April 2012: The Armenian Genocide

Every year in April, this letter is dedicated to and focused on the Armenian Genocide.  Every April.  I have looked at this from every angle I can think of and every angle that interests me.  I am not sure I have resolved anything. Clearly, it is an important topic to me.  It is for other Armenians as well.  I do get nice feedback from other Armenians when I write something in these April letters that resonates with them.  It is a recurring theme in our lives and an issue that will not go away until there is closure.  For the Armenian Genocide, closure has been elusive.

In the time I have been formally writing about this there have been changes.  As the internet has made the world smaller, there are Armenians and Turks that have gotten closer together.  It is good to see Turkish scholars and artists that believe what we Armenians have experienced and know to be true.  Beyond the Armenian issue, Turkey is in the throes of trying to determine what kind of country they will be.  The Armenian issue is but one of the issues that are part of this debate.

This year a few questions are on my mind.  First, who were the victims of the Genocide?  Secondly, who actually committed the crimes?  As we approach the 100^th Anniversary of this crime, this Genocide, there are a scant few Armenians alive that actually experienced the event.  By the same token, the Turks responsible for planning and executing the Genocide are all gone. Can I hold the grandchildren responsible for what their grandparents did to my grandparents? 

It is no longer about individuals.  It is for the Armenians about the memory of individuals and the memory of a generation.  It is about the memory of a lost homeland.  It is about the loss of a lifestyle and the chance to evolve a culture in our own land and country.

The issue no is not with the people, it really cannot be any longer.  It is with the government, with the state, who separates itself from the Ottoman State and furthermore denies any wrong doing by that government during World War I.  The most they are willing to admit to is that there were causalities on all sides.  In the worst case, they will accuse Armenians of atrocities.

The American Indians:  This last statement actually makes me think of the United States and what was done to the American Indians in the creation of this country coast to coast, sea to shining sea.  I have alluded to this before in these April letters.  I am going to expound on it more in this one.

We, the United States of America, were none too kind to the American Indians.  We basically took this entire land from them or from the English, French, or Spanish who were already in the process of taking this land from the Indians.  For the most part we did not do it nicely.  We cheated them out of Manhattan.  We pushed them out of their homelands by an ever increasing population of settlers who simply built towns which turned into cities on the lands.  We took land and made them into our farms.  If and when the Indians protested we used force to inflict our will on them.   The coast to coast nation was well established before the coining of the term Manifest Destiny in 1845.  We quickly finished the job after the Civil War preparing ourselves for the American Century.  Certainly, we negotiated treaties with them and at times even bought land from them.  I do not think that any of these deals were fair.  Certainly killing all the buffalo was wrong.  Read about The Trail of Tears and see some eerie similarities even if the numbers involved were not the same. 

Key to Manifest Destiny was the belief we were taking civilization to west to the Pacific Ocean.  We were doing a good thing.  Since our definition of civilization inherently included Christianity, we were essentially doing God’s will or work.  Who was in our way?  Indians.  Injuns.  Redmen.  Injuns.  Heathens.  Non-believers i.e. giavurs.  These savages did not look like us.  They did not believe in our God and his only begotten Son.  They had no written language.  They did not have the same notion of property ownership as we did.

They were savages.  If left unchecked, they would attack us.  They would take our women and children.  It was not safe, or even possible, to live peacefully among them.  They could not be trusted. 

I learned this viewpoint 100 years after the fact watching cowboy and Indian movies with my maternal grandfather growing up.  As kids, we played cowboys and Indians.  Our goal was what the culture taught us:  to kill the Indians, to protect our homes from these heathen savages.  Indeed, the only good pretend Indian was a dead pretend Indian. 

When I look at some of the same movies now, I see they were not quite so biased.  But, very few gave the Indians a fair shake.  In the 1960s and 1970s, with emergence the various liberation movements for Blacks, Women, Homosexuals, and others, we began to confront our treatment of the American Indians.  Films like Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josie Wales began portraying the US as the bad guy in the American Indian Wars.  Books like James Michener’s Centennial portraying the Cheyennes, who referred to themselves as the human beings, as simply noble versus noble savage or just plain savage. 

There is a great soliloquy in The Outlaw Josie Wales:

I'm an Indian alright but here in The Nations they call us the civilized tribes.  They call us civilized because we are easy to sneak up on.  White men have been sneaking up on us for years.  They sneaked up on us and they told us we wouldn't be happy.

They told us we would be happy in The Nations.  So they took away our tribal lands and sent us here.  I had a fine woman and two sons but they all died on the Trail of Tears.  I wore a frock coat to Washington before The War.   We wore them because we belonged to the five civilized tribes.

We dressed ourselves up like Abraham Lincoln.   We got to see the secretary of the interior.  He said, "Boy, you boys sure look civilized."   He congratulated us and he gave us medals for looking so civilized.  We told him about how our tribal lands had been stolen and how our humans were dying.

When we finished he shook our hands and said "Endeavor to persevere!"  They stood us in a line John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and me, I am Lone Waite.  The newspapers took our picture and said, "Indians vow to endeavor to persevere."   We thought about for a long time, endeavor to preserver, and when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.

~ Lone Waite, Indian chief. Lone Waite was played by Chief Dan George who also stole several scenes in Little Big Man.

Endeavor to persevere indeed.  That is the battle Armenians are fighting in the Diaspora especially in the United States.  If it were not for recent generations of immigrants from the Middle East and now Armenia, our community here would have certainly assimilated into the melting pot.

Lone Waite and company went to meet with the Secretary of the Interior.  It was another Minister of the Interior, Mehmed Talaat, who was the nemesis of the Armenians.  I do not think he ever used the word persevere and Armenians in the same sentence however.

We endeavor to persevere.  My friend Ken Hachikian and his colleagues at the Armenian National Committee endeavor to keep this issue alive.  They endeavor to make sure the current Turkish government does not forget that they have a long pending wrong with people who were and still might have been productive citizens of their empire and now their republic.  Yes, it is a different government in terms of constitution but there was a nice linear flow of leadership.

Was the current Germany responsible for the crimes against their Jewish citizenry?  Is the American Government responsible to the crimes we committed against the American Indians?  I believe the answer to that is:  Yes.

Do I believe that Joe Average American or Cemal Average Turk is responsible for what was done by their government and by their military one hundred years ago?  I do in so much as they are citizens of the country that is responsible. 

As a citizen of the United States of America, I could ask myself.  Am I responsible for what was done by this country to the American Indians 150 years ago?  Am I responsible for the dropping of the only two atomic bombs on human populations? How would I react if somehow I was told that I live on Potawatomi land and have to forsake my home because of a wrong done generations ago?  My reaction would be like I would expect to hear from the Turks or Kurds living in my great-grandfather’s house in Keserig.  I would protest and tell my government and the Potawatomis “this is our home.  I am sorry about what happened so long ago, but I was not responsible for that and I am the legal owner of this property now.”

How similar is the Armenian and American Indian situations?  I see similarities.  Other Armenians do not agree with me.  I had a discussion with a lady a few weeks ago.  She refused to see any similarities between the Armenian Genocide and the American Indian Genocide.  I see this in Armenians sadly.  We think this only has happened to us or that Genocide is worse and more heinous than that of other peoples. 

Google “American Indian Genocide” or “American Indian Holocaust” and read some of the material.  Judge for yourself if there are any similarities.   

Mi Amigo Juan:  I have an Armenian friend, Juan Payassian in Argentina.  We met exchanging music videos on YouTube.  We both love the same kind of music: Armenian and a la Turca.  I just exchange videos, Juan makes them.  He takes old recordings and adds his own images.  He does a great job as he is an artist by trade.  You can view all of his videos on his YouTube channel:  Juan's Channel .  Juan has put some great music and wonderful montages to go with the videos.  I especially like the following:

·         Udi Hrant - Hüseyni saz semai

·         Konyalim

·         Eddie Mekjian Ensemble - Kharnatzsi

·         Selim Sesler - Topal oyun havasi & Macka yollari tasli

·         Juan reciting Neruda's Mi Voz

I wish I had known Juan when I was still travelling to Buenos Aires on business.  It would have been fun hanging out with on Calle Armenia at the Café Armenia and other shops on that Armenian street in Buenos Aires.  For now, we communicate by email and music sharing.

I bring up Juan in this letter because he recently posted a most interesting, brave, and heartfelt video on his channel.  On April 7, he posted this video:  My apologies to Turkish people.  I listened to this video and read the text of his speech several times.  I was amazed.  I read the comments and was also amazed.

Juan’s words fit into this year’s April 24^th letter.  I am dancing around many of the sentiments that Juan expressed but have not quite come to his conclusion.  As they say, Juan stoops to conquer.  He has laid his heart and soul out.  I am sure some Armenians will chastise him, or any Armenian, for uttering these kinds of words.  I truly hope that this letter does not bring those sentiments to Juan for what he has bravely posted.

It is not odd and it did not surprise me that there were no comments from Armenians on Juan’s video.  I will comment and leave a link to this letter when it is done.

Should the American Indians apologize to the rest of us Americans?  Should the Jews apologize to the Germans?  Juan did just that.  He did not apologize to the Turkish government.  There is a difference. 

There is a legal issue.  It has yet to be resolved.  People like my friend Ken are working to resolve that.  They are leading the effort to recognize that church lands and buildings were taken from the Armenian people, trying to get this confiscation recognized, and then trying to get the lands back or compensation.  The Turkish Government wants to avoid this at all costs as it will raise the issue of where did all the Armenians go, who why did they leave, and why did they simply abandon their churches and schools.  There is no doubt that compensation for church and school properties will be a prelude the larger and more general compensation issue regarding the genocide.

What about at the person to person level?  Has there been an improvement of relations between Armenians and Turks.  Yes at the personal level and no at the state level.  In my own case, I had very few relations with any Turks growing up.  I had a good friend at Wayne State University in the 1980s, Halim Anisoglu, with whom I lost touch until late last year.  In this century, I have make friends and acquaintances with whom I play music, exchange music, or whose postings I follow on various websites.

I think of Osman Koker who is a wonderful fellow and friend.  He has published a beautiful collection of Armenian postcards which is a great testimony to our having been there.  He knows where all the Armenian Churches were and where most of the stones of the torn down churches are. 

I know Suha Guzel an engineer and great friend of humanity.  We began sharing videos on YouTube but have evolved to corresponding about the issues between Armenians and Kurds and both Armenians and Kurds with the Turks. 

I know two other folks.  I had included their names but they asked that I take their names off of this posting.  They are Turkish and friends of mine.  They both love the music I love.  They are very knowledgeable and one of them knows the words to every Turkish song one can think of.  We have practiced and performed together.  We never talk politics though sometimes I feel in hangs like a thick mist in the air around us. The fact that I was asked to remove their names confirms to me the strain between our two peoples.  They are truly non-political so their sentiment to not have their names mentioned is heartfelt and sincere.  But, there is a fear, also, of how they will be perceived.  I did comply and remove their names. 

Do I view these lovely people as Turks or Kurds?  Partially… because it is part of what they are.  More so, I view them as talented and interesting friends.  I view us sharing a culture. 

That is key.  That is part of what Juan was saying.  We shared a culture.  We share it still.  The humble stone homes with tin roofs on one side of the Arax river look exactly like those on the other side.  The people look the same.  The music and food overlap considerably.  Generations down the road we need to look for similarities and build bridges.

Where to from here:  While I view us as sharing a culture, some people have worked hard to keep the peoples separate.  First, it was hardliners on Turkish side who were the architects and perpetrators of the Genocide.  They have been joined equally adamant hardliners on the Armenian side.  I am more sympathetic to those on the Armenian side mostly because I am Armenian but also because they are reacting to a great historical crime and continuing injustice.

Me?  I believe in the Armenian political agenda.  I do.  I believe we must work until the Turkish State admits to what was done.  Then and only then can the Turks and Armenians create an environment where we can work, coexist, and build good relations between the two peoples.  That would be excellent.  What is the probability of it actually happening?  It used to be horribly extremely low.  Now, it is just extremely low so we are making some progress. 

I believe the Turkish government is waiting and stalling as long as they possibly can.  They are waiting and stalling so that when they do admit to the crimes of the Ottomans and Young Turks, it will be like the Americans admitting to the horrible way this land was taken from the Indians… but it was so long ago.  I can the successors of Erdogan and Davutoglu mouthing these kinds of words someday and nothing more.

I will continue to ponder the Genocide.  I will continue to support the Armenian political agenda as championed by the Armenian National Committee here in the US.  I will also continue to look for and build bridges with Armenians, Turks, and Kurds who also want to build bridges.

————— • —————

Tonight April 23^rd and tomorrow April 24^th I will think of those great people in the generation that survived.  I will think of my great-grandparents who I never met.  I will listen to Lone Waite’s and Juan Payassian’s soliloquies on YouTube.  I will listen to the most beautiful and saddest song I know as I do every year:   Adanayi Voghperke.

Starbucks Brewed Communism

I was on my way to teach last evening and was feeling like a needed a coffee.  This feeling is not something rare.  I stopped at the Lake Forest Oasis on I-94 on the way to my Tuesday evening teaching assignment.  I stopped to get a coffee.  I stopped to get a coffee because I was in low gear because I was operating on three hours sleep.  I was operating on three hours sleep because of poor planning and inept task management.

There is a Starbucks within walking distance of my house, but I stopped at the Starbucks in the Oasis because it is so convenient and such an easy-off and back onto the interstate.  I ordered what I order 86.73% of the time:  a grande regular coffee with room for cream.  The young fellow behind the counter said $2.48 as I handed him my card.  $2.48?  Just a week or ten days ago the very same order at this very same location was $2.20.  I really do not note such prices except that the Oasis Starbucks was already charging $.15 more than the other Starbucks on "surface streets."

Wow... they raised their prices $.28 on top of the premium they were already charging.  Why?

I asked the young man, the Barista as they are called, when they raised prices.  He answered "Just a few days ago."  I said, "that is a pretty hefty increase for just a cup of coffee."  It is actually a 12.7% increase.  That is above any increase in fuel or whatever else is happening.  It is after all, as my parent's generation would say, just a lousy cup of coffee.

Then a thought struck me and I uttered another question to the barista fellow.  "Did they give you a raise when they raised prices?"  He smirked and said, "no nothing like that."  I stopped asking questions, bid the pleasant fellow a good evening, and went to the side bar to put milk and artificial sweetener  into my coffee thinking that if they are going to charge $2.48 for a lousy cup of coffee, they should at least by putting the sweetener and cream in it for me.  That is what Dunkin' Donuts does for $.50 less per cup.

But, that is not all I was thinking.  I was thinking communist thoughts.  I would have accepted the price increase if half of it went to the workers.  It did not; it went to the company and primarily to the executives and shareholders.  It went mostly to the 1% that the Occupy Wall Street movement was protesting.  I am not against executives and shareholders belonging, at times, to both classes.

Still, I wanted to tell the Barista to organize, to revolt, and that he had nothing to lose but his chains.  Power to the people!  I wanted to start an old school labor union where the Barista and I would be the first members.

I was feeling pretty sophomoric.  That was the time of my life when I was the closest to being a communist.  I am nowhere near that now but I more and more I feel I am taking steps in that direction.  I am not one for extreme dogma.  I prefer a balanced middle ground.  My cousin David always says he is a fiscal conservative and a social moderate.  Except for these Starbucks like moments, I am in the same boat with him.  I am also pretty sure that, as a country, we are out of balance.   We were once too far on the extreme of social welfare.  We may have gone too far the other way.  We can never seem to find a good middle ground.  Funny, many of my fellow Americans believe that we are still too liberal.

Some people focus on gas prices or milk as their gauge of inflation.  I guess I am using coffee but only in this one instance.  I notice that prices for things are higher in big city hotels, airports, and now interstate oases.  I am not always checking prices but I noticed this increase and it irritated me.  What is $.28 really?  It is a small thing versus the impact that an increase to $5/gallon of gas would have on our economy.

The power of labor unions is their ability to withhold labor and disrupt the operations and hence revenue and profits of a company.  The power of the unions has declined in my lifetime.  This is due to the globalization of the labor force resulting in so many hourly jobs, union jobs, having moved off shore.  Of the remaining jobs, a large percentage of them are in right to work states or union free facilities.  Mostly people are happy to have the jobs; they have and do not want to rock the boat.  The most powerful unions in this country are now for government unions and they are under the same pressures that threatened other industries.

The difference between today and the heyday of union organizing in the 1930s is that for most workers today, the Barista in question versus Joe Lunchbucket of yore, are treated much better.  People, generally, do not work in unsafe work places.  There are few sweat shops in this country as we have exported the great majority of them to the third world.  People work reasonable hours for moderately fair wages.  The other thing that has changed is that the health care and retirement benefits for the great majority of us are not what they once were.  Most people worry about the day to day, doing their jobs, and just making ends meet.  When we worry about health care benefits, mostly I hear people complaining about Obamacare not how are we going to care for all our citizens.  Oddly, very few are worrying about how the heck we are ever going to fund our retirements.  Sure self-reliance works but only for a determined minority.

You see how my thoughts are tinged with the pink of socialism if not outright communism

So what if Starbucks is charging $.28 more for my lousy cup of coffee.  So what if they are not sharing this gain with their workers.  It is no never mind to the Tea Party me.  I can go anywhere to get a cuppa.  I can make coffee at home for less.  I can get coffee for $1 at MacDonalds or around $1.50 - $2.00 at venues like Panera, Dunkin' Donuts, or other places.  I go to Starbucks for convenience.  They have a lot of stores.  I generally like the feel of their stores and that taste of their coffee.  There is a limit however in what I am willing to pay for the taste of their coffee, the ambiance of their stores, and the free internet (what part of the $.28 increase is going toward improved internet services?).

I am not sure where my limit is for a price of a cup of coffee or the price of a gallon of gas.  I am not sure how far we can be squeezed before we organize, unionize, and perhaps truly occupy Wall Street.

When the Cloud Fogs Up

There is a problem with living in the cloud and relying on the internet.  The internet has to be functional.  A few nights I experienced this reality in full measure.

I was having trouble retrieving email earlier.  I was on my iPad.  The first thing I did was turn it off and turn it back on.  It still was not working.  The indicator showed I was connected to the internet but I was now getting messages saying the server was not responsive.  I proceeded to do the next best thing,  I went and rebooted my modem and wireless router by unplugging them and plugging them in again.  That did not work either.  So I did it again and again to no avail.  i then knew something bigger was up.

I decided not to futz with it any longer.  It reminded me of last year or two years when there was a similar issue.  It turned out that time that Comcast, my service provider, had a massive system wide internet failure and did not let anyone know.  When I found out, I was more than a little perturbed.  So, this time I decided to call them and see if this was a repeat of that event.

I picked up the house phone and got nothing.  It was dead.  Since, the phone which is voice over internet, I assumed in all the plugging and unplugging of wires, i had compromised the phone by not quite plugging everything back the way it was.  I made sure everything was secure and tried the phone again.  This time I got a busy signal.  Odd.  I tried again and got a dial tone.  I dialed the Comcast toll free number and went through the menu and waited... and waited.  It took ten minutes to get an agent.  I could hear the young man without any issues but he kept saying that he could not hear me and that I was breaking up.  We lost the connection probably due to my pushing random buttons on the phone handset in the belief that I had some chance of improving the connection quality by doing so..

Judy's cell phone then rang.  It was the agent, thankfully.  Once I established that he could hear me, I asked him if there was a system wide outage.  He said not that he was aware of.  He told me he was running diagnostic tests on my modem and saw no issues.  He instructed me to reboot the modem again this time taking out the backup battery to get a real reboot.  I had not done that.  I was in the process of trying to get the battery out when he stopped me.  He said he was just notified that enough people were calling in that made it a wider problem than just my house.  He said that a node/router/whatever of theirs  had failed and crews were being dispatched and that  he had to say it might take 24-48 hours to fix.  Oh my.

I had work to do that required access to the internet.   I had a new client and some pressing deadlines i.e. the next morning.  The files I had to work on were waiting for me in my email account.  This, of course, required the internet and I could not access them.  So, I was dead in the water in this regard.  I could have done other business development and personal work but these files were also in the cloud in either google docs or Evernote.  These applications are wonderful because they are accessible from any computer, pad, or phone..  Any computer, pad, or phone connected to the internet that is.

I could have used my phone.  That is not dependent on my home network.  The phone is good enough for texting, taking photos, checking quick facts and information on the internet, checking email, and perhaps responding to the emails if the response does not have to be too detailed.  Oh yeah... you can actually make calls on these phones as well.  I could have probably worked on the file but given the screen virtual keyboard size, I would have been more frustrated than productive.  And I was already pretty frustrated.

Wait a minute.  My iPad was 3g.  It had cellular capability.  I would just use that and be back in business.  Silly me.  Why hadn't I thought of that earlier.  Sometimes, I really act twice my age.  So, I switched on the cellular and it was slow.  Not just slow, but s-l-o-w...  It was molasses in the dead of winter slow.  Clearly, everyone in my neighborhood and town was already doing what I had just thought of.  The cellular bandwidth was fully utilized.  So, this option did not really work.  The files I needed simply were taking forever (and that is a long time) to download.  So, my brilliant, albeit late in coming idea,  was not so brilliant after all.

I was cut off from the world.  I was in desolation.  I was exiled.

Well not really.  Thankfully, we still had electricity.  I could read a book if I wanted to.  Luckily, I still had hardcopy books in my home.  Whew.  Even better, the cable TV still functioning.  The Comcast agent had said that the television network was separate from the internet.  Whew... what a relief.  I could watch The Green Lantern or The Blind Side for the umpteenth time.  I could still check on the weather every eight minutes on The Weather Channel.  I would have to suffer without the hour by hour forecast that the internet version provides.  It was horrible but somehow I survived.

I decided instead to work on a new file.  I could use my laptop and Microsoft Word.  Oh my, how retro.  I could use my iPad and their word processor, Pages.  The iPad option was less retro but essentially the same same.  So, that is what I did.  It was not what I was planning to do.  It was not what I needed to be doing.  But, I was doing... something.

The internet was not down as long as the Comcast  representative had said it might.  It was down about three hours.  I was engrossed in my make work writing that I never even realized it had come back on-line.  It felt like 1989.

Through perseverance, determination, and resolve, I somehow and miraculously survived this ordeal.  The human capacity to endure never ceases to amaze me.

March 2012: Sic Gloria Transit Mundi & More

This letter is a bit of a ramble.  It is a bit of the transformation I went through this month.  So, it is a journey of sorts.  As I have used March to write a travel in previous years, this letter can be quasi-considered in that category even though I did not physically travel anywhere.  The journey was all internal and in the form of a lesson.

Sic gloria transit mundi is a Latin phrase that means "thus passes the glory of the world."  It is attributed to the phrase popularized in the movie Patton as "all glory is fleeting."  In the movie, one of the true classics, General Patton as played by George C. Scott gave this little soliloquy.

For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.

I am not anywhere near being Roman General, yet I got a good dose of this lesson this week which I am sharing with in this letter. 

Monday evening, March 12th, I had just started my Introductory Statistics class at the College of Lake County.  I was giving an exam and answering last minute questions that the students always have.  I was about five minutes into it when Blake Banovitz the President of the Student Government, Ryan Stivers the VP of the Student Government and another senator who I did not know came into the room.  They were carrying small gifts and balloons.  There was a small sign attached to the gift.  They made an made announcement to the class.  The announcement was that they were giving me a wonderful and much appreciated award and honor that is summed up by the card which was attached to the gifts they presented to me:

Congratulations!

The College of Lake County

Student Government Association

would like to recognize you as

the recipient of the

2012 College of Lake County

Outstanding Part-Time Faculty Award

Your time and dedication to student success in

and out of the classroom is greatly appreciated.

Please join us at 7 pm on Tuesday, April 17 at the Board of Trustees Meeting in A206

where you will be formally recognized for this award.

I was delighted to get this recognition.  My students applauded.  I may have even blushed.  I rarely ever blush these days.  I felt very good about this and while the students were taking the exam, I texted the family and let them know what had just happened.  I was feeling really good and accomplished.  This award is from the students and it was a great confirmation that they appreciate the effort and style I bring to the classroom.  I love this work.  I cannot say that about everything I have done. 

The advice that is often freely given is some variation of "if you do what you love, you will love what you do."  It is indeed sage advice but, honestly, how many of us are really and truly fortunate enough to be able to say that.  Often that which we are passionate about does not easily become a livelihood.  Most of us settle into something we don't actually hate and perhaps moderately enjoy.  That is good enough for most of us.  But when we do see someone who is doing what they love, we recognize how lucky they are and rekindle our own desires to do the same. 

I enjoyed teaching at the college level back in the 1970s when I first did it.  The need to make more money and, frankly, serendipity led me to a corporate career.  Do not get me wrong, I enjoyed most of that career which took me to from Detroit to Connecticut/New York City, and then to Chicago.  I got to visit and work with great people from around the world and specifically in Latin America.  I did enjoy that to the point that I miss it at times.  Teaching was and is again something different... and more.  I enjoy the classroom.  I enjoy the flow of students from one course to the next.  I enjoy the continual improvement process of how I try to get knowledge across to the students.  I do get better every time I teach a particular course.  I enjoy how I really get to know the material on a different level by having to be able to coherently teach it to others.  I love it pure and simple.

Love aside... it still doesn't pay much.  It especially does not pay much at the adjunct level.  So, I applied for two full time mathematics positions at the College of Lake County.  The full time positions pay more but still not what I could and believe should be earning.  It mattered naught, I was already doing something I loved and this would allow me to do it full time.  I also believed another maxim that "if you can do what you love, worry not, the finances will work themselves out."  Either that is true or you will go bankrupt. 

I had applied for a similar position in 2009 but was rejected.  It did, however, turn into the adjunct position I now have.  As usual with me, serendipity was at play.  If Plan A does not work out, a Plan B that is in the same kind of direction will reveal itself.  Back in 2009, I felt dejected at the rejection then but upon getting the adjunct position I realized I was not ready.  A lot had changed since the 1970s when I first taught.  I had to learn the technology used in the classroom and internet course management software.  What used to be just book, chalk, blackboard, and grade-book had become more complex.  In the complexity, however, was a lot of capability that was of great benefit once it was mastered.  As I have mastered large chunks of it in the interim three years, I was feeling really confident about my candidacy for these positions.  I knew my application was much stronger than it was 2009.  I had better recommendations.  I was a known entity; I had done whatever was asked of me, accepted any assignment offered, and was getting good reviews from the students.  I was feeling golden.

Now, I had been named Outstanding Adjunct Faculty of 2012.  How could they say turn me down?

Actually, quite easily.

Less than 24 hours of getting notification of the award, I received a thanks but no thanks letter from an HR executive at the college.

Really?

Dang, it wasn't even a full day of enjoying the accolade.  Sic gloria transit mundi.  Actually, it was barely twenty hours.  It did not take long at all for me to be a mixture of anger and disappointment.  I thought I would at least get an interview.  Nope.  The email I got was polite thank you but no thank you but we have chosen to interview others.  All glory is indeed fleeting.  Sic gloria transit mundi or in your face, I am not sure which.  All I know is that it made me kind of sic... to my stomach.

The first thought that came into my head was age discrimination.  This could be the case.  It might not be the only reason but I was fairly certain it was a contributing vector.  I was thinking that the selection committee, an amorphous and anonymous group, probably didn't even know they were discriminating.  I could most certainly, using my statistical skills, verify some kind of correlation if I could get the ages of all applicants and hires for, say, the last thirty hires. 

I bounced the idea of age discrimination off of some valued friends.  These folks were human resource professionals, executive placement professionals, and even two professors at other universities.  They all agreed that age discrimination is rampant in the work place in general and academia.  One professor in a business MBA program told me that the school she teaches at actually has been discussing how to move away from 60 years old teaching 40 year olds how to manage 20 year olds.  She said that she probably has to find another place to teach.  She is very good.  The other professor simply told I was getting a good solid dose of how academic departments are run and, yes, age discrimination is a factor that exists, no one talks about, and most people who feel discriminated against rarely do anything as there is almost nothing to be gaining by taking any action.

I had to agree.  I could make a stink about it and play the age card.  But really, where would that get me?  It would consume a lot of time and energy.  There is nothing to be gained from being upset in any way at this.  Why waste time feeling bad or negative?  It will not change any of this.  It will not change the mind of the people that did not think I was as qualified or attractive as others for this position.  All negativity will do is make me feel bad and not appreciate the recognition I got from the students.  It really is a special honor and I should not let anything take away from that.  I get to go to the April 17 Board of Trustees meeting for the college and have a formal presentation.  That is very cool.  “Accentuate the positive” and all that.

But, I was upset.  I was upset with myself more than anything or anyone else.  I am upset for putting myself in a position where I was actually counting on the endorsement of anyone else.  In this case, it was the selection committee.  I knew how they would operate.  It is how they are collectively wired.  Their track record for making adjuncts full timers is very low. 

I get upset now and then.  I guess that is natural and it is certainly my track record.  But I am best when I transform the energy I put into being upset into motivation.   That is what I decided to do in this case.  I want to enjoy the recognition I got and I still want to do something exciting and that I love.

I decided to focus on my own business in which I have hung out my own shingle (I am certain this will be a topic of a future posting).  I will create a name for myself through consulting, writing, speaking, and teaching.  Thus, my decision was to create my own opportunities.  That is really what I really should be doing.  I was probably counting on this full time teaching  position because it was an easier path... and it certainly would have been. 

For sure I was interested in a full time position doing what I truly loved.  I had applied and if I got the job, I would have taught and been on auto-pilot until I finally retired.  The rejection made me really that this scenario would not have been enough.  I need and want more.  I love to teach.  But, I will also consult, speak, and write. 

I have a friend friend in Mexico who I have talked about in these letters.  His name is Angel de la Puente.  We met when he was Director of Customer Service and Logistics for Colgate Mexico and I had the same position in the Latin American Division.  He always used to say "You like me, keep me.  You don't like me, let me go."  He realized that he would try to do the best job he could and that was all he could do.  If the powers that be decide that he (or you or me) is no longer a valued member of the team, there is nothing any of us can do to keep ourselves from being let go... or not hired... or not even considered for an interview.

There was a second or perhaps third tier philosopher, Epictetus, who really laid it out perfectly with a couple of quotes that resonate with me.  They have special meaning when I am feeling dissed or rather what I like to call disenfranchised:

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

Read more quotes from Epictetus.

People and committees make personnel decisions any way they will and want.  Sometimes, it will feel personal and to a degree it is, as it is happening to you personally.  Do I get upset, stay upset, lash out, or just take it as the roll of the dice (you can't really get upset by something random) and move on?  Was all this insulting to me?  Sure, I can easily look at it that way (after all I am Armenian) or do I just accept their decision for whatever reason and however they came to that decision and move on.  Epictetus would have me taking the more noble approach and forgetting about what I can essentially do nothing about and move on to the next.  This is the same philosophy espoused, in his own eloquent way, by my friend Angel.  It is not so much as what they did and what they decided by more so how I reacted to it.

"Screw them" is certainly a reaction.  I do believe, knowing Angel, that sentiment is exactly embedded and implied in his quote.  You don't get that in the words?  Trust me, it is there.  You have to know the man and have heard the tone in which he delivers the statement.  We used to say something similar in the Johnite's band all the time, "screw them if they can't take a joke."  Of course, we used the f-word instead.

Epictetus lived from 55 -135 AD.  He was born a slave and later freed.  I suppose it was this slave heritage that led him to believe to take things as they happen and are handed out.  He believed in fate.  What else is a slave to believe in?  He advocated accepting what one has no control over as the key to contentment and happiness.   Epictetus is like a saint.  He is like Jesus turning the other cheek.  It is all very easy to say but hard to put into practice.  Perhaps, Epictetus was one of those slaves General Patton was referring to.  Maybe, he was on the chariot behind the hero whispering "all glory is fleeting."

I eventually accept events I really cannot control like Epictetus advocates.   The problem is that I need to and do rage about it first.  I probably rage too long.  Rage may well be too strong a word, but my reaction is certainly in the direction of rage.  While my friend Angel talks like Epictetus, he is also a bit of a firebrand as well before accepting fate.  I do believe he rages more than I do or at least more colorfully.  But, he believes what he says.  If you like him, take him.  If you don't, let him go but be prepared to get an earful of expletives and a frank assessment of what he thinks of you.  I am guessing Epictetus did not openly rage or let loose with the f-bombs if things did not go his way. 

So, what is my plan?  How do I handle this double edged sword of recognition and rejection?  I will focus on the recognition because the source of that is who really matters:  the students.  I am also focusing on building up my consulting business.  If done right, the revenue potential is much higher in consulting than teaching.  Furthermore, consulting will either succeed or fail based entirely on me, my ability to market, sell, and execute.  Creating my own future seems like exactly the right thing to do.

After a few days of being a cross between Epictetus and de la Puente, I began working in earnest to get my business up, running, and generating revenue.  I am kind of happy with what I have done in this regard this month.  I worked with my daughter's brother-in-law Andrew to create a logo that I quite happy with.  I have my company email set up in google apps and transferred all my email, calendar, documents, and contacts from my old consulting company.  I designed and printed business cards using my brand spanking new logo.  I contracted with a web-designer to begin creating the shell of my website.  She will teach me how to add and edit content so I can mostly be self-sufficient.  It is rather exciting.  I am having a lot of fun with this.

What is really exciting is that I also landed my first client and engagement in the past week.  It was a quick intense engagement to help a third party logistics provider prepare a bid to retain a customer that was about 30% of their business.  I liked that from this one week project I earned over half of what they pay me to teach and adjunct course at the College of Lake County.  It was also a lot of fun. 

There is also a religious and spiritual component to all this and I do not say this lightly.  I often tell people that there has to be a God because only a universal divine, all powerful, and all knowing being would have the insight to know and the power to ensure that I am not bestowed with unlimited good looks, power, or wealth. 

I am adding two dimensions to religious component.  First, I believe in God because of the humbling and centering lessons provided to me both randomly and when I seem to need them:  Sic gloria transit mundi.  Second, I also believe in God because quite simply when one door closes, another opens.  Someone or something is providing the lessons and opening the doors that reveal Path B. 

I just have to have the right positive attitude to be able to see the doors that are opening. 

Moirta and Jobs

I read an article in Forbes on-line, Would Steve Jobs Have Released the iPad3?, by Gene Marks.  Apple has been under the microscope more than ever since the passing of Steve Jobs.  They have launched the iPhone 4s and the latest iPad since the passing the of inspirational, brilliant, and enigmatic co-founder of the company.   Critics are looking for flaws in the new leadership in these products.  The people in this school looking for chinks in the armor claim that these two products are not different enough from their predecessors.  This may indicate that the company is now being run be more traditional marketers who may do OK but do not have the Jobs mojo. 

It reminds of a few books I read in the late 1980s and found quite inspirational.  One of the books was actually about Apple.  The other was about Sony.  Actually in looking up the exact titles on amazon.com, I learned that both books came out in 1987.  I am pretty certain that out by 1984 since I was using examples from both in training I was giving in 1985 and 1986.  The books were:

•  Odyssey:  From Pepsi to Apple by John Sculley with John A. Byrne

•  Made in Japan:  Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita with Edwin M. Reingold and Mitsuko Shimumoru

In those days, Sony was the company that was viewed as Apple is today.  It was the prime innovator of consumer electronics.  They had invented the transistor radio in the 1960s and revolutionized the industry with the concept of portable music.  They continued the walkman and the portable disc player.  The made the best televisions on the planet.  They were innovative and unstoppable.  They were the envy of their competitors and companies in other industries.  Morita was the genius behind the company and drove the product development machine much like Jobs did at Apple. 

At the same time, Apple was emerging.  They had innovated the first PCs but had been overtaken by IBM powered by Microsoft PCs in the workplace.  The had come out with the first Macs that were viewed as innovative but were really used by desktop publishers and in education.  Steve Jobs wanted to be more and he wanted Apple to be more.  He thought he needed to get a solid businessman with great experience in marketing to take the company to the next level.  This would make for a great partnership that would allow Jobs to develop and innovate new products while Scully ran the business side of things.

Sculley was a wunderkind at Pepsi.  He became President at the age of 39.  He was a high flier and still relative early in his career.  Jobs wooed Scully to come to Apple.  As reported in Scully's book, Jobs clinched the deal by telling Scully "Do you want to keep marketing sugar water or do you want to make products that will change the world."  Scully joined Apple.  It didn't take long before Scully and Jobs butted heads... really hard.  Scully out maneuvered Jobs in the Board Room and ended up as Chairman and CEO.  Jobs was out.  It was crazy but everyone thought Scully was the man.  Jobs went on to found NeXT and Pixar. 

Sculley went on and hung his hat on a product called Newton.  It was a decent product but a flop.  It was a Palm Pilot ahead of its time.  Sculley actually coined the term Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) when describing the Newton.  It was too pricey and perhaps not functional enough.  The reality might nave been that people were just not ready for it.  The key thing is that probably would not have happened with Jobs at the helm.  He would have made sure the timing, the pricing, and functionality were all right for the launch.  Apple spent over $100M on this product which did not make the grade.  The Newton was not the only product and strategic mistakes.  The products in his era were bigger and bulkier without the design and functional elegance the Jobs products are known for... especially those that came after Jobs' return to Apple.

Sculley ran Apple from 1983 to 1993.  He left when the sales flattened, margins shrank, and the stock dipped.  The soft drink marketing whiz could not take his skills to another industry.  His book was fascinating and engaging when I read it.  It would be kind of comical now I suppose.  In May 2009 Conde Nast Portfolio compiled a list of the 20 Worst American CEOs.  John Sculley was #14 on the list.

Sony did not fare well without Akio Morita either.  The company that led the consumer electronics world in the 1970s and 1980s became something much lesser.  They dominated personal music players with the walkman and the discman products.  Everyone had one.  Everyone had to have one.  Everyone copied them but the people who really wanted the best had Sonys.  It was that simple. 

Music was about to go seriously digital and ultra compact.  Sony should have owned that market.  Sony should have led the movement into that market.  They tried and failed.    Sony had the people, the music, and the technology but could not put it together the way Jobs and Apple.  Apple created a product that allowed people to carry all their music around with them by putting a small hard drive into their digital player.  They also created a channel to sell digital music via the internet.  Voila.  Game over.  Apple wins Sony is barely a player in the space anymore. 

The main reason for this was that Apple had Jobs again and Sony no longer had Morita.  It is probably not that simple but it is the way that I see it.

That is why I am so fascinated to see what Apple does or does not do without Jobs.  My guess is that Apple will be run by smart business men who are sharp marketeers, finance guys, and maybe some engineers.  If these guys cannot maintain to some degree the Jobs passion for innovation, sleek design, and excellence, the great company will become a good one.   The good company will be vulnerable to the Steve Jobs or Akio Morita who creates a juggernaut of a competitor. 

Is the iPhone 4s and iPad3 a continuation of excellence or a harbinger of future mediocrity?  Did I just say mediocrity?  Oh my!

A Matter of Perspective

I was watching a movie the other day.  It was called Too Big to Fail which is the story of how the US Treasury Department fought to avoid the collapse of our financial system back in the fall of 2008.  The story was about how Henry Paulson, the then Secretary of the Treasury, and Tim Geithner, the Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve at the time, got Congress to bail out the major banks through a cash infusion.  It was also the story of how Paulson and Geithner had to convince the banks to take this chunk of money that they supposedly did not want fearing too much government ownership and guidance in their operations.  They took the money and seemed to have used to line their own pockets via bonuses rather than for the intended purposes of loaning it out to stimulate a recovery (but this is a topic for another much longer blog posting).

In one scene, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, and another fellow were heading to one of a series of brutal all day meetings.  Just before entering the building, the other fellow bemoaned having to endure another tortuous day "I don't think I can take another day of this."  Lloyd Blankfein told the other fellow and I paraphrase, "You got into a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve, not a Higgins boat going to Omaha Beach." 

That was the absolutely correct perspective.  These were rich guys, financial lords of Wall Street, going to all day meetings with catered lunches and cushy surroundings.  They were not being put in a dungeon and tortured.

Around mid September of 2008 my career was falling apart.  Our entire management team was about to be and eventually axed.  It was not because of the economy but more so because a new group president wanted his own crew in there.  The US economy was about to fall apart and I was neck deep worrying about my own miserable little career.  It was a bump in the road, not choppy seas taking me to Omaha Beach. 

At such time, I should think of Blankfein’s words.  I should also think of my maternal Grandmother, Azniv Frankian Merian who we always and affectionately called Grannie .  She was born into a hard life in 1905 in a little Armenain village, Yeghike around the city that is now called Elazig, in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.  At the age of ten, soldiers came to evacuate the villagers in a pretense of relocation for their own safety.  It was to exile them into the Syrian desert to die of starvation.  It was an ugly event which Raphael Lemkin labeled as Genocide.

My Grandmother survived.  Neither she nor her Mother or sisters made the death march.  They survived because their Turkish neighbor agreed to hide them.  To survive she hid for days in the outhouse... the bottom of the outhouse... the stinking, disgusting, pit of the outhouse.  She did this.  She survived.  She never forgot this though she only told me once.  It made an impact on me.  I think she told me that story that one time to give me a some perspective on things.

I need to remind myself that no matter how bad things seem to be, they are never as bad as they were for my grandmother when she was just ten years old.  No matter what emotional corner I have painted myself into, it is not equivalent to what my Grandmother had to endure.  And, I have to face it, as she survived she had it a lot better than those who died in the Dier el Zor desert or were shot, hanged, or drown en route to the desert. 

It is matter of perspective.  It is a matter of relativity.   It is a matter of not taking things that are not that serious, too seriously.