Category Archives: History

Food, History, Security

Secrets of Sriracha

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The NYT gives an in-depth look into the Hot Stuff in a Squeeze Bottle

“I knew, after the Vietnamese resettled here, that they would want their hot sauce for their pho,” a beef broth and noodle soup that is a de facto national dish of Vietnam. “But I wanted something that I could sell to more than just the Vietnamese,” he continued.

“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”

What Mr. Tran developed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s was his own take on a traditional Asian chili sauce. In Sriracha, a town in Chonburi Province, Thailand, where homemade chili pastes are favored, natives do not recognize Mr. Tran’s purée as their own.

It’s described as a melting-pot of ingredients for America’s diverse tastes. One thing is for certain, Americans love sauce. The most interesting part of the story is how the family migrated from Vietnam.

To limit potential losses, Mr. Tran split the family into four groups: One group went to Indonesia, another to Hong Kong. A third went to Malaysia, and a fourth to the Philippines.

David Tran traveled on a freighter, the Huy Fong. Everyone ended up in United Nations refugee camps, before the family finally began to regroup.

“I was in Boston,” Mr. Tran recalled. “My brother-in-law was in Los Angeles. When we talked on the phone, I asked him, ‘Do they have red peppers in Los Angeles?’ He said yes. And we left.”

That was the start to a US operation that now generates 10 million bottles a year (2 million go into the non-Asian market) and is found across the country in chain restaurants. The plan today to limit potential losses is a completely different story.

History, Poetry

Three Riddles

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by Jonathan Swift

In Youth exalted high in Air,
Or bathing in the Waters fair;
Nature to form me took Delight,
And clad my Body all in White:
My Person tall, and slender Waste,
On either Side with Fringes grac’d;
Till me that Tyrant Man espy’d,
And drag’d me from my Mother’s side:
No Wonder now I look so thin;
The Tyrant strip’t me to the Skin:
My Skin he flay’d, my Hair he cropt;
At Head and Foot my Body lopt:
And then, with Heart more hard than Stone,
He pick’t my Marrow from the Bone.
To vex me more, he took a Freak,
To slit my Tongue, and made me speak:
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to Eyes and not to Ears.
He oft employs me in Disguise,
And makes me tell a Thousand Lyes:
To me he chiefly gives in Trust
To please his Malice, or his Lust.
From me no Secret he can hide;
I see his Vanity and Pride:
And my Delight is to expose
His Follies to his greatest Foes.

All languages I can command,
Yet not a Word I understand.
Without my Aid, the best Divine
In Learning would not know a Line:
The Lawyer must forget his Pleading,
The Scholar could not shew his Reading.
Nay; Man, my Master, is my Slave:
I give Command to kill or save.
Can grant ten Thousand Pounds a Year,
And make a Beggar’s Brat a Peer.

But, while I thus my Life relate,
I only hasten on my Fate.
My Tongue is black, my Mouth is furr’d,
I hardly now can force a Word.
I dye unpity’d and forgot;
And on some Dunghill left to rot.

The “slit tongue” reference might seem odd today, but it comes from an ancient theory about making some birds “talk” as explained by John Marzluff and Tony Angell in the book “In the Company of Crows and Ravens”:

History, Poetry, Security

La Steaua – To the Star

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by Mihai Eminescu

La Steua care-a rasarit
E-o cale atit de lunga
Ca mii de ani i-au trebuit
Luminii sa ajunga.

Poate de mult s-a stins in drum
In departari albastre
Iar raza ei abia acum
Luci vederii noastre.

My translation:

To the Star that rises
So far away
Many thousands of years
before we see the light

Perhaps it disappeared already
In the blue void
But only now it appears
shimmering in our eyes

History, Poetry, Security

German Donald Outshines US Duck

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The Deutsche Welle tries to explain why Donald Duck, ‘modern Sisyphus,’ still Germany’s darling at 75

In their earliest days in Europe, comic books were looked down upon as lacking intellectual rigor and were thought to be bad for children. So when it first started publishing Donald Duck, the German publisher Ehapa asked Fuchs to make her translations more erudite.

And erudite she was. The German Donald quotes Goethe and Schiller, Hoelderlin and Wagner. He uses frequent alliterations and has coined phrases that have since worked their way into the language on the street. Moreover, Fuchs often gave the stories a more political tone than they’d originally had.

I can only imagine a cartoon duck quoting Goethe.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Perhaps the following quote is more likely. Imagine Donald’s voice as he says:

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt
increases.

The article explains several of the elements that Germans find appealing in their version of the Duck character. First, perseverance:

Gerhard Severin is the acting president of the Donaldists. For him, Donald Duck represents a “modern Sisyphus, who always keeps trying. Despite constant setbacks he starts over again, and shows us that you should never give up.”

Second, a hot temper is said to be something Germans admire. Third, although I might be going out on a limb here, Donald has no pants. Maybe it would be more accurate to say Donald’s pants are down. Get it? Down. Either way, I bet this is also a factor that resonates with the German perspective on life.