Dtavadjan?

 

This word, dtavadjan, is a strong word in Armenian and it is being bandied about quite a bit in the past month referring to the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan. 

It means “traitor.”

Losing the recent, September 27 – November 10, war with Azerbaijan was a devasting blow to the gut, heart, and soul of every Armenian around the world.  The abruptness of the end of the war and the loss of life, land, and national pride despite the heroic effort the Artsakh forces a larger and better armed Azeri military backed by Turkey.

On November 10, the Azeri forces were making headway and appeared to be about to take Sushi.  Suddenly, a peace was announced, and the terms were most definitely not favorable to the Armenians.  I was taken aback that many were calling Pashinyan a dtavajan and calling for elections to oust him.  The terms of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Ceasefire Agreement are provided below.

My first thoughts were that the odds were stacked against us.  Artsakh with some support from Armenia and perhaps some latent help from Russia, we were fighting well-funded Azeri forces augmented with Turkish air support and Turkish funded mercenaries (seasoned Isis fighters?) brought in from Syria.  The Azeris had drones supplied from Turkey and Israel for which the Armenian forces had no answer.  We had bravery and tactics.  Report showed we were inflicting an order of magnitude more casualties.  But, we had no answer for the drone and the numerically superior Azeri and mercenary forces.  As my friend Ara said, “we were trying to shoot down drones with peashooters.” 

The ceasefire came so quickly that it appeared, at least to me, to have been pre-brokered.  It seemed to me that the regional powers basically put a gun to Armenia’s head and made them take this deal.  I did not think that Armenia had much influence in these negotiations.  The outcome of war was clearly in favor of the Azeris.

I actually thought, “Who would have wanted to be in Nigol Pashinyan’s or Artyak Harutunyans (President of Artsakh) shoes and have to sign such an agreement.”

Immediately upon the announcement of the terms, people took to the streets in Yerevan to protest the agreement and Pashinyan.  Many began to call him a traitor and called for elections.  It was clear other political parties were looking to take control of the country in such an election.

I asked others, mostly my friends, about Pashinyan being a traitor.  A few guys from Armenia did not think he was a traitor and thought as I do.  American born Armenians aligned with a particular political party with aspirations to take a larger role in the country unequivocally called him a traitor.  Others, that thought he was a traitor, claimed he did not commit Armenia’s full arsenal of weapons which he might have used in Artsakh or even to take out Azerbaijan’s oil industry.  The accused him of not allowing volunteers from the diaspora to join the Artsakh defenders.   I believe he had to walk a thin line to prevent Turkey taking a more direct role in the War given Russia’s not willing to assist the Armenians with forces.  I believe Putin and Erdogan were calling the shots behind the scenes, Putin probably was waiting for the moment to step in and impose the agreement we ended up with.  The words of Khirimian Hyrik who was the Catholicos of the Armenian Church from 1893 – 1907 still ring true.  I used this same quote in my blog post, of October 2^nd, Chidem Inch: War in Artsakh, in reaction to the onset of this horrible war

It was upon returning from the Congress of Berlin, where he was sent by the Armenian delegation to negotiate on its behalf, that he delivered his most famous speech, that of the “iron ladle.” He argued that Armenians had placed their hopes for salvation in others, rather than themselves. Hayrig used the allegory of a pot of harissa, a traditional Armenian dish, from which other countries were extracting what they wanted with iron ladles while he had been sent to secure concessions for the Armenians with nothing but a paper ladle. He thus implored Armenians to shed their timidity and become masters of their own fate. 

~ auroraprize.com

I do not think that Nigol Pashinyan is a traitor.  I do think he was in over his skis.  I do think he taken to school by Erdogan and Putin.  He had very little prior leadership or diplomatic experience.  He was a journalist.  He is a great orator and got involved in politics at the representative level.  He found himself leading the February 2018 Velvet Revolution and then thrust into the top job in Armenia’s government.  The people supported him.  He was anti-oligarch, anti-establishment, and strived to not be under the influence of Putin.  He was a breath of fresh air.

But on November 10^th, Putin showed Pashinyan and the Armenians who had the iron ladle.  We were, once again, looking for them to be our savior during the war and once again their own interests prevailed over doing what we thought was the right thing to do.  My view was that Putin basically pulled Armenia back into his sphere of influence with this agreement.  Putin even chastised the Armenians for never having recognized the Republic of Artsakh!

Paper ladle indeed.

 

 =====

 

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement

 

 

We, the President of Azerbaijan, I. Aliyev, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia N.V. Pashinyan and President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, state the following:

1.     A complete ceasefire and end to all hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is hereby declared from 00:00 Moscow time on 10 November 2020. The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia, hereinafter referred to as the Parties, shall stay at the positions they occupy.

2.     The Agdam District shall be returned to the Republic of Azerbaijan by 20 November 2020.

3.     Along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor, a 1,960-strong peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation with small arms, 90 armoured personnel carriers, and 380 vehicles and other pieces of special equipment shall be deployed.

4.     The peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation shall be deployed in parallel with the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh. The duration of the peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation is 5 years to be automatically extended for another 5 years unless one of the Parties should serve a 6 months′ notice to contrary.

5.     For the purpose of improving the effectiveness of enforcing the agreement by the Parties to the conflict, a peacekeeping centre in charge of enforcing the ceasefire shall be deployed.

6.     The Republic of Armenia shall return the Kalbajar District to Azerbaijan by 15 of November 2020, (this was later extended to 25 November), and the Lachin District by 1 December. The Lachin corridor (5 km (3.1 mi) wide), which will provide access from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and bypass the town of Shusha, shall remain under the control of the peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation. Subject to agreement by the Parties, a construction plan will be determined in the next three years for a new route of movement along the Lachin corridor, providing a link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia with the subsequent redeployment of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to guard this route. The Republic of Azerbaijan shall guarantee the safety of traffic of citizens, vehicles, and goods along the Lachin corridor in both directions.

7.     Internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the control of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.

8.     The exchange of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees as well as the remains of the fatalities shall be carried out.

9.     All economic and transport links in the region shall be unblocked. The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the safety of transport links between western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with a view to organising the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions. The Border Service of the FSB of Russia shall exercise control over the transport communication. Subject to agreement by the Parties, the construction of new infrastructure linking the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with regions of Azerbaijan shall be carried out.

On Planning and Doing

 

We make plans.  Things happen and the plans have to change.  That happened to me this evening, I was all set to work on grading a specific class.  I got an email from a student that took me down a rabbit hole changing the course of my evening.

Some of us are quite meticulous in planning and equally meticulous, even obsessed, with the execution thereof.  The vast majority of us, fall short in the meticulous and obsessed execution parts. 

All of us are subject to “things popping up” and disrupting our plans such as what happened to me this evening.  Some of these things that pop-up could divert us for a few minutes to a few hours.  There are also major things, let’s call them random shocks that thankfully occur much less frequently.  These random shocks could divert us for days, weeks, months, years, and, perhaps, forever.

The random shocks can be life changing like needing immediate surgery that requires a long recovery time.  It could involve being offered a new and better job.  Natural disasters and wars are random shocks as are winning a multimillion-dollar lottery prize.  These kinds of random shocks, positive or negative, are hard to predict and therefore hard and costly to proactively plan around with any effectiveness.

The little pop-ups are minor things such as temporary tasks that have to be taken care of immediately.  It could be a phone call you have been waiting for.  It might be your boss needing something for his boss that diverts you from your plan for a few hours.  It could be someone dropping by and pleasantly taking up your afternoon.  It could be catching the flu.  There is a randomness to the occurrence of these little pop-ups but they happen more frequently. 

There seems to be two schools of thought in this regard.  Both require a plan.  What tasks have to be done today or this week, how long do we believe they will take, and prioritize them.  A lot of people can do this effectively. 

Things get interesting in the actual getting to, doing, and, of course, finishing the tasks.  The meticulous planners and doers want to start immediately on the high priority tasks and work their way down the list.  They know that random little pop-ups will occur and delay them but by starting early, dang it, they are sure to meet the real or self-imposed deadlines. 

On the other extreme is the just-in-time crowd, also known as the procrastinators.  This category of folks, of which I might be a member, do the opposite of the meticulous proactive crowd.  The just-in-timers have a knack for figuring out, “when is the last possible moment I can start this task and work at a frenetic pace to still get it done on time.”  The prioritization is simple.  What is the most pressing task with the most pressing deadline? “Hey, let’s do that.”

The problem with this delayed, latest possible time something can be started, approach is that the little pop-ups are like big disruptive random shocks.  They have to be ignored, handling quickly and deftly, or something has to give.  What gives is the trade-off between making the  deadline or sleeping.  “Fire up the Keurig, were gonna be here for a while.”

This is by no means a scientific study and because it isn’t, I will, naturally, be making even more sweeping generalizations based on my view of how things work.  The meticulous folks are the best at managing longer term, you know, strategic kinds of projects.  The just-in-timers are the better fire fighters.  They are the so-called multi-taskers who struggle with longer term tasks that require months and years to achieve.  

The just-in-timers can jump in help organize things as in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.  They can develop quick plans to organize, respond, and get things going.  As the new reality, again using the Covid-19 pandemic, settles into the new normal, the just-in-timers lose their edge and the meticulous planners and doers quickly take the reins from the just-in-timers.

This distinction is not black and white.  There is, of course, a lot of gray in the continuum between just-in-timers and the meticulous early starters.   It is good to know where you are on the continuum.  Then, you can be aware of and leverage your strengths and work on strategies to mitigate your weaknesses.  It all sounds so clear and easy… I’ll start tomorrow.

Inablity to Concede

 

Well, this is one of those blogs that I shy away from writing.  It is about politics.  It is about President Trump.  It is a no-win topic.  But, it is a topic that is bothering me and I have some things to get off of my chest. 

 Approximately half of the readers will agree with me while the other half will not.  Both sides will be vehement in their opinion.  This is the kind of polarization our President fed off of to get elected in 2016.  He has also exacerbated this polarization during his term in office. 

Let me state up front that I never voted for the man. 

While I might agree with some of his policies, I have never warmed up to his personality and style.  His opponent in 2016 lost the election because many people simply did not like her.  She lost the Electoral College vote though she won the popular vote.  There are folks who vote by the issues and there are people who have personal issues with a particular candidate. 

Trump has, in my view, never acted Presidential.  From the moment he was elected he ruled way to much by Twitter.  He has accused anyone and everyone who disagreed with him of being purveyors of false news or outright called them names.  Yet, he had no issues doing using false news himself most recently exemplified by refusing to concede to President-elect Biden, incessantly insisting he is the winner of the election, and that there is rampant election fraud.

The problem with fake news is that no matter who is peddling it, it will resonate with a segment of the population.  Whether I was agreeing or disagreeing with this notion of election fraud, there are plenty of my friends and acquaintances who would be willing to school me on my misguided thinking.

The magic of fake news is that confirms to many that there is a conspiracy, that the cards are stacked against us, and there is deep state or cabal.  To those who have been living blissfully in a glass half full existence, fake news introduces doubt; the golly gee whiz, “I don’t know what I don’t know” kind of doubt.  I have to fight against this doubt myself.  Any inkling of doubts have evaporated, however, as the judicial system is not overturning any of the results and the Attorney General stated just this week that there is no evidence of fraud.

Presidents of the United State should not be sowing seeds doubt like this.  This is not any kind of “art of the deal.”  It is, rather, win at any cost.  It is excessive egomania in a profession where a seriously strong ego is a necessary requirement to seek the highest offices. 

Another thing is that Presidents should act Presidential.  Tweeting as Trump does, calling people names and making rash and brash statements is beneath the minimum standards decorum of the office.  Is decorum that important?  I believe in a democracy it is.  Is there a standard of decorum?  Again, I believe there is.  There is no law governing this nor could there be.  People running for or in the office simply showed know how to behave in public. 

I find the behavior of our President both appalling and, yes, dangerous to the integrity of our democracy.  If the American Century that began at the end of World War I is indeed ending (to be replaced by the Chinese century?), it also coincides with Trump’s style of populism and modus gobernandus (oh yeah, I just made this up).  Which is the chicken, and which is the egg will be argued for years. 

I also believe, Trump could have won the election.  A few articles I read this week floated the notion that the way he handled the pandemic cost him the election.  I believe this even before I read this op-eds.  His push to reopen the economy, treatment of governors especially in Michigan and New York, pushing hydroxychloroquine, and discrediting medical experts all contributed to this.  He vacated part of the center and gave it Biden in an election with a record turnout. 

His refusal to concede and this fight to overturn the results demonstrates his excessive ego, his desire to win at any cost, and lack of decorum and respect for the office.  While it looks like we may weather and survive this, I do worry whatever new standard he has established for both Presidential elections and behavior.

Contagion: Another Roaring Twenties?

 

I read an article yesterday that opened my eyes.  Uncharacteristically, I did not bookmark it or clip it to Evernote.  But, the premise was so obvious, there was no need to.

Basically, it stated that the Roaring Twenties followed the 1918 Flu Pandemic.  That made so much sense.  I wondered why I had not thought of it myself.  People are Covid weary in this Pandemic.  Everyone I know is weary.  With the return of lockdowns, you feel the tension and stress all around.  We are at an extreme, right now, of not being out and about, not intermingling with others even in benign ways, and certainly not socializing the way we have been used to all our lives.  It may get even worse before the vaccines are distributed, administered, and free us from this viral threat. 

When we are free of this virus, the release of all this tension and stress will have that Newtonian equal and opposite effect.  People will make up for lost time.  We caught a little glimpse of people pushing against the locking down, the quarantining, travel restrictions, and threatening violence to be free to do whatever they want.

The Roaring Twenties were not only due to the 1918 Flu Pandemic.  The US experienced what we used to call a triple whammy.   Besides the Flu Pandemic, there was a horrific World War I and a pretty severe recession in 1920 and 1921.  The end of World War began the American Century.  Freed from war, the flu, and the recession, people made-up for lost time and celebrated their new found prosperity.

To provide a glimpse of what might happen, consider wedding receptions.  Many people opted to get married this year with all the limits on social gatherings.  They had modest ceremonies and very small receptions of close family and friends of 10 – 20 people.  Many are planning more extravagant celebrations.  There will be a great demand on venues, caterers, florists, photographers, and musicians.  People will party with gusto and they will pay for it.  All the musicians I know are looking forward to being really busy when this happens. 

Oddly, the stock market has been on a tear during this pandemic.  Last week the Dow crested 30,000 for the first time ever.  Businesses of all types have had to deal with the disruption of the pandemic.  Some, like Amazon, have grown and thrived.  Others, like any of the movie theater chains… well, businesses are a bust.  And, there is everything in between.

One that particularly sticks out in my mind is sports.  Sports are big money in the US.  Back in March play was suspended in hockey and basketball.  The baseball season was postponed.  The management of MLB, the NBA, the NHL, and add to them the NFL focused all of their time and energy in figuring out how to resume or start their seasons.   Resume and start they did.  The precautions taken seemed to work in baseball, hockey, and surprisingly basketball.  Football, which started with the second surge and being more up close and personal, has not done as well.  Greed and the entertainment value aside, it all seems misguided.  Yet, in their defense, everyone wants to maintain their livelihoods and ply their trades.

It is not 1918.  We lived in a different world.  The world is smaller and more interdependent today.  It is also more densely populated.  In 1918, the population was 1.9 billion.  Today it is 7.8.  In 1918, they had newspapers, silent movies, and books.  Radios weren’t popularized until the late 1920s.  Today, we have video conferencing in our homes, on demand video, cell phones, and computers that keep us connected with each other and happenings in the world in ways that can only be described as remarkable. 

Yes, times are different.  But, I believe the 2020’s will be roaring once we are past the pandemic.  We must also keep in ming, though, that the first Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt halt with the Great Depression.

My December Challenge

 

Kind of an Advent Challenge

It is December 2020.  I am challenging myself to write a blog post everyday this month. 

It will be a challenge.  Over the past three years, my average postings per month were 5.5 with a maximum of 14 and a minimum of 0. 

I see a few obstacles with this aspiration.  First, will simply doing it every day.  While I did write a maximum of 14 in January of 2018, the median and mode for the past three years were both 5.  So, if I were to do 31 this month, that would really be something.  The rest of my life kind of interferes, in a good way.  Work and family commitments and priorities naturally take a priority, with good reason.  I am not a professional writer. 

Professional writers get paid to write.  It is their livelihood.  If these write news copy their deadlines are tight and real time.  I only know one novelist.  He imposes his own deadlines, also tight and real time.  He writes to a regimented schedule, with set days off, and vacations just like he worked for a corporation which in a sense he is.  I have read about other writers including Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens who were prolific and regimented.  Dickens bordered on the obsessive but that is pretty evident given his amazing volume of work.

For the first two weeks of this month my work commitments are to finish the term and prepare my syllabi for the coming Spring term.  This involves grading and writing. 

I wonder if I can post a course syllabus in this blog.  If I do, you will know that I am desperate.  I hope it doesn’t get to that.

Secondly, I have to find 31 things to write about.  Not only do I have the topic, I have to actually write about it to meet my blogworthy standard.  Now, my standard for blogworthiness is not terribly high.  But this combination of having the topics and doing blogworthy writing are more daunting than you might think.

Of the two, I think the first will be the bigger challenge to overcome but just by a smidgeon.  I am sure there will be days where, as made famous by the Seinfeld TV series, I will be writing about nothing.  This first post might actually qualify for this category.  There will be lame topics.  There will be controversial subjects.  I actually have two of these already in mind.  Of course, I will write my annual Christmas letter.  I will write about the Pandemic.  I will write about other writers, being Armenian, the music that I love, and who knows what else.  I will write about health and fitness.  I will write about family and friends.  I will ponder what kind of objectives a fellow my age could and should set for himself. It could be a lot of fun and it could be personally, you know, what ya call it?  Oh yeah, personally beneficial.

So, here I am on day one at 11:28 pm trying to get to 500 words and start my 31-day streak.

Obituaries

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, if my grave remains unmarked

In a corner of the earth

And remembrance of me fades away,

Ah, that is when I will die.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are my favorite obituaries from this blog:

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

Contagion: Thanksgiving Refections

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

Çidem İnç: Şun Şan Orti Erdoğan

 

Erdogan make the handsign of the
ultranationalist and racist Grey Wolves

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erdoğan was none too happy with these resolutions.

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

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

Chidem Inch: Tears for Artsakh

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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