Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina

Just when I was certain that nothing could top making my own peanut butter (I even toasted the peanuts this time!), my friend Lorena introduced me to her husband, a musician, and we jammed. And so far as exciting developments, it topped even making my own peanut butter.

His myspace is http://www.myspace.com/sebaibarra and he has a couple of the songs that we jammed to on there: Gota Madre and De Tractores y Ramas.




He's a super talented song writer and equally humble. It was soo much fun. I think I was playing with a future super star. (I made the video private upon Seba's request; if you'd like to see it though you can send me an email and I'll make it accessible to you! My email address is smcoger@gmail.com )

There is a character on the television show Northern Exposure that I can identify with of late. He is a Jewish doctor from New York and because of a scholarship he is sent to Alaska where he is a bit out of his element: people eat moose, and they like him a lot but he founds their ways to be very unfamiliar. Well, a few days ago during a heavy rain my landlord, the 74-year-old señora, ran into the rain and arrayed towels over the grass.

I laughed. I had no idea what was going on.

Also, as you can see in this picture, dried orange peels occasionally hang from our lemon tree. (That's my house in the background.)

I am happy to report that the señora's daughter also did not know why curly, dried orange peel dangled from the limbs.

Before we solve these mysteries though, I should tell you about two new friends. With Jacob and Angela (my Lutheran exchange friends) having returned to the States, it was a pleasure to hang with a couple of more yanqis (Yankees, an Argentine term for US-ians.). Joe and Joanna Wolaver are from Texas and they are living in Corrientes, a 30-minute ride from Resistencia. Joe is a Fulbright Scholar who graduated from Colombia Law School. I had a lot of questions for the both of them, and we hung out nearly the whole afternoon of the 1st. The dog statue between Joe and me is of this famous mutt that the whole city cared for, though he had no particular home. That seems to be the case for all dogs here, actually.

The beloved dog is buried here underneath another sculpture. Resistencia, as I may have written before, is Argentina's sculpture capital with a couple of thousand sculptures around the city. It hosts an international sculpture festival every other July.

This posed picture is a Thank You; the bag on my leg is from my friend Paige, a fellow Fulbright Scholar who stayed the night on where way back to Salta from Brazil, Paraguay, and Iguazú Falls. We didn't get a picture together, so this will have to do. The bag says, "This is not a plastic bag," in Portuguese (Thank you, Paige!). The snack on which I'm munching is from France, and was sent as part of a big, inspiring, love-filled package from Tabitha Lee, my friend and fellow UA-grad. She also sent incense, a swweeeett letter, French paper, and an LSAT book!! Yeah! Friends are sweet. Thank you, Tabitha !!

This was entertaining! Ha! There's a brief video from this episode on youtube.

The señora makes socks. Oh, and there's Homero's new sweater!

So what with all the music, visits and gifts, the time here has been equal parts enjoyable/cozy and enjoyable/completely unfamiliar. Ha! The towels, the señora maintains, are best washed with detergent in the rain. The orange peel is added to her yierba mate to give it extra flavor. It's interesting to note that while I did not know and the doctor daughter of the señora did not know what the peel was about, Paige, the fellow Fulbright scholar that visited me, did know.

Greg Ingram, another friend, had the idea of Google Earthing the places that I've been. So this picture of home came from Google Earth, and it's where it all began: Danville, Arkansas.

I left Danville and went to Fayetteville where things continued to develop.

Here you can see Arkansas and Cuernavaca. A lovely Mexican host family and university cared for me when I lived in Cuernavaca for about a month and a half in 2006.

Fayetteville led straight to India where two months were enjoyed in the South (especially good memories are from the highlighted city of Coimbatore) and two in the North.

On my way back from India, I stopped in the UK (Oxford, Tintagel, and later London), Spain (Malaga, Sevilla, and Madrid), and Germany (Mannheim). I made more friends and visited friends and cousins.

The tack is right over my house. Just like these palm trees...

I love living under palm trees. They look like stacked starfish. Sometimes in the quiet of the night, their yellow layers fall and break dreams and all the dogs bark in response. (As I write this, it is 9:03pm; after 9 the already porous dam between my left and right brain crumbles and everything I write tends toward the poetic. For this reason I usually adhere to a rule that I turn the computer off at 9.)

In the plaza, artists and breast feeding advocates were plying their trades and sharing literature respectively.

With the swine flu behind us, schools have opened and people can go to church again. One of my co-workers, Laura, had surgery and so I've been able to work with her students a little this week. We talked about passive voice, and I think I may have found a couple of more musician friends.

Tonight I cooked a butternut squash puree thing. I did it up with a little brown rice flour tonight, but here's how I normally do it.

Rainbow Puree (soundtrack album: Lucky Dube’s Trinity)
In just a little sunflower oil, saute purple cabbage, a little
carrot, a little onion and/or broccoli stems, a red bell pepper, a green bell pepper, and after sauteing it for a while add some water,
and soy sauce for it to saute in. Then later add a whole bunch of
broccoli, and some more soy sauce. Salt to taste. (Tonight the broccoli went in before the bell peppers so that they could retain a little more of their own flavor.)

Boil chopped butternut squash until it is soft enough to mash. Add
some salt, mash it all up, add cornmeal, and stir the cornmeal in quickly
before it gets hard. Pour in all the sauteed veggies and stir it all
in real nicely. Put this next to brown rice* and then put it all in some
tortillas and remember to chew each bite 32 times.

*Brown rice is 1.5-2 cups water to 1 cup rice, boiled hard at first,
then turned down to a simmer maybe 45 minutes or until it gets soft.

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I usually cook enough of whatever I cook to last a few days, so as to increase the time I can study for the LSAT. Ha! OK, that's about enough for this blog entry. Ya'll take care, and if you want to send me a card (it's best not to send packages unless they're extra creative because I have to drive a ways to get them), do it by the end of August just to make sure it will have time to get here! My address is

Stephen Coger
Concepción del Bermejo 265
Resistencia, Chaco cp 3500
ARGENTINA

Here are a couple of more ideas for culinary experiments:

Rabbit Guacamole (soundtrack album: Lucky Dube’s Prisoner)
squirt half a lemon or lime into a bowl and then put in an avocado and
mash it up, then put in some chopped onion, some chopped
carrot, some
chopped red bell pepper and/or tomato, and chopped cilantro. If you like, add some
salt, but I just add a heck of a lot more lemon or lime. Stir it
up so everything’s evenly distributed, and let it sit for a couple of
hours before eating it as a dip with crackers, corn chips or bread.

Dhal (A vegetarian dish from India)
* yellow lentils cooked in a pressure cooker until soft enough to puree
* saute in sunflower oil, onion, ginger, carrot, green bell pepper, red bell pepper, butternut squash, tomato, a pinch or two of salt, curry powder, mustard seeds), coriander, cumin, cloves, cilantro, and if you can get it, "garam masala" (it is a mix of all those great spices minus curry)
* then put the now-mashed lentils over all of the well-sauteed veggies
and let it boil and saute and maybe add some more mustard seeds
* then cut up a lot of spinach and put it into the lentils and when
all the spinach is shriveled up,
* the some brown rice on a plate and spread the "dhal" on top.
Delicious. And it smells good, too!

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Here are a couple of more pictures, one of them as obviously posed as the cookie/bag picture above!

Click on the picture to see everything we talked about: Wade in the Water, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, inversion with negative adverbials, and we had several words of the day, among other things.

I hope ya'll enjoy the blog. A couple of more things before we part: the satellite picture at the top of this blog entry shows the location of my house, my high school (Escuela Normal Sarmiento), and my Argentine family's house.

And 12:30pm in Arkansas is midnight (tomorrow) in New Delhi is 6:35pm in London is 2:30pm here in Argentina.