Octavio Bajonero Gil had an unusual art collection, a Mexican college was looking for something different, and the result is the National Museum of Death, reports Chris Hawley in USA Today (10/30/09). Octavio's collection includes "dozens of tiny calaveritas," or small, decorated skulls, "along with hundreds of other death-related artworks he had acquired over 50 years." It forms the core of the museum's collection, and museum director Jose Antonio Padilla, thinks it makes for a most relevant exhibit.

"Mexicans have death imprinted all over their art and culture," he says. "So why not a museum about it?" Actually, some Mexicans are less than enthusiastic about the idea, given that the "country is grappling with a wave of murders following President Felipe Calderon's military crackdown on drug cartels. But Jose counters that "this is not a museum of drug violence. It's a museum about a certain artistic tradition." In addition to those really cool calaveritas, that includes "depictions of death from other countries, from American Halloween decorations to small replicas of the terra cotta soldiers of China."

Also featured are various "statues of 'Saint Death,' the grim reaper, which is increasingly worshipped at shrines and chapels in poor neighborhoods of Mexico." Some visitors are so taken by this that they try to leave offerings. "We get some unusual people here," says Juan Manuel Vizcaino, assistant director of exhibits. The Museum of Death attracts some 70,000 visitors each year, about one-third "from other countries, mainly the United States." One visitor, Spencer Garcia-Stinson of New Hampshire, left impressed: "It's definitely kind of bizarre," he says. "In the United States we don't like to talk about death, but here they're dealing with it so openly ... It's amazing."

Nobody knows for sure who made the first pepperoni roll, but it's clear the tradition started with Italian immigrants working in West Virginia coal mines, reports John T. Edge in the New York Times (9/30/09). The immigrants landed in West Virginia in the early 1900s because, according to one historian, coal companies wanted "a more docile, controllable work force than their American-born counterparts." That part didn't work out as planned, as the Italians "were just as inclined, if not more so, toward union affiliation and action." But it did result in an enduring innovation in fast food.

The story goes that "Italian miners loaded tin pails with hunks of hearth-baked bread as well as various American takes on Italian salumi, from bologna to pepperoni." It wasn't long before "commercially baked pepperoni rolls" were being turned out and sold "in taverns and country stores to shift workers in need of cheap and portable food." It's a tradition carried on by bakeries like Tomaro's, located "in the Italian-dominated Glen Elk neighborhood of Clarksburg," which has been in business since 1914. However, it's the Country Club Bakery of Fairmount, founded in 1927 as the People's Bakery, that claims to be "the origin point of the pepperoni roll."

But it's a relative newcomer, Brake's Dairy King, that's been around only since 1998 that sees more potential in the pepperoni roll's future than nostalgia for its past. "You can nuke these in the microwave," says Chris Brake. "They can take it. My rolls can take anything. I'll split them open and pile anything on. I'll put ice cream in the son-of-a-gun if somebody wants one that way." Even traditionalists like Chris Pallotta of Country Club Bakery sees "the prospect for continued relevance as a new generation of consumers applies an avalanche of American condiments to his Italian-American pepperoni rolls," saying "I'm just glad to see that they're starting with pepperoni rolls."

Norman Lear didn't exactly see dollar signs when he first heard a bunch of pop-music chestnuts sung by a group called Playing for Change, reports Mark Guarino in the Christian Science Monitor (9/21/09). "There's no young person or big stars, the songs you've heard before," says Norman, who these days runs Concord Music Group, a record label. "So I didn't look at it and say, 'there's a big buck to be made.' I thought, 'this can be very good for our label because it's so good and so healthy and so deeply touching.'"

That's exactly what Mark Johnson, a recording engineer had in mind. Over a period of about four years, he traveled to 15 countries with his recording equipment in tow. He visited "South Africa, Ghana, India, Nepal, the Middle East, Russia, Brazil and Ireland," and recorded local "instrumentalists, vocalists, choral groups, youth choirs and subway performers, each contributing individual parts to familiar songs by Bob Marley, Sam Cooke, Peter Gabriel, and others. The result was both a CD and DVD -- and a YouTube hit video of "Stand By Me," the "Ben E. King chestnut from 1961." (video)

Mark says his idea was to "show all different cultures and races and political points of view coming together to do something positive." All of the recordings were done "outdoors to capture the environment of each particular location," and "each musician wore headphones, which ... allowed them to contribute their parts in accordance with what was needed." The CD and DVD were distributed through Starbucks and now a tour is planned, featuring "a band of 10 musicians from the recordings, many of whom don't speak the same language, just music."

It's kind of a mystery how Sonoran-style hot dogs came to be wrapped in bacon, reports John T. Edge in the New York Times (8/26/09). These hot dogs are known as Sonoran-style because the Mexican state of Sonora is "often cited as ground zero for bacon-wrapped hot dogs." But the funny thing is that Sonora "is a locus for cattle ranching, not pig farming." So, another possible explanation is a print ad for Oscar Mayer hot dogs, run in 1953, "selling American consumers on the virtues of bacon-wrapped hot dogs." It could be that Mexican consumers, intrigued by American pop cuisine, adopted the idea and made it their own.

Whatever the origin, the bacon alone does not a Sonoran-style hot dog make. The toppings and the bun are just as important -- "a kitchen sink of taco-truck condiments ... stuffed into split-top rolls that owe a debt to both Mexican bolillo loaves and grocery store hot dog buns." Usually this means "a clump of beans and a chop of tomatoes and onions, followed by squirts of mayonnaise, mustard and salsa verde." Sometimes you might get some ketchup, and some innovative vendors, known as los hotdogueros, crumble some potato chips on top, too.

"A ketchup and mustard hot dog is boring," says Tania Murillo. "They're not colorful enough," she continues, adding that Sonora is indeed the best place to get the best hot dogs. While that may be true, Tucson is currently home to more than 100 hotdogueros -- many operate from carts but some, "like El Guero Canelo, with two Tucson outlets, have evolved from carts into full-scale restaurants." And the concept is spreading -- "from Chicago to Denver to Los Angeles, where illegal street vendors, selling so-called danger dogs to late-night crowds, play hide-and-seek with the local health department." As Tania says, "You've got to make them colorful, and pile on the stuff."

Shopping malls catering to Asians and Hispanics are doing better than their "mainstream" competitors," reports Husna Haq in the Christian Science Monitor (8/31/09). In fact, business is so good at Kam Man Mall, in Quincy, Massachusetts, that its manager is planning to open another Asian supermarket in the area. Sales are "up 10 percent in each of the past two years." It's a similar story at the Great Wall Mall in Seattle, as well as La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth, which specializes in Latino-oriented stores.

It's not just the buying power of Asians or Latinos, though. It's also that immigrants "tend to save more" and also "rely heavily on cash, one of the few protected assets in the wake of Wall Street turmoil." In addition, ethnic malls tend to engender loyalty. "Customers are willing to go in and shop there even if it's not the best price," says David Kaplan of Kent State University. Jose de Jesus Legaspi, who runs the La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth, comments: "By focusing on a narrow, underserved demographic, ethnic malls create a funnel to bring people in from far away."

He adds that business has only gotten better since the recession started: "Since the recession, our occupancy, merchant base and number of customers has increased," he says. Even the unemployed are driving growth, he says, as some of them have opened small shops in the mall's mercado. Ethnic malls are also faring better because they typically are "anchored by supermarkets and low-cost eateries," instead of "high-end department stores and ritzy restaurants." The most intriguing question may be "whether immigrants remake American consumerism -- or American consumerism remakes them."

The Greek gyro, as we know it, was introduced to America by a Jewish hippie-type from Chicago named John Garlic, reports David Segal in the New York Times (7/15/09). The idea actually wasn't John's -- it was his wife, Margaret's. She was watching the old "What's My Line?" television show during which a Greek restaurant owner demonstrated his best gyro technique. She and John got their hands on a recipe, "rented space in a sausage plant and cranked out history's first assembly-line gyros," in Chicago, starting in 1973.

Hoping to expand, the Garlics partnered with Peter Parthenis, who was "building rotisseries, but soon realized the money was in the meat." The partnership fizzled, and Peter bought out the Garlics, who subsequently gave up on the gyro business. Others Chicagoans, such as Chris Tomaras and George Apostolou, soon joined the fray, however. "The response to the product was tremendous," says George. "My two brothers and I, we became millionaires in two years' time." Chris Tomaras meanwhile started Kronos Foods, which is now "the world's largest manufacturer of gyros."

Today, some "50,000 vertical broilers" cook up cones of gyro meat nationwide. The cones consist of ground "beef and lamb trimmings," mixed with "bread crumbs, water, oregano and other seasonings." Hydraulic pressure fuses "the meat into cylinders," which are then frozen. After doing time on a rotisserie, they're carved into thin strips, and folded into pita bread with a little yogurt sauce. At about $5 a wrap, gyros are selling well these days. In fact, business is so good that Kronos is about to open a bigger plant, that can "crank out enough cones for 6,000 sandwiches a day."

The origin of Utah's famous pastrami-burger can be traced to the failure of the currant crop in Greece back in 1907, reports John T. Edge in the New York Times (7/29/09). That sent Michael Katsanevas, along with many other Greeks, packing for the United States. After getting a job at an asbestos kiln and serving in the Army during World War I, Michael opened a restaurant in Salt Lake City. Most of his eleven children followed him into the restaurant business, mostly locally. But one of his kids -- James -- moved to California where he "learned to build pastrami burgers from a Los Angeles man of Turkish descent."

These burgers featured about a quarter-pound of pastrami, tucked between a cheese-topped beef patty, some Thousand-Island-type sauce, sliced tomatoes, onions and lettuce. The creation is said to be "an atavistic souvenir of the decades when Chicanos and Jews both lived along Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights," in Los Angeles. When James' brother and sister opened Crown Burgers in Utah a few years later, they put the pastrami burger on their menu. They also made sure that Crown Burgers -- of which there are now seven -- was itself a memorable dining experience.

Crown Burgers is done up in a sort of medieval motif, complete with tapestries, antique chandeliers, and stuffed pheasants perched on ornate fireplace mantles. "You have to admit that when you sit in one of the Crown Burgers, you're eating a burger in a grand place," says Ken deConde, the designer. The Crown Burger pastrami burger has attracted imitators in Salt Lake City over the years, as well as permutators who use Swiss instead of American cheese, and mustard instead of Thousand Island. Although the Carl Jr.'s chain has occasionally featured pastrami burgers, it remains mostly a Salt Lake City specialty, "less a product of a particular ethnic group or nationality than of honest American fusion."

It was America's first collegiate sport, and an a onetime source of Olympic Gold, but today rowing is struggling, reports Skip Rozin in the Wall Street Journal (7/16/09). "Right now we have maybe 150,000 who regularly participate in a sport out of a population of 300 million," says Glenn Merry, head of U.S. Rowing. "To most Americans, we're just not relevant." One issue is that rowing is seen as elitist, "a sport for the wealthy and white" who attend the most exclusive colleges.

That's why Harry Parker, a rowing coach at Harvard, launched a nonprofit group, Community Rowing, Inc., on the River Charles, in Boston. Community Rowing "offers classes for a fee to anyone and community outreach to more than 200 teenage girls from the Boston area -- 'a third black, a third white, and a third from all over'." Another issue, says Skip, is that rowing doesn't fit with "today's multibillion-dollar sports machines" that are "driven by stars, money and violence."

The good news is that the number of competitive rowers reportedly has grown to 85,000 today, "up from 32,000 in 1986; an additional 65,000 row recreationally. Occasionally races draw crowds: Boston's Head of the Charles regatta claims an attendance of 300,000." This trend hasn't done much for rowing's Olympic prospects, unfortunately, as the U.S. team scored just three medals in 2008. However, Kate Sullivan of the Riverside Boat Club, thinks rowing's irrelevance has its appeal. "It's almost like it's this closet subculture," she says. "On the one hand, it's too bad. Then again, it isn't."

Neither Shauna Page nor Fernando Ruiz is a trained cook, but together they are making what might be the best tortillas in New York City, reports Dan Saltzstein in the New York Times (7/22/09). Their tortillas are so good because they are "made with masa -- a dough made only of soaked and ground corn," which isn't for sale anywhere in the city. So, Shauna and Fernando make it themselves, turning out "about a ton of masa every three weeks, using kernels of a natural corn hybrid bred specifically for tortillas, grown in Illinois."

Masa is said to have "an earthier, more intense corn flavor" than the dried and powdered corn flour -- known as harina -- used by "even the best Mexican chefs." Shauna and Fernando mix up their masa in "a big tub in the basement" of their shop, known as Tortilleria Nixtamal, at 104-05 47th Avenue in Corona, Queens, a largely Mexican-American neighborhood. This involves boiling "the corn for about an hour in a solution of calcium hydroxide -- or slaked lime -- that breaks down or loosens the hull, softening the corn and making it easier to digest."

This process approximates the method used by the Aztecs, who "used limestone-rich lake-bed sediment." After soaking, the corn is ground into either a fine grind for tortillas or a coarser grind, which when mixed with lard and stock is used to make tamales. The dough is expensive, costing about $2.25 a pound for tortillas, and because no preservatives are used it lasts only a couple of days. Some customers say Nixtamal's formula is less than perfect, but Shauna and Fernando are forging ahead, using their tortillas to make tacos and tamales for their customers, who Fernando says include growing numbers of non-Mexicans.

The tables turned on Matt Romero when he knocked on a door hoping to sell a home security system, and the woman who answered wanted to talk about religion instead, reports Kirk Johnson in the New York Times (6/12/09). As Matt recalls it: "She asked me if I believed in Christ and if I knew who my savior was and I said, 'Yes, ma'am,' and we had a discussion and she told me, 'No one comes in my house without hearing the word' and I said, 'That's good policy, ma'am."

It was an interesting moment for Matt because, before he started selling home security systems, he spent two years going door-to-door, as a Mormon missionary. His employer, Pinnacle Security, of Orem, Utah, actually has made a business model of hiring former missionaries -- about two-thirds of its 1,800-member sales force has missionary experience. The firm was "founded in 2001 by a student at Brigham Young University, the Mormon Church-owned school," and its managers "say missionaries simply have the right stuff" for door-to-door sales.

After all, they've developed "thick skins from dealing with the negative responses that a missionary armed with a Book of Mormon and a smile can receive." They've also learned sales techniques, such as "mimic and mirror," or copying the posture and bearing of your prospective customer. They've learned to look, but not stare, and to stand at an angle at the doorstep, to avoid appearing confrontational. "It's missionary work turned into a business," says Cameron Treu, who was recruited to Pinnacle "by another former missionary." Pinnacle's missionaries are now spreading its word in 75 cities across America.