On the bridge to the north of an old Padang hotel, a group of vendors sell early evening snacks of sweet corn and roast banana. The corn is grilled over charcoal until the tops of the kernels turn dusty black. Then the vendor hands the ear to her assistant (sous chef?) and she drenches it fast in a drying salt water and a whisk or two more of butter. The results are glorious and crunchy.
Author Archives: Caroline M Cooper
China Needs More Chocolate Tins of Postage Stamps
Several years ago I worked as a research reporter for the New York Times’ Beijing bureau. One of the best trips I took, alongside another reporter, was to Zhengzhou in Henan province. We were there to visit two HIV/AIDS activists—Hu Jia and Gao Yaojie.
Indonesia is One Tasty Jam
What deliciousness! In which we hop a ride on the Radio Magnetic audio rocket—produced with tremendous bravery by me, you will hear what I mean—to Padang in North Sumatra, Indonesia where we eat our hearts, minds and stomachs out. Padang food you are the keeper of my soul.
130 Years of Krakatoa
A hundred and thirty years ago this month Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano erupted, sending plumes of ash so high it discolored the horizon in San Francisco. The explosion killed nearly 40,000 people and dispatched pumice as far away as Zanzibar. The boom is reported to have been the loudest sound ever heard in modern history. Via The Jakarta Post, read more
Roll of Mustard, Hear My Cry
I am in a major first romance. I am 36 years old: a stock-taking point in life. A point at which you begin to understand the broad contours of the things you will and will not have: the career as it has taken shape, the dreams as they have fallen away, the places you have visited but will probably never see again. Via The Farmer General, read more
A to Z Style
I’m taking an excellent class at Poets House right now, led by the inimitable Dr. Emily Moore. We’re all teachers in there and are exploring poetry in its many forms and guises with an eye to the classroom. I’m loving the many exercises and the chance to think as a teacher by first working like a student, going through my sonnet and enjambment paces.
Milan Kundera
“Franta remained standing alone in front of the building, and because his legs ached from his all-night vigil he sat down on a bench from which he could keep an eye on the entrance.”
—The Farewell Party, Fifth Day, pp. 169, Knopf, 1976.
Ernest Hemingway
We can think more and better, or worse or even, perhaps, differently, if not a bit sadly today about Ernest Hemingway.
If we think of him at all.
It was on this day in 1961 that Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho.
The Act of Seeing The Act of Killing
A new doc on Indonesia’s 1965-66 anti-communist genocide takes the international film festival circuit by storm. But in the country that most needs to see it, the film is underground, its crew largely anonymous. Via Guernica, read more
Protect the Freshness is Over
A Henan jaunt to investigate a Chinese Communist Party campaign sheds little light on how the world’s largest political party maneuvers at the local level. Or it shed a lot of light. Or it cast shadows. Or it threw spotlights. I think everyone just felt better when I left Jiguan. Via The Farmer General, read more
Caroline M Cooper 