Late March 2019

Introduction

My time here in San Juan is getting short. I’ll soon be heading back up north. I thought I’d share a few images I’ve collected, in no particular order and with little or no commentary. I’ve done minor editing on all of them; some have received a more complete treatment.

More Faces

I’m intrigued by the art work I see on walls in some neighborhoods, especially the works depicting faces. Here are a few of them.

Street Art, Not Wall Art

Not all street art is wall art. Check out this example of street art.

Nature

Maps

I enjoy poring over maps. Apparently an artist in Pinones does as well.

Wildlife

Consider the shark in the bottle.

Miscellaneous

I’m not sure of the cultural reference, if any, in the next two.

Check back for more. Maybe I’ll do some image editing over the summer and add a new post or two. You just never know.

Notes and Sources

These are my images, edited to a greater of lesser extent in Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

Mid March 2019

Introduction

The Ironman 70.3 returned to San Juan for Saint Patrick’s Day. More then 900 athletes from North and South America (and a few from Europe) participated in the swim – bike – run competition. The event is in reality a half – Ironman, with a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride, and a half-marathon to finish. The events are twice as long in a full Ironman.

I live about a block away from where many of the race activities occur, so it is an easy task for me to take pictures at various points along the course. I’ll share some of them in this post.

The Start

The first leg of the triathlon is the swim. The athletes start in groups according to age and gender at five minute intervals. The elite men and women go in the first two groups. The swim is in the Laguna de Condodo. The start is at the Condado end of the Puente dos Hermanos, the bridge of the two brothers.

The groups are called into the water at five minutes intervals and begin their swim when a horn goes off.

The Swim

The waters in the Laguna were warm (about 78 degrees F) and calm. Volunteers in kayaks watched over the swimmers who were guided over the course by a series of orange floats along the route.

The Swim – Bike Transition

The swimmers use a ramp to leave the water. They then run about a quarter of a mile to where the bikes are stored. The athletes run with their bikes for about seventy five yards before they can mount and start the 56 mile ride.

Bike Mount and Start

The riders had to reach a line before they could mount their bikes, They then biked up a small hill to leave the park and head towards Dorado and back.

Bike Finish, Dismount and Run Start

It was a great day for a bike ride. There were no showers and the wind was not a factor. The riders came back into the park, dismounted, went to the bike corral, put on their running shoes and started the half – marathon.

In terms of my interest in getting pictures of the event, the run is the least interesting. I mean, how many pictures can you take of runners grimacing with pain? So I’ll show only this one.

The Results

This year, for the first time I can remember, athletes from the United States won both the men’s and women’s competitions.

Cameron Hackett did the swim in just over 25 minutes, the bike ride in two hours and twelve minutes, and the run in just under an hour and a half. His total time was four hours, eleven minutes, and thirty nine seconds. Christopher Portugal Reibel, from Peru, finished second about four and a half minutes behind Hackett.

Heather A. Jackson crushed her opponents. With a total time of four hours and nineteen minutes, she beat Carolina Dementiev of Panama by nearly 32 minutes.

You can click here to see the full list of participants and results.

It was a great way for me to spend St. Patrick’s Day, especially since later that afternoon we went to a friends apartment for a traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner. And we did not once have to worry about snow flurries.

Notes and Sources

The images are all mine, edited with Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

Mid March, 2019

Introduction

In this post, I’ll show a few more examples of San Juan street art arranged by themes. My organizational scheme is rudimentary – I’m sure there are other ways to organize and display the works that I see. This is a follow-up to an earlier post – click here to see that one.

Foliage

Here are a few examples of street art dominated by foliage. Some are fanciful, some just fun, and I’m not sure about others. The first is on a piece of plywood protecting a building being remodeled on Calle Loiza. This area is undergoing rapid gentrification. In the last year, an Irish Bar and a Korean barbeque opened in that neighborhood. I wonder what kind of establishment will be put in this building – maybe a flower shop?

Here is another example, this time from along Avenida Fernando Juncos.

Here is another example from that same neighborhood. Are they wall flowers or exotic dancers?

Flowers or females? Here is another example, this time from Condado, illustrating the connection. This is on a shutter that was pulled down over Pinky’s, once a popular breakfast place. The space is now a Chinese dumpling restaurant.

Here is one last example, from near the Placita de Mercado in Santurce. The red background is unusual – I haven’t noticed many examples that use much red at all. I wonder why. The hand reaching through the wall is also unusual. Sad to day, this work has been defaced.

Faces on the Wall

Here are some faces on the wall from around San Juan. The first is from Rio Piedras, near the University of Puerto Rico. Is his name Baghead, or is that the name of the artist? Or is it a cultural reference to which I am ignorant?

Maybe Baghead is pointing to Calle Loiza, the home of the next face. This reminds me of something from an Indiana Jones movie – think of it covered with vines and other tropical foliage, guarding the entrance to a cave, home to some kind of archaeological treasure.

The next is a red-haired young woman from Avenida Fernando Juncos, in Miramar. Is she angry? Anxious? Happy to see me? What do you think?

An older woman shares the wall with the Woman with Red Hair. Together they keep watch over their neighborhood.

A somewhat more fanciful face is in Santurce, along Avenida Juan Ponce de Leon, near Parada 18.

Finally, two examples of colorful faces, the first from Rio Piedras.

Notes and Sources

Errata: In the last post showing Faces on the Wall I said the Woman with Six Arms is found in Santurce. I was wrong – she is from Montreal. She is still beguiling.

The images are mine, edited with Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop, some images more than others.

Early March 2019

Introduction

I’m going to group some the the street and wall art I’ve seen by theme, as I did in my last post about the street art here in San Juan. Click here to see that post. I’ll show some examples of wall art related to food, then some faces, and then one just in time for spring training.

Food

While not a major theme, I have found several examples of wall art showing food in one form or another. The fist one seems to celebrate Puerto Rican coffee which, by the way, is excellent. I wrote about the recovery of the local coffee industry here. Check it out.

Cheeseburger anyone? Hamburgers are popular here – in fact, there is an iconic place near here named El Hamburger. It is immensely popular, with a cheese burger and fries for $5.50. And they now have some local craft beers. What more could one want?

How about some local fruit? Mangoes, papayas, pineapples, passion fruit, guava – take your pick. Here is one pineapple for your consideration.

Faces on the Wall

I’ve shown you the Woman with the Green Face before. I find her evocative and beguiling. She’s been painted over so my photos may well be her the only way she will be remembered.

I like the Woman with the Blue Face as well. She is more severe than the Woman with the Green Face, more, ah, in your face, as it were.

The Woman with Veil is also from the Sagrado Corazon neighborhood. This was an immense undertaking – she fills a three story wall. There is a religious theme about this work but I’m not sure I understand it. Anyone want to help me? Leave a comment. She is still there – much faded but still overlooking her neighborhood.

Here is another face with what seems to be a religious them. I just found her – the Woman with Rooster and Pineapple overlooks Avineda Fernando Juncos in the Miramar neighborhood. This is another large effort – she is on a wall about two stories high. Maybe some day I will retouch the image and remove the wires in front of her. A project for a rainy day. Again, I’m not at all sure of the symbolism. What’s with the rooster holding a key? And the pineapple? Please leave a comment if you can help me.

The Woman with Six Arms also needs retouching – another rainy day project. But she protects her Santurce neighborhood. Or is she encouraging you to do something untoward?

I hope you don’t think all the faces on the wall are of women. The Golden Buddha protects a no parking zone in Rio Piedras.

Finally, I hope you don’t think all the faces are even human. This version of King Kong overlooks a side street in the Puerta de Tierra neighborhood of San Juan.

Fun

As a kid, I used to love to read that major league pitchers and catchers had to report for spring training. It convinced me winter would soon be over. There is a winter league in Puerto Rico, and last year the team from Santurce was league champion. A fan in the Manillas area celebrated their accomplishment in a most appropriate manner.

Notes

These are all my images. I used Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop to make various adjustments to the original images.

Late February 2019

Introduction

The Greeks believed the Muses – nine of them – were the sources of inspiration for their artistic endeavors. Each muse had a particular domain. For example, Clio inspired the Greek historian Herodotus when he wrote his histories; Calliope inspired Homer as he wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.

I was thinking about them because there are nine representations of the Muses in the plaza in front of the Center for Performing Arts here in San Juan. I found the sculptures intriguing and wanted to match each to the appropriate muse. This was more difficult than I had imagined. The sculptor has created new Muses that don’t relate directly to their Greek heirs. You’ll see them in a bit.

There was some debate in the ancient world as to the number of Muses. Some authorities claimed there were three; others nine. Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC, seems to have put the matter to rest when he wrote:

Writers similarly disagree also concerning the number of the Muses; for some say that there are three, and others that there are nine, but the number nine has prevailed since it rests upon the authority of the most distinguished men, such as Homer and Hesiod and others like them.

(See Notes and Sources)

The Muses, daughters of Zeus by Mnemosyne, are considered minor gods in the Greek pantheon. Mnemosyne was the Titan goddess of memory. Zeus created the Muses to celebrate the victory of the Olympian gods over the Titans and to allow his followers to forget the past. Apollo, the god of music, art, and poetry, taught them their skills..

Representations of the Muses

Over the centuries, the Muses have become associated with symbols of their artistry. Here is a list, adapted from Owlcation, describing the Muses and their paraphernalia.

• Calliope, the superior Muse, inspires poetry, rhetoric, music and writing. She is often depicted with laurels in one hand and Homeric poems in the other.
• Clio, the muse of history, is portrayed with a clarion in one arm and a book in another.
• Erato inspires love poetry and is shown with a bow, love arrows, and a lyre.
• Euterpe created musical instruments to help provide inspiration for songs and poetry of love, war, and death. She holds a flute and is surrounded by other instruments.
• Melpomene, depicted with a tragic mask, inspires rhetoric and tragedy.
• Thalia inspires comedy and is shown with a comedic mask.
• Polyhymnia created geometry and grammar. She is shown wearing a veil and looking upwards to the heavens.
• Terpsichore inspires dance. She also created the harp and education. She is shown with a laurel wreath and dances with her harp in her hands.
• Urania created astronomy and is shown with stars, a celestial sphere, and a compass.

One depiction of the Muses is on the walls of the Palace of the Vatican. Rafael’s Parnassus shows various figures from Greek history. Here are two excerpts from that fresco.

The Muses of Santurce

If you have read my previous blog entries on street art here, you would already know that Puerto Rican artists have their unique blend of Caribbean and European influences. This is certainly true of the Muses of Santurce. (If you haven’t read my blog entries on street art, shame on you. Click here and here and here and here and here and here to get caught up.)

The Performing Arts Center in Santurce opened in April, 1991. The Center consists of four performance venues and two restaurants, surrounding a central plaza. The plaza, the Juan Morel Campos Plaza, is home to nine life-size statues of the Muses created by the sculptor Annex Burgos, in 2005. He used local artists as models, many of them practitioners of the arts depicted. While inspired by the Greek Muses, Burgos was not constrained by them. His Muses show Caribbean influences and relate to art forms unknown to the Greeks.

I tried to relate Burgos’s version of the Muses with the descriptions of the Muses given above. My efforts are documented below.

The Muse of Literature

Burgos depicts his Muse of Literature holding a book. Perhaps she relates to Calliope since, among other things, she is the Muse of writing.

The Muse of Theater

The two Greek Muses, Thalia (comedy) and Melpomene (tragedy), are often paired. Burgos transforms them into one Muse.

The Muse of Corporal Movement

One of the Santurce Muses seems as if she were captured while performing an elegant dance. If I’m right, she is Burgos’s representation of the Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, or as he says, corporal movement.

The Muse of Music

Euterpe is associated with music. Burgos’s Muse of Music is making music with a conch shell.

The Muse of Vocal Music

I can’t easily relate the rest of the Santurce Muses to their Greek counterparts. Again, Burgos was inspired by the nine muses of the Greeks, but not constrained by them.

The Muse of Architecture

Burgos depicts this Muse presenting a model house for review, perhaps by a client.

The Muse of Design

This Muse is holding a caliper as in implement in her artistry.

The Muse of Plastic Arts

The plastic arts involve modeling or molding various materials in three dimensions, e.g. sculpture and ceramics, or art involving the representation of solid objects with three-dimensional effects.

The Muse of Cinema

This art form was clearly unknown to the Greeks. Burgos shows her with reels used to hold film.

So there are the nine Muses of Santurce. They greet visitors to the Center for Performing Arts in fine style.

By the way, Burgos has other public art in Santurce. He created three larger than life avocados for the Plaza de Marcado in Santurce. I think, but I’m not sure, he is also responsible for sculptures of sea shells at a park in Condado. I will have to check that out.

Notes and Sources

See the Wikipedia entry for the Muses here. It has the complete citation for the quote by Siculus.

Some of the introductory material is from Owlcation, a site celebrating the humanities with several pages on Greek history. Click here to go to that site.

The two excerpts from Rafael were taken from the Wikipedia entry for Parnassus. Click here for the site.

The images are all mine, edited and otherwise tweaked with Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

Mid – February 2019

Introduction

Readers (all 14 of you – thanks to each of you) of my blog will surely have noted my interest in the wall art I see around San Juan. I saw something the other day that caught my attention. That caused me to think about some of the works I had seen. Hence this post.

I thought I would try to identify themes in the works. I found this quite challenging – easy for some, impossible (at least for me) for others. So here are some of the themes I’ve identified and examples for each.

Politics

Some of the street art is distinctly political. Consider the example below. By the way, I’ve written about Puerto Rico’s status before. Click here to see that post.

Puerto Rican Flag

I suppose this could be political as well. Many artists use the flag as a central part of their work. To me, the flag is sometimes a design element, sometimes a major theme. See the examples below.

India

I’ve noticed a couple of examples of wall art that evoke the Indian sub-continent. I can’t quite figure out why. There are, by my informal observations, very few people here of that heritage. I know of only two Indian restaurants in all of San Juan, and I think one is out of business.

Some Caribbean islands have a substantial population from India. The British abolished slavery in the early 1830s. Sugar cane is a labor intensive industry and estate owners on British islands had to turn to an indentured-servant system for their workers. Some of them came from India. Trinidad and Tobago, for example, have a substantial population of people descended from Indian sugar cane workers.

But that was not true in the Spanish colonies. Slavery continued until the 1870s and slaves still provided labor. So I don’t know why images that evoke India occasionally appear on the walls here.

Women

Women often appear on the wall art here, as the two examples above show. Here are some more.

Full disclosure: The next image is not from Puerto Rico. It is on a wall near the open air market in Rochester, NY. But our friends Antonia and Thomas tell me that is a Puerto Rican neighborhood. I posit the artists were displaced from San Juan, and but for that the art would have been here. Anyway, that is my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Other Themes

I’ll save examples of other themes for another post. I will show one below to pique your interest. Just think of what it would be like for this creature to give you a back rub. I call this theme Fanciful Animal.

Puzzlement

I said in the beginning I had seen something that caught my eye. It was in Santurce, in an area with few other examples of street art. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

I have to think this is the work of an artist with a fetish for women’s underwear, red at that. I wonder who it is. Is it the guy at the gym, on the treadmill next to me? Is it the bartender at the Video Bar? I suppose it could be a woman – is it one of the baristas in the Starbucks I go to, in Condado?

Thoughts like this keep me awake at night.

Notes and Sources

The images are all mine, enhanced in various ways in Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

Mid January, 2019

Introduction

Our balcony looks over the Port of San Juan. I can watch the cruise ships enter and leave port, and observe the freighters coming and going. It has become pretty routine by now, but every once in a while I notice things and wonder about them. This has happened three times in the last couple of weeks.

Steel

Pre-Maria, Pre Tariff

Before Hurricane Maria, I would see a ship carrying steel come into port about every six or seven weeks. Here is an image from pre-Maria.

The Sheng Qiang, registered in Hong Kong, delivered steel to the Port of San Juan in February 2017. When a ship docks at Pier 14, it is met by a phalanx of fork lifts. In this case, the ship’s cranes lifted steel from the hold to dockside, and the forklifts moved the steel to different locations on the pier.

Although I don’t know for sure, I have to think this was steel from China. Since it was in a Chinese ship, and carried steel from China, the Jones Act did not pertain. And that meant it was at market price.

I’m not sure what happened to all that steel. I’m sure much of it stayed here for construction projects on the island. Perhaps some of it was transshipped, on smaller vessels, to Caribbean islands with more modest ports and docking facilities.

Post-Maria, Post Tariff

But things have changed. President Trump has instituted tariffs on Chinese steel. I haven’t noticed any steel shipments since I arrived in late October, 2018. It is possible steel has come into the New Port. I can see ships entering there, but I can’t see the unloading areas. But it seems most ships to the New Port are container ships, not bulk freighters.

Last week a steel shipment did arrive, but it was not on a Chinese vessel.

The Donaugracht arrived in port about a week ago. Registered in Amsterdam, she belongs to the Spliethoff fleet. According to the company website, their ships work multiple routes, including the Baltic/Northern Europe to the Caribbean. Interestingly, the website does not mention Puerto Rico as a destination. One would have to think the Donaugracht’s appearance here was out of the ordinary.

She carried steel – rebars and wire rolls. I would have to think it was not Chinese steel. Was it European? From somewhere not affected by Trump’s tariffs? I’d have to think so.

So steel, apparently non-Chinese, arrived in port from a shipping company that doesn’t typically sail here. As I say, I wonder if it all as to do with the Trump steel tariffs.

By the way, the Donaugracht had an unusual deck cargo – yachts. I wonder if rich Europeans, maybe Russian oligarchs, own them. Perhaps the yachts are being shipped here in anticipation of their owners’ arrival for the peak season here.

Click here to see an earlier post of mine about concrete and steel.

Coal

There is a bulk freighter here now delivering coal from Colombia. The UBC Toronto, registered in Cyprus, arrived here from Puerto Brisa, in Colombia. Puerto Brisa is a new port, constructed to help export coal from coal mines in the mountains of Colombia. You can see a promotional video of the new port here, complete with choral music in the background. Coal exporting has never looked or sounded so good.

Strange Thing Number One

There are several strange things about this. First, the ship’s name. When I see UBC, I think of the University of British Colombia, which is in Vancouver and not Toronto. Not unexpectedly, the University of Toronto is in Toronto, and it is not a satellite campus of the UBC, at least so far as I know.

Strange Thing Number Two

Next, why is coal being delivered to San Juan? Now, to be sure, Puerto Rico uses coal (and other fossil fuels) to generate electricity. There is a 454 MW coal-fired generation plant in Guayama, and Puerto Rico imports about 1.6 million short tons of coal from Colombia to operate it. By the way, this is about 0.2% of the coal burned in the mainland USA.

But Guayama is on the Caribbean coast, about 50 miles from San Juan. Will all this coal be trucked there? Why wasn’t the coal delivered to the port at Ponce, which is much closer to Guayama?

The unloading process is slow. Shipboard cranes lift coal by the large bucket full and empty it into a portable chute, positioned just before the ship arrives. Trucks drive under the chutes and get their fill of coal. The drivers then cover their load with a tarp and drive off. There is a steady stream of trucks. I suppose they could go from here to Guayama, but I doubt there are that many dump trucks on the island. So the coal is stockpiled somewhere close to the port. But that means the coal has to be moved twice, which is inefficient.

As I say, I have more questions than answers about this one.

The Royal Dutch Navy

The Royal Dutch Navy is in port, again. (Click here to see an earlier post on this topic). The HNLMS Zeeland, an off shore patrol vessel, is docked at Pier One in Old San Juan. The Zeeland is one of four Holland class patrol boats, at least one of which is stationed in the Caribbean to patrol around the Dutch Antilles.

The Zeeland requires a crew of 52 and carries up to 32 extra personnel – helicopter pilots and mechanics, marines to man the two fast (40 knot plus) small boats, various others. She is equipped with one main weapon – a rapid fire (up to 120 rounds per minute) 76 mm gun as well as various smaller machine guns. The prominent tower carries a Thales system phased array radar system. At a length of 355 ft, and with a displacement of about 4,000 tons, she is smaller than some luxury yachts. To see some earlier posts about luxury yachts I’ve written about, click here and here and here.

I don’t know why the Zeeland is here. I suspect the commanders are in various discussions with their US Coast Guard colleagues. I hope the crew is having fun. Perhaps I’ll run into some of them later today, at Doug’s Pub in Old San Juan.

Notes and Sources

See Wikipedia entries for Spliethoff Shipping, Donaugracht, UBC Toronto, and HNLMS Zeeland.

Click here for a useful and succinct summary of energy sources and issues in Puerto Rico as published by the US Department of Energy.

I took all the images.

Late December, 2018

The recovery from Hurricanes Irma and Maria is continuing. There is progress, but there continue to be issues. Below I’ll give snippets of various topics. My information is from the San Juan Star, the English language newspaper here, unless otherwise noted.

Federal Government Shut Down

The Federal government is shut down as I write this. I’m not sure of all the effects this will have here. At a minimum, the forts in Old San Juan (El Moro and San Cristobal), operated by the National Park Service, will have shut down, as would El Yunque, the tropical rain forest on the northeastern end of the island.

The government here is watching carefully. An extended shut down might slow the flow of relief funds from Washington to Puerto Rico. For example, government officials fear delays in funds for the Nutritional Assistance Program, $40 billion for reconstruction, and $3 billion for the health program here. And there are probably other funds in the pipeline that could be delayed if the shut down continues.

Border Security

Puerto Rico attracts at least a few illegals. The US Coast Guard has primary responsibility for stopping them. Just last week, the Coast Guard stopped 41 nationals from the Dominican Republic found crossing the Mona Passage. A Coast Guard spokesman said they were traveling in unseaworthy makeshift vessels. They were all repatriated to the Dominican Republic.

In a separate incident, the Silver Wind of the Silver Sea Cruise Line came across a small boat taking on water. The cruise ship rescued 13 Dominican migrants from it. They were treated with a ride to the Barbados, the Silver Wind’s next port off call. There they were turned over to local authorities.

I hope President Trump doesn’t hear of this. He might want to build a wall around Puerto Rico. I think even an attractive steel slat wall would be a bad idea here. What do you think?

Death Toll

Generating an accurate death toll from Hurricane Maria proved more challenging than one would have thought. The governor, last February, acknowledged the difficulty when he commissioned a study by the School of Public Health at George Washington University. In August, the researchers returned with an estimate of nearly 3,000 deaths attributable to the storm and its aftermath. This was far more than the original, official estimates.

Governor Rossello created a 9/20 Committee to assist the government in revising death certification procedures. The goal is to improve information management regarding fatalities caused by natural disasters.

Coffee

The coffee industry here suffered greatly from Hurricane Maria. The crop was pretty much wiped out. But there is hope. Two varieties of coffee plants are grown here – Limani and Fronton – and plants have been germinated from seeds and are now in the ground.

In addition, the Starbucks Foundation donated seeds of a third variety, the Marsellesa, and the seeds have survived the required quarantine period. Soon the seeds will be distributed to nurseries and then, after they grow into small, sturdy tress, will be distributed to coffee plantations. It will be about three years before these plants begin producing beans.

I feel better now about getting my morning coffee at the Starbucks in Condado.

We went to an historic coffee plantation and processing plant a few years ago. Our good friends Marilu and Mundo took us. It was in the mountains north of Ponce. I had my camera but for some reason I don’t have many images of it. So the image below will have to do.

Street Lights

PREPA, the Puerto Rican Power Authority, is responsible for for about 220,000 street lights around the island. Other entities, cities, town, Department of Transportation, are responsible for others. Of the PREPA lights, 106,000 are still out. In a recent government hearing, PREPA acknowledged it did not have enough crews to do the necessary repairs in a timely fashion. PREPA stated it would start hiring contractors to help, and expects their efforts to start by February, 2019.

The reporter noted: “It was not immediately clear why it took so long to reach this realization.”

Indeed.

I did note local contractors working on the street lights in Old San Juan. They’ve all been restored and the old city looks very welcoming.

I don’t know who is responsible for the lights on the bus lane in back of our building. They still await repair.

PREPA

PREPA is for sale. The government issued a RFQ – Request for Qualifications – from interested parties early last month. The government here wants a company interested in managing and operating all facets of the energy distribution and transmission system. This will be accomplished via a public-private partnership. According to a statement by Governor Rossello, the winning company will be expected to transform and modernize Puerto Rico’s energy system. In fact, the government has a stated goal that, by 2050, all energy generated here will be from renewable sources. So the winning company will have to work with that expectation.

By the way, Puerto Rico currently generates about 5,500 MWs of energy, the vast majority from fossil fuels – natural gas, diesel, and fuel oil. Solar arrays account for about 140 MW, and hydro-power another 156 MW.

There are, as you might expect, many opinions about the power system here. In one initiative, the Rocky Mountain Institute, in conjunction with Save the Children, plans to install micro-grids to power 12 schools. The first, at an elementary school in Orocovis, includes a rooftop solar array (of about 15 kWh capacity) and a large lithium-ion battery. The whole system, including the expenses for rewiring the school, cost about $120,000. It is expected that excess energy will be sold to PREPA thus generating a revenue stream for the school.

On a larger scale, another group is advocating for the use of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), a technology being developed in the states. SMRs have a generation capacity of between 50 and 300 MW. In one proposal, the SMRs would be placed underground and thus less prone to hurricane damage. The fundamental idea, as I understand it, is that SMRs would be spread around the island creating a series of interconnected generation and transmission grids.

That would seem to be an improvement over the current situation. The largest generation plants are on the island’s south coast. That means the main transmission lines have to traverse the mountains to get to the more populated northern coast. The transmission lines proved to be vulnerable and suffered great damage during the hurricanes.

As might be expected, the mere mention of nuclear energy created a backlash. Representative Denis Marquez Lebron, of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), introduced a bill in the house to prohibit the ‘generation of nuclear energy.’ Those are apparently his words. I’m not exactly sure what he was trying to say. Marquez, in his speech, referred to the Ukraine (obviously Chernobyl) and Japan (Fukushima) as reasons to ban nuclear energy here.

In early December, the government revealed it had received RFQs from five interested companies, not yet identified. The government did note that they were regulated international energy companies, whatever that means.

Pork

Puerto Ricans love their pork. Many families travel to lechoneras outside of the cities, but especially in towns in the mountains. A lechonera is a pork barbecue – whole animals are cooked for hours over an open fire. When they are ready, you can choose whatever part of the pig you want. Pork liver? Give me a minute. Spare ribs? Not a problem. Kidneys? Coming right up.

There are numerous side dishes available: tostones (fried plaintain chips), amarilla (sweet yellow plaintain, arroz (rice), among others. And it is almost always swilled down with Medalla, the local beer.

But there’s trouble in trotter town. There’s a shortage of pigs.

This would seem to be an easy problem to fix. Put a male pig with a female pig (or two or three – I admit to ignorance when it comes to swine husbandry) and problem solved. So it must be more complicated than that.

My guess is the swine infrastructure was damaged, and therefore the growers missed some generations of little piglets. But, according to the paper, this situation is temporary. And that should make the pork-lovers of Puerto Rico happy.

Hotels

Many of the large hotels in Puerto were damaged, some extensively. Here is a list of some of the major hotels and their current status.

• Ritz Carlton Dorado Beach – reopened.
• El San Juan Hotel, Isla Verde – reopened June 1.
• Vendanza Hotel, Isla Verde – reopened August 1.
• Dorado Beach Hotel, Dorado – reopened October 1.
• St. Regis at Bahia Beach, Rio Grande – reopened October 29.
• Caribe Hilton, San Juan – closed until the summer, accepting reservations as of December 21.
• W Retreat and Spa, Vieques – reopens December 31.
• Condado Plaza Hilton, Condado – undergoing renocations, no opening date announced.

I walk past the Caribe Hilton a couple of times a week. During the week, a crew of workers is toiling away. Weekends, not so much.

Cock Fighting

This is not directly related to Hurricane Maria and the recovery efforts arising from it. But it is of interest (at least to me) and illustrates the difficulties of a one size fits all approach to regulations.

President Trump signed the so-called Farm Bill last week. One provision bans cock fighting in the US and its territories. Cock fighters here are livid, and promise they will take their sport underground.

Cock fighting is actually a pretty big business here. There are 70 cock fighting arenas around the island. One estimate suggests the industry generates $18 million annually, and is responsible for 117,000 direct and indirect jobs.

I wonder how one takes cock fighting underground. Do you create make-shift arenas in the mountains? Will they be close to the lechoneras? That would make for a nice day – watch (and bet) on cock fights, and then eat barbecue.

I’ve never been to a cock fight. Maybe I’ve missed my chance. I was in a bar one night and watched some cock fights on television. They were less bloody that I would have thought. When one bird established an advantage, the handler of the losing bird removed his animal from the ring. So it was not a fight to the death.

That I was in a bar, drinking beer and watching televised cock fights, probably shows just how much I have fallen. But its been a fun ride.

Background

The US  flagged cargo ship El Faro crashed into the bottom of the sea at 7 33 AM the morning of October 1, 2015. She carried all 33 crew members with her. A network of hydrophones picked up the sound of the impact. The hydrophone operators, a branch of the US military, were not sure what the noise was. When, some time later, they learned an American cargo ship had disappeared they realized the noise was the El Faro hitting the ocean floor.

The El Faro was an unusual ship. She carried both vehicles, cars and truck trailers, and containers. More modern ships carry only containers – those ubiquitous rectangular boxes you see every day on highways, backed up to loading docks, stacked two high on freight trains, even higher on container ships.

She also carried a Voyage Data Recorder, a ship’s black box.  The bridge was equipped with six microphones. The recorder captured 26 hours of dialogue leading up to the sinking. Rachel Slade used the bridge conversations in her compelling story of the El Faro. Her book, Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-three Mariners, One Megastorm. and the Sinking of El Faro, describes the precarious state of the US Merchant Marine, changes in the shipping industry, and El Faro’s fatal encounter with Hurricane Joaquin.

The Jones Act

The El Faro was assigned to the Jacksonville – San Juan trade route. As required by the Jones Act, all sea shipments from the US mainland to US states or territories have to go by US flagged and crewed ships. The Jones Act helps maintain a viable merchant marine, generates high-paying jobs, and allegedly raises costs.

The Jones Act, passed during the Woodrow Wilson administration, was clearly protectionist. One would have to think that the higher costs of American ships and sailors would be reflected in economic costs. Slade cites the World Economic Forum as stating the Act costs Americans at least $200 million a year (Slade, p. 141).

The results from other studies are not so clear cut. The American Maritime Partnership, in 2018, sponsored a study be economists in Boston (Reeves & Associates) and Puerto Rico (Estudioes Tecnicos). They concluded that transportation costs have no impact on retail costs on the island.  Their methodology included a comparison of the prices of consumer goods in Jacksonville and San Juan.

I wondered just who or what the American Maritime Partnership is. I visited their website (google it – you’ll find it). Here’s a quote from the Who We Are section:  The American Maritime Partnership (AMP) is the broadest, deepest coalition ever assembled to represent the domestic maritime industry. I’ll leave to you to wonder if the results might be biased in one way or another.

The Government Accounting Office, at the request of Congress, studied the potential effects of modifying the Jones Act. You can read it here.

The GAO noted that many foreign-flagged vessels visit the Port of San Juan. They carry things like Argentinian beef, Chilean wines, Peruvian mangoes, Korean cars, and Chinese steel. Since this is international trade, Jones Act restrictions do not apply.

The Jones Act requirements have created a discrete shipping market between the US and Puerto Rico. Four Jones Act carriers operate scheduled vehicle and container service between US ports and San Juan. They are Crowley, Horizon, Tote, and Trailer Bridge. They collectively offer both Ro/Ro (roll on/roll off, trailers and vehicles) and container service. Travel times from Jacksonville range from four days for the faster container ships to seven days for towed barges filled with parked trailers. The GAO report suggests that most shippers were happy with the service provided by these carriers.

The El Faro

The El Faro, then named Puerto Rico, was built in 1975 specifically for the Jones Act Puerto Rican trade. She was built by the Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation in Chester, PA. (All Jones Act ships have to be made in US shipyards, of US steel, by US shipbuilders). As originally constructed, the Puerto Rico was a roll on, roll off ship, with three decks available for cars and trailers.

The Puerto Rico was the younger sister of the Ponce de Leon. They, with one identical sister ship, revolutionized the US – Puerto Rico trade. The three ships were large (700 feet long) and fast. They provided scheduled service back and forth for trailers and cars.

In 1993, Tote, her new owner, had her lengthened by 90 feet in an Alabama shipyard. As Slade points out, this was a major conversion and the ship should have been brought to then current standards. The new standards required enclosed lifeboats. However,Tote argued against this expense and the US Coast Guard allowed the Puerto Rico to continue sailing with the two open lifeboats (Slade, 94). After the conversion, the ship, now named Northern Lights, plied the Tacoma, WA – Anchorage, AK route, another Jones Act route. She also sailed under charter to and from the Persian Gulf carrying military vehicles and supplies for the Gulf Wars.

By the way, if you want to gain a better understanding of an enclosed lifeboat, watch the movie Captain Phillips.  The captain and three Somali pirates leave a hijacked container ship in one.

But the shipping industry was changing. Containers were more flexible than trailers – the boxes were removed from a truck chassis at the originating port, stacked on a ship, and placed on a chassis in the arriving port. Special cranes did the lifting.  Ports around the world adapted to the new world of containerization.

Tote responded by modifying the now-renamed El Faro. Starting in 2003, the top deck was converted to carry stacks of containers. Once again, Tote’s lawyers argued successfully to retain the open lifeboats and not install a more modern enclosed lifeboat, as required by regulation. Somehow, the load line was raised by two feet, meaning the ship could carry more cargo by being deeper in the water.  These and other changes escaped the notice of the Coast Guard (Slade, 174).

So, in 2015, the El Faro was 40 years old.  She had been modified twice but still had the obsolete lifeboats. Her replacement, the Isla Bella, was ready for testing and would soon replace her. The El Faro left Jacksonville during the evening of September 29, 2015, with a cargo of 391 containers, 118 trailers, and 149 cars – 25 million pounds of cargo. She was heading into a storm.

Joaquin

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami routinely tracks low pressure areas in the North Atlantic – Caribbean basin.  A low is initially named an invest, which can strengthen to a tropical depression, then to a tropical storm (when it is named), and then a hurricane.

The image above shows three numbered systems in the Atlantic.  Invest 96L brought drenching rains to the Carolinas. Tropical Depression 9 petered out. Tropical Depression 10 became Tropical Storm Ida, which meandered harmlessly about the Central Atlantic before dissipating. Ida, briefly a hurricane, was the ninth named storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season.

The NHC  took notice of a low, named Invest 98L, on Sunday, September 27. It was in the Atlantic, east of the Bahamas, and southeast of Bermuda. Invest 98L strengthened and became Tropical Depression 11 later that day. TD 11 was over warm waters (the warmest in that part of the ocean since records have been kept), which favored strengthening. A high pressure to the north pushed it slowly to the west or west south west. The high generated wind shear, which works against strengthening.

The NHC (and other international agencies) use sophisticated models to predict the intensity and track of gathering storms. TD 11 was a forecasters nightmare. Some models predicted growth to hurricane strength. Other models showed TD 11 being sucked up by the high and dissipating.

In the event, TD 11 became Tropical Storm Joaquin on Tuesday, September 29. It was still a difficult forecast environment, but some models were now predicting growth to a Category 1 hurricane by Thursday. Other models predicted dissipation by the weekend.

The NHC issued a hurricane warning for the Bahamas on Wednesday, September 30. It was now clear that Joaquin would strengthen. In fact, on October 1, Joaquin strengthened from a Category 1 to a Category 3 storm in less than 6 hours.

The diagram above, adapted from Slade, shows the tracks of Hurricane Joaquin and the El Faro. The straight dotted line shows the usual Jacksonville – San Juan route. Captain Davidson steered the El Faro to the west, apparently hoping the small island of San Salvador would provide some protection from the storm.

The Coast Guard

Slade does an excellent job in describing the Coast Guard’s rescue efforts. That they were unsuccessful is no reflection on the courage and professionalism they displayed.

The National Transportation Safety Board

The NTSB investigates transportation accidents involving the loss of life. When available, voice recorders provide important information. However, the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) was still with the El Faro, somewhere on the bottom of the sea.

Slade does an excellent job of describing the recovery efforts. It took three voyages, with specialized submersibles, to finally bring the VDR to the surface. The El Faro was in deep water, about 15,000 feet. She had broken apart, and her cargo – cars, trailers, containers – was strewn over the bottom of the ocean. Click here to see a video of El Faro captured by one of the submersibles.

Once recovered, the VDR provided useful information. NTSB analysts listed to 26 hours of conversation picked up microphones on the bridge. They were able to identify voices and, for example, learned of the concerns of some of the junior officers as to the course they were steering. These conversations are an integral part of Slade’s story.

The NTSB also conducted formal hearings. Slade attended these, and her account of the ttestimony of the TOTE executives is scathing. They noted again and again that the Captain, and the Captain alone, had complete authority to alter course to avoid foul weather. They did not, however, acknowledge the pressure Captain Davidson was under to bring the ship in on schedule. Nor did they acknowledge the awkward situation he was in, in wondering whether he would get command of the ship destined to replace the El Faro. Rather, the executives’ testimony showed an organization with unclear responsibilities and decision making authority. Click here to see a video of El Faro’s last voyage created by the NTSB. The video describes facts as determined by the NTSB, and makes no judgments. Those are left to the final, written report. If you want to see that, all 300 pages, click here. I found the first part, a narrative describing the sequence of events, most interesting. The report uses conversations picked up the VDR as part of the narrative. The voices are described as First Mate, Able Bodied Seaman, etc. Slade provides background on the voices and introduces you to some of the doomed crew.

Summary

Captain Davidson inexplicably sailed the El Faro into a Category 3 hurricane.  Consequently, the ship sank taking 33 lives with it. Slade’s account is far- ranging and compelling. Highly recommended.

Notes and Sources

Rachel Slade’s book is available from amazon.com. This link will take you right there.  It will be available in paperback in May, 2019. The image of the sunken El Faro is from the NTSB via the Jacksonville Business Journal. Click here for a slide show with more photos. The image of the El Faro in better days is from the web. Click here for more information. The weather images are from Category 6, an excellent blog by meteorologists Bob Henson and Jeff Masters. They are fully referenced there. Click here to see recent posts. I went to the Archives to review posts from late September and early October 2015. The map of the El Faro and Joaquin tracks is from Slade. I took the image of the Isla Bella.  

The Woman With the Green Face is gone – she’s been painted over.

The Head/Heart is gone. The wall it was on came down during construction near the Popular Center in Hato Rey. 

The dinosaur-like Monster Holding Infant/Meal? is gone as well. He once occupied an important wall, visible to anyone on Avenida Ponce de Leon and especially to drivers turning left (south) as they left the city. This is what that prime location looked like then, and now.

The warplane no longer protects the Sagrado Corazon neighborhood. The wall it was on was painted over.

I don’t understand much about the mechanics of Street Art.  I guess I understand that walls in abandoned buildings are considered fair game, and some of the efforts there rise above the level of graffiti. But who pays for the large scale efforts, like the Monster above? That filled a whole wall. The artist must have needed formal access and permission, planning and agreement, scaffolding and materials and time to create the final work. Who paid the artist? Where did the money come from? The owner of the building? If so, why? A city arts grant?  There is much I still have to learn.

Street art is clearly dynamic. If some works disappear, others appear. Here are some recent sightings. They may be new (most likely) or works I hadn’t noticed before.

This mural, on a wall in a small plaza at the end of Calle Tanca, replaces Big Bird. The plaza is a neighborhood meeting place – bars around the plaza sometimes host live music.

The Four Readers are on a shutter along Avenida Ponce de Leon, in Santurce. I suspect the information in the lower right is the artist’s Instagram address but I haven’t checked it out yet.

This couple is on a door near Plazita de Mercado, in Santurce. When I first glanced at it, I thought they were dancing. Now I’m not so sure. Combat boots? It does seem like they are sharing an intimate moment. What do you think?

Finally, a garage door visible from a side street in Old San Juan.

Notes: These are all my images. They have been processed (colors enhanced, etc.) in Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop.