Currently — this very minute — killing it on the Met stage in the role of Adina in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore is Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who took a break between acts this afternoon to speak with a radio host about, um, that photo that’s been circulating online.
Category Archives: Blog
A Bandage Made of Caviar
I had to pause before the counter and pay tribute to a time when I had spooned heaping amounts into my still-laughing mouth and felt love and recognize, despite my self-aggrandizing pity, that I had known and would know again some kind of love, in whatever form. Via The Farmer General, read more
On Anwar, from Oppenheimer
The Act of Killing has just been nominated for an Academy Award. Congrats to Joshua Oppenheimer and the entire crew. I am reposting the following message that came to me from Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing. I write about the film for Guernica here. Continue reading
Drive Your Own Red Whale
Take good and extra precautions when wiring money from Jakarta, Indonesia to New York. Ensure everything is signed off, declared, stamped. Pressure Javanese officers for assurance and make telephone calls from one Batavian landline to another that will be picked up when the phone rings in Manhattan. Make the phone ring in Manhattan.
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Pick Me Up When I Get In
A 10 pm departure. Only a half hour out of Kunming and already the windows displayed a repetitive wheel of blackness. The 66 hard beds in car five were half full. Families with small children, students, some middle-aged business men in button down shirts, the ubiquitous black leather shoe of the Chinese male.
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Take a Page Out of Zora’s Book
I have recently completed a draft of something long and feverish and I intend to send it out soon with my heart in my throat where it belongs and always does, I believe, its best work. At night I will tuck myself in and listen for the frozen thrum of snow on the panes. It is best to be alone.
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You Break Up All the Time
My birthday, and the Hong Kong guy gave me a card. This is what it said:
“Sixty six days ago you were on the other side of the planet.
Fifty one days ago we met.
Down and Out by the Arau River
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.
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.
Caroline M Cooper 