candidates appearing on shows like Leno’s “Tonight.”

“Al Gore even appeared on ’Saturday Night Live’ in a hot tub,” says Kaplan, referring to a 2002 epi-

sode. “People said that was a sign he’d given up on politics, but I didn’t think so.”

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