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The workers make Spam, perhaps the emblematic hard-times food in the American pantry.

Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table. Now, in a sign of the times, it is happening again, and Hormel is cranking out as much Spam as its workers can produce.

In a factory that abuts Interstate 90, two shifts of workers have been making Spam seven days a week since July, and they have been told that the relentless work schedule will continue indefinitely.

Spam, a gelatinous 12-ounce rectangle of spiced ham and pork, may be among the world’s most maligned foods, dismissed as inedible by food elites and skewered by comedians who have offered smart-alecky theories on its name (one G-rated example: Something Posing As Meat).

But these days, consumers are rediscovering relatively cheap foods, Spam among them. A 12-ounce can of Spam, marketed as “Crazy Tasty,” costs about $2.40. “People are realizing it’s not that bad a product,” said Dan Johnson, 55, who operates a 70-foot-high Spam oven.

Hormel declined to cooperate with this article, but several of its workers were interviewed here recently with the help of their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 9. Slumped in chairs at the union hall after making 149,950 cans of Spam on the day shift, several workers said they been through boom times before — but nothing like this.

Spam “seems to do well when hard times hit,” said Dan Bartel, business agent for the union local. “We’ll probably see Spam lines instead of soup lines.”

Even as consumers are cutting back on all sorts of goods, Spam is among a select group of thrifty grocery items that are selling steadily.

Pancake mixes and instant potatoes are booming. So are vitamins, fruit and vegetable preservatives and beer, according to data from October compiled by Information Resources, a market research firm.

“We’ve seen a double-digit increase in the sale of rice and beans,” said Teena Massingill, spokeswoman for the Safeway grocery chain, in an e-mail message. “They’re real belly fillers.”

Kraft Foods said recently that some of its value-oriented products like macaroni and cheese, Jell-O and Kool-Aid were experiencing robust growth. And sales are still growing, if not booming, for Velveeta, a Kraft product that bears the same passing resemblance to cheese as Spam bears to ham.

Spam holds a special place in America’s culinary history, both as a source of humor and of cheap protein during hard times.

Invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the company’s founder, Spam is a combination of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a “hint” of sodium nitrate “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color,” according to Hormel’s Web site for the product.

Professor Ian Frazer, former Australian of the Year, has revealed the vaccine could be ready within the next five to 10 years.

Michael McGowan used his position as an air marshal to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he showed him child porn, took pictures of him naked and sexually abused him.

And when Brian “Cooter” Phelps wanted his ex-wife to disappear, he called a fellow air marshal and tried to hire a hit man nicknamed “the Crucifixer.”

An Oxon Hill man who worked with sensitive national security information was fatally shot Wednesday evening as he sat in his car at a stop light near his home, according to police, family members and coworkers.

Sean Nicholas Green, 31, had stopped at a red light at about 5:31 p.m. when a man approached his car and fired several shots into the driver’s side window of his black Cadillac Deville, police and family members said.

Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a spokesman for Prince George’s County police, said detectives do not have a suspect and are still working to establish a motive for the killing. “It doesn’t appear to be a carjacking, he was sitting at the light, he wasn’t the only car there — it’s weird stuff, a mystery right now,” Copeland said.

Other motorists who were stopped at the intersection of Virginia Lane and Saint Barnabas Road witnessed the shooting but were able to provide only vague descriptions of the gunman, who quickly fled the scene, Copeland said.

Stephen I. Green Jr., the victim’s older brother, said the shooting occurred about the time his brother usually left his apartment in the 2700 block of Alice Avenue to go workout at a nearby gym.

Sean Green lived alone, had never been married and had passed a security background check to begin working at the National Counterterrorism Center in Northern Virginia about two years, according to his brother and a supervisor at the center. He worked in information technology and handled computers with sensitive national security information, the supervisor said.

“We’re all just in shock right now. This is a great loss, not just to our family but to the whole world,” Stephen I. Green Jr. said last night as he and others gathered at his parents’ home in Capitol Heights. “My brother came from a very loving and supportive family. He was a son, a brother, a nephew, a wonderful uncle — a positive member of society.”

The slaying is the second mysterious killing of a security worker in Prince George’s in recent months. In August, Kanika Powell, a security specialist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory was gunned down by someone waiting near her doorstep. Five days before she was killed, police said an impostor had knocked on her door claiming to be an FBI agent. Police said there’s no indication the two killings are connected.

By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 4, 2008; B01

Kanika Powell suspected something when the man knocked on her door claiming to be an FBI agent. He held a badge up to her peephole but walked away when Powell refused to open up without seeing a photo ID.

Five days later, there was another knock at the door of her Laurel area apartment. This time a different man, who said he was delivering a package. When Powell again refused to open the door, he also left — no package, no note where it could be claimed.

Five hours later, Powell was outside her door after returning from errands. Someone was waiting in the hallway and opened fire, riddling her with bullets. She died a day later, this past Friday, and police have no idea why she was killed.

Her slaying has all the trappings of a television drama: e-mail messages Powell, 28, left behind about the strange men coming to her door; her mysterious career at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where she worked as a security specialist; the FBI’s insistence that none of its agents approached the woman; and investigators who say they can find no apparent motive for her killing — no spurned lover, no robbery, no signs of gang activity, nothing.

“At this point, we haven’t ruled out any avenue of investigation or motive, other than that it was random,” Detective Kelly Rogers of the Prince George’s County police said yesterday.

Rogers said police arrived at Powell’s home four minutes after she called 911 Aug. 23, after the encounter with the man who identified himself as the agent. Officers canvassed Powell’s apartment complex but found no one matching the description she’d given them.

Powell had also reported the incident to the apartment complex and told friends and colleagues. “It appears she did everything she could,” Rogers said. Yesterday, Rogers and Powell’s family began circulating fliers announcing a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest or indictment. Police are asking anyone with information to call the county’s Crime Solvers hotline at 866-411-TIPS (8477).

Powell’s family and friends say they cannot fathom a reason for the killing. Her wallet and keys were found with her. They said she had no enemies.

“She was just living a normal life,” said her mother, Judy Forrest. “It doesn’t add up. Somebody knows something, and they’re holding on to it, and we don’t know why.”

Powell was a 1998 Largo High School graduate who enlisted in the Army in 2000, served in Korea and worked as a security contractor and then at the Hopkins laboratory. Powell still had a close group of girlfriends from high school. She had never married and had no children. Court records show no criminal record, and police say they found nothing unusual or illegal in her apartment.

Michael Buckley, a spokesman for the Hopkins laboratory in Laurel, where scientists work on more than 400 homeland security and other research projects, said it was premature to speculate on whether Powell’s death had any connection to her work.

Buckley said Powell had started at the lab as a contract worker in 2004 and had become a lab employee in 2006. He declined to name the lab Powell worked in or her title, citing the “nature of the work.”

Powell signed her e-mail to friends and colleagues as “Kanika T. Powell, Special Security, 13-S448 JHU/APL.”

Forrest said her daughter was a security specialist who would not talk about her work. Powell would occasionally leave town for a couple of days to pick up things for the lab, she said. “I would ask her where she was going, and she would say, ‘Mom, you know I can’t tell you that.’ ”

Powell did tell her mother about the strange men who came to her door. Forrest said her daughter installed a security system after the first man came to the door. She might have thought she was being set up for a scam after the first visit, Powell’s mother said, but the second one made her feel targeted.

“She said, ‘Why are these people bothering me, Ma?’ ” Forest said, recalling that her daughter wondered whether she had angered someone. “But she didn’t seem scared.”

Still, Powell sent e-mail warnings to colleagues and friends about the men who came to her door. “The most scariest thing that happened to me,” she wrote. “Pass this along ladies . . . who knows who these guys are.”

Kelly Easter, one of Powell’s co-workers, said he last had lunch with her Aug. 26. “She was busy working on stuff, trying to get police involved. She was really messed up about the whole thing,” he said. The man claiming to be an FBI agent had come to her door only a few days earlier. “She just had no idea who would do that.”

LAUREL, Md. – Prince George’s County Police are baffled by the execution-style murder of a women near Laurel last Thursday, and they now say the victim was being stalked by as many as three different men in the days leading up to her shooting.

Investigators say Kanika Powell was gunned down as she entered her apartment building on Merrill Lane, and her death has left her family shaken and looking for answers.

Detectives say they have no solid leads in Powell’s murder, and they’re not sure who may have wanted her dead. Her family says she had no known enemies, but on the Saturday before her death a man claiming to be an FBI agent came to her door. He told her he needed to talk to her about a bank fraud investigation, and police say that was the first of three attempts to kill her.

Two days after the imposter came to her door, Powell sat down at her computer and wrote an email to friends and family. It read, in part, ‘I just wanted to share with you the most scariest thing that happened to me this weekend.’

In the email, the 28-year-old Army veteran and security specialist said the man showed her a badge and said, ‘… once I got close to the door and looked out of the peephole I saw a male figure that was not familiar to me at all. I asked who he was and all he stated was that he was from the FBI and that he was looking for Kanika Powell. It freaked me out completely because this man knew my name.’

Powell called her uncle and her mother to tell them what happened.

“I told her to call 911 and report it, and she said, ‘Mom, what are they gonna do?'” said Judy Forrest, Powell’s mother. “You have to report it, you never know.”

Forrest says Powell was worried, but didn’t seem overly concerned.

“I think that she might have been hiding from me the level of fear, you know,” said Forrest. “She was trying to be independent and not let me know how frightened she really was.”

Then, it happened again. A man posing as a deliveryman came to the apartment on Wednesday night, and again Thursday morning. Powell refused to open the door.

“She even discussed arming herself with some protection but I don’t think she ever did,” said Ernest Powell, her uncle.

Law enforcement sources say if Kanika Powell knew why someone was after her she never told family or the friends they’ve been able to speak with.

Toward the end of the email she sent, Powell wrote, ‘…not only did I get NO sleep for the rest of my weekend, I am trying to get an alarm system installed in my apartment.’

That alarm system was installed, but whoever was out to get her ambushed Powell at her front door.

Powell worked as a security specialist for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Her family says she was not involved in any illegal activity, and her lifestyle was simple and low-key.

At an emotional promotion ceremony, Dunwoody added a fourth star and, looking back on her years in uniform, said it was a credit to the Army that she was given a chance to rise through the ranks in a male-dominated military.

“Thirty-three years after I took the oath as a second lieutenant, I have to tell you this is not exactly how I envisioned my life unfolding,” she told a standing-room-only auditorium. “Even as a young kid, all I ever wanted to do was teach physical education and raise a family.”

“It was clear to me that my Army experience was just going to be a two-year detour en route to my fitness profession,” she added. “So when asked, `Ann, did you ever think you were going to be a general officer, to say nothing about a four-star?’ I say, `Not in my wildest dreams.’

“There is no one more surprised than I — except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, `Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.'”

Later, at Fort Belvoir, Va. — her birthplace — Dunwoody was being sworn in as commander of the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming all soldiers. Just five months ago, she became the first female deputy commander there.

Dunwoody, 55, has made it clear that she feels no need for special acclaim for her historic achievement.

“The recognition makes her a little bit uncomfortable from the standpoint of the gender aspect — that we’re making a big deal (that) she is the first female general officer,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday in announcing that Defense Secretary Robert Gates would attend her promotion ceremony.

When she was nominated by President George W. Bush in June for promotion to four-star rank, Dunwoody issued a statement saying she was humbled.

“I grew up in a family that didn’t know what glass ceilings were,” she said. “This nomination only reaffirms what I have known to be true about the military throughout my career — that the doors continue to open for men and women in uniform.”

She also told an internal Army publication, “While I may be the first, I know I won’t be the last.”

Her nomination was confirmed by the Senate in July.

There are 21 female general officers in the Army — all but four at the one-star rank of brigadier. It was not until 1970 that the Army had its first one-star: Anna Mae Hays, chief of the Army Nurse Corps.

Women now make up about 14 percent of the active-duty Army and are allowed to serve in a wide variety of assignments. They are still excluded from units designed primarily to engage in direct combat, such as infantry and tank units, but their opportunities have expanded over the past two decades.

Dunwoody received her Army commission after graduating from the State University of New York in 1975.

Her first assignment was to Fort Sill, as supply platoon leader in June 1976, and she remained at Sill in various positions until she was sent to quartermaster officer school at Fort Lee, Va., in July 1980.

She later served in Germany and Saudi Arabia.

After graduating from the Command and General Staff College in 1987, she was assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., where she became the 82nd Airborne Division’s first female battalion commander.

The Charter for Compassion project on the Internet at www.charterforcompassion.org springs from a “wish” granted this year to religious scholar Karen Armstrong at a premier Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California.

“Tedizens” include Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin along with other Internet icons as well as celebrities such as Forest Whittaker and Cameron Diaz.

Wishes granted at TED envision ways to better the world and come with a promise that Tedizens will lend their clout and capabilities to making them come true.

Armstrong’s wish is to combine universal principles of respect and compassion into a charter based on a “golden rule” she believes is at the core of every major religion.

The Golden Rule essentially calls on people to do unto others as they would have done unto them.

“The chief task of our time is to build a global society where people of all persuasions can live together in peace and harmony,” Armstrong said.

“If we do not achieve this, it seems unlikely that we will have a viable world to hand on to the next generation.”

Such a broad ban by the Food and Drug administration on goods from an entire country rather than from a new rogue manufacturer is unusual and reflects the level of concern over how widespread the problem is in China.

Importers to the United States must now certify that food products are free of dairy or of the industrial chemical melamine that has been found in a vast array of Chinese products – from baby powder to milk powder to creamy confectionery. Failing that, the goods will be stopped at the border.

Is this the bottom? I seriously doubt it. The unemployment rate could get up to 8.5%, and maybe as high as its post-Depression high of 10.7%, up from its current 6.5%. At least that’s what Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times op-editorialist Paul Krugman expects. Needless to say, in an economy which depends on consumers for 70% of its growth, this is not good news since it divides the country into two categories — those who lose their jobs and those who fear losing them.