Ruminations by John McGlynn: Giving Up

As I begin to write this rumination on 2 March 2021, I recall that it was exactly one year ago the office of the president announced the first case of Covid-19 in Indonesia. With no outside activities to mark the days and no celebrations to distinguish one week from...

Surat dari Pejompongan: Baru, Modern

Bung ND, Jika kita membicarakan puisi Indonesia modern, maka sebenarnya kita berbicara tentang budaya tulisan yang baru—elitis, tentu saja. Umurnya belum seratus tahun. Jika dibentangkan sebuah garis masa padanya, kita belum bisa melihat garis yang berwarna-warni....

Ruminations by John McGlynn: A Tale of Three Historians

Indonesia is not alone in the countries where “history” has been written to conform to notions of the powers that be. At Saint Anthony’s grade school I was taught that God Himself had charted the course of U.S. history. By His guiding hand Christopher Columbus had...

Greetings from the Executive Director: February 2021

International Mother-Language Day on February 21 might have gone unnoticed and unreported in Indonesia had it not been for President Joko Widodo who greeted his Facebook followers that day with “Pripun kabare?”—the Javanese (his mother tongue) for “How are you?” He...

Greetings from the Executive Director: January 2021

As if the unsettling pandemic wasn’t enough of a burden, a series of floods, landslides, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions across the country seemed to signal yet another inauspicious new year—one that had initially begun with a nascent sense of optimism. As...