A Great Detroit Lions Season

 

I am watching the Detroit Lions playoff game against the Washington Commanders.  There is about 6 minutes left in the game and… it will take a miraculous finish for the Lions to win.  The Commanders are leading 44-28.  As the camera pans fans in the stands at Ford Field, the Lions fans have the look all fans have when things look hopeless in a game they were expecting to win.  

The problem with championship playoffs is that every team but one loses their last game of the season.  The Lions are about to lose theirs.

Growing up in Detroit.  I was excited about all the home teams.  I loved the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions.  Every year, at the beginning of any of their seasons, I had great expectations for these teams as any kid does.  During my formative years and continuing until 2022, the Lions were at best unimpressive and for the great majority of the time they were simply awful.  Year after year of consistent disappoint turn my youthful passion and exuberance for the home team into ambivalence. 

When I moved to Connecticut in 1990 and the New York Giants won the Super Bowl that year, it was pretty easy for me to become a Giants fan.  When Tom Brady led the Patriots to a Super Bowl win in 2002, I became a Patriots fan.  Now that I live in Chicago, I follow the Bears.

I always kept an eye on the Lions, however.  Detroit roots run deep.  Sometimes I would feel a twinge of that youthful passion and exuberance for the Lions when it looked like they might finally be turning the corner.  But, the Lions, as I was prone to say, “never disappointed” in that they were consistently bad.

The TV just showed the banner of the last NFL Championship.  It was in 1957, ten years before the Super Bowl era.  In 1957, I was only 4 years old. 

I remember at the start of this season, there was a lot of buzz and predictions from the pundits that Lions would be in the Super Bowl this year.  I was excited too, because the previous year the Lions were 12-5 and were really looking good.  I knew they would be as good or better than last year.  I was hoping this year would be the year they got to and won the Super Bowl but, I wasn’t predicting or counting on that happening, however. 

Sadly, their season ended tonight.  The Commanders won 45-31.

The Lions are a good football team.  They had an amazing season amassing a 15-2 regular season record, winning the NFC North Division, and earning a #1 seed in the playoffs.  Dan Campbell is an inspiring and driven coach that molded this team into a tough, gritty, and hard driving team.  In the end, it was clear that having 18 players on the injured reserve, mostly on defense, finally caught up with them.

I am disappointed with the loss.  I am disappointed for the city and the fans that showed so much passion and exuberance for the Lions.  But it nothing like the chronic disappointment I wrote of above.  They had a great season, and I sure hope they have turned the corner and continue to excel.

Welcome, Lilly Torosyan

Originally published in the Armenian Weekly

In the same week that the Armenian Weekly published my piece thanking editor emeritus Pauline Getzoyan for her five years of stewardship of the Weekly, I read the first piece by our new editor Lilly Torosyan.

My first thought was one simple word: “Wow.” Lilly can write. Lilly weaved a beautiful piece, threading many familial and national themes into a poetic tapestry, to mark her taking the helm of this venerable paper. We gained insight into her family, rooted to the recent history of our nation, in the eyes of her grandfather. We learned of Lenin’s despicable response to Shaumian and Andranik’s request for weapons. She invoked Raphael Patkanian, James Baldwin, Zahrad, Siamanto and Tigran Hamasyan. While Lilly’s tapestry is beautifully crafted, it is also bluntly serious, as is the last century and half of our history.

My second thought was, “Oh boy, not only will I have to sharpen my pen, but I will have to sharpen my wit, expand my vocabulary and seriously mine for deeper metaphors to keep up with our new editor.” I don’t think this was her intent. I believe she was just writing in her natural and gifted voice. But in doing so, there was a tug on, a tightening of, the creative tension that anyone who contributes to the Weekly probably felt. It was an invitation to step it up, to take things to a new level. This is the kind of thing any organization, including a weekly newspaper, needs in order to refine the organizational ethos and nurture continuous improvement.

The Weekly has a long and proud history. The editors, their staff and contributors have defined the quality of the paper and forged this proud history. The editor is the leader, of course, in this regard. We face existential concerns, rooted in Nakhichevan, Karabakh, Zangezur and whatever the unholy alliance Turkey and Azerbaijan are planning as their next step. The role of the Weekly is to buoy our part of the diaspora in these rough seas as we contribute however we can to ameliorating our national plight. We, the larger Weekly community, also need to support our local communities and organizations, especially those of our youth, like the AYF and HMEM, to keep our community viable, vibrant and cohesive.

Pauline Getzoyan felt all of this intensely in her tenure as editor. Lilly Torosyan feels it with the same passion. Pauline inspired and encouraged folks like me to want to contribute more to the Weekly. Lilly has certainly picked up where Pauline left off and has taken a very good first step in charting her own course. 

Welcome, Lilly, and best wishes for a long and successful term as editor.

Who Said What?

 

I watched a movie, The Big Short (2015), which presented the Hollywood version of the subprime meltdown in 2007 that arguably triggered The Great Recession.   It was a very well-done and engaging film with a star-studded cast that included:  Steve Carell (Mark Baum), Christian Bale (Michael Burry), Ryan Gosling (Jared Vennett), and Brad Pitt (Ben Rickert).  All the characters portrayed by these stars were based on real people but only Christian Bale’s character, Michael Burry, used the character’s real name.  The movie is fast paced, gripping and each of these actors does a great job. 

There was a Mark Twain quote at the beginning of the movie: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”  It resonated with me, as quotes are prone to do.  I reversed the video, hit stop and took a photo of it.  It was a very cool quote. 

I did an internet search to find a graphic for the inevitable bloggy bit I was going to write about this.  There were graphics of the quote but there were articles, as well, that state that Mark Twain never said this.  This is the problems with quotes found on the internet… anything found on the internet.  How can we be sure the luminary said what the beautiful graphics on quotation websites attribute them as saying?  In my case, I simply trust the websites which is a bit risky.  Case in point, in my New Year's Day 2025 post, I wanted to include a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  It is beautiful and direct.  The problem is that it has never been verified he ever wrote or said this.  But dang if Albert Einstein doesn’t give the good quote more gravity and force then say Rita Mae Brown who actually first uttered the phrase.  Rita Mae who?  Get the idea?  Rita Mae Brown is a civil rights, feminist, and LGBT activist and writer.  She has a reputation but nowhere near that of Einstein’s.

The New Republic addressed the same issue in a December 29, 2015 article by Alex Shephard, “’It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble,’ which must be why The Big Short opens with a fake Mark Twain quote.”  The article claims that the closest that Mark Twain ever came to this was, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”  It also attributes a different version of the quote to one Josh Billings (1818-1885), a humorist and lecturer.  The New Republic article noted that the quote used by Michael Lewis in his book, on which the movie is based, is from Leo Tolstoy in a 1897 essay, “The Kingdom of God is Within You.” 

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

The New Republic article states that the Tolstoy quote is good but cumbersome to the one falsely attributed to Mark Twain. 

So why the fake quote?  Movies need something move things along and quotes need to be  pithy.  The Tolstoy quote has 55 words, the questionable Twain quote has 21.  Who’s going to read the longer more complex quote that takes longer to read and digest than the shorter folksier easier to digest fake Twain quote.  A post on reddit noted, “This is done to show that people will make things up and you will believe them. Just as the big banks and ratings agencies did before the Financial Crisis of 2008.”  This sounds like as good a theory as any. 

Of course there is my favorite quote of all time…

 

Thank you, Pauline Getzoyan

 

Recently in an email exchange with Pauline Getzoyan about a piece I had written for the Weekly, she closed her email with, “I have some news to share with you and I’d rather tell you over the phone than via email.” Having been around the corporate and organizational block a few times, I knew she was going to tell me she was stepping down as the editor of the Weekly.

I got a little sad. 

Part of the sadness was the unknown about who would take over, what their leadership style would be, where they might want to take the paper, et cetera, yev eylin. It is a natural part of the change and turnover that occurs with greater frequency these days. We have to get used to it and manage. Heck, I have worked in fields where the job was to change and improve organizations. Change is inevitable.

The greater part of the sadness was simply that Pauline was so good at being the editor of the Weekly.  She was easy — actually, wonderful — to work with. Working on the AYF Olympics Special Issue with her for five years was a great pleasure. We met as a team, and there was constant communication between the writers and editorial staff. It was more collaborative than ever, and that is not to take anything away from previous editors. With Pauline, it was just more of a joy.

Pauline has made the print edition cleaner and more visually appealing. The website has become a vibrant go-to news source with more original content. Her leadership style and team-building skills are exemplary.

Pauline is the kind of editor who nurtures and encourages writers and contributors. She edits to make the writing better, not just to cut content to accommodate a layout. She asks questions and provides feedback in a way that not only makes you a better writer but also makes you want to write more. This last skill is truly a gift. It cannot be taught in any school. It is an innate trait. 

Pauline presided over the paper in very tough times for the Armenian nation: the Artsakh war of 2020, the ensuing blockade and the fall of the Republic of Artsakh in 2023. We talked about these sad events and existential implications for the Republic of Armenia. These events weighed heavily on her heart, as they did for many of us. Pauline led her team and kept us all informed with reporting online and in print. She also knew how important it was to help our community, the readers of the Weekly, regroup and appreciate what it means to be Armenian in the Diaspora. She sought out and encouraged articles that focused on this, as well.

James Mandalian, Jimmy Tashjian and Khatchig Mouradian were great editors and stewards of the Hairenik Weekly and Armenian Weekly. They all had longer tenures, but Pauline’s contribution in five short years puts her right up there with these editors. 

In each and every AYF Olympic Ad Book, Mal Varadian’s family presents his tenet and charge for all of us: “Make it better than it was.” I think Pauline has indeed “made it better than it was.”  Brava and thank you, Pauline. 

--

Originally published in the Armenian Weekly

New Year's Day 2025

A beautiful sentiment
sent by my friend Mike Adajian

 

It is the start of a new year… another new year. 

As of today, we are a quarter of the way through this 21^st century. 

Traditionally, I would be writing about all the things I want to do and accomplish this year.  Over time, that has been less and less the theme of these New Year’s Day posts.

In 2019, I posted my New Year piece on January 3^rd.  It was titled In the Time of Your Life.  It focused on the prelude to William Saroyan’s award-winning play, The Time of Your Life.  Like many a great writer, Saroyan’s were impactful and probably something I should read more often, at least every New Year’s Day.  Saroyan’s words put this whole thing into a perspective that resonates with me. 

My 2020 post was written two months before the COVID-19 Pandemic hit and disrupted everything.  The Dawn of a New Year and Decade was more reflective and full of the contentment and joy that comes from hanging out with one’s grandchildren.  Later that year, my hopeful naivete really shined in a May 1, 2020 post, Contagion: Promise of Utopia?  I really thought there was a chance that impact of the pandemic would unite us all.  Talk about naivete.

Was it folly or wrong to be hopeful?  It was certainly a normative perspective… focus on the way things should be rather than the way things are.  It is folly for not knowing it was a normative aspiration.  It is never folly for being hopeful.  Hope, dreams, aspirations drive the world.  This happens on a global scale and for each of us in our personal communities. 

What am I getting at here?

That is a really good question.

It is the dawn of a new year.  It is an arbitrary marker, but it is marker like one’s birthday, and the start of a new school year.  It is a good time to reflect and assess where one is and where we want to be.  It is a good time as any to set some goals, resolutions, whatever you want to call them.  They may be new goals or goals that you have set many times but have not made much progress at.  It is OK to be hopeful for yourself.  Try again.  To paraphrase Winston Churchull, “Never give up.”  Remember the words of the great comedic sage, Jerome “Curly” Howard (or a script writer): “If at first you don’t succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed.”  It’s also good to keep the words attributed to Albert Einstein in mind, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Honestly, these New Year’s hopes and resolutions are for the most part personal, about ourselves.  Sure, over the holidays we tend to thing on a larger scale when wishing for Peace on Earth.  New Year’s Day signals the end of the holidays that began with Thanksgiving.  We prepare ourselves to return to work in earnest and set personal goals for ourselves include the infamous resolutions.  The resolutions are filled with dedication and hope on New Year’s Day even though most are quickly forgotten in a few weeks.

Today, this first day of 2025, a violent act in New Orleans forced a larger, global, perspective in today’s reflections and planning.  In the early hours of the morning, a rented truck drove into the reveling crowds of Bourbon St. and killed at least 15 and injured 35.  The gunman had an ISIS flag in the truck.  The FBI is considering this an act of terrorism and suspect it was not a sole act.  Hours later, a rented Tesla Cyber Truck started smoking, caught fire, and exploded outside a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.

This only reminds us on this day of setting personal objectives and resolutions that we need to think globally as well.  The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the starvation and displacement issues in Gaza and the Sudan were brought front of mind today with these violent acts.  The setting of personal goals and resolutions were shelved worrying about the dangerous state of world we live and how we might realize that utopian goal of Peace on Earth.

      If only…