Obituaries

 

I am reading a book by William Saroyan simply titled Obituaries.  I was always fascinated by the title from the moment I noticed it.  It took me like ten years, however, to buy it.  Like many books I buy, I put it on the bookshelf and add it to my mental reading list.  I put next to the other Saroyan books I have actually read.  It looked good there.  It actually stood out with its bright red binding with the bold words jumping off the spine:  William Saroyan Obituaries

On many occasions I thought about reading it but didn’t.  I can’t explain why.  After purchasing it, it sat on the bookshelf for fifteen years.  It took this contagion for me to pull it off the shelf and actually start reading it back in March.   Go figure.

I was wrong and right about what I thought the book was about.  I just assumed it was going to be Saroyan reminiscing about the people in his life in some warm Armenian way.  The book was sure enough about reminiscing about people he knew and didn’t know.  It was, after all, his last book published in 1979, two years before his passing.  But he did it in an Armenian way but the tone was not what I would call warm.  It was more defiant and brusque as Saroyan can be.  Clearly, I never read the blurb on the back of the book nor the first chapter.  If I had, and I have roughly 25 years to do so, I would have known:

… each entry in the necrology register of Variety magazine for the year 1976 is recalled, revivified, regaled and/or reviled by their former intimate.  Others, not on the list

Did I say I was reading this book?  That is true, I am reading the book, but it is at a snail’s pace.  It is not an easy read.  I have never read as many incredibly long sentences in my life and I am only an eighth of the way through the 354 pages.   These sentences run on and on and them some more.  They are stream of consciousness in a sense, but they are also intricate thread with insight and philosophy.  I am savoring every word.

I wonder how many people have read this book.  I believe one has to be a serious Saroyan fan or scholar to buy it and read it. 

I am no Saroyan, not even close.  But the title of this book resonated with me when I first saw the title.  It resonates with me still.  I have been clipping obituaries and saving them to Evernote ever since I installed Evernote on my PCs.  I have saved obituaries of family and friends as well as well-known personalities that I never actually met.  I save them and often write my own thoughts about them in this blog.

It may be an Armenian thing, this obsession with death and remembrance.  I am not sure and don’t want to overemphasize or over-fantasize this aspect, but the Genocide does weigh heavily and influence how generations were raised and think thereafter.  Consider that Saroyan wrote this, his last book, and titled it Obituaries.  Consider, Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his obsession with death in both his career, as a coroner, and as an artist.  Consider, the importance of Hokhankist in the Armenian Church.  Lastly, consider the words of the famous Armenian poet Bedros Tourian (who died at the age 21 in 1872) of tuberculosis in his poem My Death:

But, if my grave remains unmarked

In a corner of the earth

And remembrance of me fades away,

Ah, that is when I will die.

Maybe I am not emphasizing the part of the Armenian psyche enough?

When I was younger, I saw an old black and white film that I can neither recall the name nor the actors.  I do remember a bit about the plot.  This young aspiring reporter landed a job at a major newspaper, maybe the New York Times.  His first assignment was writing obituaries.  When not writing an actual obituary, his job was to scour the newspaper and wires for news about politicians, luminaries, and celebrities.  He would then update their file saved the old-fashioned way in file folders in file cabinets.  This was done to make the writing of an obituary if and when the person died easier.  I was intrigued by this very pragmatic practice in the days before the internet.  I was intrigued by the nature of the job.

This week I read and saved two obituaries.  The first of Diego Armando Maradona who passed away November 25th.  He was an amazing soccer player, one of the greatest ever.  He was also a most troubled persona who fought drugs and demons most of his life.  He was only 60 years old. 

The second was of a Colgate colleague who I reported to for a short time, Chuck Beck.  When I joined Colgate, Chuck was VP of Manufacturing for Europe.  I was impressed by his energy, drive, and determination.  He was a tireless worker and pusher.  He would refer to himself and the folks that report to him as “men of action.”  Indeed, he was.  We were cordial enough, but I knew that I probably would enjoy working for him.  Well, that happened.  I was working in Global Purchasing.  I was invited to join that organization by the VP of Procurement, Lowell Hoffman, that I got along with very well.  Under Lowell’s mentorship, I was to run toothbrush procurement since we were purchasing about half of our toothbrushes from two suppliers in Europe.  After just a few months, Lowell abruptly left the company and Chuck took his place.  I knew this was not going to end well and it didn’t.  I was lucky enough to return to the Latin American Division as the first Director of Customer Service and Logistics in the history of the company (many more followed very quickly).  This began the most productive part of my career.  Chuck and I got along much better and valued each other much more.  He asked me to support a few initiatives he started in terms of global transportation, I agreed and did, and helped achieve success of these initiatives.  We were good.  I came to think highly of Chuck because of this. 

Why did I suddenly think of him yesterday?  I am not sure.  I am never sure of why such thoughts bubble up.  I did an internet search and learned that he passed away, suddenly, at the age of 78 on September 27, 2018.  I was sorry to hear of this.  He left Colgate before I did.  We did not stay in touch.  We did not work well together when I reported to him, but we were much more effective afterwards and had mutual respect and it was all due to Chuck reaching out.  I will never forget this lesson.

Here are my favorite obituaries from this blog:

• Remembering Ms. Trosko
• Angel de la Puente
• Remembering Sosy Krikorian Kadian
• Baron Krikor Pidedjian (1935 - 2019)
• February 2017: Anniversary Letter
• First Father's Day without... 
• Chadwick Boseman (1976 – 2020)

Contagion: Thanksgiving Refections

 

The Covid-19 Pandemic has returned with this recent surge.  The hospitals are nearly full.  Most states have imposed travel advisories, moved K-12 schools back to remote learning, and limited public gatherings especially closing restaurants to indoor dining.  I know a surprising number of people who have had the virus in recent weeks.  Most of them are younger folks who have had mild to flu like symptoms and they have all recovered.

While the hospitals are filling up again, it seems like the medical experts have learned to treat the virus more effectively.  They are shying away from using ventilators because they learned that once they started patients on ventilators it was very hard to wean them off of them.  We are all anticipating the vaccines which might finally end this Pandemic.

At the same time, incident rates seem to suggest we are also testing the herd immunity theory, though, oddly, no one is talking about that.

In the summer, people tried to return to normal; a masked and socially distant normalcy.  To a certain degree, we succeeded.  Restaurants were serving diners outside and they were bustling.  Car traffic began to approach the annoying levels they were at pre-pandemic.  The stores and shops were busy again.  People wore masks but they were out and about.

A Wee Bit of Travel:  Last year for Thanksgiving, I was in Germany:  Thanksgiving in Germany.  What a difference a year makes.

In a normal year, we might have traveled to Washington, DC and maybe California a few times.  We had a trip scheduled to Toronto, New York and Massachusetts for an engagement party, a baptism, and a wedding.  We had another trip planned to Massachusetts over Labor Day for the Annual Armenian Youth Federation Olympics.  The only trips I did take were to Michigan basically to visit my mother and sisters.  I drove to Detroit once and South Haven twice.  It was a bit eerie stopping at gas station plazas and walking around South Haven and seeing folks with and without masks.  It was good to be with family, for sure. 

I am hearing of more and more folks who are getting on airplanes and traveling mostly for pleasure trips.  I am guessing this increase in travel is simply due to Covid Fatigue.  We are not ready to take that risk as yet.

Children and Grandchildren:  I was supposed to fly to California the first weekend in March to visit my daughter, son in-law, and grandsons.  The Pandemic was in its infancy and after some discussion, we decided to cancel the trip.  We laugh that I could have been stuck there months had I gone.  That would have been a wonderful exile.

We miss our children and grandchildren and look forward to a time where we can freely visit them and have them venture our way.

Weddings:  As mentioned, we missed three weddings, an engagement party, and a baptism this year.  Four of these five events were out of town.  The weddings took place but with only immediate family in attendance.  We were able to zoom in and enjoy the ceremonies. 

I love weddings.  I love to play for them, and I love to attend them.  I am glad the three young couples got married, I am sorry that it was not the celebrations they were expecting or deserved.

Work:  I spent a lot of time alone working from home.  Just being home, alone, in my office was reminiscent of 2008 and 2009 during the Great Recession.  Back then, the time was spent looking for work.  It was a dismal chore as millions of us were looking for work and there were like two jobs available.  It was a lonely effort of sending out inquiries and applying to jobs into what seemed to be a black hole in the internet.

The difference this time was that I was a busy as I have ever been.  I was on the Covid Response team at the University and I was teaching more than a full load from March at the start of the Pandemic through August.  I was then asked to serve on another strategic academic committee.  I eagerly accepted, knowing I would be even busier.  Being busy, crazy busy, and working from home is infinitely better than working from home was during the Great Recession.

The School Year:  Our Univerity Covid-19 Task Force managed to move all classes to remote learning in short order back in March.  We managed the odds and ends associated with that through the end of April.  In May, our Task Force was renamed the Campus Re-Opening Task Force.  Our charge was to safely open campus in the Fall.  We wanted to have as many face-to-face classes as we could within the social distancing protocols set by the state and city.  We meet four to five times a week from May through September.  We have six functional sub-committees that have been meeting right along the whole time. 

We successfully opened campus.  We had a combination of face-to-face, online, and mixed online and face-to-face classes.  We had professors who taught in all three modes. Also, students were able to attend classes face-to-face or remotely based on their personal and family risk levels to the Covid-19 virus.  We were successful for two months with constant monitoring using a phone-based app, testing in partnership of a local hospital, and reacting to cases as they happened. 

I was one campus two days a week.  I was teaching four classes:  three undergraduate classes and one graduate course.  As all graduate classes were fully online, mine was as well.  Two of my undergraduate classes met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.  The third met Monday evenings.  The Monday evening class met face-to-face as the socially distanced reconfigured room could still hold all the students.  Only about half the students attended face-to-face, the other half called in via MS Teams (Microsoft's answer to Zoom).  My morning classes were large.  Half the students were in attendance face-to-face and half were online via MS Teams.  We did this Mondays and Wednesdays, flip-flopping was attended live and who attended via video conference.  On Fridays, we were all online.  We made it work.

Early in the week of October 23, we were thinking that in the Spring term we might have even more classes online and were looking forward to starting up sports competitions.  By the end of that week, the news was about the record number of cases in Chicago, in Illinois and all around the country.  The surge had begun.  By November 10, we decided to move the last week and a half of classes online.  It was a much smoother pivot than it was back in March.  We now have to monitor things to determine how classes will start in the Spring.  We are prepared for however the status of the Pandemic evolves. 

Thanksgiving:  It has been a different year for all of us.  It has been isolating.  We are all Covid weary.  It has been especially difficult for those who have lost loved ones this year.  Some of us are handling it better than others.

I am thankful for my family, for those I see frequently, occasionally and not very often these days.  While we have not seen our kids or grandkids, we am thankful for FaceTime which makes staying in touch much more tolerable.

I am thankful for having the job I have and all the people I work with.  I am thankful to have the opportunity to be part of the team working on how our university survives and thrives during these challenging times.

I am thankful for all the healthcare workers who risk their lives treating everyone.  I am thankful for everyone working in the food, pharma, and personal care supply chain and retail stores that ensure the flow of groceries and goods are not interrupted.

I am sorry for the pain and anguish being felt by my countrymen in Armenia and Artsakh.  Regional politics and war that has put them in jeopardy and ripped a large part of Artsakh from us.  I pray for a positive result, even though the cards are stacked against us. 

With the Christmas Season approaching, Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to reflect on the blessings in our life.  When we also see the struggles of people around us and around the world, it is a good time to pray with greater passion for Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

Çidem İnç: Şun Şan Orti Erdoğan

 

Erdogan make the handsign of the
ultranationalist and racist Grey Wolves

This man, this Armenian hater, this self-proclaimed modern Enver Paşa and Sultan Selim I, this megalomanic Erdoğan is a dangerous son of a bitch.  He is our enemy and a most dangerous one at that.

He helped and gave haven to Isis to launch attacks in Syria including the Armenian villages of Kessab.  We protested and nothing was done about it by anybody. In Washington, DC, he ordered his thug bodyguards to attack and beat-up Armenians protesting against him.  We protested, congressmen and senators were outraged, and… nothing really came of it.  The US greatly relied upon Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria.  They fought valiantly and how did the US repay them?  We let Turkish forces attack them.  I have to emphasize, we the US let him get away with his bodyguards attacking US citizens protesting in the capital of our country.  We not only let him, but apparently sanctioned him, to attack our Kurdish allies.

What hold does this man have over the US?  We are still suffering from the policy set by Admiral Mark Bristol in the 1920s making Turkey an ally and ignoring or, at best, paying lip service to Armenian interests.  It was bad enough before Erdoğan.  It is horrible with him and the US doesn’t seem to waiver from this supposed “ally” when it really counts.  Erdoğan gets bolder and bolder in his Ottoman aspirations and we seem to look away.  Why?

As Armenians in the US, we are active and interested in pursuing recognition of and restitution for the Armenian Genocide from the Turkish government.  We woke to this mission in 1965 commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the 1915 Genocide.  Since then. We have learned to lobby.  We dedicate vast sums of money and time on this.  We have improved our efforts and influence as we became more educated and influential in this country.  But, we are only influential to a small degree.  We have pushed for Congress to pass Genocide Resolutions.  We have endorsed Presidential candidates who have promised to call what happened a Genocide.  The best we got is President Obama’s “Medz Yeghern.”  Biden gave the same promise this year.  I hope he does but my expectations are low.

It seems much longer, but it was just one year ago that resolutions were passed in Congress recognizing the Genocide.  On October 29, 2019 that The Resolution Affirming the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide (H.Res. 296) was passed by the House.  Then on December 12, the Senate passed The Resolution Expressing the Sense of the Senate that it is the Policy of the United States to Commemorate the Armenian Genocide Through Official Recognition and Remembrance (S.Res. 150).  Trump, not surprisingly, did not acknowledge these resolutions. 

It was a great moment for Armenians in this country.  We were ecstatic. After years of dedicated effort, we finally got a resolution passed.  It may, however, have not been entirely the result of Armenian efforts.  I believe this was Congress’s way of protesting Erdoğan’s attacks on our Kurdish allies in Syria especially given Trump’s allowing, evening sanctioning, such a thing.  It was an easy way to make a statement against this despot.

Erdoğan was none too happy with these resolutions.

Here we are a year later and Azerbaijan with significant Turkish support attacked, killed Armenians, displaced other Armenians, and took ancestral lands that the rest of the world thinks belong to them.  Was this Erdoğan’s reaction to the passing of these resolutions?  Was this revenge? 

We spent fifty-four years to have two resolutions passed that the President did not endorse and in essence got us only a feeling of satisfaction.  One year later, Erdoğan showed us that what really matters is force and the ability defend ourselves.  We have yet to learn the lesson Khrimian Hayrig taught us.

Chidem Inch: Tears for Artsakh

 

 

Armenian around the world have been worrying themselves sick since September 27 when Azerbaijan with the aid of Turkey and Turkey funded Syrian mercenaries started an all out war with the Armenians over the region known as Nogorno Kharabagh.  We were collectively worried, and with good reason, at the disparity in population and more so on the level of military spending by Azerbaijan.  Adding Turkey’s military might to the mix made things seem even more daunting. 

Given the hatred the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan have had and demonstrated, Turkey since the Ottoman days and Azerbaijan since the fall of the Soviet Union, we were all justifiably worried that the hatred would again turn genocidal resulting in the brutal slaughter of Armenians. 

The Armenians in the diaspora rallied.  We rallied and united like never before.  Crisis, extreme life or death crisis, has a way of doing that.  This was not the Armenian Highlands in 1915.   The Armenians in the Diaspora are of means to lobby governments and raise millions of dollars in short order.  We lobbied, via letter, phone calls, and petitions, government leaders at all levels in the countries where we live to create awareness of what was happening in Kharabagh.  Beyond awareness we asked for, nay demanded, action to do what was right for the indigenous Armenian people of the region and right the wrong that Stalin did a century ago in giving this region and Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan.  We asked for legislation.  We protested to raise awareness.  We hoped for military and humanitarian aid and better yet military intervention to stop what the sheer lopsided numbers portended might happen.  We did not get legislation and certainly not the military aid. 

Our efforts were valiant, steadfast, and united.  I was never so proud of our people especially, those in my children’s generation.  Their fundraising and presence on social media was impressive.

During all of this time, in Artsakh (yes, I know, I use the names Arsakh and Kharabagh interchangeably), our soldiers there fought valiantly.  As my friend said, they were shooting down drones, sold to Azerbaijan by Israel and others, with pea shooters.  Their drones were more plentiful than our pea shooters were accurate.  The pounded our towns with artillery.  We killed tens to hundreds of their soldiers for each of ours that were martyred.  Yet, they kept coming.  The numbers not in our favor as we were well aware.  The Kharabaghtsis were awesome, brave, and valiant.

We were all expecting support from Armenia proper and Russia.  Russia was lost Azerbaijan, from a sphere of influence standpoint, to Turkey.  We all hoped to the point of assuming, they would support the Armenians and the independence of Artsakh.  They did not.  As per our history, the Armenians in Kharabagh were mostly on their own.  They were superior in tactics and determination; they fell short in numbers and armaments. 

On November 10, the war abruptly ended.  Shushi was about to fall and the Presidents of Armenia and Artsakh agreed to terms that were not favorable to the salt of the earth, Mamig and Babig, people of Artsakh.  It was a gut punch to all of us. 

I have no inside information on what happened behind the scenes.  My first reaction was that the big regional powers Turkey and Russia imposed terms on the Armenians.  The fall or imminent fall of Shushi seemed to trigger a cease fire and terms so quickly that I assumed they were already pre-arranged.

The result, Armenians were again on the short end of things and we are all sick about it.

It took me almost a week before I could write about this.  I will be writing about some more, I'm sure. 

The 2020 Presidential Election

 

 I am sitting in front of the TV glued to the election coverage.  It is, as of 9 pm CST, not clear if Trump will be re-elected or if Biden will be the next President.    I am guessing that we may not see a network make a prediction any time before 11 pm or maybe even midnight.

It is the not the same as four years ago… and it is kind of the same.

Four years ago, Donald Trump defied all odds.  He kept winning primaries.  He kept saying and doing outrageous things that would have normally blown-up any other candidate’s run.  His supporters actually liked him more for what they took as “bold leadership” or “telling it like it is.”  Hilary Clinton was unable to capitalize on them.  The polls all showed Clinton in the lead almost the whole campaign.  The lead did diminish as the election neared.  It was fun watching the pundits on every network dumbfounded by the results as they rolled in and showed traditionally Blue States go for Trump.  There was high entertainment value in watching the jubilant confusion on Fox News and totally shocked confusion on MSNBC. 

I wrote about it:  This Crazy Election Night.  I went to bed not knowing the result and woke up to a President Elect Trump… something I never thought I would see.

Part of the reason the polls were wrong and under-counted Trump is that, first, the polls were less accurate with caller ID and cell phones.  Second, people, especially younger people, just don’t answer their phones when pollsters call because they don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.  The polls were, in my view, skewed to older folks with home phones maybe without caller ID.  There was another factor that came to me after the election:  the seems to be a large number of Trump supporters that won’t admit to others, even pollsters, who they are for.  My views are not fact based but I think they are directionally correct.

Are things any different this time? 

I thought the polls showing Biden with double digit leads were accurate.  I expected the pollsters were more careful with their methods.

Then, I read an Op-Ed article in today’s Wall Street Journal:  What Pollsters Miss About Trump by William McGurn.  The article was about a retired pollster, Matt Towery.  He believes that Trump will win again. 

Mr. Towery dismisses polls showing huge leads for Joe Biden because the state races will be tight and their models aren’t that good at “picking up the average guy on the street.” Cellphones have only made it harder to get a good representative sample, especially from young people.

“How many young people do you know who will answer a call from an unknown number on their cellphones and happily spend the next 20 minutes answering questions?” he asks.

Matt Towery seems like a smart fellow.  Maybe I say this because we both agree.  It is 11:40 pm right now and the election has not been settled.  MSNBC has Biden leading in the electoral vote 205 to 165.  On Fox News, it is Biden 237 to 213.  CNN has Biden 215 to 165.

We will not know the result soon.  It is engaging but not nearly as exciting as 2016.

More to follow, I am sure.