August 2009: For Love of the Music

One of my favorite letters was the August 2004 letter entitled: Memories of August Festivals (http://thissideoffifty.blogspot.com/2009/01/august-2004-memories-of-august.html). It was in two parts, the first was about the famous Woodstock Music and Arts festival which took place in August of 1969. The second part, which truly makes this letter memorable to me, was about the Blessing of the Grapes picnic of the St. Sarkis Armenian Church in Dearborn, MI which my church until 1990.

The reason I love that letter is because it was special for me to capture the atmosphere of those Grape Blessing picnics. Central to that experience was the music and musicians that had an incredible effect on me and lured me into this world of Armenian Kef style music.

Growing up, I thought I wanted to play the clarinet. It was an obvious choice. All I heard around my house were the tapes from my maternal grandmother’s brother Samuel. He was a clarinet player. He played the folk songs in the real old country style from where our family was from in Turkey. My Father was and is a huge fan of Hachig Kazarian, the great Detroit born clarinet player who now lives in Las Vegas. I really wanted to play the clarinet and I really wanted to play the music that Samuel and Hachig played.

It did not work out that way. In fifth grade, when it was time to take music lessons in the fifth grade, I signed up for clarinet. I was very excited and knew this was the first step to virtuosity, fame, and playing the music that I loved. The very first thing the instructor, Mr. Magnus I believe, did was give a tonality test. He played some notes on the piano and we had to hum them back. I was so excited; I completely messed up this simple test and was rejected. REJECTED which rhymes so well with dejected which is what I was.

After about two weeks of dejection, my friend Mike Steele was going to violin lessons. He knew I was unhappy about the clarinet experience so he invited me to come and try the violin. I wanted to play something, so I went along. Mr. Ara Zerounian, an Armenian, was the teacher. He gave me the same simple test. I easily passed and voila, I was playing the violin – not the clarinet.

I seriously considered and believed I would be a concert violinist and perhaps even a composer, heck; I was taking lessons from Ara Zerounian who trained the Kafafian sisters and Michael Ouzounian. In fact, I took lessons from Michael Ouzounian for $2 a half hour. Who is Michael Ouzounian? Well after surviving his failed attempt to improve my violin technique, he went on to Julliard and became the principal violist in the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera.

When my attention span and love of the violin waned, I drifted a few months or years musically before really and truly buying into the American male teenage musical dream. I thought I would take up the guitar. Ah yes, chords, rock and roll, Beatles songs, and ripping screaming guitar solos. I would woo the ladies with my renderings of Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell songs. I would master the classical, folk, and rock styles. I had decided to eschew jazz, only because I realized I could truly master three styles. Four would have just been too much and truly unattainable. Oh yes, I forgot that I had decided to do all of this without taking one lesson on the guitar. Come on, this was the America of the 1960s a time when cock-eyed optimism was still very much alive in these United States and self initiative and desire was all that was needed to do any damned thing one wanted to do.

Predictably, that dream leveled out at the same lame level as my guitar playing skills. That’s OK. It was fun for the year or so that it lasted.

Then, in the storybook fashion of this tale, I was at an Armenian dance at St. Sarkis. I asked the oud player, I believe Ed Shargabian, how he tuned the oud. The next day, for pure kicks, I tuned my guitar like an oud. I tried playing a few Armenian tunes I knew. Wow. I liked it. I liked it a lot. In short order, I was playing a dozen songs. Nothing special, but I was hooked. Ed Shargabian lent me my first oud and became a friend and mentor until his untimely passing in a car accident.

That music had been all around me growing up. My father tells me a few stories of when I was a baby. First, my paternal grandfather showed my father my little hands and commented that I had long fingers and would be a concert pianist. Secondly, my grandfather would play Udi Hrant’s soulful lament, Agin, on the family record player. I would lift my head and look around. It was an even more significant sign of the role this music would play in my life. I truly believe I was more startled or intrigued with the unique raspy voice of the great master than anything else.

The music was an obsession of both sides of my family. My maternal Aunt Suzie who taught modern dance at the university level, taught folk dancing at Saturday Armenian School at St. Sarkis. She single handedly made sure that our generation knew all the village dances that the first generation of immigrants brought with them. This included the Laz Bar, the dance of the Laz peoples, for which my maternal Grandfather, Levon, was considered the master. We learned the dances of Van, Kghi, Erzeroum, and Sepastia. She formed a dance group and we performed at our church and ethnic festivals around Detroit. This helped solidify the roll of this music in my lfie. Truly, I never really had any illusions of being a great dancer. I liked it a lot, but knew my limitations.

I have also written about my maternal Grandmother’s brother Samuel. He had a band in Aleppo, Syria where he settled after the Genocide. He would send us reel to reel tapes of his very Kharpert style of clarinet playing. This and the constant Armenian, Turkish, and Greek music my father played in the house as I grew up. I was definitely conditioned and pre-disposed to this music. I also believe there is a genetic component. I believe it is in the core of my DNA. Yes, I know, I was probably conditioned but it is most definitely core.

This passion for the music is a something we call kef. It is a word in Armenian, Turkish, and Arabic. We refer to someone smitten with kef as a kefji. The word varies from something spiritual and soulful to an exuberance for partying.

I am not alone. My good friend and talented drummer Mike Mossoian once summed it up, as only he could say, “If I wake up one day and was no longer a kefji, just shoot me.” He was speaking not to any ethnic or even cultural arrogance though Lord knows we Armenians are entirely capable of this. He was speaking of his love of the music. If he woke up and no longer liked the music, his life would be empty. Indeed it would be, for him, for me, and for many others I know.

Ed Arvanigian: On August 7th, Judy and I drove to Detroit to attend the birthday party for a great friend, a pure kefji, and musical mentor: Ed Arvanigian. This birthday party was mostly a gathering of family and friends at his daughter Kari’s house in Dearborn. It was a beautiful summer evening, very comfortable, you could say perfect for an outdoor party.

Ed is such a kefji and such a fixture in the music scene in Detroit, there had to be a band. The band were all my friends and from my generation: Tom Gerjekian, John Harotian, Mike Mossoian, Kraig Kuchukian, Greg Nigosian, and myself. At one time, with Tommy, Greg, and I playing there were three oud players. There were only two musicians of Ed’s generation: Kelly Kuchukian the long time oud player in the Hye Tones band and Simon Javizian a wonderful clarinet player and leader of the Ardziv Band. Yes, Kelly is the father of Kraig who played keyboard that night.

Ed loves the music, especially the Turkish music, of his parents’ generation. Basically, that is all we played. That is all we wanted to play. Sadly, the call for this music is less and less with each passing year. At most Armenian venues, the performance of Turkish music is banned and will cause a pretty strong reaction if played. Oddly, because of this most Armenians can no longer even recognize Turkish songs if they are not sung… so, we sneak them in. Also, a lot of Armenian popular music coming from California and Armenia is simply Turkish songs overlaid with Armenian words. It simply is what it is… as they say.

That night, for Ed, we played and sang the old songs. Mostly Ed and Kelly sang them. It was a total blast and very touching. We began playing Ipek Siyah Mantolu, coincidently my father’s favorite song. There is still a huge smile on my face when I write this. Ed and Kelly recognized the song from the open chords and like little children, eighty year old little children mind you, ran, at a surprisingly fast waddle, up to the microphone to belt out this song together. The music provided the same level of inspiration, excitement, devotion, feeling, elation, and kef no matter how old. If this music gets under your skin or in your soul, you are a devotee for life. It becomes part of your life bordering on your way of life. I truly hope that when I am 80 or more, I have the same kef spirit as Eddie and Kelly. (In the photo, Eddie has the orange glasses with his arm around Kelly.)

The musicians that evening all commented on how such parties once the norm are few and far between these days. Sure, we all have ALL the recordings in our iPods. But, a solo party between ones ears and a live band, open bar, mezza table, social event are two very different things. I can see why Sufis and some Alevis view music as a central part of their spirituality.

John Bilezikjian: I had actually planned to dedicate this entire letter to my friend and oud virtuoso John Bilezikjian. While he is not the only person I know that makes a living playing the oud, he is the only person I know making a good living playing the oud. (In the above photo, John is pictured with his 1900 Manolis Venios oud. Manol is considered the Stradivarius of oud makers.)

Yet, this is how my letter writing goes. Even when I am lucky enough to have a topic, or think I have a topic, at the beginning of the month, things change as the month unfolds. I did not think I would be in Detroit for Ed Arvanigian’s party and how it would influence me as I began to think about what I wanted to say about John and this music we love.

I will not burden you with a biography of John. His website is rich with his biography and significant number of recordings, film and TV work, and collaborations with such luminaries such as Placido Domingo and Leonard Cohen. Take a look and be impressed: http://dantzrecords.com/info.htm. There is also a wonderful article on John in the Gilded Serpent, an e-zine dedicated to Middle Eastern Music, Dance, Belly Dancing: http://www.gildedserpent.com/art42/artemisjohnb.htm.

First and foremost, John is a very nice man. He is sincere and easy going. Talking and being with John is so casual that I often forget just how accomplished and what an awesome talent John is.

In preparing this segment of this letter, I was amazed at everything John has done when I read both of the above weblinks. He did three international tours with Leonard Cohen. He has performed and written music in films like The French Connection, Schindler’s List, and others. If you hear an oud on a television show or commercial, it is probably John playing. He has performed with both the LA Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Pops. He mostly performs on the oud but is a master of the bouzouki, saz, mandolin, balalaika, and the violin. He was even the first to have conceived and craft a flat backed oud. He has even written an Oud Method book that is published in the Hal Leonard series of Method Books.

John is incredible. He has countless recordings from belly dance to Sephardic albums. My favorite is Music of the Armenian Diaspora. John plays two ouds and performs songs that define the Armenian-American experience for me. It is beautiful. If you are only going to listen to one thing, listen to this youtube link. This is a posting from John’s album The Magic of John Bilezikjian. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLBqEr9hOk

It is Bekledim de Gelmedim, a classic Turkish waltz by written by Yesari Akim Arsoy. Listen to John’s velvet voice and beautiful oud. Too bad you cannot hear him dedicate it to his grandmother as he does on the album. It was her favorite song.

As you can hear in the youtube, John has developed a unique style of playing the oud based on his chord system for the oud. Because of this, John can play almost any gig by himself and fill the place with just his oud and voice. He has a style of alternating between chording and melody that I swear sounds like he is doing both at the same time. Classical guitar players actually do both at the same time using every finger on their right hand to pluck the strings. John does it with a pick.

Other oud players do things that are pretty impressive. I hear a run here or trill there and can imagine doing it even if I cannot actually execute the maneuver. I have heard John do things that I cannot even imagine doing. Very cool and very impressive.

John knows the music. At the aforementioned Ed Arvanigian birthday party, Kelly sang a song a Turkish classic, Indim Yarin Bahçesine. I love that song and tried to look for the words on-line. There are many songs with that title but different words. So I cut and pasted the words I thought were right into an e-mail and sent them to John. A few minutes later we were on the phone. I told John that I was looking for the 9/8 song that Udi Hrant used to sing. John said, “oh yes, the Ismail Dede Efendi song” referring to the great Turkish composer.

Who among my peers would know this? Others might have pockets of knowledge but John for sure would know. He is a tremendous student of the music and an untapped wealth of knowledge.

John Bilezikjian is both a major talent and a friend. The friendship part differentiates him from almost every other major talent in our niche of the music world. There are people who might help others when asked but you know not to ask for too much or too often. There are others that you know way better than to ask for anything because it would just give them a great opportunity to say “NO!” accompanied by some belittling editorializing.

Not everyone appreciates John, however. In the countless and pointless arguments I have heard by the dwindling fan base of Armenian-American kefjis, many believe John has changed the style and purity of the core music. I used to think that to a degree. I was an idiot and gladly admit that now.

I have never heard John speak negatively about anyone.

There is a great memory of when John was in Detroit in the 1980s. He was at a picnic we were playing at. I invited him to play as he does any time I visit a club he is playing at. He dazzled the crowd. My beloved maternal Grannie called me over and said, “Vy you don’ play like dat?” I answered simply, “I ask myself the same question every day.”

July 2009: Newspapers

Maybe I should be writing about Armené and Michael’s wedding in this letter. But, it is too soon. I am basking, yet, in the glow but it is too soon. Plus, we have another wedding in September. I should wait until after Aram and Anoush’s wedding in September. Maybe I will write about the weddings in my December letter.

It was, however, on the way home, on the plane, from Armené’s wedding weekend that the idea for this month’s letter came to me. I was reading an interesting profile on Carlos Slim Helú in the June 1, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. The wealthy Mexican investor, it seems is in position to take ownership of the venerable New York Times.

Back in January of this year, Slim lent the newspaper $250 million. The paper needed cash desperately as they were over $1 billion in debt. Carlos Slim negotiated some very tough terms as he usually does which included getting warrants on 15.9 million shares of the Times Company. So with the stroke of a few pens and the electronic transfer of funds, Carlos Slim Helú became the New York Times’ “largest creditor and was poised to become one its largest stockholders – after members of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan, which has controlled the Times since 1896.”

Whoa… back up. The New York Times was over $1 billion in debt and in such dire straits that they agreed to loan from what some consider a Mexican robber baron of Lebanese descent. How could this institution, a national newspaper, the definitive source of news, the unofficial newspaper of record, be on the verge of going under? How can that happen?

Well it is happening to newspapers all across the country. Readership and subscriptions are down. Advertising revenues are down. Literally, the physical dimension of the paper has shrunk. On the other hand, the prices of newspapers are going up but not nearly at the rate that loses and debt are multiplying.

The reasons for this are not hard to figure out. Electronic media are eating into market share of print media if not making them outright obsolete. There are several 24/7 all news channels on television. Almost every cell phone can access Google, Yahoo, or something equivalent. It is incredibly easy and convenient to look things up on a whim. It is even easier with an iPhone or Blackberry.

I am not immune to the convenience of the Internet: I was in St. Louis playing music the weekend of July 18-19. On the drive back on Sunday the 19th, we were discussing how dangerous the use of cell phones was while driving. In a matter of seconds, I had a New York Times article on the subject on my Blackberry and was quoting statistics to my friends. The article was very current. It was from that day’s paper. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/technology/19distracted.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=distraction%20driving&st=cse

Ironically that day’s New York Times was waiting for me at home. I never saw the print article. I got home around 6 pm, had other things to do, and I was tired. I only read the Week in Review section of the paper. The next day the paper went into the recycling bin 90% unread. I hate when that happens, it seems like such a waste. On Tuesday, trash pick-up day, the Sunday paper, the only day I have home delivery was on its way to being recycled.

On that same Tuesday, I read an email from my cousin David Gavoor. He forwarded a link to the cover story of the Sunday New York Times Magazine entitled “This Boy’s Appetite” by Frank Bruni the restaurant critic for the paper. The article, which I have yet to read, is an excerpt from his forthcoming book and outlines his lifelong battle with his love of overeating. In this case I copy/pasted the entire article and saved it to read at my leisure as the hard copy magazine was already gone. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19bruni-t.html?emc=eta1

I love the convenience of the internet. Information, news, opinions, statistics are at the tip of my fingers via my laptop or Blackberry. These were cases from the past two days. By providing the link, anyone reading this can be reading the same articles in a matter of seconds and few clicks. In the old days, David would have had to cut out the article, or photocopy it, and mail it to me. I would have gotten the information a week or so later versus the few minutes the scenario I described took.

Newspaper Memories: There is something iconic about reading a real newspaper. As a young boy, I recall my Mother’s father Levon reading the Hairenik, the Armenian Daily newspaper that has since become a weekly. I recall my parents reading the Detroit Free Press. We had home delivery of the Free Press. So there was always a newspaper in our home. The tradition of seven day home delivery continued when I got married and moved into first an apartment and then our home. It stopped when we moved to Connecticut. I bought my daily papers at the train station and had weekend home delivery.

I recall there being three major newspapers in Detroit: the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, and the Detroit Times. I never read the Detroit Times. It closed when I was in grade school. The Detroit Times was sold to the Detroit News. For a short period, the News had both mastheads but only to provide some comfort and ease the rebranding to the readers and subscribers of the Times.

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News were the two papers I remembered most. The Free Press was a morning paper. The Detroit News was an evening paper. I believe the News was the more popular paper. Men used to come home, have dinner and then read the paper. During my youth, television news which was primarily an evening event made the evening newspaper obsolete. The print news was always older than what was being broadcast on the television at 6 pm. The News continued as an evening paper but eventually succumbed to reality and became a morning paper. It had to do that to stay both relevant and viable.

I remember the era of paperboys. Some of my classmates were making $10-20 a week delivering anywhere from 25 to 50+ newspapers by bicycle. That was pretty big money for teenagers back then. They had rugged bicycles that would be called cruisers today with big baskets to carry their newspapers. They would meet at a central location where a truck would drop off bundles of papers. The newsboys in the district would unbundle the papers, take their allotment, and fold them to facilitate throwing them onto or somewhere near the front porches of their customers as they would ride by. Once a week or fortnight, they would have to collect from their customers.

The Free Press boys were up and out at five in the morning. The Detroit News boys were busy from the time school let out until dinner. They did this seven days a week, year round, no matter what the weather. They were out in the rain and frigid cold of the Detroit winters. I often thought about trying to do the job, there was some allure to it. But, honestly, it was a more demanding job than I wanted to tackle.

Newspapers today are delivered by adults in cars. I am not sure the last time I saw newspapers delivered by a teenager on a bicycle.

When I began working at Ford Motor Company in 1976, everyone seemed to bring a newspaper to work with them. I did the same. I remember my boss would sit at his desk at lunch with his sack lunch and read the Detroit Free Press for the full lunch hour. He would peruse every page.
When I was in Connecticut and took the train into Manhattan, the newspaper was part of the ritual both ways. I read New York Times or the Wall Street Journal in the morning and the Daily News or New York Post on the way home. I was amazed by how the real seasoned pros would fold the Wall Street Journal in half lengthwise and read the entire paper that way turning each page, in essence twice. It was an art form. It made it so you never had to intrude into your seat mates space when you turned the page. The column layout of the paper actually facilitated this.

Shrinking Size, Rising Prices: Over the past few years as this newspaper crisis has developed two things have happened. Almost every paper, certainly all of the papers I know of, have shrunk in size and doubled in newsstand prices.

Literally the USA Today and New York Times are smaller. The page size is smaller; I am guessing 10 to 15% smaller in terms of length and width. The Boston Globe was 75¢ on weekdays. In April, the price was hiked to $1 in the city zone and $1.50 further out. The USA Today started off at 50¢ and stayed that way for many years. It went up to 75¢ a few years ago and this past October, it went to $1. Just recently, the New York Times jacked up prices from $1.50 to $2 for the weekday paper no matter what region. On Sundays, the New York Times now costs a whopping $5 in and around New York City and $6 elsewhere. On May 8, 2009, the Wall Street Journal put it quite simply: “These days, newspapers are scrambling to remain relevant - and solvent. The Times is betting that people will be willing to pay more money to read the editions.”

It is a simply a sign of the changing times. Circulation is down. Advertising is down. Prices therefore have to go up. Because advertising is down, the papers simply have less pages. They are not as thick. The Sunday New York Times used to be three inches thick and laden with full color advertising supplements. The Sunday Times is now about the thickness the weekday papers used to be.

Early some morning, go and buy a paper from a newspaper box, the kind you have to put coins in and open the door to get a paper. First, it may be harder to find than you might imagine. If you do find one, you will be surprised at the very small number of papers in the stack. I remember when these boxes used to be full in the morning. Now, they only load them with four or five papers… even at train stations!

As Detroit is the experiencing the worst of this recession, it is no surprise that the Detroit newspapers are feeling the crunch the hardest. The two newspapers have a joint operating agreement i.e. use the same print plant to reduce costs. They print a joint Sunday paper. On December 18, 2008, much to the consternation of my parents, the Detroit Free Press announced it was going to only provide home delivery on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. These are the heaviest advertising days. This move was made with the expressed intent of encouraging more internet delivery.

The Detroit Times was sold to the Detroit News on November 8, 1960 and ceased publication immediately. The reasons given for the sale of the paper ring hauntingly true today: “The sale was necessary because costs such as labor, newsprint, supplies, and equipment have risen far more rapidly than revenues.” It would have even been more relevant to today’s situation if they had mentioned that television was part of the cause for lower revenues.

July 29, 2008: Today the August 3, 2009 issue of The New Yorker arrived. The June 1 issue was responsible for the topic of this letter. The August 3 issue motivated the inclusion of this section.

There was an article entitled “A New Page: Can the Kindle really improve on the book?” by Nicholson Baker. The article explored the wonders and woes of the Kindle (www.amazon.com/kindle) which is Amazon.com’s e-book. It is connected to the internet and can download books, newspapers, and magazines. The device is on its second generation which seems to have much more appeal than the first generation Kindle. The Kindle costs $299. At a mere 10 ounces and 8” x 5.3” x .36”, it is a sleek compact device and seems to be gaining traction in the marketplace.

Every time I see someone with them, I ask them what they think of the product. On my very unscientific sample of four, the reviews have been stellar. They love it. They say it was a great purchase. In The New Yorker article, there were similar glowing quotes from devoted users taken from the Amazon.com website e.g. “If I dropped my Kindle down a sewer, I would buy another one immediately.”

The cost to subscribe to the New York Times on the Kindle is $13.99 per month. The monthly cost for the Wall Street Journal is $14.99 and the USA Today is $9.99 a month. The monthly cost for The New Yorker magazine is $2.99 or 75¢. The cover price for the weekly magazine is $4.99 and the subscription price is 82¢. So, the Kindle media subscription prices are low but not as free as the internet.

The Kindle can hold 1,500 books. There are more than 300,000 books in the Kindle store. Amazing! I could amass more books, newspapers, and magazines at bargain prices. I would probably not read anymore than I do now but I would avoid the clutter. I would also forego the guilt of physically seeing unread books piling up in my library, bed stand, and other flat surfaces around the house.

The last thing I want to do is carry another electronic gadget and corresponding cords around in my briefcase. But, the Kindle takes up less space than a magazine and often I have a few magazines and a book that I am lugging around. The Kindle certainly has some advantages plus it has a bigger screen than my Blackberry. The product has a compelling value proposition.
What it is missing though, is the physical look, feel, and sound effects of a newspaper. I could and would probably read things on the Kindle. Heck, I read them on the itsy bitsy Blackberry screen and on my laptop. It is the feel of the paper, the crinkly sound of turning the pages, the need to re-assemble a section when you fall asleep and the paper slides off of your lap.

The physical paper and ink of books, newspapers, and magazines are tactile and comforting in a way rooted in my earliest memories. If they go away or are minimized, I will feel bad and miss them but they will be replaced by something better and cheaper.

I recall the nostalgic reminisces of my Mother regarding the heyday of radio broadcasts. Television made radio change to music and talk. It survived but in a new format. Television provided moving pictures and was in many ways superior. Yet, the nostalgia remains.
When the downtown Hudson’s Department Store closed in Detroit people were in an uproar. They had great memories of the place and were indignant to see the venue close down. Yet, not enough people shopped there to sustain the business. The corporation did what it had to do. The memories survive.

We love our icons. They provide great memories and root us. Any change can be unsettling but the change usually happens after we have already changed our habits. I call this blog/e-mail, a monthly letter because it evokes a memory more personal and handwritten.

I do not read newspapers as much as I did just five years ago. I have gravitated to the internet for convenience, timeliness, and the very low cost of getting what I want when I want it. But, I love the option of poring over the Sunday paper… when I can.

I may buy a Kindle someday, but probably not until the sound of newspaper being handled and manipulated can be mimicked. I also wonder, especially as I age, if the device is robust enough to survive falling to floor when I fall asleep reading it.

June 2009: Annual Health and Fitness Letter

I have had the habit of writing about health and fitness in first the July and more recently the June issues of this letter. It is important to write about this for me, since living well and right is a lifelong challenge for me. I have written about diet and cycling. This year I will write about the concept of stress.

Well, first off, I have to acknowledge that I allowed myself to backslide over the past year and a half. I remained a vegetarian but I lapsed and ate too much and too much of the wrong foods. My biggest weaknesses are chocolate, sweets, and plain old simple overeating.

The secret formula of eating right and getting to a naturally good weight and lean body has not changed. It is to eat as little fat and simple carbohydrates as possible. This means, for me, the basic Ornish diet: no meat, no white sugar, no white rice, no white flour, and to avoid processed foods which tend to be rich in fat and simple carbohydrates. When I do this I am full without overeating. I stay full longer and if I snack, it is dried fruit and roasted chick peas.

I would like nothing more then to blame this on the stress of the economy, my job situation, impending weddings, and what else? I could blame global warming, the North Korean missile launches, the Taliban, and perhaps even Pluto being officially declassified as a planet in our solar system.

The bottom line is stress and the subsequent trying to eat through it. First, I had to stop overeating and get back to eating style outlined above. No matter what other motivations I may have, the weddings of my children are on the horizon and frankly, I would like to look as good as I can in the photos.

Secondly, the motivation to live as long and as healthy as possible is still very real. The goal was to be able to know my grandchildren and share in their lives as much as possible. I would love to be at their weddings and dance with them.

Enough of this, I have covered all this in other letters.

The questions that I am wrestling with are why I have stress and why I allow it to ruin my dietary style. The breaking of this cycle is important to me. As a casual observer of people, I also believe it is very important to others.

It will also help me in terms of mental health as well. You are probably wondering what the heck I am talking about right about now. I guess I am talking about putting it all together to work towards both physical and mental health and fitness. Or so I profess.

Stress has two effects on me. First, as already laid out, it makes me want to eat through it. I am not alone in this. Many people eat their way through whatever their problems are, whatever they think their problems are. The foods that are available people like me are salty, sweet, or fatty. They taste good but are horrible for us. No one eats a bag of carrots to deal with stress. We eat a pound of Oreos. We eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs. Or, we do both. The sugar high helps only as long as the sugary spike lasts. And, that is not very long at all.

Second, stress also causes a paralysis that saps my will to act. So, it seems worthwhile to look at stress since it is apparently the root of all my, and let me use the scientific term here, stupid behavior.

What is stress? There is a biochemical component to this. In a state of stress, the body reacts chemically. For the greater part of mankind, stress was the reaction to a very real danger. Fight or flight was a very real choice that had to made instantly… for survival. Without getting too deeply into it, the adrenal gland releases hormones that spike the sugar level in the blood to fuel either the fight or flight. When faced with T. Rex or an invading horde, this is a most natural and very necessary reaction. When faced with a dictator boss at work outburst or an unreal traffic jam on your way to the airport, the same mechanism can kick in. In the later case, where does that sugar spike and energy rush go? If you are one who loves to fight or can translate this calmly into action, it probably fuels your activity. Otherwise, it is like eating too much sugar, you spike and then crash. It can begin an overeating cycle of spiking and crashing.

Fight or flight? I rarely choose the fight option. Why am I not choosing the fight option? These two manifestations of stress may well be related. Binge eating of simple carbohydrates and fatty foods cause these dramatic ups and downs. The downs, which I believe there are lot more of than the highs, probably re-enforce the paralysis and certainly the lethargy. Crazy as it sounds. I know this to be true about me and see it others as well.

I am slowly becoming convinced that stress does not exist. It only exists between my ears. It is contrived. I allow others people and sometimes events to create it. Dr. Wayne Dyer, a Detroit native and a fellow Wayne State University alumnus, was featured on PBS television a few weeks ago. He made this exact point. He said “there is no stress in the world.” He challenged the audience to go out and come back with a bucket of stress. He then said no one could complete the challenge. Why? Simply stress does not exist.

I have seen this and know that it certainly can be true. The problem is that I have witnessed this and seen it to be true only a select few. Allow me to illustrate what I mean by looking at an all too common situation. Let’s say something goes awry or off the plan at work. The boss, a surly SOB, explodes, motivates, berates, and possibly threatens your job. How do people react? Why do some people, eat their way through this, drink their way through it, or just stop with that deer in the headlights look? More importantly, why do a select few just take it stride like it were nothing really big, add a few items to their to-do list, and get to rectifying things?

What is the nature of this second and admirable class of people? Are they immune to stress? Do they just suppress it? Re-channel it to the task at hand? Are they fighters? Are they smarter, more organized? Are they simply advanced life forms?

You can tell that this is something that I have thought about for a very long time. Here is what I think I know about the people that have a non-stress reaction to what could be a most stressful situation. Sure they have a sense of urgency but there is no stress. They do not blame themselves. They understand the nature of the boss and that this is the way he or she will always react to such situations and thus do not take it personally.

There is a definition of stress that I have always loved. There are variations on this, but I have always liked this one. In fact, I like it so much that I have committed it to memory:

Stress is the most unnatural suppression of the most natural urge to choke the living shit out of some asshole that desperately deserves it.

Apologies. I do not often use profanity in these letters, but the use here is critical to the definition.

Even this humorous definition supports the points I am trying to make here. It is all in the mind. And, stress is caused by other people. Others are not actually creating stress; they are just being themselves, moronic, self-serving, maniacal as that may be. The stress inside of us is simply how we react to them.

Why do some of us have road rage while others weather it cool, calm, and collected? It is the same thing as the surly boss and the humorous definition. It is how people react to the situation so differently.

Well I understand this semantically. I even understand it philosophically. Sure stress is just a concept. But, it is a very real concept; at least the resultant behavior is very real. Road rage is real. Binge eating is real. Depression is real. But, so is the positive reaction.

Let’s go back to the surly boss. Why is it that some people crumble and are paralyzed by the surly boss outburst, while others just shrug it off and get to rectifying things? There is even a class of people who use the stress as fuel. These fighters look for chaos and conflict, they thrive on the fight. They look for the fight. They get power from winning every fight they can. They clearly apply the fight principle to every issue in their lives.

Can we change our basic reaction to stressful situations? Clearly, whatever coping mechanisms we have, fight, flight, fear, paralysis, binge eating, or some combination of all seem well ingrained. We cope and somehow get things done, some better than others. After all of these other questions, there is a big one that is the point of this letter. Can we eliminate stress i.e. change the way we react to stressful situations? Clearly, I have been thinking a lot about this. Yes, lots of thinking but no real good answers.

Change is possible. But, it is not easy. We have learned how to react from our earliest years. We have learned to cope with parents and teachers telling what to do and not to do. We have learned to react to their feedback, positive and negative, constructive and not so constructive, from an early age. I used to make fun of the way psychotherapists used to have patients revert to their childhood to find the root cause of the issues.

I am reading a book entitled Stop Self Sabotage by Pat Pearson. It is pretty good. The Wayne Dyer program on PBS was entitled Excuses Begone. Both are focused helping people get out of their own way and increasing the probability that we actually achieve what we want. Dyer began by talking about stress. Pearson never really talked about it. But they both got to the same point of providing advice on how to get rid of the excuses and barriers that cause us to stall and come up short against our dreams. Failing whether at weight loss, business, love, or whatever can be stressful if it is a recurring theme in one's life.

It is a cliché but admitting the problem or recognizing the issue is the first step toward changing the situation. The pundits all say variations of the same thing. We must work to recognize the stressful situations, how we react to them, and gradually change the behavior of reacting to these situations.

Pat Pearson talks about self-esteem and self-confidence. She looks at them as independent factors. They can be either high or low. Clearly, we want to be in a state where both are high and we do not want to be in a condition where both are low. The interesting concept is the interaction where one is high and the other is low. I am not sure if I have high self-esteem and low self-confidence or vice-a-versa. I am still sorting that out. Maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Another cliché is to envision the behavior you would like to model. In this case, I would like to be like those calm, cool, and collected folks that do not really react to the stress inducing surly boss. They take the pertinent points and turn them into action items which they knock off effectively and efficiently. That is what I would like to be.

Certainly, in truly stressful situations, physical emergencies that involve life and death or just work related crises of epic proportions. There is no time to think. There is only time to act. When there is a fire in a warehouse, you work to get it put out and then work to get product flowing again. There is no time to contemplate anything. In true stressful emergencies, events dictate your response. Even the surly boss doesn’t matter.

In non-emergency situations, I have been like that for short periods of time. It is a good feeling. Paralysis just adds to the stress which leads to a deeper paralysis et cetera. Binge eating adds to the spikes and drops in sugar levels, which also sustains stress. Then we induce more stress because we are not accomplishing what we want professionally or health wise. Maybe I need to develop an act first think later approach to life. That will be tough.

In reading over this letter, part of me wonders why I am subjecting anyone else to these true confessions. Another part of me feels very good to just write about this and get it off my chest. It is refreshing to do this.

I am embarking on a new business. I am joining my friend Ara Surenian in an Demand Planning and Inventory Management Consulting business (www.demandcaster.com). There is stress here. While trying to decide to do this, I felt like I was at the edge of a cliff and afraid to take that first step, that leap of faith. After awhile, I got a little of the Nike attitude: Just do it. I was stressing out about that first step. Sure, I have worked for large companies my entire career. There is a steady paycheck, but there is a lot of other nonsense that one must also deal with. Maybe I was not standing at the edge of a cliff but rather on the edge of a curb. I will never know until I take that first step. What is there to be afraid of? Nothing. I can hear Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying that the only thing I “have to fear is fear itself.” And this fake fear causes real stress that messes with me mind and body. It is as I said earlier in this letter, just plain stupid.

Surely, these habits can be changed. It is not easy and I know it will not be easy for me. But, I feel I must try. So for the next year, I am dedicating myself to both physical and mental health. I would like to see if I can put it all together: eating right and thinking right. Eating right and exercising is hard enough, thinking right to minimize stress and maximize my effectiveness, I think will be even harder. But, I am going to give all of this a shot. It could be very exciting. It should be the best year ever.

May 2009: Can You Believe it’s 1947?

In July 2008, our Aunt Rose Marie Gavoor passed away. In her final years, she was a resident of the Riverwoods assisted living and nursing care facility in Exeter, New Hampshire. My father, my Uncle Buddy, Judy, and I went to clean her things from her small room/apartment at Riverwoods. Many of her household goods had already been in storage since she had left her home in Rye some years ago. While she was living, these items were passed along according to her wishes to extended family members. As Uncle Rouben and Aunt Rose Marie never had children, their nieces and nephews were like their children and their great and even great grand nieces and nephews were like grandchildren and great grandchildren. Most of their furnishings are in our homes now and we remember them every time we walk across a rug here or set sometime on chest of drawers there. It is a good thing and a good way to keep those we love in our lives and hearts on a daily basis.

In July, we were going through Aunt Rose Marie’s correspondence, photos, and other memorabilia. Basically, these were the things she saved from her life that defined her life, that were important to her. I was impressed by her organization and care with which she kept so many things in such a small room.

She had the menu from the St. Regis where they had their first dinner as a married couple. I was glad she had saved that. It put things in a certain perspective. For $3-4, the price of a cup of coffee in a fine New York City restaurant today, they were able to get a prime rib dinner with side dishes and desert. Amazing.

What really caught my attention was a letter. It was written on that ultra thin bluish Air Mail stationary that was so popular in the early days of Air Mail. I did not recognize the name of the sender. It was not an Armenian and certainly not a relative. It was from a friend of theirs. I am even having trouble remembering if it was from a man or a woman.

Both Aunt Rose Marie and Uncle Rouben took their correspondence seriously. Having been in the US Foreign Service, they had friends and acquaintances from everywhere they had lived: New York, Washington DC, Nepal, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. They knew people in most of the major European countries as well as throughout Africa and Middle East. Uncle Rouben always used to ask us, the grand nieces and nephews if we were “keeping up with our correspondence.” They corresponded with us all and expected us to write back. We would hear from them if we did not respond in a timely manner to their letters. None of us ever wanted to get the letter with his famous biting catch phrase, “In spite of your callousness, we love you just the same.” Whenever we get together, someone will always invoke this famous Uncle Rouben quote.

So, I opened this Air Mail envelope to see who it was from and what it was about. The first line just struck me: “Can you believe it’s 1947?” The impact and amusement of this little question kept growing. I had thrown away the letter thinking then that it was not too important and we were already saving so many things. But since then, I have been more and more fascinated with the memorable opening line. I now wish that I had saved it.

This is not so much about time management as the passage of the time. People are always saying, “I cannot believe how fast the summer has gone.” Older parents are always telling new parents, “Enjoy the time. It will go faster then you think. In a blink of an eye they will be graduating from high school and leaving home.” Time does seem to accelerate as we age, doesn’t it?

I have heard the phrase, “Can you believe it’s…” 1985, 1991, 1999, 2004, fill in the blank. But the years that I have heard are the years that I have been living. This is why, “Can you believe it’s 1947?” struck me in such a way. 1947. It could have been 1938, 1924, 1855, or even 932. Basically, the year was before my time, before my parents were even married.

It struck me so, because I think of accelerating time as something of this modern age. I had believed it was due to the whir and hum of modern life, our 24/7 lifestyle, the time consuming inter-connectivity of the electronic media, the internet, cell phones, movies anytime we want them. I thought the hustle and bustle of the business world, the commuting to and fro, and managing the various family activities keep us all more engaged than ever making time just zoom along.

Apparently, that is not the case. Time was accelerating for the friend that wrote Aunt Rose Marie. He or she was astonished that it was already 1947. 1947 less than a year and half after the end of World War II… 1947.

What happened in 1947? Back then I would have had to go to the library and seek out almanacs and encyclopedia year books to find out. Now, the internet allowed me to quickly present this summary without leaving my desk, to simply toggle between Microsoft Word and a few internet pages. In 1947, unemployment in the US was 3.9%, it was the beginning of the era of true American dominance in the world. Domestic postage in the US was a mere 3¢ versus the current 44¢ which will, no doubt, soon grow. 1947 was the year the Marshall Plan was proposed to assist the recovery the European nations recover from the ravages of the war. It was the year that Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees and Dodgers played in the World Series with the Yankees taking it 4-3. Harry Truman was president of the United States and Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party and leader of the USSR. It was the year Henry Ford died. It was the year Thor Heyerdahl traversed the Pacific on his raft called the Kon-Tiki. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947.

So, this phenomenon of time accelerating and zooming along is not only of my time. I wonder if Socrates, Columbus, or Beethoven had such thoughts. Why does time seem to accelerate? Why are we astonished that it is 1947 or 2009?

The best explanation for this seeming accelerating passage of time came when I was an undergraduate. It came from a mathematics professor as only they can observe things. I wish I could remember. I am guessing it was Alan Baum, Ron Morash, or Bob Fakler. I can envision either of them telling me this. Simply put, we think time is accelerating because each passing year accounts for a lesser percentage of our net experience. OK… I may have lost you here. Let me explain it the way it had to be explained to me.

Let’s say you are 1 year old. The next year will end up being 50% of your entire experience. If you are 9 years old, the next year comprises 10% of your entire experience. With each passing year, the next year is a smaller percentage of your life of your living experience. If you are 24, your 25th year is 1/25th or a whopping 4% of your entire experience. No wonder that time seems like it is accelerating. When you are 49 years old, the next year is 2% of your experience.

Let’s call this the Diminishing Experiential Theory (DET) of why time seems to zip along faster with each passing year.

Of course, I tried to find explanations for this on the internet. I searched on a variety of phrases and words. When I searched on “acceleration of time,” Google provided all kinds of pages and sites expounding on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In fact, when searching on anything using the words “acceleration” or “time.” Basically, the Theory of Relativity is based on the speed of light being constant versus the basic belief that most of have that time is constant. In the Theory of Relatively time slows down the closer we get to the speed of light. To add to the science fiction of it, time progresses more slowly in higher gravitational fields.

The classic Theory of Relativity tale is of a fellow who goes off on a two year space trip at speeds near the speed of light. Upon returning, he is shocked to find that fifty plus years has elapsed. The DET certainly seems at least as plausible an explanation for the relativity of time as experienced on planet Earth.

I got a lot more interesting responses using phrases like “years going by faster.” This avoided all the serious relativity sites and provided some humorous insights. One link took me to a dating site called Plenty of Fish. Oh my, I just admitted to my wife, mother and daughter that I had just been to a dating page!!! Someone posed a question in on a chat page… gee I keep digging a bigger and bigger hole for myself.

Anyway, the question posed was “Does it seem the older you get the faster the years go by?” A fellow named Nowhere Man basically laid out the DET. It resonated with most though someone did post that “Nowhere Man clearly has too much time on his hands.” Some of the postings were pretty funny. UrbanX got me laughing with this one:

It's related to Einstein's Theory of Relativity as someone indicated, but not really in the way they indicated. When you're young, your head is closer to the ground and as you age it moves further away. This is not only due to your height increasing, also due to working in office towers and flying on airplanes. This is the tricky part, so pay close attention to my fingers. As your head is further away from the ground, it is actually rotating faster than the ground and is thus closer to the speed of light. Relativistic effects kick in and the calendar, which runs on the timescale of the ground, moves more quickly than you do. Hence, the feeling that time is moving faster as we age. It quite literally
is. http://forums..com/5787565datingPostpage2plentyoffish.aspx

This ties it all together. Further evidence that UrbanX is onto something is that when we get really old, we shrink and time begins to progress at a slower rate again. Well, at least I may have that to look forward to.

I have been out of a job since the end of October. What I cannot believe is that it has been six months. This time has just raced by. I have never had a six month period that has gone so quickly. I actually thought it was just me, but it seems to be a nature of the beast. A few of the Newell disenfranchised meet for lunch every few weeks to bolster each others spirits and provide support. Last time we met, Mike mentioned that he could not believe how fast the time has gone. The rest immediately agreed and expressed what I had been thinking that it was just me. Thankfully, we realized it was the nature of our situation.

Why is this?

I believe it is the difference between regular working time and heavy internet usage time. Job searching this days involves a lot of time on the internet, hitting the job boards, working LinkedIn, and using e-mail even more heavily than when we were working. Internet time certainly moves faster than regular time. It is truly another example of the relative nature of the passage of time.

Here are some different perspectives…

I can believe on May 19th, my sister Laura would have been fifty-one years old. I cannot believe it is going on seven years since she passed away.

On the same day, I learned that our dear friend Jack Papazian passed away. I learned on April 14th that he was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. This degenerative neurological disease is fast moving, incurable, and fatal. I cannot believe that the disease took him so quickly, basically one month.

Jack was only sixty-nine years old. When I was twenty, I believed that sixty-nine was old. Now, I believe that he died way too young.

Death stops and footnotes the time of our lives. We all remember where we were and what we are doing. Where were you when Princess Di died? Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? We remember those moments like they were yesterday.

But it is not just the sad moments. It is the happy moments.

I vividly recall May 23, 1981 when my son Aram was born. I remember it vividly and it does seem like 28 years.

We have a couple of other happy moments coming up this year. Do I believe that I my children are getting married this year? No not at all. Has it been a blink of the eyes since they were born? Not really. Even with the amount of business travel I had, I really truly enjoyed the time being with them, watching them grow, and believing I had some influence in that process.

I really cannot believe it is 1947… er… 2002… I mean 2009.

April 2009: The Armenian Genocide Yet Again

My Little Ben Pipe: It wasn’t yet April. I was already thinking about my April letter which has been Armenian and Armenian Genocide themed. This year shall be no different.

It was Sunday, March 29th. We woke up to a snow storm. We just had one of those late season storms of wet snow that clung to every limb and twig of every tree making for a beautiful sight. The two inches of snow was too heavy to shovel and I knew it would melt by days end or the next day for sure. If it were dry snow, it would have been easily 8-10 inches.

True to my prediction, by late afternoon the snow was pretty much gone from all the paved surfaces, the sun was out, and it was a beautiful and unseasonably cold day. So, I decided to take a short bike ride outside rather than ride in the basement, stationary, in front of the TV. I bundled up in fleece, windbreaker, long spandex, a hood, sunglasses and helmet and took off on my oldest bike that I do not really care how wet or grimy it gets.

I felt good at the end of the ride and was acclimated to the temperature. I thought I would enjoy the last few minutes of daylight by smoking my pipe. It is a little pipe, a wee bit of a pipe that one closed hand can conceal. It is curved and so short that when I light it, I have to be careful not to burn my nose!

So why do I smoke this pipe? There are two reasons. I like it because it has a small bowl that makes for a short enjoyable smoking leaving me wanting more. The second reason is more important and thematic for this letter: the pipe is from Armenia.

I picked up this little pipe in Vernissage the open air weekend craft and flea market in Yerevan. Like many tourists, Vernissage is a must stop on a Saturday morning to buy souvenirs of the land, relics of the Soviet era, carvings, weavings, rugs, instruments, knick-knacks, books, bootleg music, and most anything else the enterprising locals might think of selling. We would start off as a family, but scattered here and there, never too far, based on what caught our eye. I would gravitate to musical instruments, soviet relics, and cool crafty things. My wife? She was attracted to table clothes, decorative bowls, and the like.

An old man had a small table with wooden items that I presumed he carved. That is always a presumption because there is a small but definitely non-zero probability that the knick-knack that catches your eye might actually be made in China or Vietnam. On this table, were a few of these little pipes. They were cute and ever so cheap, just a couple of dollars. So, I picked one up, gave it the once over, and noticed two words stamped on the briar where the mouth piece attaches Ben and under it in Armenian the same thing. So, I bought it without even bargaining assuming it was made in Armenia by this old fellow.

Usually, this Ben denotes the second letter of the Armenian alphabet. It made me wonder if this were the name of the man’s little company. Maybe it meant it was also his #2 model and the other were other models, the Ayp or #1 and perhaps even a Geem or #3 pipes.

I never gave the pipe another thought. We got home and I put it in my desk drawer. The pipe moved with the desk from Connecticut to Illinois.

Truth be told, I smoke the pipe a few times a year. But each time I smoke it, all I think about is where I bought the pipe. I think it being carved out of a chunk of an Armenian tree by the carver/vendor that I bought it from in Vernissage. I think of the memorable afternoon my Uncle Rouben, Cousin Charlie, and I smoked on Uncle Rouben’s front porch in Rye, New Hampshire on a lovely August late afternoon in 1981.

This time I smoked my Armenian pipe and pondered the above as well as the future of Armenia and the Armenian community in the Diaspora. I thought of my grandparents and how they survived. I thought of the current politics in Turkey and Armenia. Are they headed toward a resolution and understanding that will allow for an opening of the border and freer trade? What may either side concede regarding what happened in 1915? Will the government of Armenia give up on Karabagh? If the border opens, will it begin a slow Turkification of Armenia? Good thing the bowl of the pipe is small and all this pondering lasted a merciful fifteen minutes.

I may have to get a pipe from a neutral country like Switzerland.

Muzaffer Ertürk: In early February, I was listening to my favorite music on YouTube; that music that is smack dab in the overlap of Armenian and Turkish cultures. Not only that, I was listening to the music of Elazig or Kharpert, what could have been my hometown in the Armenian Highlands now more commonly referred to as Anatolia. I was listening to the music of a relatively unknown but very good singer, Muzaffer Ertürk, and his very very good band. His songs have the names of Husenik, Dersim, and Harput. They are the old songs, folk and otherwise, of the region.

I was mesmerized. Who is this fellow Muzaffer Ertürk? I polled people I thought would know him. I wrote Ara Dinkjian and Ozan Aksoy. No one I know is more connected and knowledgeable about Turkish music and musicians than these gentlemen. Neither of them heard of Ertürk. They both were most impressed with the You Tube videos. The simple fact is that Muzaffer Ertürk was not on any of our radar screens. I went to Tulumba.com to see if he had any CDs I could order. There was nothing. Evidence of his talent to the likes of me is only available on You Tube.

So, I took advantage of the You Tube functionality and sent a message to one of the people that posted these videos. I chose Palulu1907 and sent a You Tube message. He responded and we exchanged a few e-mails.

Palulu is from Elazig and is twenty-one years old. He loves the music of the region as I do and is a major fan of Muzaffer Ertürk. He has posted twelve music videos, ten of them feature Ertürk. I had favorited several of Palulu’s postings so we had a common ground before our e-mails. Palulu did not know Muzaffer Ertürk nor did he know how to get a hold of him. Too bad, I will keep trying.

Here is the e-mail Palulu sent to me:

Hello. I thank for mail. My english very bad. Bende Elazığlıyım. We own same culture with you. Politicians and some people are affected because our brotherhood. I love to Muzaffer Ertürk but I have his e-mail address.I love to Turkish Folk Music. I love to armenian :)

His English is impressively better than my Turkish. Also, his message was clear and heartfelt. I agree with his eloquent thoughts.

Ahçiği Yolladım Urum Eline: Palulu sent me another song he posted, Ahçiği Yolladım Urum Eline. He said it was about a Turkish man in love with an Armenian girl. His original posted has since been removed for “user terms violations.” Needless to say the Armenian in me suspects that the Turkish Government somehow took this down in their continuing oppression of anything Armenian. I know it is paranoid, but that was my first reaction.

Luckily, there are other postings of this same song. Here is another version of Muzaffer Ertürk singing the same song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIGtOV8_pS4. Some were surprised to find this song on the TRT network: Turkey’s one and only public broadcasting network. The surprise was rooted in the abovementioned paranoia as TRT is under the Turkish Government.

My friend Melissa Bilal, an Armenian from Istanbul working on a PhD at the University of Chicago, found the words to the song. She provided a translation which my cousin Sandy’s husband Bedros helped with some of the colloquial points. I provide both below.

Ahçiği Yolladım Urum Eline (Ahçik)

Elazığ-Enver Demirbağ-Zülküf
Altan-Mehmet Özbek
Ahçiği Yolladım Urum Eline
Eser Bad-ı Saba Zülfün Teline
Gel Seni Götürsem İslam Eline

Serimi Sevdaya Salan O Ahçik
Aman O Ahçik Civan O Ahçik

Vardım Kiliseye Baktım Haçına
Gönlümü Bağladım Sırma Saçına
Gel Seni Götürem İslam İçine

Serimi Sevdaya Salan O Ahçik
Aman O Ahçik Civan O Ahçik

Vardım Kiliseye Hac Suda Döner
Ahçiği Kaybettim Yüreğim Yanar
Ben Dinen Dönersem El Beni Kınar

Serimi Sevdaya Salan O Ahçik
Aman O Ahçik Civan O Ahçik

Translation:
I sent the girl to Greeks place
Soft breeze is blowing on fine hair
Come and I’ll take you to Muslim home

Went to church looked at cross
My heart got tied up to her beautiful hair
Come and I’ll take you to Muslim home

I arrived to the church, the cross above the baptismal water.
I lost the girl, my heart is burning,
If I change my religion, everybody will make fun of me.

The words are nothing special. A Turkish friend said that “the song is very cute.” But for an Armenian, half a world away from an ancestral city he has never visited, the song strikes a deeper chord. It is another point of proof that we were there. That it is still performed and listened to today provides another grain of sand to the long overdue closure process. The Armenian girl is referred to using the Armenian Word for girl, ahçig.

But to me, the music is soulful and heavy. It resonates where, to me, the Armenian and Turkish cultures overlap. It resonated deeply and richly.

Brothers Fighting?: I have a friend, John Vosbikian, he has a unique sense of humor. He is an excellent clarinet player, heavily influenced by the Turkish style. When other Armenian musicians would bring up an artist from Turkey, say Muzzaffer Ertürk, John would often say “you know that he is half Armenian.” The response to this was always, “No! Really?” John would retort, “Oh yeah, his mother is Armenian” or something like that. As John was very convincing, people would often believe him and go forth perpetuating the myth he had just created.

But to me, John did have something. As I watch You Tube postings of this music, I cannot help but think that most of the Turks I see could pass for Armenians or vice-versa. It is not the first time I have thought this and I have even thought it about other ethnic conflicts where the combatants, the opposing sides, all look alike.

The musicians in the Ahçiği Yolladım Urum Eline video could be Armenian as much as they are Turkish. The instruments are straddle both cultures: tar, saz, oud, duduk, and kemanche.

Growing up, I have to admit that I was confused and most certainly naïve in my confusion about the apparent sameness of combatants. When considering the English and Irish issues, I never could understand what they were fighting about. To me, as a youngster I could not tell the difference between them. They looked the same to me. They even sounded the same to me. I just did not understand what all the fuss was about. I was indeed naïve. I now can sometimes see differences in facial features and accents. But overall, my childhood impression still holds.

The same principle applies to other conflicts. Consider the Arabs and Israelis, the peoples are both Semites. Shalom Aleichem. Salaam Alekhum. What gives? A slight difference in pronunciation and they are mortal enemies? How about the Balkans? Are the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians so different?

Yes, some will write me and talk about differences in language and religion and that I have oversimplified the anthropology of the two peoples. They may be right, but this year, for some reason, I am looking more at common ground.

The answer to these questions is, of course, a matter of perspective. The farther one is away from it, the less critical the differences. When you are born into it and reared in rhetoric of the conflict, the differences are glaring.

Bele vs. Lokai: There was an episode of the original Star Trek television series that fascinated me. It was entitled “Let that be your last Battlefield.” It was the 70th episode in the series and aired first on January 10, 1969.

The basic story is of the last two survivors of the planet called Cheron. Their names were Lokai and Bele. They were the last of the two warring peoples of this planet. The two races are half black and half white. Bele is from the race that is white on the left side and black on the right. Lokai is the opposite. The crew of the Enterprise could at first not tell the difference and even when they understood the mirror image physical difference, they could not fathom the hatred. Frank Gorshin played Bele and was nominated for an Emmy for intense raw energy he put into this role.

Well, it was the 1960s. TV was all about reflecting the racial turmoil the country was going through. This episode aired nine months after the assassination of Martin Luther King (April 4, 1968).

I did not watch this episode when it first aired. I watched it well after the show was in syndication. I was fascinated and amazed. It took me back to the creation myth of the Armenian people when the good and righteous Hayk fought the evil dark hearted Bel and won creating the Armenian or Haykakan nation. I kept wondering if there were an Armenian writer on the Star Trek team who decided to name the more memorable character Bele.

I guess this year I am seeing similarities not differences and wishing this space was more populated.

March 2009: Newport Coffee

For the first two years of this letter, the March letter was about my travels in Latin America. The March 2004 was entitled Letter from Buenos Aires and was just that. In March of 2005, I wrote about Mexico. I thought that I would be dedicating each March letter to reflecting on someplace that I travelled. It should have been easy to, or so I thought, as I was pretty much a road warrior working in the Latin American Division of Colgate-Palmolive.

But, it did not turn out that way. Other topics seemed more important each of the next three years and so, I wrote about them. Each March, however, I would think about someplace to write about. The problem was quite simple; I was not travelling as much and certainly not abroad.

This March is no different. I wanted to write about someplace I have been and enjoyed. I wanted to share the thoughts I had there and the people that I met. While having this intention is one thing, I am really not travelling anywhere these days. The last time I was on a plane was the first week of November 2008 when I went to Knoxville to speak at the University of Tennessee Supply Chain Forum. In January of this year, I drove to Detroit for a weekend. The stark truth is that I am really no longer any kind of road warrior. This is the longest I have gone since the early 1980s without being on an airplane. I am actually trying to decide if this is good or bad. I am definitely leaning toward the “it’s good” side.

Stark as it might be, there are certain benefits to not being a road warrior. I am not dealing with airports, airport lines, airport security, flight delays, flight cancellations, and cramped crowded airplanes. I am not dealing with opening the door to yet another hotel room and feeling that “if this is Tuesday, I must be in Miami.” People tell me I look more rested and calm. That is no doubt a combination of avoiding the stress of the daily work grind and the stress of business travel. Yet, amid all these pluses, I will admit I do miss the movement, the change of venue, and seeing good friends and colleagues in distant locations especially Latin America.

Somehow, in this circumstance I have decided to renew the idea of an annual travel letter. The obvious question is what destination to write about? The idea I always had was to write the letter from that destination. I could write about Armenia, Uruguay, Chile, or Guatemala. I could write about Boston, Washington DC, or even Miami. But I chose someplace much closer to home… a mere 2.1 miles from my home. I want to write about the Newport Coffee House in Bannockburn, IL. I have written this entire letter from there.

Newport Coffee is a wonderful little place. It is a single store, sole proprietor business, with free WiFi and really good coffee. No really, the best coffee around. I have nothing against the chain stores I also frequent: Starbucks and Paneras. The prices and offerings, coffee-wise, at these stores are essentially the same. It is just a refreshing throwback to go this little one store operation.

I go there most afternoons for the past few weeks. They have free WiFi an absolute must for one seeking new employment or writing a monthly letter. There are three differences between Newport Coffee and the aforementioned chain stores. First, the music at Newport is at the perfect volume for me. The selection of music is very good, loud enough to enjoy, but not so loud that you cannot think, read, or concentrate. The music at Starbucks is offensively loud to me. This is probably because amongst everything else they offer, they sell music. Secondly, the clientele at Newport is different, more eclectic. This is because they attract a student customer base. Newport Coffee is the unofficial coffeehouse of the nearby Trinity International University. Even the non-student customers seem to come to read or work more eclectically.

The Trinity connection is interesting. I think most of the employees are either students or alumni of this university. Certainly, everyone that works there looks like a grad student clad in a very urban casual style of jeans and t-shirts.

Newport Coffee has a kind of Ann Arbor like feel to it; Ann Arbor of the 1970s that is. Most of the students that frequent the place may well be graduate students, they look like people from that era, longer scruffier hair, jeans, and interestingly different shirts. One day, a fellow was wearing an Cambridge University hoodie. Another day, another guy had what might have been the official sneaker of my college years: the Adidas Samba, that distinctively black leather with three white stripes indoor soccer shoe. Often, the male students have t-shirts with slogans or emblems I have never seen and thus making me wonder wherever did they buy such shirts.

But the clientele is not all students. It is a true mix of older professional folks, retirees, and housewives. It might just be me or it could be the ambience of the place that makes me think this but everyone seems simultaneously more relaxed, more interesting, and thinking deeper thoughts in Newport Coffee than any of the surrounding Starbucks.

What brings everyone in is no doubt the coffee. At the Newport Coffee website www.mynewportcoffee.com you will learn that they roast their coffee in small batches making very fresh, strong, and flavorful coffee. It is the best cup of coffee around here, I would dare say in all of Lake County. The big black roaster is off in the corner of the place surrounded by burlap sacks of beans from South America, Africa, and Hawaii.

Being the unofficial coffeehouse of Trinity College, it is amazing the books that students are reading. Most of the time, the student patrons have a few books stacked on the table plus the one they are reading. More often than not, one of the books is the Bible. Being a naturally curious person bordering on the nosey, I note the titles when I can.

One lady was reading a book entitled, A Peculiar People. I simply assumed that it was about Armenians and if not about Armenians I was certain that it would have a chapter dedicated on me or my friend Ara Topouzian. Amazon.com provided the truth. The subtitle of the book is The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society and attempts to explore the role of church and individual Christians in these times when both church and faith are seemingly less influential.

Another fellow was reading a book entitled Sub-Merge. Again, I was able to get the title but the subtitle was in too fine a print to read across the room. I assumed the book was a novel about submarine warfare or a dark psychological thriller. Again, I was wrong. The subtitle of this book, again thanks to Amazon, was Living Deep in a Shallow World: Service, Justice and Contemplation Among the World’s Poor. Wow, what a great phrase… Living Deep in a Shallow World. I immediately wanted to borrow the phrase for a future letter. But this phrase actually defines the clientele of this place. Most of the people I see in Newport Coffee seem to be living deeper or wanting to live deeper.

When I went to the Trinity International University website, www.tiu.edu, I found that the university is truly founded on Christian principles and has a decidedly Christian mission. From the About section of the website:

Forming students to transform the world through Christ. At the heart of Trinity’s mission lies its commitment to engage the culture for Jesus Christ. Trinity’s purpose is to enable its graduates—in all schools and in every discipline—to think and live like Christians in the twenty-first century. We believe that God calls his people into many kinds of service; Trinity’s calling is to prepare them to serve for his glory.

I would guess both A Peculiar People and Sub-Merge should be required reading.

The book that really caught my eye was Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. It was the second to last book by this noted author and Nobel Prize winner. I read it back in 1971 as a freshman at the University of Michigan. It was the one book we had to read and comment on in the required freshman English Composition course. I kind of liked the genre and certainly liked Steinbeck’s writing. I recall that the Graduate Assistant who was our professor disparaging this book and suggesting that there were much better books by Steinbeck to read. He thought we should have been reading The Grapes of Wrath. I had already read most of Steinbeck’s classics and read The Grapes of Wrath in my sophomore year. I was glad to have been exposed to a book that I normally would not have read.

There is not much I recall about Travels with Charley except that I enjoyed it. It was the first real literary travelogue I read. Since then I have enjoyed other books in this genre. I really enjoyed In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin and The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians by Philip Marsden. I never read Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries but I loved the film version.

I am amazed by these authors who take off on a trek, not sure of exactly the path they are taking or who they will meet along the way. I am even more amazed at the common people who welcome these travelers with open arms, tables, and homes. I am motivated to pick up Travels with Charley: In Search of America and see how I react to it thirty-eight years later.

Lastly, I was sitting in Newport one day, working on my laptop, perhaps even finishing up my February Letter. A young lady who works there was talking with a friend and customer. I was not really listening to what they were saying. But, I thought I heard the word Armenian used by the lady in the conversation but I wasn’t sure. I often think I hear the word Armenian being uttered. When I went up to the counter later for a refill, I asked her if she had used the word Armenian. She indeed had and informed me that she was Armenian. Her name is Nevair Jindoyan and had grown up in the All Saints Armenian Church in Glenview that I now attend. I think half of the church is actually related to her. She has a most lovely name, Nevair. It means gift in Armenian. I know only one other Nevair and always thought it was a lovely and special name.

I was even more delighted to find out that Nevair is actually the owner of Newport Coffee. She had just recently purchased it and was taking a year off from teaching to make the place her own and really learn the business.

There is another Armenian owned coffee or rather tea business in Chicagoland: Argo Tea www.argotea.com. They have thirteen stores of which twelve are in Chicago and one is in Evanston. The company was started by Arsen Avakian in 2003. Earlier this year when my son, Aram, was in town trying a case downtown we had an opportunity to stop by one of the stores. It was like 6:30 pm and the store was jammed. People, mostly younger, were working on their laptops or reading. There was music and people were talking but it was still someplace you could really concentrate if you needed to. It seemed lighter and airier than Starbucks. The main difference was the pots of different teas ready to be served. But it is not just a tea house. Argo Tea serves a wide variety of brewed and espresso coffee products as well. Certainly, Argo Tea is interested in growing but they seem to be doing it slowly and deliberately, a wise strategy in this economic environment.

It seems that I should facilitate Nevair who is interested in expanding her offerings into teas and is a coffee supplier to meet Arsen and explore how they might source each other products. Who knows?

So, you see? I was able to craft a travel letter without actually going very far. There is much to see in the world right around where we are. Maybe next year, I will buy a dog, a camper, and follow the route John Steinbeck took across this great land.

February 2009: Fifth Anniversary Letter

Wow… it has been six years. I penned and sent out my first letter in February 2004. This is my 61st letter. Just today I added two people to my distribution list taking the number to 347. I think I sent my first letter to about 30-40 people.

Back then I was not sure if there would be a second letter let alone a 61st. I really was not sure I would be able to sustain it. But I have and it has been a rich and rewarding experience. It has kept me in touch with the people closest to me.

I know that everyone that gets this letter does not read it. There are probably folks that barely read any. But, I get 10-20 people commenting on each letter and it is not always the same bunch. Some challenge my views, most add their own perspective, and all are encouraging.

In these five years only two readers have written and asked to be taken off of distribution. I did not like that but I cannot be everyone’s cup of tea. One lady a professional writer begged off after just a few issues. The second was just a few months ago and someone from South America that I really admired. I was a bit worried because it would be just like him to have taken gravely ill and not communicate that.

My confidence in writing has grown with each letter. I really was not sure when I depressed the mouse key to send that first issue. I am still skeptical every time I send one. Did I get it right? Will people like it? Is the topic relevant? I worry much less now. Readers, basically friends and family, really like the letters in which I reflect on growing up and the introspective letters. I should probably shy away from those that are more like term papers though these are sometimes the topics that interest me.

I even am thinking about an evolving career as a writer. In my current job search, I am exploring some options in that direction. Keep your fingers crossed, because doing something different would be kind of cool.

If something is bothering me, I like to write about it. It forces me to read what others have said on the subject and in the process of the reading and writing, I solidify my own views. To use the sophomoric word, it is cathartic (which the thesaurus has reminded me means therapeutic, liberating, beneficial, healing, energizing, or invigorating). It is all of these things mixed together. It liberates me from worrying so about something if I capture the essence and my take of it in a letter. The process is therapeutic, invigorating, energizing, and beneficial as well. It is also healing. I think in another ten years of writing about the Armenian genocide I should be all healed up. No, it will definitely take more than ten years for that.

Launching a Blog for these Letters: A few folks have wondered why I send my letter out by e-mail. My off the cuff answer is that it certainly saves in printing costs, postage, and the man-hours that would be involved to snail mail the letter to almost 350 people. But I knew what they were about to get to. They wanted to know why I was not posting my letters on a blog.

Blogs were around when I began this letter. Truth be told, I should have began with a blog. It would have been the right and cutting edge thing to do. So, why didn’t I do that? The answer is both simple and kind of, what is the technical term… ah yes… stupid: I was unsure of my self, my writing skills, having a public forum where anyone could read what I wrote and comment on it.

It was a matter of control. I wanted to send my letters to who I wanted to get them. I wanted the only path of feedback to be directly and privately to me. Posting everything on-line exacerbated these foolish fears. As for the first, I have never turned down anyone’s request to be put on distribution. To the contrary, I am honored that anyone wants to read these musings and meanderings. With regard to being overly sensitive maybe even paranoid about the feedback in a public forum that is hogwash on two counts. First, people have been very civil and for the most part complimentary in any feedback they have given. Secondly, and this one deserve a big “duh”, most blogs give you the option of allowing comments or not. If you allow comments, they also provide the option of reviewing and approving them before they are posted.

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging_timeline, I learned that one Jorn Barger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorn_Barger ) first used the term weblog on December 17, 1997. In the second quarter of 1999, Peter Merholz (http://www.peterme.com/) had some fun with the term weblog by breaking it into two word “we blog.” Voila, the word blog was born and it has obviously stuck.

In that same time frame, the earliest blog like sites were called Open Diary and LiveJournal. In August of 1999, Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan created a site called http://www.blogger.com/. It was such a success that Google purchased the site in February of 2003. So clearly, blogging was already a well established phenomena when I wrote and sent out my first letter in February of 2004!

There is at least one blog dedicated to blogging. It is http://www.blogheral.com/. On April 14, 2005, they reported that there were over 50 million blogs worldwide. On February 11, 2008, the site reported:

…over 112.8 million blogs, a number which obviously does not include all the 72.82 million Chinese blogs as counted by The China Internet Network Information Center. Blog statistics often concern the English language blogosphere but we should not forget about the millions of other blogs that are not always included in estimations.

In the past few months, both Deb Devedjian and Gary Rejebian innocently asked why I had not begun a blog for this monthly letter. It was a good, sincere, and honest question. I gave it some thought and figured with there probably being over 200 million blogs on-line, the technology was sufficiently mature enough for me to join the trend.

I went to blogger.com and nosed around. I cannot say how incredibly easy it was to get my site up and running. Over a few weeks in January, I posted all my old letters on the site. I posted the January 2009 letter kind of real time i.e. I posted it when I mailed out the letter. I will do the same with this letter and moving forward. The website is: http://thissideoffifty.blogspot.com/

I like the look of it and glad I have finally got around to doing this. Immediately, I got one follower a nice lady named Anita Boser who has two blogs of her own: http://www.blogger.com/profile/17628246135385560400. I was impressed to get one follower so quickly. But, I got no others. And guess what, no one has posted a comment of any kind. Whatever was I concerned about?

My good friend Raffi Bandazian looked over the blog and gave some positive comments. I asked why he did not sign up as a follower. He responded that he RSSed the site. RS-what? Oh no, something new to learn… ugh.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary and is basically a mechanism for people to get updates when the content has changed or been updated on sites they normally follow. Applications like Google Reader are used to manage ones news and websites of interest through RSS feeds. Sounds like a very good and powerful idea. The technology might be too new and untested. I will have to wait until the user base hits a couple hundred million!

Daily Writing & Pens: As you may recall, I handwrite a page every day and over the course of the month, a theme and a letter emerges. This past year, I have been typing my letter directly on my laptop. I still handwrite 26-28 days per month, the others I type.

Having departed Sanford, I am less loyal to their brands. That is not to say that I do not continue to use Sharpie’s, Waterman’s, Parker’s, and Uniball’s. I like all of these pens. What I am saying is that I have dusted off my Caran D’Ache pens and enjoy them once again. I am curious to see if they will become my pen of choice again. So far all signs are in that direction with the Sanford Brand Waterman in second place.

For awhile this year I was using fountain pens. From working at Sanford, I have four stylish Parker and Waterman fountain pens. They are very nice and a delight to write with, but they just run out of ink too quickly for my taste. I am a dyed in the wool ball point pen fan.

In the February 2008 letter, I was extolling the virtues of the Uniball Jetstream. It is a very good pen. Honestly, if you said that is all I could ever write with, I would be happy. But since I left Sanford, I have gravitated back to fine writing ball points and rarely use any throw away pens.

Memorable Writer: In my February 2006 letter, I wrote about a memorable piece I had read in the August 2, 1999 New Yorker. It was an article John Updike had written on the passing of John F. Kennedy Jr. At the time I read it, I thought it was a perfect piece of writing. It captured the essence of the moment, the iconic position of the Kennedy Clan, and the tragedies that has been associated with the family.

I was saddened to learn that John Updike passed away on January 27th. He was 76 years old. His prose was wonderfully descriptive. Some critics called described it as more flowery than substantive. I disagree.

He was prolific. He loved to write and once said:

“I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to,” he told The Paris Review in 1967. “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html?fta=y

Here is a short example of his elegant and descriptive style.

A barn, in a day, is a small night. The splinters of light between the dry shingles pierce the high roof like stars, and the rafters and crossbeams and built-in ladders seem, until your eyes adjust, as mysterious as the branches of a haunted forest. David entered silently, the gun in one hand.... The smell of old straw scratched his sinuses.... the mouths of empty bins gaped like caves. Rusty oddments of farming — coils of baling wire, some spare tines for a harrow, a handleless shovel — hung on nails driven here and there in the thick wood. He stood stock-still a minute; it took a while to separate the cooing of the pigeons from the rustling in his ears. When he had focused on the cooing, it flooded the vast interior with its throaty, bubbling outpour: there seemed no other sound. They were up behind the beams. What light there was leaked through the shingles and the dirty glass windows at the far end and the small round holes, about as big as basketballs, high on the opposite stone side walls, under the ridge of the roof.
From the story “Pigeon Feathers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28excerpts.html?_r=1&fta=y

Annual Thanks: As usual, at the end of each of the last four February letters, I like to thank two people instrumental to bringing this rewarding project to life. My morning train friend, singer, and marketing/proposal writing wizard, Marilyn Zavidow, helped me name this letter, The Other Side of Fifty: A Monthly Letter of Musings and Meanderings. We did this taking the 5:30 am train from Westport to Manhattan. She looked at my draft mock up and made some suggestions. She thought about it overnight and came back with a few suggestions. I picked the one that I thought would best capture the essence of what I thought I was about to do. We definitely came up with the right title. I have mused and meandered for five years with every intention of doing this for as long as I can. Thank you Marilyn.

Check out Marilyn’s website: http://www.zavidow.com/.

I had been writing a page every day from June 25, 2002. The idea for a monthly came in January 2004 when I learned of the passing of an American Armenian man, living in Paris: Aram Kevorkian. Aram was a well known and highly regarded lawyer. I had not even heard about him until after he had passed away on December 20, 2003 at the age of 74.

Aram began writing a monthly letter in 1978. The Kevorkian Newsletter started off as a legal letter to update his clients on the nuances of French Law and any changes in statutes. It became something more, something bigger, and something deeper. Besides the law, he explored social issues, observed and commented on notable figures, and did so in a way that earned the great appreciation of his readers. The letter was mailed to 3,000 or so readers in over 70 countries.
Upon reading two issues of The Kevorkian Newsletter, I knew what I wanted to do with my daily writing. This e-letter is the result and I like to think a most modest continuation of Aram Kevorkian’s creation.

Here is a link to the New York Times obituary of Aram Kevorkian. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E7D7113FF937A15751C1A9659C8B63

Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement. Until next month.