1969

     1969 was an eventful year… at least to me. 
     It was fifty years ago and I was sixteen years old. I was coming of age. It was a year full of hope and also a year of dichotomies. It was an amazing time to be sixteen and an amazingly weird time to be sixteen. I have written about before in November 2008: Was it the Weirdest of Times? 
     It was a time where some of my generation, me included, truly believed we could change the world. I attribute that to the post World War II prosperity in the United States. University education was available and encouraged for all. It was more affordable compared to these days. The labor market supply and demand was such that we were essentially guaranteed jobs, good jobs, upon graduation. We were the generation raised on TV. Everything and anything could be solved and rectified in an hour. We thought we were different. We believed we were different. We believed we could and would change the world. We had the Summer of Love. We had Hell No, we won’t Go. We had the Age of Aquarius. We had Woodstock, the moon landing, the Vietnam War, the Generation Gap, and women, blacks, Indians, and Latinos advocating for equal rights in our land of the free. It was a time of some significant changes in morals and mores for a sixteen year old to deal with on top of all the normal coming of age things sixteen years have to deal with. 
     1969 was special because of the moon landing and Woodstock. It was special given my age. It was special in how my ideas, thoughts, and vision changed and changed marked by these two important and unrelated events.     
     When John F. Kennedy laid down the challenge to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, I became fascinated with the possibilities. I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to become an astronaut. I watched every launch of the Mercury and Gemini programs. I had written Kennedy as a nine-year-old asking for information on the Space Program. I got a manila envelope from NASA full of booklets and pamphlets on the plan to get to the moon, biographies of the astronauts, and more. I read it all, several times. In watching the launches, I would take notes about any delays, the actual time of the launch, and how the mission went. I never scored a baseball game but that was what I was doing with the space program. 
     Somehow, I started losing interest midway through the Gemini program when the missions were longer then a TV show. I was dismayed by the Apollo 1 capsule fire that took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee. Maybe I was just getting older and my interests were changing. I believe that the social turmoil of the era also competed for my attention. By the time of the Apollo 11 Mission, I was missing the childhood exuberance I had for the space program and wondering how and why I lost it. 
     Oddly, a few weeks later, Woodstock became all the rage. It came out of nowhere and captured as much or more news, from my perspective at that time, than the moon landing. And, I knew nothing about it just a week earlier. It went from being a big rock concert to becoming something much bigger. It seemed liked everyone around my age (actually a few years older), were trying to get there to be a part history, to be a part of what we thought or were being led to believe, was a turning point in the history of mankind. I am laughing, now, as I type this fifty years later, but did it seem real back then. I wrote about it in August 2004 and I am pretty much in agreement with what I wrote then. Woodstock was not the beginning of a millennial change, it was the beginning of the end that era’s peace and love movement. 
     The moon landing and Woodstock… oh, the times they were a changing and changing still.

Really? Apple?

     There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, June 28th: Apple Shares Fall as Design Chief Jony Ive Plans Exit.  From the article:

Mr. Ive, who has been at the helm of the design team since 1996, helped design the iPhone, which has driven Apple’s sales and profit for most of a decade. Mr. Ive also oversaw the development of key products such as the iPod, iPad and MacBook. 

His departure marks the end of an era at the iPhone maker as it shifts to an emphasis on services from product development.

     Really?!? Apple is shifting from a focus on products, innovative and game changing new products, to services. All I can say is wow…
     In March 31, 2012, I wrote a blog Morita and Jobsin which I talked about the legendary founders and innovative driving forces behind the innovations for which Sony and Apple were known. When Morita passed away, the innovative spirit at Sony died with him. I feared that the same could happen to Apple. It seems to be a very natural occurrence when a founder who drove and demanded innovation passes on. Corporate “wonks” take the helm. While they might be good finance, operations, or marketing, they lack the entrepreneurial soul of the founders. There is a high risk of a company known for innovative and market changing new products to become a company of line extensions that is then vulnerable to losing their edge with consumers.
     The Apple Watch work began under Steve Jobs. So, it cannot really be counted as a post-Jobs innovation. AirPods may be the only true innovation. The buzz about the latest version of the iPhone seems to have waned since they have made the price for phones with 256 GB of memory about $1,000. They were thinking everyone would continue to buy them and were bucking the trend of supply and demand. They were wrong. First the newer phones were not innovative enough, not so different in features and performance, than predecessors to justify the higher prices. Also, the market for smart phones has become saturated. Both lead to lower volumes of sales.
     The growth and success of Apple has been based on innovative market busting products and they simply have not had them since the passing of Jobs. Will forsaking product innovation for service innovation be any better for them? Only time will tell.
     IBM used to make physical products. The M stood for “machines.” They were the dominant desk and laptop company in the US if not the world. They deemed they could not cut it anymore in that market and sold their laptop business to a Chinese company: Lenovo.
     The movement from products to services is not necessarily a bad thing. Apple is making money for sure. IBM is making money. But, there is something about making things that are on the cutting edge and that everyone wants. Akio Morita and Steve Jobs understood this very well. Lastly, it is a personal thing with me. We need to be a nation that makes things that people want and helps them live better. It seems like the innovative part of the American Spirit that was so strong in the last century is slipping through our fingers like sand.
     I grew up admiring Ford, Edison, Bell, Firestone, Jobs, and even retailers like Walton and Bezos. I believe if you are not a good and competitive manufacturer of a product in your own factories, you will lose that expertise plain and simple.   Eventually you will also lose the innovative edge to whoever you outsourced the manufacturing to.  One follows the other.  To keep that innovative edge, you need a leader with scope and vision of an entrepreneur and not a corporate apparatchik.
     Almost on cue, there was another article in the Wall Street Journal on July 12: Red Wing, Iconic U.S. Shoe Maker, Labors Mightily to Bring Production Home. Red Wing Shoes is a privately held maker of industrial shoes: the safety shoes factory and warehouse workers are required or encouraged to wear. From the article:

Rebuilding U.S. manufacturing presents complex challenges for industries like footwear, electronics and bicycles, where most of the supply chain has moved abroad. Even a company like Red Wing—with a long history of U.S. production, private ownership and control over a key raw material and distribution—makes more than two-thirds of its shoes abroad. 

“The reality was that we had not developed a lot of new products for U.S. manufacturing,” said Mark Urdahl, a former General Mills executive who joined Red Wing 14 years ago and became chief executive in 2015. “You start to lose the skill set—through retirement and attrition—of people who have the ability to develop footwear here.”

     They simply exported the manufacturing and lost that expertise. The ability to develop new products naturally flowed to where the manufacturing went.
     Are shoes something we want to and have to protect? We are not a country of having governmental manufacturing strategies like China. So, in our case, it is up to the leadership in each industry to want to fight, innovate, and make the best things in the world here. I am not sure we are training those kinds of leaders these days. Jobs, Morita, Ford, and others were not financial guys. They were innovators and makers. That is probably the mojo Apple needs to find again before they sell their phone hardware business to Huawei or Oppo just as IBM sold their ThinkPad business to Lenovo in 2005.  That would be a sad day.

Multiple Shampoos?

modernconceptssalon.com

Note:  I wanted to title this piece Shampooⁿ but I could not make the exponent work in the title window on blogger.

     I still have enough hair that require cutting and trimming every three to five weeks. I used to go to barbershops which then gave way to salons. Now these independent businesses seem to have given way to the franchises like Great Clips, Supercuts, and, the place I have gone for the past several years, Sports Clips.
     They do a good job at my Sports Clip location and the prices are reasonable especially now that I get a senior discount. Their locations are sports themed in all the décor that gives the feel of being in an arena. There are TVs everywhere and they, by policy, are tuned to either ESPN or a live sporting event. Of course, I always ask if they can put on Oprah or the Hallmark Channel.
     There are a few irritating factors but nothing that makes me want to find another place to get my haircut. First, they are always trying to sell me an upgrade. They have a service called MVP which includes, beyond the haircut, a shampoo, a hot or cold facial towel, and a neck message. I believe it is a $10 upcharge to the cost of a haircut. I never get it, unless it is free. Second, they are always trying to sell me product such as shampoos, creams, conditioners, and other styling stuff. They always ask, quite nicely, and I always say, “No fries with that” with a big enough smile to keep things light. I get it. They are running a business and want more revenue per customer. But, I just want a haircut… that’s all.
     The last thing that frustrates me is from a purely perspective of a professor of business. Their systems are lame. Their online log in system was slow in coming and cumbersome to use. While at each store, they have my records of when I have been there and details of how I like my hair cut. This is cool but that data cannot be accessed by any other Sports Cut location which seems more 1982 to me than 2019.
     The irritants are mild compared to the value of their service and ambiance of their shops and friendliness of the ladies (only ladies) that work there. So, I am a loyal customer and actually give them my endorsement.
     But, this is not why I am writing.
     I needed a haircut yesterday. I went online and saw the wait time at my prime location to be almost an hour. Another nearby shop had no wait time. I have never been to the other shop, so I thought I would give it a try. It was bigger. While the décor was the same, it had a different vibe. It seemed hipper and edgier than the shop I go to. My stylist was a lovely, perky, young lady with short blond hair. She was energetic in both mannerism and in her pace and cadence of how she talked.
      She told me of the Double MVP promotion running in the month of July. I thought it was a buy one get one free offer. I misinterpreted thus causing a comic back and forth until she could better articulate or I could finally understand, that it was all free and involved two MVPs in the same visit. That’s right, two shampoos, two hot or cold towels, and two neck and shoulder massages during the same visit. Part of my not understanding was that I rarely want the service at all and was confused why anyone would want to double up on it. The fact that they offered the double service at all boggled my 1950s issue mind.
     So, being the inquiring person I am, I asked why people would get the double service. In her perky, charming, fast-talking way, she told me multiple shampoos and massages were quite popular with lawyers and marketing people. I found that quite specific in terms of professions favoring this added service. Oh yes, it seems some of these folks would get two, three, or four shampoos in a row. Some even get ten with the record being fifteen as far as she knew. I was kind of astonished. Now, I was the energetic and perky one, talking fast and asking questions.
      I will say that the shampoo experience is very pleasant and very relaxing. You are seated in a recliner with your head in the sink designed just for shampooing hair. They put a perfect temperature hot towel on your face and the stylist basically gives you a head massage lubricated with shampoos and, again, perfect temperature water.
      As pleasant and relaxing as it is, the thought never crossed my mind to ask the stylist to keep doing it. Never. Ever. Yet, this is a real thing. Guys are getting multiple shampoos at I am guessing $10 a pop. “What another?” Sure, why not.”
   All I could think about, but did not say, was that this was some kind of nouveau millennial lawyer marketer replacement for lap dances… which is something I have, of course, only read about.

Lee Iacocca

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     Lee Iacocca passed away on July 2. He was 94 years old. His passing caught me by surprise since I had not seen him mentioned in the business news, as far as I can recall, for several years. Part of the surprise might have been because I might have thought he already passed.
     Iacocca was a big deal in the auto industry. I was well aware of that growing up in Detroit. He was the President of Ford Motor when I began working there in 1976. His ambitions and ego clashed with the ego of Henry Ford II who fired his #2 on July 13, 1978. The shock of that rippled through the company like wildfire in an era well before email and internet. Ford logged a profit of $2 Billion the year that the “Deuce” fired Iacocca.
     Much has been written about Lee Iacocca this week. He was the father of the Mustang, one the most popular and enduring cars to come out of Detroit. He was also the credited with the Ford Pinto which was most infamous for its design flaw that made it prone to gas tank explosions in rear end collisions. After Ford, he took the helm at an ailing Chrysler. There his celebrity took a quantum leap as he secured government loans to buoy the failing and became the spokesman of the company in their television advertising. At Chrysler, he introduced the K-Car and the Mini-Van, the latter of which has been as iconic as the Mustang. He also bought American Motors which brought the Jeep nameplate to Chrysler. He authored three books, two of which I read.
      Many of the articles referred to him as the first celebrity CEO. This observation also surprised me a bit because I thought of Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and others. Upon further reflection, everyone before Iacocca was a founder, inventor, or entrepreneur and not professional managers rising to the top in well established companies.
     I never met Lee Iacocca. I would have loved to have and maybe worked for him. Minimally, I would have liked to have heard him speak. I enjoyed his Autobiography (1984) and Talking Straight (1988) books. I got and read them both when they were published. Oddly, I completely missed his third book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone, which was published in 2007. I have added that to my reading list.
    Here are a few recollections and reflections when I think about this larger than life leader in the auto industry.

• All the senior executives at Ford had access to a fleet of cars to drive. They all drove brand new Ford cars for certain. But, they also had access to the best cars in the world to drive for “competitive evaluation.” The lore around the company was that Iacocca took a Ferrari from the World Headquarters, the Glass House, to a meeting at another of the many Ford buildings in Dearborn. When it came time to return to the Glass House, Iacocca couldn’t figure out how to get the Ferrari into reverse and had to call the garage personal to come out and show him. 
• This one I believe is from Iacocca’s Autobiography or the Detroit Free Press. On the other hand, it may have also been corporate lore. When Henry Ford II fired Iacocca, he walked him out in front of the Glass House. He pointed up at the blue oval Ford logo on the building and told Iacocca, “Do you see whose name is on the building?”
• This one is from his Autobiography. Iacocca was amazed at how good the hamburgers tasted in the Glass House executive dining room. One day he asked the chef (I want to say his name was Bernardin) how he prepared he burgers. He took Iacocca into the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator and took out a filet, he put the filet into the meat grinder, and then formed the output into a patty. That was the secret.
• The obituaries all referenced that Iacocca in his last years at Chrysler, he tried to expand beyond autos in a series of acquisitions. This plan put Chrysler into financial turmoil again and hastened Iacocca’s departure. He tried to take the company over again in a hostile takeover partnering with Kirk Kerkorian. That takeover did not pan out but instead lead to Mercedes Benz taking over Chrysler. I once knew about these lesser parts of Iacocca’s storied career but chose only to remember his huge successes.
• I wonder what impact Iacocca had if had become Ford’s CEO? Would they have had the same quality focus? Would they have developed the Taurus? Certainly, Philip Caldwell, Don Petersen, and Red Poling did a pretty good job. Iacocca was certainly more popular and well-known than Philip Caldwell, but Caldwell equally, if not more, successful.
• The Mustang came out while I was in elementary school. We were Detroit kids which meant everyone had a family member or extended family member working in the auto industry. So, it goes without saying that the popularity and excitement of the Mustang was part of our young lives. I recall my friend telling me that “My Dad designed part of the Mustang.” I said, “Wow! What part?” He responded, “The rear window molding!” I remember thinking “the rear window molding… not very exciting.” It was my first glimpse into the “not very exciting” aspects of the auto industry.
• Again, most of the obituaries I read, alluded to Iacocca as a cigar chomping executive. Ah, for the good old days where you could smoke a cigar anywhere you wanted. Certainly, we are better off with smoke free workplaces but I would occasionally smoke one in my office or while teaching if it were allowed.
• I wonder if any of my students would know who Lee Iacocca is? I will have to poll them when classes begin.

     To end, here are some memorable quotes from Lee Iacocca.

• Management is nothing more than motivating other people. 
• The one word that makes a good manager – ‘decisiveness’.
• In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.
• You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.
• We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insolvable problems
• The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

Happy 40th to the Walkman!

The Original

     I was writing a bloggy bit about Apple in which I was wondering if they had lost their competitive edge in being able to innovate truly exceptional new products. In this regard, I always relate and compare Apple and Sony. They dominated the consumer electronics markets in their heyday with innovative products. The innovation was driven from the top by Steve Jobs at Apple and Akio Morita at Sony. The stream of innovative products at both companies dropped dramatically when the founding icon left the helm.
     In the midst of writing this, an article from USA Today popped up on a news feed informing me that the Sony Walkman was launched on forty years ago on July 1, 1979: Before Apple iPods and iPhones, there was Sony Walkman, 40 years of portable music. This amazing innovation was basically a small cassette player that was either clipped to one’s belt or held in one’s hand and worked exclusively through headphones. There were no speakers. The Sony Walkman was the first personal music player and Sony owned that space until Apple out innovated them with their combination of iPod and iTunes.
     Certainly, people used headphones before the Walkman. The use of headphones was usually on devices or systems that were designed to be played primarily with speakers. People used them at home with the stereo systems that were anything but portable. The headphones themselves weren’t designed with portability in mind. They were big and bulky. Transistor radios, another Sony innovation, made the radio portable but had a low-grade earbud option rather than high quality headphones. Also, with the transistor radio, one was subject to the offerings of the radio stations.
     As far as playing the music you wanted to hear when you wanted to hear it. The options were records and tape. Record were never really portable. The tape players were first reel-to-reel and also not very portable. The innovations of the 8-track and cassette players allowed for players in the car. The cassette format became the standard for two reasons, the tapes were more compact and only had two sides versus the 8-tracks needed to switch directions eight times and disrupting the music in doing so.
     The first truly portable music players were big and loud. They were called “boom boxes” and ranged in size from a cigar box on the smaller end to a case of beer on the large side. They were AM/FM radios and cassette players. There is a recurrent image of movies from the 70s and 80s of folks walking around with boom boxes on their shoulders belting out music at a volume that an entire

My Workhorse Walkman

neighborhood could hear.
     The Walkman was much more portable and much more personal. You could hear someone else’s music only if they turned their volumes up so high you could hear the music from their headphones in their ears. Forty years later, the hearing aid industry is a benefitting from generations of folks listening to loud music on headphones. You could listen to anything you wanted, provided you had the cassettes at hand.
     The original Walkman actually had two headphone jacks. The thinking was that one could walk on the beach or down the street with a significant other both listening to the same music. That was so rarely the case that subsequent models only had one jack. The Walkman was truly a personal, one person, device.
     When first introduced, the Walkman was kind of pricey for the day. When

released in Japan they were selling for $150 and, if memory serves me well, they were about that price when they came to the us a few years later. The price came down in the second iteration. At the party held to celebrate the success of the Walkman, Morita made a challenge to the engineers and designers at the end of the evening. He held a block of wood that was two-thirds the size of the Walkman. He told the engineers that this was the size he wanted the next version to be and it should have half the number of parts and half of the cost. This is the kind of creative tension Morita brought to the table!

My Walkman MiniDisk

When I finally bought one, I paid something like $50 or $60.     When I was traveling a lot for business and commuting from Wilton, CT to Manhattan. I always had a Walkman in my briefcase. First it was a yellow sport version and later the mini-disk Walkman. Mostly, like 90% of the time, I listened to Armenian and Turkish music. About half of that music was live recordings that a group of musician friends would record, duplicate, and share. The Walkman was a big part of expanding our repertoire.

     I have very fond memories of the Walkman but easily gave them up when gifted an iPod. Innovations are really awesome and breed great loyalty until something better comes along.

Planned Obsolescence? Really?

https://www.earthlaws.org.au/psa/ 

     Owning a house involves maintaining the house. With the turn of the century, it seems things need maintaining more often. Also, maintaining things seems to have become replacing things.
     Our house is really a great house. It is 20 years old and we love the architect designed space and flow of the floor plan. We are on our second set of furnaces and air conditioners. Even more remarkably, we are on our third set of water heaters. We bought a freezer in 2007 and it died and had to be replaced this year. The range has a ventilation fan for our countertop range. It went kaput and needs to be replaced as the parts to repair it are no longer available.
     The water heaters are $1,200 wholesale. The furnaces and air conditioners were approximately $3,000 each. The range fan is also $3,000. The freezer was a bargain at a measly $550. None of these items could be repaired. The furnaces and air conditioners were so expensive to repair that no one would do it. The water heaters and freezer could not be repaired because of the way they were designed. Therefore, everything had to be replaced. I think we only replaced one water heater and one furnace (oil burner) in my first twenty years of home ownership. That number has been eclipsed in the second two decades.
      This all offends me as Quality professional. It reminds me of a concept that I thought was long gone from the world of product development, namely, Planned Obsolescence which per Google is defined as:

a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials.

     This definition fits perfectly to each of the appliances I have mentioned.
      I am keenly aware that our appliances and gadgets are more complicated these days and thus potentially more prone to failure. I understand that to keep prices competitive, there is a relentless effort to reduce costs. This means using less material for the same function and using less expensive materials. There is a limit to how much cost can be reduced before quality and reliability suffer. I believe we are way past that threshold and the part of quality that we have traded off for price containment is durability and repairability.
     Has this been done on purpose? Is there some devious intent behind this? I do not think so. I believe it is an unintended consequence of trying to provide energy efficient products laden with features at the lowest possible prices. This results in products that work quite well but have shorter life-spans. I would rather have a few less features, perhaps even pay a little more, for quality base functionality with impressive durability.
     I do believe we a third wave quality and reliability revolution. The first was in 1920s and 30s when Walter Shewhart developed the system of Quality Control. The second was Post World War II when the Japanese created their system of Quality Management. We need to be on the brink of a third wave to create products that last longer with lower cost of total ownership. The products need to be repairable, perhaps even like automobiles, with a maintenance schedule designed to ensure operational quality with exceptional reliability and durability. The manufacturers that can do this will shake-up the market as Toyota did to Ford and GM in the 1970s and 80s.

June 25, 2019

     It is my birthday. We really celebrated it on the 23rd. We were in Washington DC for the christening of our youngest grandchild. We celebrated four birthdays on three cakes. My in-law Yervant and I share a birthday: the 25th. The 25th was also the birthday of my father in-law who passed away in 2010. My oldest grandson is the next day, June 26, and my only granddaughter is the day after that. It is a wonderful cluster of birthdays. We were kind of hoping for all of us to share one birthday. But, it is better that each of the little ones has their own birthday. We can celebrate together, and the grandkids can still have their own day where we can celebrate them separately. I like it.
     So, what did I do for my birthday? The only thing on my schedule was to address the incoming class of transfer students to North Park. I welcomed them to North Park and spoke to them about the merits of meeting with their faculty advisor to ensure they plan their schedules and graduate on-time. I passed out an OpEd piece How to Get the Most Out of College by Frank Bruni in the August 17, 2018 New York Times. It is a very good piece that provides excellent advice to undergraduates. All in all, I enjoyed motivating these new students.
     Other than that, I talked to family and friends online and by phone both audio and video. The highlight, by far, were the two face time calls with my grandchildren. Hearing them sing happy birthday from DC and LA was the best. I got messages from around the corner and heard from friends around the world. There were phone calls, messages, and posts on Facebook. I tried to thank each individually on Facebook but quickly got hopelessly behind. Thankfully, I have this blog with which to thank everyone en masse. It is really heartwarming to have so many people reaching out with birthday greetings and well wishes.
     I began this blog in 2004 as an e-letter. My friend, Marilyn Zavidow, named it This Side of Fifty. Well, I am certainly well on this side of fifty. But, it is good. I am enjoying my family and have pure joy watching the grandchildren grow. I am also enjoying my encore career as a college professor. It is the best retirement pastime or hobby for me.
     This is not a birthday that ends in a five or a zero. It is an in-between birthday. But, it is a birthday that has me resolved to pay much more attention to my health and well-being than ever before. Sure, I know. I have said this a countless number of times. This time seems different. Actually, this time has to be different. I want to operate at peak performance and independently as long as I possibly can. This commitment to personal health and well-being was certainly a lesson my father, his brother, and their father and uncle advocated and exemplified in their daily life. I truly have to start being a Gavoor man.  Hopefully more on this in the coming year.
     Thanks again for all the greeting and well-wishes. I feel truly blessed.

When Two Armenians Meet in Prague

Maestro Haig Utidjian

      In a March 7, 2019 post, Going to Prague, I wrote about looking forward to meeting Haig Utidjian a composer, maestro, and deacon that I got to know on about a year ago.
    We first became acquainted on Facebook in June 2018 via my distant cousin, Levon Avdoyan, who is recently retired from the Library of Congress and a revered scholar on Armenia and the Middle East. Levon had organized a conference in Washington, DC on Armenian Studies and he had invited Haig to make a presentation. About a year ago, Levon, Haig, and I got into a wonderful discussion on a Sunday morning on FB. Oddly, I do not recall the specific Armenian topic but do fondly recall being a part of the trio with these two scholars. We agreed that we should continue the discussion in DC when we were at the conference which I was planning to attend. We were going to DC for the Smithsonian Folklore Festival which was featuring Armenia. Alas, our plans changed, and I was unable to get there early enough to attend the conference.
     Later in that summer of 2018. we decided to make Prague the destination for the School of Business and Nonprofit Management International Experience Trip for 2019, I let Haig know. I was looking at getting to meet him as bonus of the trip.
      A few days before leaving, we texted again and tried to coordinate our schedules. It was going to be tough. Certainly, we had a busy tour schedule. Haig was also busy with his class and various ensemble practice schedules. I did mention we were free on Sunday, and perhaps we could meet at the Armenian Church. He said “splendid” and that would work as he was the deacon. Haig informed me that it would only be a vesper service taking place in the early afternoon. It mattered not; I was looking forward to meeting him.
     Haig didn’t just say “splendid.” As he knew I was a musician, he said “Splendid, we will put you in a shabik (robe) and we will sing two Lenten sharagans (hymns) together. I will send you the music.” I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. I am a so-so sight reader when playing the oud. I am a horrible sight reader when it comes to singing.
     A few minutes later, I got a text from Haig. Sure enough, there were two attachments. I opened the first. There was no music, just words, naturally in Armenian script. Upon further review, I noticed every other line were the lyrics, the in between lines were a cross between braille and Arabic. Slowly, I realized, that he sent me the music in Hamparsum Nota! This well-known, and seldom used these days, notation was the invention of Hampartsum Limondjian, better known as Hamparsum Baba, in Turkey. Hamparsum Baba developed a system of musical notation that he developed rooted in an older Armenian system of runes. Hamparsum Nota is credited with preserving classical Ottoman music until Western musical notation was adopted. I was impressed that Haig thought I could read Hamparsum Nota which I cannot. But, I was suddenly motivated to learn more. This is the kind of inspirational fellow Maestro Haig is!
     I asked if any of the students wanted to go with me. Donna Hardy and her

Me, Vita, Fr. Barsegh, and Donna
Church of the Holy Spirit

friend Vita Robinson decided they wanted to go to church and, as they did not want to venture out alone, decided to come with me. The church the Armenians were using was the Church of the Holy Spirit. This historic medieval Catholic Church is next to the even more famous Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter which is designated as a UNESCO Historic Site. The Cardinal Duka, the archbishop of Prague and the Primate of Bohemia, has graciously allowed the Armenians to use this beautiful old stone church.
     It was a drizzly cold day in Prague. They church did not have a heating system, so it was cold, even colder than outside, in the sanctuary. We never took off our coats. It was definitely how our ancestors went to church. Haig sang beautifully. He has a lovely clear tenor voice and his nuances of the church modes took me back to my youth back in St. Sarkis Church in Detroit. After the short service, we took some photos and went to Father Barsegh’s office… where there was heat! We had coffee and chatted with Father Barsegh.
     After that, Donna, Vita, Haig, and I went to a bistro and chatted some more.

Haig brought me books he had authored to carry back to the states for Levon. I was delighted to do so. He also generously brought copies for me as well. One of the books was titled: Tntesean and the Music of the Armenian Hymnal. This book introduces, well almost everyone, to the massive tome (like 800 pages) that Elia Tntesean compiled in the 1800s of all the Hymns of the Armenian Church that had been preserved using Hamparsum Nota. The second book was, Treasures of the Earliest Christian Nation: Spirituality, Art, and Music in Medieval Armenian Manuscripts. Both books, at first glance, were impressive.
     In inspecting and thumbing through the Tntesean book, I noticed an endorsement on the back from “Krikor Pidedjian, Komitas State Conservatoire of Yerevan.” I know Krikor very well as he was the Director of Camp Haiastan when I attended back in 1967. When we moved to New York, I was reacquainted with Krikor, an eminent authority on Armenian Sacred music himself. I asked, “I see Krikor Pidedjian endorsed your work. How wonderful.” Haig replied, “Do you know Krikor?” I related how I did. It seems that when Haig was preparing this book, he visited St. Nerses Seminary in New York and everyone told him he needed to meet with Krikor. As it was arranged, Krikor’s wife let Haig know the visit would be brief because of Krikor’s health. Perhaps, he could only meet for half an hour. Well, Krikor was engaged to exchange views and knowledge with another scholar passionate about Armenian Church Music. They spent almost five hours together.
     Haig asked, if I would kindly carry two more books back to the States for

Krikor which I most certainly agreed to. As he did not have the books with him, we would have to meet again. Haig invited me to his apartment on my last evening in Prague. We had Armenian coffee. We toasted each other over a glass of Mekhitarine (a light herb brandy made by the Armenian Mekhitarist monks in Vienna). And, we talked. We talked about the history of our people. We talked about where we started and how we each got to where we were in life. He showed me the massive Tntesean Hymnal he had bought in Istanbul. He gave me a brief lesson in Hamparsum Nota and he sight read several passages giving me a short lesson in reading the Nota. I was simply amazed and wondered out loud that there might only be ten folks in the world that could do this.  Haig said, "Ten might be too low, but it is probably less than 25."
     From his two books, here the biographical paragraph on Haig:

Haig Utidjian, PhD, MSc(DIC), CAS(GSMD) is an orchestral conductor, chorus master, and musicologist. In his native Cyprus, he was a pupil of Abp Zareh Aznaworean of blessed memory, and is a Senior Deacon of the Armenian Church, with research interest in the musicology and theology of the Armenian Hymnal and in the works of St. Gregory of Narek. He was recently decorated with the Komitas medal by the Armenian state and the Yakop Melapart medal by the National Library of Armenia

     When we met, Haig insisted on talking to me as much as possible in Armenian. My Armenian skills were the limiting factor. He was quite fluent. He is

Haig signing his books

dedicated to preserving Western Armenian and the Church musical tradition of Bolis (Istanbul) rooted in Hampartsum Limondjian, Elia Tntesean, and Archbishop Zareh of blessed memory. He simply lives his life in this manner. It is inspiring and impressive.
      Upon returning home, I got a glimpse of Haig’s family heritage. There was an article in the April 9thNew York Times, “Stoning Gay People? The Sultan of Brunei Doesn’t Understand Modern Islam: The Ottoman Empire was more liberal.” They were quoting an English translation of the Ottoman Penal Code by John Bucknill and Haig Utidjian. Levon noticed this and brought it to Haig’s attention. The Haig Utidjian refered to in this article was a lawyer and the great-grandfather of the Haig I have been writing about here.  There is a long history of Utidjians in the intelligentsia  of the Armenians in Istanbul.
     As I am writing this I am listening to a CD Haig gave me. It is an April 4, 2016 recording of Charles University Orchestra with Maestro Haig conducting. They were performing Komitas/Sahakiants’ Liturgy for Strings. Here is a link to view the concert on YouTube.
     What an amazing fellow! Haig is a gentleman, a scholar, and an amazing and passionate Armenian. Certainly, when the two of us met, we most certainly created a new Armenia.

The Church of the Holy Spirit

When Two Armenians Meet in Lake Forest

      Of course, the title of this piece is from one of the variations of the famous William Saroyan quote: For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia. I was not expecting to meet another Armenian today though I am never against it. I am always up for creating a New Armenia. Today’s story was something different and, actually, something special.

     I was out and about this afternoon running errands. I went to downtown Lake Forest. I had a box of freshly baked choreg to mail to the grandkids in Los Angeles. All of our grandkids on both coasts love “Medzig hats” or Grandma’s bread (instead of Medzmayrig which is Armenian for Grandmother, Judy selected the diminutive Medzig). While waiting in line at the Post Office, juggling the two boxes I had to mail, I noticed that the young lady in front of me had a tattoo on top of her left foot. When I regained control of the boxes and set them on the ground as the line was a bit long, I looked again at the tattoo. It was two lines of script that looked like it was Thai or Sanskrit or even… um… Armenian. Nah… it couldn’t be. Mind you, my perspective had me trying to read the script upside down. 

Sidebar: You may be wondering why I am focused on the tattoo of a young lady while standing in line at the Post Office. That is a very fair question. My wife asked me the same thing. The answer is simple. I tend to notice everything. I tend to notice everything when my nose isn’t buried in my phone. For example, the fellow behind me at the Post Office who looked like a retired CEO had on a royal blue Pebble Beach golf sweater; the Post Office Manager was helping a little old lady tape up a package; more people came in to check their Post Office Boxes than waiting in line to at the one sole window that was open. This ability to notice details may have been honed during my years of operations and quality management where it was my job to walk through factories and, basically, notice everything both good and bad. Maybe, I had the ability to notice everything all my life and this was the reason I was effective at my job. 

     So, I told the young lady, “I am trying to read the tattoo on your foot. What language is it? I want to say that it looks Armenian.” She responded, “It is Armenian.” I moved to get a better view of the tattoo. It said Խաղաղություն Սեր, Peace Love. She had it done at a tattoo parlor in Grayslake. What a cool tattoo.  
     It was my pleasure to meet Elizabeth “Elle” Sergenian. It was a pleasure to create a New Armenia for a few minutes at the Lake Forest, IL Post Office. She was gracious enough to allow me to photograph her tattoo and include it in this bloggy bit. 
     Afterwards, I realized that I was so amazed by seeing this tattoo that I did not really ask the normal questions when two Armenians meet. We did become friends on Facebook and I was able to figure out that Elle may be related to the Sergenian Carpet and Endless Knot folks in Madison, WI. 
     Like my Chidem Inch series of posts, I think I will start another such thread: When Two Armenians Meet. Thanks William Saroyan! Thanks Elle! Thanks US Postal Service!

Խաղաղություն
Սեր

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Around the World in 24 Days

     Any regular reader of this blog probably knows that I am a reader of the Wall Street Journal. It is indispensable resource to me as professor in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University. I read it almost every day and clip articles for use in all my classes. I share current news stories that exemplify what we are covering in class. This really helps drive the concepts home.
     The Journal is the primary news source for business professionals in the US. It is one of the few newspapers to thrive in this internet age. They were the first newspaper that I know of that was able to successfully establish and sell subscriptions for online access. One of the reasons this was possible was because their reader base is more affluent and thus can afford it. Also, the quality of the writing, reporting, and quality coverage of all things business has made it the Journal de riguer for business men and women.
     Given the affluence of their subscribers, the products advertised include pricey luxury goods. There are ads for high end watches and executive clothing. While I am a subscriber and reader, I am at the low end of their readership in terms of affluence. There is little chance that I will ever spend $1,500 for a suitcase, $2,000 for a pen, $70K for a watch, $3,000 for a suit, or $5M for a vacation home. While these kinds of items are certainly pricey, they are “normal,” run of the mill, ads in the Journal. I am used to them.
     Yesterday, May 31, there was an ad that did surprise me. The National Geographic Society has a subsidiary called National Geographic Expeditions. They advertised “An Extraordinary Journey by Private Jet.” The expedition is being called “The Future of Everything.” It is a twenty-four-day trip that will take place May 15 – June 7, 2020. Every two days the tour group is moves to a different global locale to “experience ancient traditions and meet the innovators determining what’s next for our planet.” The trip begins in Seattle and ends up in Boston. In between, the stops are in Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Estonia, Finland, and Iceland. No more detail was provided in the advertisement but more is provided on www.natgeoexpeditions.com/wjs as well five other trips.
     The private jet? It is a specially configured 757 for 75 passengers versus the normal 233. There will be an executive chef and a dedicated tour physician aboard. Oddly, they didn’t mention a thing about the inflight entertainment options.
     The cost for The Future of Everything Expedition: $92,795 for double occupancy and $102,045 for single occupancy. For all this money, the traveler is still responsible for getting to Seattle and back home from Boston.
     This sounds like an amazing trip. It is certainly pricey, but that is what amazing costs. Would I want to participate? Absolutely! Unless I win the lottery in the next few months, this expedition is outside my budget. The North Park School of Business and Nonprofit Management International Experience trip is much more my speed.