I've Been Reading

 

The title of this post is the title of an occasional column my Great Uncle Rouben Gavoor wrote for the Hairenik Weekly (now known as the Armenian Weekly).  Uncle Rouben, my paternal grandfather’s brother, was the youngest of six children of Mardine and Mariam Kharagavoorian.  He was born in the Keserig village of Kharpert.  He was the only one to be educated in US were they all immigrated to.  He went to Medford High School in Medford, Massachusetts and got a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University.   Because of his degree in journalism and his adventures traveling and living around the world in his career with the US Foreign Service, he became a writer for the Hairenik Weekly.  It warms my heart that I write for the Armenian Weekly myself and feel this extra-special connection with Uncle Rouben. 

When Uncle Rouben wrote an “I’ve Been Reading” column, he was basically reviewing a book or two that he thought might be of interest to Armenians.  Well, I’ve been reading lately, and one the books would certainly be of interests to Armenians and others.

I came upon a collection of short stories by William Saroyan:  The Man with his Heart in the Highlands and Other Stories.  This paperback, a Dell Laurel Edition, was published in 1968.  The book sold for 50 cents which is the equivalent of a mere $3.80 today.  What struck me about the book was just how compact it is.  It truly is a pocket-book.  It fits easily in my back pants or jacket pocket.  It is just a bit larger than my cell phone.  No doubt a result of the smaller size of the book, the font size was surprisingly small by today’s standards.  With the yellowing pages, I need a well-lit setting to read it.

Before, I even got to the first story, my heart melted when I read the dedication.

 

To

Roupen Darbinian

Editor in Chief

Hairenik Monthly

Hairenik Daily

of Boston

America

and the World

a great editor

with thanks and admiration

 

Roupen Darbinian was the editor that no doubt got my Uncle Rouben involved with writing for the paper.  He was also a mentor of William Saroyan and publisher of Saroyan’s work when he first started writing.  Darbinian (nee Artashes Stepani Chilingarian) was born in the Javekheti region of Georgia in 1883.  He studied in Tiflis through high school, attended university in Germany, and the Faculty of Law in Moscow.  He was active in the ARF and contributed to several party newspapers.  He served as Minister of Justice in the short lived First Republic of Armenia. With the Sovietization of the Republic, he moved first to Persia and then to the US where he became the editor of the Hairenik Publications.  He died in 1968, the year Dell published this Saroyan book. 

Saroyan introduced each story.  It made me wish I could have sat down with him and chatted, though I am not sure we would have gotten along well.  I am not entirely sure why I say this except that is the impression I am left after reading these stories and his other writings in Obituaries and Place Where I’ve Done Timing. 

I am only part way through this book of short stories.  I might have waited until I finished, but the title of this post is “I’ve Been Reading,” as in still reading, not quite done yet. I love these stories.  They provide a glimpse into the Fresno of Saroyan’s youth.  It gives a feel for the peasants who were displaced from the old country to the US.   It really gave a feel for the poverty Saroyan experienced growing up.  Some stories are more Armenian than others, but all are though the eyes of the author, a first generation American-Armenian.  The stories are bittersweet in the Armenian sense of that word… if there is even an Armenian sense of that word.

Uncle Rouben knew Saroyan.  The met in Europe, if I am not mistaken.  I think they were acquaintances more than friends just from how rarely Uncle Rouben spoke about him.

So, I’ve been reading and will continue to do so.  And as I read Saroyan (Rock Wagram is next in the queue), I shall think of Rouben Darbinian, William Saroyan, Rouben Gavoor, and the Hairenik Weekly they all wrote for and loved.

A Lesson in a Cup of Coffee?

My coffee consumption did not really change much during the pandemic.  I have two to three cups a day.  Sometimes, I will have a fourth in the mid to later afternoon depending on workload and how sleepy or Zoom fatigued I am feeling. 

Because of the pandemic, I am home much more often.  So, almost all of the coffee I drank from March through August was made at home in our Keurig.  Most of the pods were either Kirkland’s Breakfast Blend, Pacific Bold, or Caribou’s Medium Blend bought in 100 K-Cup boxes.  I like to keep the cost per serving around 35 cents per serving.  In my non-scientific study, these are the best value in terms of taste and cost per serving. I always have some Cameron’s Jamaica Blue Mountain Blend (50 cents per serving) because it is a richer and better tasting brew.

From the start of the fall semester on August 28 through the week before Thanksgiving, I was on campus on Mondays and Wednesdays mornings for 8 and 9 am classes.  About half the time, I did go to my office for to join an online meeting or just to spend some time in my campus office as a change of venue.  The change of venue also provided a change of coffee machines.  I have a Nespresso machine in my office. 

On the way in to teach, I make a 12 ounce coffee in my Yeti (yeah, I am kinda predictable) tumbler.  In more normal times, I would take a second serving into the classroom.  These days, I stopped doing that because it was too complicated being masked and having to tend to students in the classroom and those participating online.  So, when these morning classes ended, I was ready for that second cup of coffee.  Hence, going to my campus office and my Nespresso machine waiting for me there worked out quite well.

By the end of October when the pandemic numbers were again rising, I was more interested in getting home after teaching and minimizing the number of people I would be in contact with.  On one of these days, I wanted a second cup of coffee.  Well, I had parked my car in a lot near a Starbuck’s so, I stopped in and got usual:  a Grande Americano.  I went to the car and drove home.  I reached for the coffee about five minutes into the drive, took a sip, and thought, “Wow… this is so good.  It tastes so much better than what I have been drinking.”  So, much richer and tastier. 

Before the Pandemic, one out of twenty cups I drank was a Starbuck’s Grande Americano.  I don’t recall the quality being that much different from the coffee from my two machines.  But, I hadn’t been to Starbuck’s for eight months.  The difference was marked and amazing.   My theory for why is simple, and I believe spot-on.  My home Keurig and office Nespresso machines were about $120 a piece.  A quick Google search revealed that the exclusive espresso machines in Starbuck’s stores made by the Swiss based Thermoplan cost about $18,000.  $18,000?  My guess was $5,000.  I think this explains the difference in the quality and why they charge me $3.50 for the Grande Americano at Starbuck’s versus my 35 cents a cup at home. 

Is this but one example of the pandemic making me appreciate and enjoying these small, everyday experiences I was simply taking for granted before this year?  I am going to answer yes, even though it involved an $18,000 coffee maker…

 

 

 

A December 12th Memory

 

Back in the early 2000’s, it was around late November.  I was trying to arrange a meeting involving the Logistics and Customer Service leaders of Colgate-Palmolive.  I do not recall the exact topic of the meeting.  I think it was maybe the second gathering for a project we were working on in the Latin American Division.  We wanted to get the meeting in before the Christmas holidays to to push the project forward and not lose three to four weeks due to the Christmas Holiday and the slow ramp-up in the first few weeks of the New Year.  If it was a short update meeting, we could have done it by conference call.  But, we needed to spend a full day, if not two, working through an detailed agenda.  So, the meeting had to be face-to-face.

I called Angel De La Puente, the Director of Customer Service and Logistics who was both my #1 report and partner in the project we were working on.  We looked at our calendars and the only date that could possibly work was December 12^th which was a Friday that year (making 2003 most likely the year).   For reasons that elude me, we had to meet in Mexico City.  We planned start our work on Thursday in the afternoon, work all day Friday, and end with a holiday dinner.  Folks could fly home on Saturday morning, and we would achieve our objective of making good progress on project.  We were set to go.

Just before sending out the email inviting everyone to the meeting, I got a call from the VP of Manufacturing in Mexico, who was Angel’s local boss.  He asked me if the meeting could be moved to another date as we had selected was the Virgin of Guadalupe Day.  While it was still a working day, it was an important holiday and there were festivities on site and hosting fifteen or so guests would be inconvenient. 

Well, I had two tasks.  First, I took care of business and moved the meeting to January.  We would still make our deadline.

Secondly, I was looking forward to call Angel.  This would be a fun and memorable call.  When he answered, I started right in, “Hey Angel, you have always taken great pride in knowing the history of Mexico and sharing the knowledge with me.”

He said, “Yes, somebody has to teach you Gringos.”

Smiling, I continued with the set-up, “Today, I am really questioning how much you really know.” 

He gruffly asked, “What the hell are you talking about?” 

“Well, you know about our December 12^th meeting?”

I could sense his growing frustration when he retorted, “Yes, of course.”

“I am shocked, truly, that I have to be the one to point out to you that it is the Virgin of Guadalupe Day.  I am just shocked you did not know this as it is a very important and sacred holiday in Mexico.”

There was one of the longest pregnant pauses I have ever experienced.  I knew I got him but good, and I knew he knew it as well.  He knew I would be bringing this up often whenever he was showing his natural pride.  It was indeed a long pause.  Then ever so slowly, with that deep, gravely, voice of his, he slowly uttered that one-word expletive for which he was so famous.

Angel passed away two years ago on December 29.  I miss my friend.

The Game: Cancelled

 

In a normal, non-pandemic, years, the Michigan Wolverines play The Ohio State University Buckeyes on the last game of the regular season.  In Michigan and Ohio, it is biggest rivalry going.  Many people just call it The Game. 

The rivalry started in 1897.  Michigan leads the series 58-51-6 and dominated the early years.  In the first 24 games, Michigan won 19, Ohio State won 3, and they tied twice.  Ohio State has dominated this century where they have taken 17 of the games and Michigan has only won twice.   The longest winning streak for Michigan is 9 from 1901 to 1909.  The longest streak for Ohio State is much more recent.  They have won 8 in a row since 2012.

The game is traditionally played the Saturday before or after Thanksgiving.  But, not this year.  Back in the summer, the Big 10 suspended football operations and then backtracked that decision when the saw that the SEC and ACC were playing.  They started the season on October 24^th with an abbreviated schedule.  The Michigan – Ohio State game was scheduled for December 12^th which is two weeks after the originally scheduled date.

Between 1897 and 1917, there were seven years they didn’t play.  Since 1918, they have played every year since… until this year.  This the game is cancelled.  The Michigan team has 40 players who cannot play do to testing positive for Covid, have been in contact with someone who tested positive, or had an non-virus related injury.

It is sad that the game is cancelled.  I do believe the players and the coaches wanted to play.  I also believe that, if they were to have played, they would have lost.  Back on August 6, the Ohio State coach, Ryan Day told his team, “Michigan better hope there’s a mercy rule, because we’re going to hang 100 on them.”  He was upset because Harbaugh accused him of holding practice before the NCAA specified start date.  On the Michigan FB Michigan chat boards, the Michigan fans believed they could and would score that many points.

To put it mildly, Michigan has had a dismal season.  We are 2-4.  We beat Minnesota and Rutgers and have lost to Michigan State, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Penn State.  Covid caused Michigan to cancel games against Maryland and Ohio State.  There is the Championship Week game in which the standing counterparts in the two divisions play each other.  If Michigan’s health issues are resolved, they would most likely face Iowa.  As they have been playing some good football of late, Michigan could easily end the season at 2 – 5.  Win or lost at Iowa, they have already set a horrible record of this being the first season in Michigan Football history where they did not win a home game.

The fickle fan base is calling for Harbaugh’s job.  This is the man, the Michigan Man, who was dubbed the savior of the program when he was first hired.  It was just a matter of a year or two until he would be competing at a level equal to or better than Ohio State.  Sadly, he has yet to beat them in five tries where we got pummeled in three of those games. People want to replace him with Urban Meyer which I think is a horrible and unacceptable idea.  Others want to have Tom Brady or Charles Woodson, two great Michigan men for sure, with no coaching experience whatsoever which makes another bad and unacceptable idea.

Michigan’s recent woes against Ohio State began after Michigan’s 1997 National Championship year.  Ohio State got tired of Michigan doing well with so many great Ohio players.  So, they hired Jim Tressel to be the head coach with part of his strategy being to keep the best Ohio players… in Ohio.  It worked and Michigan has struggled since then.  Having had three coaches in the past 14 years hasn’t helped either.  I believe another coaching change will put us behind as well.  Without consulting with me, it seems the Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel must agree, if the rumors are true.  After the end of this season, he is supposed to extend Harbaugh for three years, at a lower salary, but including better bonus incentives. 

Something has to change.  Hopefully, Harbaugh can achieve what he was hired to do.

We have another date with Ohio State on November 27, 2021.  While we didn’t lose to them this year, it would be great to get back on the winning track and start another streak of our own. 

Go Blue!

MEME: Our First Music Video

 

This pandemic has impacted many things from the way we socialize to how and where we work and engage in our hobbies.  An example of a such a vocation and avocation is music performance.  The pandemic has been tough on working musicians and hobbyists that play in ensembles and perform at any variety of events where people gather to listen or celebrate. 

With universities going online in March, the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble (MEME) of the University of Chicago had to suspend face-to-face practices and cancel the Arab Concert which was scheduled for May.  Our director, Wanees Zarour, decided to continue on by taking the opportunity to meet on Zoom and teach the ensemble about Middle Eastern music theory or Maqam Theory.  We met during our regularly scheduled Thursday evening rehearsal time.  We covered the basic scales (maqams) of Arab and Turkish music.  We learned how most were divided into an upper and lower part of the scale and how those are used to evoke or transition to related maqams.  We studied and discussed how to approach the art of taksim, the arrhythmic solo improvisations that are a key part of Middle Eastern music. 

Pretty much the whole ensemble attended these sessions including alumni of the university and the ensemble who no longer lived in Chicago.  We all appreciated the chance to get together and learn, but we all missed practicing and playing together.  MEME is truly about playing the music we have all love.  MEME is special because we are an orchestra of about forty musicians and it is the only place where we can perform Middle Eastern music, both classical and folk, on that scale.  It is pretty awesome.

The last time we performed was at the end of February of this year.  It was the Persian Concert.  Over the summer, we were all hoping the pandemic would simply go away so that in September we could begin practicing for the Turkish Concert which would have taken place at the end of November.  Well, the pandemic did not subside, and per the university pandemic protocols, we were unable to gather and practice face-to-face. 

At our first Zoom session in September, Wanees unveiled an ambitious and very cool plan to record one song.  Each of us would record our tracks at home, both audio and video, and Wanees would assemble the audio portion while his able assistant   , Hayden Bunker, would work on the editing of the video part.

The song we were going to record was Agladikca popularized by Ahmet Kaya on a hauntingly beautiful piece of music composed by Ara Dinkjian.  Everyone was mesmerized by it when Wanees introduced the piece and played a few recordings on our first call in September.  He noted, “This is a timeless melody that I’ve wanted MEME to perform for years.”

A highlight of our Zoom sessions this fall was having Ara join one of calls.  It was awesome.  He spent 45 minutes with us talking the music, his creative process, and how he likes to see how others interpret his compositions.  It was a great evening that turned into a question, answer, and discussion between all of us and Ara. 

In other Zoom sessions, Wanees taught us the various options and applications available to do our individual recordings by phone or computer.  He worked with the various sections of the orchestra:  strings, wind instruments, percussion, vocalists, and traditional Middle Eastern instruments.  We discussed and worked on the intonations to get the right microtones of the makam.  He prepared a metronome track on which he played the melody on the oud.  We all recorded to this track.  Week by week we recorded by sections and reviewed them the following week.  We were amazed as the various parts and voices were added.  We were even more impressed, well actually, blown away from the ‘almost finished’ we heard last week.  There were 60 tracks that Wanees has edited and weaved in and out.  It took about 40 hours of editing to get the finished audio project.  I am guessing Hayden also spent an equal amount of time on the video.

 

Given that this was virtual, it allowed us to include alumni musicians from around the country and even the world.  Many of these alumni musicians were also University of Chicago Alumni as well.  This experience was double special for these folks: 

Miriam Hauser

Michael Goodyear (NYC)

Tahra Eissa (Denver, CO)

Ozgur Sumer (San Fransisco, CA)

Elham Beheshti (NYC)

Masoud Kamgarpour (Melbourne, Australia)

Ilker Capoglu (San Fransisco, CA)

Sezen Meydan (Washington DC)

Allegra Steenson (Seattle, WA)

It was an amazing amount of work to prepare for, record, mix, and present the final product.  Everyone was delighted to be part of this project for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, we were playing and playing together. 

Health and Fitness: Pandemic Style

 

A feeble action selfie of
today's walk 😆

It was a beautiful globally warm December day today.  The skies were blue and cloudless, and the air was clear.  After I finished entered my grades for the semester, I decided to take a walk.  I have been walking a lot more this year than last and that is a good thing.

A year ago, I spent Thanksgiving in Germany.  I was visiting our sister school, the Applied Science University, in Aschaffenburg.  Aschaffenburg is a smaller city of about 70,000 in Bavaria.  Like much of Germany it was a mix of old and new.  I loved it.  Being a smaller city, there was little public transport, a few taxis, and, surprisingly, no Uber.  If you didn’t drive, you walked.  And, they walk… a lot more than we do.

We did a lot of walking, and frankly, it was a big challenge for me.  I was horribly out of shape and achy in both knees and soles.  We walked from the hotel through the town to get to the two campuses of the university.  We walked to restaurants every night for dinner.  We walked from train stations to our various excursion destinations.  It seemed like every walk was at least a mile.

To make matters worse, I was the oldest and slowest of our group which consisted mostly of students and a handful of professors.  I felt older than I should and negligent for getting, once more to a position of having to start yet another start of a weight loss and fitness program.  I also felt mentally deficient as I predictably keep getting older and each of these starts becomes more difficult and pressing to avoid larger looming health issues.

When I got back from Germany, I was resolved to change by walking more and eating better.  I reenforced the resolution at the start of the new year.  These were good resolutions as my doctor also wanted me to start a walking regimen.  I basically did nothing until the pandemic hit and we were in the March lockdown.  About the ides of March, I decided to take a walk.  It is still a bit wintry.  I dressed appropriately and walked a half mile or so.  I was pretty slow.

I tried to walk four to five times a week.  I built up to a mile by the end of March and took that up to two miles by the end of April.  By mid-summer my walks were 2-3 miles and I had gone from a pace of about 2.2 miles per hour to 3.1 mph (yes there is an app for that).  These are modest improvements to be sure.

At the same time, I decided to eat more sensibly and I have.  I try to eat three smaller or normal (not normal for the old me mind you) meals a day and avoid unhealthy snacks and desserts.  The goal was to lose weight but slowly as I change my behavior to eat more sensibly and healthier.  Basically, it is working.  I am down a shirt size and a pant size.

I am getting to the point where this walking and better eating regimen is becoming my new norm.  It is even OK to splurge a bit here or there.

My paternal grandfather had a motto of “moderation in all things.”  I understood the value of that tenet but never really practiced it.  Some years ago, I saw that this wise advice was attributed to Aristotle.  Today, in trying to verify that, I found this on oxfordreference.com on “moderation in all things”: 

Proverbial saying, mid 19th century; a more recent formulation of the idea contained in there is measure in all things. The essential thought is found in the work of the Greek poet Hesiod (c.700 bc), ‘observe due measure; moderation is best in all things’, and of the Roman comic dramatist Plautus (c. 250–184 bc), ‘moderation in all things is the best policy.’

There will be more to follow on this subject.

e-Commerce Deliveries

 

Like many others, I am working from home these days and have basically been doing so since March.  I have a lovely home office, which may be the subject of a post later this month.  As we are at the end of the cul-de-sac, my office is in the front of the house, and it has seven windows, I have a great view of our street and the comings and goings.  During this pandemic, the comings and goings are for the most part lawn crews and e-commerce delivery vans and trucks.

The number of e-commerce deliveries noticeably increased with the start of the pandemic.  About half of the deliveries are Amazon.  The remainder are UPS vans or leased Penske trucks which could also be delivering Amazon packages.  Today, I saw actually saw a FedEx which when I saw it hit me as surprisingly rare.  The only time I notice a USPS truck is when they are delivering our daily mail. 

I use Amazon for sure, but not as much as a few of my neighbors who are younger and have school aged children.  I am guessing that they probably are giving Alexa orders throughout the day.  They will get up to four deliveries a day with a norm of one or two.   I have had two Amazon deliveries in a day on occasion and, I believe, I got three deliveries in one day once.  These statistics are, of course, anecdotal.  I have not kept a tally, but I think my observations are relatively accurate.

Given my former profession and that I am a professor of operations management now, I cannot just notice these delivery vans and trucks (that would so Gladys Kravitzy).  I also have to process what I am seeing; and my impression is that the way they are scheduling and dispatching deliveries may be inefficient. 

     Let’s go back, before the Amazon, before the internet, and before FedEx.  Basically, let’s go back to the 1960s when I was a kid and the 1970s when I was coming of age.  Most parcel deliveries to homes, at that time, were handled by the USPS.  They delivered to each and every house six days a week.  Sure, there was a rare UPS or, even rarer, Railroad Express Agency delivery.  Mostly, it was the
USPS.  Food deliveries?  We had some.  We had a milk man, Twin Pines Dairy, that delivered every day and a bread man, Awrey’s, that delivered twice a week.  Other food deliveries were rare in my neighborhood and almost exclusively pizza.  The volume of packages was nothing like what we see today, but there were days when got parcels via the post office and food deliveries from both the milk and bread men.  So, that counts as multiple deliveries.

Grocery stores killed the milk and bread/baked goods delivery business.  With grocery stores, the food industry was very efficient in getting the good to within a mile of where you lived (assuming you lived in well populated urban or suburban area), it was then your job to go to the store, select your products from the shelves, pay for them, and then tote them home. 

When the internet burst onto the scene, everyone assumed that we would be able to order online and get groceries delivered to our homes for less than it cost to go and buy them from the grocery store.  How naïve we were.  The grocery store would have to have people walk the aisles, make the selections, pack and load a vehicle, and then drive and deliver them to your house.  How could that possibly cost less?  It didn’t.

Well, Amazon figured out a way.  Most grocery chains had regional warehouses and local stores.  The warehouses were designed of getting goods in full tractor-trailer truckloads, storing the goods, and shipping full truckloads, on pallets, to the local stores.  Amazon eliminated the local stores and reconfigured the warehouses to facilitate picking individual customer orders.  It was a classic elimination of the middleman strategy that generated savings.  The made shipments using USPS, UPS, and FedEx which took a few days. 

This worked perfectly for, well, books which is where Amazon got started. Over the years, Amazon added more and more goods and built more and more warehouses.  As their business grew, they added more products to the mix.  The increase in the number of warehouses in densely populated areas allowed them to cut delivery times.  They set goals of one day and then same day deliveries.  If they could do this, they would be a serious threat to pharmacies and grocery stores.  This pandemic has accelerated their progress to do this in the largest cities around the country.

At the same time, they have brought the delivery business in-house.  They have invested in delivery vans and even adopted a Uber like model for independent drivers to get in on the action.  As a result, they use UPS and USPS substantially less than they did just a few years ago.  They used to use FedEx, but no longer.  They got a ‘divorce’ and FedEx has dedicated themselves to working with anyone who competes with Amazon.

So, my question is this.  Why did the USPS and the milk man pass by our house once a day and the bread man twice a week but Amazon is zig-zagging all over our neighborhood all day long making separate runs even to the same house on the same day?  The USPS and milk/bread men had routes they followed.  You would think that route model would be less costly than Amazon parcel focused model.  But I am not so sure.

First, I am certain Amazon’s aim is to shave delivery time.  They want to be so convenient that going to the store is so… well… inconvenient by comparison.  For many products, that is certainly the case already.  Secondly, if Amazon is doing it this way right now with multiple deliveries a day on my street, I have to assume their systems and algorithms have provided the lowest cost model given the short and mid-term goals in this regard. 

We have to remember that in the days of yore there was no computers to support the creation of real time dispatches and real time routing optimizations.  The route model of the milk and bread men was probably the best heuristic delivery management model around.

I just wonder, if I start getting perishables from Amazon if I will have to put the modern equivalent of a milk chute in my house?

A December 7th Potpourri

Sonny, Buddy, Mark, & David Gavoor

 

It is my seventh post this December in which I set a goal to post everyday.  It seems like an appropriate time, at the end of my first week, to post what I call a ‘potpourri’ post. 

Potpourri?  Like herby flowery sachets that smell nice.  Well, that could apply.  When I write one of these, part of my intention is to be light and airy.  I strive to provide a pleasant verbal fragrance as well.  But, I mean It more as the second dictionary definition (www.meriam-webster.com):  a miscellaneous collection.

That’s the ticket, a miscellaneous collection, a mish-mash, shorter items, vignettes, or notions probably less loosely connected than I think.  Historically, I tended to write these when I did not have a ‘real topic’ I could make into a full blog post.  Sometimes, from a Seinfeldian perspective, the potpourri posts were bloggy bit about nothing, a stream of consciousness (sometimes more like unconsciousness) babbling rambles. 

So, here goes.

A Day that will Live in Infamy is the opening words of a somber speech given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt referring to this date in 1941.  “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”  This famous very short speech can be read at www.loc.gov.

This devastating attack crippled the US Naval presence in the Pacific.  The situation was so grave that there was a real possibility that the Japanese, if they had finished the job with a second attack, could have attacked the west coast of the US.  But, they balked, and we were able to regroup and win a decisive naval battle in June of 1942 around Midway turning the tide of the war in the Pacific.  While the Japanese surprised us on December 7^th at Pearl Harbor, we were able to crack enough of their code to determine they were going to attack Midway.  This allowed us to surprise them and gain a decisive victory.  There are books and movies on both Pearl Harbor and Midway.  My favorite, that covers both brilliantly, is the 2019 movie Midway.  I have watched it several times, the last being just before I started to write this piece.

A Day that will Live in Seismic Infamy:  On this date, December 7, 1988, there was a devastating earthquake in Armenia that killed thousands.  The estimates of the dead were hard to tally and range between 20,000 and 50,000.  130,000 were injured.  This level of death and injury was due to the poor construction standards in the Soviet Union.  Buildings fully collapsed in the quake killing or seriously injuring all who were in them.  Armenians all around the world and the world in general all donated to help the country and the survivors.

This event and the aid efforts afterward elevated the relations between Armenia and Diaspora to new heights and, in my view, stirred an unrest in Armenia that resulted in the establishment of the Republic a few short years later in 1991. 

A Day of Notable Births:  The best part of this day, however, is remember and honor the birthday of three special people.  First, my father’s brother, Richard Haig Gavoor turned 90 today.  I called Uncle Buddy, as we use his nickname, and had a great conversation catching up.  He was on an exercise machine when I called which is not a surprise.  He has always been athletic and has taken very good care of himself.  In growing up, his education and corporate success always served as both an inspirational and aspirational example to me.  Thank you Uncle Buddy.

December 7 is also my good friend Ara Topouzian’s birthday.  We face-timed this morning and, per our usual, had some serious laughs.  One short year, and one long pandemic, ago, we were in Detroit at his new house, the refurbished home of his parents, and had a most memorable evening of music, food, drink, and merriment.  I look forward to a day where we can do the same for either of our birthdays again.  The ties between the Topouzians and the Gavoors is strong hailing
back to when my father and my Uncle Buddy along with the Watertown AYF Chapter adopted Ara’s father, Armen who was a field event standout, as one of their own in the 1951 Olympics that a five person Watertown team won.  My friendship when Ara began in earnest when he was in high school and was our babysitter for two to three years.  The two CDs on which I have played are Ara’s For the Children of Armenia and Faces of Bravery.  Thank you Ara.

     The third birthday call I made this morning was to Lola Koundakjian.  I was only able to leave her a message.  I met Lola when I first moved to New York.  She is a fascinating lady, an IT professional, and poet.  She was born in Lebanon and has the best traits of both Lebanese and American Armenians.  Lola is the founder and curator of the Armenian Poetry Project.  Of the hundreds of poems she has posted there, she was gracious enough to include eleven of mine.  Over ten years ago, she sent me an email saying, “November is National Haiku Month, if you write one a day you will have thirty haikus at the end of a month.”  I took her up on it and except for a few years when I first started teaching full have kept it up.  Thank you Lola.

Happy birthday Uncle Buddy, Ara, and Lola.

End of the Term

 

2020 has been a different year for everyone.  The Pandemic has limited  our mobility and social gatherings.  It has been hardest on those whose family members were passed away due to the virus.  It has been hard on the frontline medical personal and their families.  It has been really rough for those whose jobs have been suspended or lost.  For the rest of us, we have had to adapt to working from home with that unexpected weariness that comes from staring at screens longer than we ever have before.  If there are school aged children doing their schooling remotely, I can only imagine organization and extra bandwidth need in terms of both WiFi and patience get through a day.  We have all been adapting, modifying, and overcoming to borrow from the slogan popularized in the 1986 Clint Eastwood movie Heartbreak Ridge.

At North Park University, our classes ended on Wednesday, November 25^th.  Originally, they were supposed to end on December 7^th.  We choose to clip a week off of the term for the simple reason that we didn’t want students going home at Thanksgiving, being with family friends and then returning to school.  We eliminated the increased risk of spreading the virus.  It seemed like a good plan back in July when we made the decision.  It seemed like an even better plan given the fall surge we have experienced.

The long and short of this long preamble is that for the last week, I have been doing what I would have been doing if this were a normal school year.  I am grading and preparing my grades.  At the same time, I am communicating with students that barely reached out to me during the course of the semester.  Now that it is down to wire, they are reaching to find out what they can do to catch up and still get a decent grade.  The percentage of students that do this doesn’t vary much.  It is less than 20%, but in true Pareto fashion, they take up 80% of the time.

With advising students for the next term, the way assignments, exams, and papers crescendo at the end of the term, and my natural proclivity to procrastinate make me one busy professor when classes end.   So, this is as normal a work week as I have had since the pandemic started.  I am just at home grading.  I am only reminded of the pandemic when I have to attend our Campus Pandemic Response Task Force meeting, go out for groceries, or watch the news for which, luckily, there is no time.

I touch base with my closest professor friends to see where we are and more so to share the kinds of amazing excuses or stories students seem to sling our way.  My colleague Daniel White Hodge, who teaches Communications, seems to be a magnet for such excuses and he posts them on Facebook.  Here is one of the best posted earlier this week.  It was one of the best ever:

Student:  Professor I Don’t understand the assignment.

Me: ok, which part?

Student: all of it.

Me: yes, but what specifically?

Student: The assignment.

Me: Umm. Ok. I can’t help you with non specifics

Student: what are we supposed to do. There’s work for this class?

Me:  😕😑😏

     I responded with one of my own about a student that hasn’t come to class for weeks and hasn’t turned anything in for even longer.

Student: What can I do in the next two days to... um... get an A.

Me: Create a time machine, go back, say, 10 weeks and ask me the same question.

     Like I said it is great to have a normal work week in the midst of this pandemic.