Olympic Hockey

February 28, 2010: I am watching Olympic Hockey. It is the finals between the US and Canada. It is an exciting game truly. Canada scored the first two goals. The US scored later in the second period to close the gap. In the third period, the play became even more furious. The US played with abandon to try to tie the game. Time was running out and it looked Canada might just win 2-1. At least that was my thoughts with three minutes and change left in the game. With less than two minutes left, there was a stoppage in the play with a face off pending in the Canadian end. The US called a time out. Well someone called a time out. (Can you call a time out in hockey?)

Coming out of the time out, the US pulled their goalie to begin play with an advantage of six skaters to five. I thought the chances were more likely that the Canadians would score an empty net goal to win 3-1 rather than the US score to take the game to overtime. Well probabilities are one thing, reality is another. The US scored with forty some seconds left in a period. The only strategy the US could follow worked and the game was sent into overtime.

The overtime period began with Canada playing more aggressively and putting a lot of pressure on the US. The reason for the intensity is because the overtime play in Olympic Hockey is four skaters per team instead of the normal five. This makes for a more wide open game and I am guessing decreases the mean time between goals. That is probably correct since the Canadians scored and won the Gold Medal.

I was very interested in watching the game. Yet, I was more interested in watching a good hockey game then to root, cheer, live, and die for the good old USA. I used to be like that back when the players were amateurs, basically unknowns. Now, most of the teams are made up of professionals and mainly NHL players especially for the US and Canadian teams.

Of course, I am stuck in 1980 when the amateurs of the US stunned the professionals of the then USSR in what we in the US have called the Miracle on Ice. I was only twenty seven years old then. It was a bleak time just like these days. The scrappy US team of upstarts captured the hearts and souls of this country back then. Their exploits raised the spirit of this nation and captivated the majority of the nation, who were not remotely hockey fans, to watch the big semi-final games against the Soviets.

The US Goalie, Ryan Miller, in a post game interview basically summed it up by saying it was a great game but they came up one shot short. When pressed further by the interviewer to say something profound about the game, Miller with no emotion said "it was just another hockey game." That may well be the difference between a team of pros playing in the Olympics in the midst of their very long season and a team of college players playing in the biggest game of their lives.

Angela Davis

This is a bloggy bit about perspective and not so much about Angela Davis.

I began teaching at the College of Lake County, a community college in Northeast, IL, in January 2010. I teach two sections of a Statistics course. It has been too long since I have taught and too long since I have been on a college campus. I miss being around campuses where there a wonderful and plentiful opportunities to attend lectures on this or films on that. There are art shows, musical performances, and theater. It is not like I ever attended very much but I miss the knowing about them as well as the guilt and angst that accompanies knowing and not being able to attend.

When I last taught, it was all what I have been calling chalk and talk. There was a text book from which I assigned problems. I presented the material on a blackboard and demonstrated how to do problems similar to those I assigned. Now, I use whiteboards and dry erase markers, Powerpoint presentations, and TI-85 calculators that even have projection capabilities in the classroom. There is, of course, e-mail to stay in touch with students all the time. There is also something called course management software and websites. CLC uses BlackBoard which is a website to post course announcements, facilitate on-line assignments, discussions, and to post any variety of documents and references you could think of to enhance the course. All this has makes for a much richer experience for the students and, at least the first time teaching a course, more to do for the instructor. It is all very cool. Things have changed on campuses.

I was walking through the corridors of the main campus in Grayslake, IL and noticed a poster advertising that Angela Davis would be speaking. I did not really read the poster in great detail. I was in a hurry but thought “wow, that might be interesting to attend.” I was wondering then what Angela Davis was doing these days and how here philosophy and politics has changed, if at all, since the turbulent times when her name was in the news? Angela Davis… a blast from the past. Maybe things have not changed so much on campuses.

A few days later on February 1st, I got an e-mail announcing the same event. I read this in slightly more detail. Angela Davis would be speaking at noon on Friday, February 5th. That was not the most convenient time, but what the heck this was Angela Davis and I was curious to see how she has evolved from back in the day. I think I would try to make it. There was a biography attached. I didn’t have time to read it, but made a mental note (a most unreliable method) to read it later.

On the 4th of February, one day before the lecture, another e-mail was sent to reminding everyone that Angela Husky-Davis would be speaking the next day. Angela Husky-Davis? I then read the e-mail more carefully. “Angela Huskey-Davis was recently the Regional Vice-President of Wachovia Bank and decided to start her own company.” Angela Davis? Vice-President at a bank? That did not make sense. I found it hard to believe that Angela Davis would have changed so much that she would have gotten a job in a bank. I cannot imagine any bank hiring the Angela Davis that I remember.

I was right.

I remembered my mental note to read the attached biography from the previous e-mail. I retrieved the e-mail and read the attachment. Oh my… this was a different Angela Davis indeed. Angela Husky-Davis was just born around the time, August 1970, which the activist Angela Davis was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Superior Court Judge Harold Haley of which she was found innocent in 1972.

Angela Husky-Davis participated in beauty pageants while a student at Norfolk State University in the early 1990s. Angela Davis was candidate for Vice-President on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984. Angela Husky-Davis is married to a Pastor, Andre Davis Jr. Angela Davis declared herself a lesbian in 1997. These Angelas could not be any more different. Angela Husky-Davis just started a diversity consulting company, Full Circle Consulting, LLC. Angela Davis is professor emeritus (retired professor for those of you not teaching part-time at a community college) of History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

I figured I was not alone in my interpretation. February is Black History Month. You tell someone my age that Angela Davis is speaking and we assume it is Angela Davis the activist. I even wonder if any of the teen and twenty year old students know who Angela Davis the activist is. Her fifteen minutes of fame was thirty to forty years ago. I am guessing enough people assumed it was Angela Davis the activist that the next e-mail used the hyphenated Husky-Davis surname to clear things up or at least make people question who it was they thought would be speaking. In my case, it certainly worked.

Needless to say… I did not go to the lecture. I am sure Angela Husky-Davis is an expert in Diversity and I have no doubts that she delivered a stirring, motivating, and meaningful presentation to all in attendance. The simple fact is I have taken diversity training three times. I think, or am deluded to believe, I get it. Plus, I think I would have gotten more diversity training from the emeritus professorial communist activist lesbian Angela Davis. I would have like to have heard what she has to say today. Are her views the same? How have they changed? In which direction? Why?

I will be more careful about reading announcements. It is after all 2010 and not 1973. So, if there is an announcement that Peter Townsend is speaking, I will make sure that is, Peter Townsend, the lead guitar player of the rock group The Who and not Peter Townsend, VP of Corporate Communication, at the Affable Annuity Insurance Conglomerate.

I do hope that they do bring Angela Davis, the elder, sometime. I would still go and hear her.

February 2010: Sixth Anniversary Letter

February 1, 2010

I begin my seventh year of writing this letter. As I have written in almost every previous anniversary letters, the project has been one of the best things I have ever done and I plan to continue it for as long as I possibly can.

I have always wanted to be a writer. I have always been one in my mind’s eye. But, like many people, what is often in our mind’s eye is not what we are and not as others see us. I write as a hobby and it has been enjoyable. I write every day.

From Paper to PC: In 2004, when I began this letter project, I hand wrote every letter. I write 500+ words per day. I would select a theme and write several days about it. Then toward the end of the month, often on the very last day of the month, I would type the letter in this two column format, edit it, and then e-mail it everyone.

Sometime in 2007, I began to type some of the entries directly into my laptop. Even then the majority of the first drafts were handwritten and maybe only a few hundred words were typed. Yet, a trend had started. By 2009, all of the letters in the sixth volume were done entirely on my computer.

The same is true for our company blog. I strive to contribute one 500 word piece a week to this blog, is also typed directly. So, in recent months, I have typed directly about ten days a month and handwrote the remainder of the month. I still enjoy handwriting but when I have a topic well in mind, I prefer to type the first draft. I suppose this evolution was inevitable.

Last year I wrote about creating a blog for these letters. I launched http://thissideoffifty.blogspot.com. Every letter is now there. In two recent months, I actually posted other articles on the blog. There are three in September 2009 and one in January 2010.

From the beginning of keeping a journal which began on June 25, 2002, when I wrote for a purpose and with a set topic, the writing was crisper and actually could have been a typed stream of consciousness. When there is no specific theme, my daily writing tends to be more “dear diary” kinds of rambling drivel.

This month, I will endeavor to write every day directly into my laptop. I will not handwrite a single page. Each day will be dedicated to either this letter, my personal blog where these letters are posted, or for our company blog.

Usually in this anniversary letter, I write about the kind of pen I am favoring. Given my stated desire, at least short term, to type instead of handwrite, it seems pointless, pardon the pun, to expound on this pen or that. My laptop? I bought a Toshiba Satellite in June of 2009 upon embarking on our business. Most writing is done on this compact beauty using MS Word 2007.

February 5, 2010

It is late Friday night. It was a grayish damp day in Chicago. It was a bit too warm for winter and definitely too cold for spring. It sleeted most of the day. It accumulated just a bit faster than the snow melted leaving the snow equivalent of a two day beard growth on the sidewalks. I guess I could have called it a dusting.

I intended to write a work blog piece today. I had just posted a piece on Statistical Thinking http://blog.demandcaster.com/2010/02/04/thinking-part-1-statistical-thinking/. I wanted to write Part 2 and introduce a concept I have developed called Optimal Thinking. Well, it is more a concept that is still germinating in my head. So, I was not able to finish that blog piece today. Instead, I meandered over to this letter to muse a bit.

I had attended a seminar a few weeks ago on writing and publishing your own book. It is something that I want to do personally and for business. It was sponsored by the National Speakers Association – Illinois Chapter. It was held at Maggiano’s in Oak Brook.

I did not know what to expect. It ended up being both very informative and very inspirational. They had flown in two guest speaker both of whom had written and published their own books.

Debra Fine was the first speaker http://www.debrafine.com. She created a speaking and training business around the concept of The Fine Art of Small Talk, which is also the title of her book. She helps people be able to start, sustain, and maintain general conversations in business and business-social settings. Her premise is that people need to nurture and re-enforce relationships to get ahead and to sell themselves and their business offerings. Debra focuses her message on the shyer among us and refers to herself as an “enginerd” before re-inventing herself as an author and motivational speaker.

The second speaker was Elaine Dumler. She is also a motivational speaker and trainer helping people with networking and communication skills. Her book actually added a new dimension to her business. She collected stories and tips from military families in how they dealt with their soldier being away especially in families with small kids. She came to idea of writing the book by serendipity and then she ran with it and made it happen. She even wrote a sequel.

I am currently reading Debra’s book. It is very good. While, as mentioned, it probably best serves the shy, I am benefiting from the message.

February 6, 2010

Debra Fine and Elaine Dumler are authors and make a good living writing and speaking. They were an inspiration to take my writing to the next level and even showed me what that next level might look like. They are not, however, the kind of excellent writer I have been featuring in my Anniversary letters.

On January 27^th Jerome David Salinger passed away at the age of 91. J. D. Salinger was best known for his novel, Catcher in the Rye. It still is a very popular novel assigned in High School and College English courses. Upon publication in 1951 it was controversial. The novel follows the adolescent narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, through New York City after getting himself expelled from an elite prep school. The book traversed many of the social norms of the 1950s by its use of profanity, placing the seventeen year Caulfield with a prostitute, and perhaps, as some of the obituaries speculated, sparking the generation gap of the 1960s and 1970s.

On occasion, the book has been banned and censored in the United States and around the world. For this reason it is always in and out of the news. This kind of controversy has probably helped make it a success. Ban or burn a book and watch how many people will read it just to see what the hubbub is all about.

I read one of Salinger’s short stories, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, while in high school. I did not think much of it then. I then read Catcher in the Rye in college because everyone was reading it and I was simply curious to see what all the hubbub was about. Plus, it was the rebellious thing to do to… er… read a book everyone else rebelling was reading. I kind of liked the seamy underbelly aspect of the novel but did not think much more of it. I did not care much for Holden Caulfield.

It must have been in the 1980s, I heard a report on Salinger on NPR’s Morning. It was probably a story about his reclusiveness. It might have even been in 1981, the 30^th Anniversary of the publishing of The Catcher in the Rye. Whatever the NPR report was about, I decided to go back and read Salinger’s short stories again. I liked them. A lot. I thought about reading The Catcher in the Rye again, but decided to read Salinger’s lesser novels instead, Frannie and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenter. Both were excellent in my opinion. With Salinger’s passing, I should read the short stories again. I am certain that if I did read Catcher in the Rye now I would probably appreciate the skill of Salinger’s writing.

When I heard that Salinger had passed away, I was a little surprised. I was surprised because I thought, for no real good reason, that he was already dead. Then it did not surprise me. Salinger was one of the great recluses in the world of celebrities. He was in the same league of reclusiveness at Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo. Salinger gave his last interview in 1980. In 1953, he had moved from New York City to Cornish, New Hampshire where he lived until his death.

February 8, 2010

It is funny actually. I made this resolution to type rather than handwrite my daily writing this month. Implicit in this resolution was that when I type, I am writing for a purpose: my monthly letter, our work blog, or an article for the Armenian papers. So, how is it going? Well, I am like three quarters done with my monthly letter and have written three work blog pieces. So, I am well ahead of myself. I usually blog once a week and you all know I usually get this letter out on the last day of the month.

This is good and bad. I am glad to be so productive. I am, however, tapped out. I will either write the longest monthly letter ever or if I get this letter out this week which seems very likely, I will have to figure out other meaningful things to write about. I did not fully realize just how much musing and meandering my daily writing has been comprised of. While I am glad I began the project and it was useful to my growth as a writer, most of it was drivel and not worth sharing with others. I always suspected such, but these past eight days have made it painfully clear.

I am very glad I did this. It really brings me to a crossroads and is forcing me to make my daily writing time, usually a half hour to an hour, more productive and meaningful. I have wanted to do this for years and even dedicated a fair amount of my musing and meandering to this. Yet, I was in a rut and just stayed there. I knew I should be doing more and doing more productive and pointed writing, yet I did not. As my favorite quote, which is quickly becoming my mantra states, “Knowing never equals doing.”

So, the intent is to not to be more prolific but rather to create something worthy of sharing with others on a daily basis. I will continue to write this monthly letter in its current form and formats but I may well post more often on my personal and work blogs. I need to do more academic writing with and for my friend and advisor John Surak. I will definitely need to pen… er type… more articles for the Armenian press.

I pushed myself to start this project. I am now going to push myself to make it better.

February 18, 2010

I handwrote this piece last night. Why did I violate my sincere intention to type every word this month? I had the best of intentions and as they say “stuff” happens.

As you know I teach Elementary Statistics at the College of Lake County, a local community college. Classrooms have become multi-media with computers and projectors. The text book publishers even provide power points to facilitate the teaching process. As a result, I am always using a thumb drive to move files from my laptop to and from the classroom computer.

Well the public computers on campus are, how do I say it, cesspools of viruses. Last night, I put my thumb drive into my laptop to exchange a file. Immediately, sirens went off, lights flashed, my virus protections howled in pain, and my laptop froze. Wow. I re-booted and got errors the said the virus protection “black file was corrupted.” Well, I just shut down my system until I could have someone more knowledgeable look at it today.

As a result, I had to handwrite the draft of what I have just typed. We learn life lessons, even simple ones, sometimes by chance. It is not really about typing my words everyday but writing something everyday worthy of blogging or publishing. It is about content and quality not about method of writing. Sometimes it is the result and the method, sometimes it is simply the result. In this case, I will settle for the result.

By the way, the laptop is OK and fully restored to its former state of wellness. Also, if it matters, and I certainly cannot resist, I handwrote this segment last night with a lovely Waterman Carene ball point pen.

February 19, 2010

I always close this anniversary letter by recalling how and why I came to write this letter. I began the exercise of daily writing with the goal, of maybe, possibly, writing a book chronicling my 50^th year. I even wanted to call it, An Attempted Mid-Life Crisis. I wrote every day. I kept the journal, but it was not book worthy. The daily writing did not hold together as a book. I always attributed that to not having spent time developing a detailed outline and then writing to it. That is what they taught us to do in school and I have dutifully resisted since the teacher first proposed this approach. I rather fancied the Jack Kerouac, lock myself in a hotel room, smoke cigarettes, type on a roll of telex paper, drink coffee, and end up with On the Road at the end of the weekend.

I also like to thank my mentors that helped bring this letter about. There is Marilyn Zavidow who helped with the design of the letter and actually came up with the name This Side of Fifty. Marilyn just celebrated a landmark birthday. Happy Birthday Marilyn!

I want to thank Aram Kevorkian. I read a few copies of his long standing monthly letters shortly after his passing. They were being circulated via e-mail. They were brilliant and engaging. Aram’s letters directly inspired me to write this monthly letter which now begins its seventh year.

Over the years, Tom Vartabedian has been most encouraging. To have a writer of his caliber comment so often and so positively on my work is most encouraging.

Lastly, I would also like to thank my wife Judy for all her support and encouragement in this endeavor.

Thank you, one and all, for your readership and encouraging comments. I truly appreciate and am grateful for it.

January 2010: New Work & Ara2

The Unemployment Story: Last month I wrote about the marriage of my children. I innocuously wrote “I came to realize that in a few years, people will remember that both the Gavoor children married in 2009 and not that it was the year of my unemployment.” This little statement drew a fair amount of attention. People were somehow surprised to hear I was out of work or not working.

So, for the first time in six years I have been writing this letter I am extending one letter into the next. While the December 2009 letter was about both of my children getting married that year. This letter will be dedicated to explaining what happened career-wise and what is happening now. I thought I had written about this or at least alluded to it in a few letters in the past fourteen months. Perhaps I alluded quite well but have simply been deluded in believing everyone reads every letter as soon as it hits their e-mail.

So, what happened? What is happening?

I took an early retirement from Colgate-Palmolive in September, 2006. It was a special Voluntary Early Retirement Program that had the objective of reducing headcount in a win-win kind of way. As is the case in such programs, incentives were provided to lure people like me into volunteering. I volunteered but needed to find another job for two reasons. First, I was simply too young to out and out retire. Secondly, I was financially unable to out and out retire… and maintain the lifestyle to which I thought I was accustomed.

Therefore, I embarked on a job search. It was really the first time I ever had to do that. In retrospect, that is kind of a remarkable statement. I had never had to look for a job. Offers and opportunities always found me. I began to suspect that I did not know how lucky I had been.

The luck continued.

I was amongst the first of the Colgate Voluntary Early Retirement class to find a new job. In August of 2006, a full two months before actually retiring, I accepted a new job with Newell Rubbermaid’s Office Products Group as Vice-President - Supply Chain. Cool. That was easy. It truly was. I was feeling pretty good about myself. While I was certainly skilled, qualified, and ready to take such a position, I also have to acknowledge some basic facts that made it both lucky and easy. The economy was percolating quite well in those days and there were significantly more open positions than people looking. Or at least, that is how it seemed.

Life at Newell was pretty good that first fifteen months. I was able to make some excellent contributions. I inherited an organization with five director/manager open positions. We were able to staff up in three months and assembled a good team. Whereas 2006 was the worst year in terms of inventory management and customer service the company, 2007 was the best year, ever, for customer service and we stabilized inventory. All of this was due to the changes our team made and implemented.

We prepared the organization for an SAP implementation which happened in October 2007. As ERP implementations go, it was relatively painless at go-live. There was pain but that came over the next few months. We had warehouse management issues at one of our warehouses because the RF system that ran the bar code readers worked intermittently. Also, we went live without a report system in place. If you are not familiar with ERP systems, you might wonder if this is a big deal. It is huge. Financial reports were generally available. But the non-financials such as Customer Service and the reports we use for Inventory planning and management, were not available. I recall one of my keys guys saying it was “like bowling during a power outage.” Indeed it was.

Service suffered and inventory levels wallowed. Our customers never went out of stock, thankfully. So, we were getting them their orders but not necessarily on-time and not necessarily in the first shipment. Inventory was definitely too high, but we did not have the visibility in the system to seriously build in the plans to bring it down.

For office supply firms, June is the peak ship month. It is when product is shipped to the stores as they stocked up for their August back to school sales. We were very worried about our ability to provide decent service. But, due to having an excellent team, we pulled through with average service and no lost sales.

We spent the most of 2007 building up reporting. The landscape was rife with all the infighting between functions like the Supply Chain and the IT implementation team. The fighting was over resources. The implementation team was interested in the next business to get the ERP and not so worried about finishing up the pervious implementation. We finally got what we needed and recovered to where we were going into SAP eleven months after implementation.

2007 was further complicated by a move by the corporation in Global Business Units. It fit most of the corporation, except for Office Products. For us, they created four Global Business Units where there should have only been two maybe three. It was misguided and it paralyzed the organization on top of all the SAP issues. It was simply too many moving parts.

To make the story short, our president and HR VP left, some might say forced to leave. Then three more of the team were let go in October 2008 including yours truly. Only our CFO remained and she left at the end of last year. The group executive that orchestrated this mass change wanted his own team in place. He got his wish. But, he was summarily let go in December 2008.

Well, this was the first time I was actually let go. I was pleased with the severance package but rightfully worried about the economic conditions. October 2008, if you recall, was the month in which the US economy melted down. It was the worst time ever in my adult life to be without a job. If they had done this a few months earlier, I might have already had found a job and been dealing with the economic meltdown someplace else.

Up in the Air Sidebar: On January 8, 2010, we went to the movies. We went to see Up in the Air starring George Clooney. Clooney plays an extreme version of a road warrior. His character, Ryan Bingham, is a corporate downsizer which means he goes all over the country firing people so their bosses do not have to deal with it. Having only spent 40 days at “home” which happens be Omaha, Ryan is more comfortable living out of hotels, planes, rental cars, restaurants, and bars then being at home. He has very little contact with his family and lives an unusually insular life with which he has somehow become accustomed.

I found the move both inspiring and depressing. It was depressing because of all the scenes of Ryan firing people. It was painful to watch the varied reactions. The common themes were disbelief, shock to have this happening after X number of years of dedicated service, and wondering what they were going to do next and how they were going to tell their families.

Been there, done that, had it happen to me, and never liked any of it all.

On top of all this, somehow Ryan Bingham, had time to both write a book and manage to create a speaking tour around the theme of his book. The book was about ridding oneself of all the things and people in our life so that we could just live in the world of work, unburden by possessions and emotions. He used a metaphorical question of “What do you carry in your backpack?” to drive these points. The message was stupid and blandly delivered.

Part of his message to those he was firing was that this firing was the beginning of the next phase of their lives. It is true that we become accustomed to our work lives, complacent and used to the surroundings and routine. Ironically, Ryan was telling people what someone should have been telling him. He needed to be fired out his complacent comfortable and most empty existence.

So what inspired me in watching this sad commentary on our times? I did like the fact that Ryan was able to blend his despicable career with becoming an author and professional speaker.

That is in part what I am trying to do with this next phase of my career.

My firing was a good wake up call. I am not sure I have entirely woken up yet. But I am in the process. I got to the work of re-writing my resumé, learning to network, and then actually networking. I was decent at it and was getting better. I got interviews and interest but no offers resulted. It was a time of highs and lows. I felt good when there were things percolating and interviews to be had. I felt real bad when the pipeline suddenly emptied and it was back to square one. That happened at least three times.

Ara Surenian & Cadent Resources Group, LLC: Upon moving to Chicago, my friend Ken Hachikian asked that I meet with another Armenian fellow, Ara Surenian. Before fully having the spirit of networking that I have learned to embrace this past year, I was happy to oblige Ken. I respect his intellect and friendship. Ara came by my office at Newell. We spent an hour or so talking. Ara told me about his consulting business and the software he had developed to help companies, especially smaller companies, better manage their inventories. The name of his company is Cadent Resources and the software tool is DemandCaster.

We hit it off pretty well and became instant friends. With my “transition,” Ara and I began to talk more about collaboration. Being a reader of this letter, Ara suggested that we take his blog to the next level. That was an easy yes. I began authoring and co-authoring blog offerings with Ara for over a year.

Ara gave me a short consulting assignment to whet my appetite. It was a lot of fun. It was much more fun doing something real than looking for a job. In this one week assignment, I also learned a great and fundamental lesson of the solo consultant: There is no one to delegate any of the work too. Seriously and hilariously, my first impulse upon getting the assignment was to reach for my cell phone and to call people who no longer reported to me and dole out the work.

As the job search became more and more dismal and depressing, Ara and I seriously talked about collaborating on the consulting side using the wonderful DemandCaster software Ara developed. I hemmed. I hawed. I was afraid of this or that. I had always worked for a company and being on my own sounded scary. How would I sell? How would I live if I didn’t sell? I felt like I was standing on a cliff overlooking an abyss.

Then in July I took that step. It was not a cliff or an abyss. It was stepping off of a curb… nothing changed. I even used the same networking skills I was using in trying to get a job to generate new business. It is way more fun trying to generate new business than looking for a job. When I was looking for a job, I felt like I was in a batting cage practicing and practicing. When I am selling our services I feel like I am in a real game taking swings at real pitches. Why the difference? I do not know but that is how I feel.

I was lucky to begin right away with a client that I thought would be a good start. This client keeps asking me to do more and extending my engagement. For this I am very thankful.

It has been a lot of fun. I am fond of saying “way more fun than the cash flow justifies.” We have a pretty good mission and positioning of our little company. Ara has spent the past three months upgrading the DemandCaster tool. We are ready to launch it with a series of Webinars to both advertise the company and communicate the enhanced functionality of the tool.

I prepared a three part Webinar series entitled Supply Chain Physics. This series codified and communicated a concept that I have used the past ten year. Basically, I say that the Supply Chain’s role is to move and deliver the right products to the right place in the right quantities. These products move in space and time and are therefore subject to the Supply Chain Laws of Physics. These laws define and govern our Supply Chains just as the laws of Physics, as we studied in High School and College, define and govern the behavior of projectiles and other objects moving through space and time in the “real world.” The webinars have had good attendance and you can watch them on http://www.demandcaster.com/Events/Archived_Presentations_-_Table_of_Contents.aspx

We have also leveraged our love of writing and supply chain to take our company blog to the next level. Our goal is to post weekly. I believe the content of our blog is better than any of our competitors. Check it out: http://blog.demandcaster.com/

Ara Surenian is a great fellow. I could not ask for a better partner or mentor into the world of management consulting. I admire his work ethic, honesty, integrity, and easy going approach.

Teaching: Also, to supplement income, I decided in Q3 2009 to pursue teaching mathematics or supply chain related courses at night. I looked at the College of Lake County, a local community college, the University of Phoenix, and the Keller Graduate School of Business which is part of DeVry University. I am happy to say that beginning this month; I am teaching two sections of Elementary Statistics at the College of Lake County. It is fun and exciting to be back in the classroom after so many years.

Jobs opened up at the College of Lake County mostly due to the economy. Community Colleges are very cost effective options for those looking for a college education. Their enrollment increased to the point where approximately seventy adjunct professors were hired.

When I first taught first as a teaching assistant and then as an adjunct, it was all chalk and talk. Now, the teaching is multi-media using white boards and power points. Problems are solved using Excel on PCs and on TI-85 graphing calculators. It is different, exhilarating, and fun. Teaching four nights a week has taken all the slack out of my schedule. I am almost adjusted to this!

Ara Topouzian: It was early January when I settled on the topic of this letter. I knew that I would be writing a several hundred words on Ara Surenian. I also knew that I would hear from another friend Ara Topouzian. He would complain, “Hey, WTF, you write about another Ara that you have only known for three years??? What about me? You have known me for over thirty five years. Loogit.” We always add the Loogit when we talk to each other in homage to one Ned Apigian. I knew that I would have to write an equal number of words about Ara or never hear the end of it… seriously… NEVER EVER HEAR THE END OF IT.

So, I decided to include a section on Ara Topouzian. Just as I made that decision, it was like Ara sensed it and called me. He called to complain that I had not mentioned him in my December letter. It was about the fifth or sixth time he had complained about this letter where I mentioned Mike Mossoian or that letter where I profiled George Mouradian. It really is one of the many gags we have we have going back and forth over a number of years.

In the case of the December letter, Ara had a little, teensy weensy, point. When we lived in Bloomfield Hills and had our children, we live less than two miles from the Topouzian’s who were close family friends. Those who have young children and try to maintain any kind of active social life know finding and retaining good babysitters is on-going concern. We were fortunate to find Ara and use him on occasion for what seemed like several years.

The reliability and effort Ara brought to babysitting certainly speaks to his upbringing. His parents, Armen and Norma, definitely instilled great values and high principles in Ara. One might also argue that his availability might have been due to his lacking of a social life back then. But, I would categorically deny that on two counts. First, it is flat out not true. Secondly, I would never ever write that as it might offend my good friend. He knows I would never do that.

Ara became a good friend for a couple of reasons. First, he is just a great person with a great comedic view of things. He is even a bigger fan of The Three Stooges than I am. Secondly, he got bit by the music bug: The Armenian music bug. He claims it was because I was always playing the music when I drove him home after babysitting. I am certain that was a catalyst but perhaps not the main motivator.

Ara learned to play the kanun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanun_%28instrument%29 ) and began playing and booking jobs. He took things to a completely different level when he launched American Recording Productions, www.arpmusic.com, in 1991to both produce and sell CDs. Not only would he sell the CDs he produced, but sold the Armenian and Middle Eastern CDs of other artists and labels he admired such as Harold Hagopian’s Traditional Crossroads. www.arpmusic.com

Ara is very entrepreneurial. He is a natural marketer and salesman. He used these skills to build American Recording Productions. He recorded with a wide variety of musicians including two CDs yours truly. To promote his CDs and music, he would play in book and music stores. He even got a grant from the State of Michigan Council of the Arts (presumably back when they actually had a budget) to teach a seminar on Middle Eastern music in the local schools, children’s museums, and other venues.

Ara was so entrepreneurial that I actually dubbed him the Armenian P.T. Barnum. I even sent him a biography of the great Phineas T.

Ara was truly P.T. Barnum when American Recording Productions was his sole personal and business interest. It has waned a bit as he embarked on his career. Ara is currently Economic Development Director at City of Novi, Michigan.

Like Ara Surenian, Ara Topouzian is a great friend and musical colleague. We have great fun whenever we are together. I do hope that I have written enough here to keep him quiet for awhile…

The North Shore Armenian Cycling Club

Most readers of The Armenian Weekly (where this piece was written for) are familiar with the name Ken Hachikian. We know him because of his excellent leadership as Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). Together with the excellent staff in Washington and the numerous regional and state volunteers, the ANCA has built a most effective grassroots lobbying organization that has really helped get the Armenian-American political agenda much more visibility than ever before. Those that know Ken a bit better also are aware of his business acumen. As a Partner at the Stonegate Group, Ken is an independent investment banking professional and turnaround consultant. In either role, Ken is known for his focus, passion, intensity, insights, and intellect.

What most people do not know is that Ken is founder and president of the North Shore Armenian Cycling Club based in Lake Forest, IL. Club members include Koko Tchamitchian, Christian Tchamitchian, Antreas Mesrobian, Claude Ohanesian, Ara Surenian, and yours truly Mark Gavoor. As a club we ride weekend mornings. Ken is constantly sending out e-mails organizing our weekend rides. I ride with him the most. Koko and Claude often join as well. We ride the Skokie Valley and McCrory Bike paths and have rides of 10 – 35 miles depending on the time available, the weather, and who joins the peleton. Once this year, Ken and I embarked on a fifty mile ride on the Des Plaines River Trail up to Wisconsin and back.

We ride because we love it. We do it for health and fitness. We do it for camaraderie. We do it to discuss economics and politics. We do it to get updated from Ken on issues facing the ANCA. There are rumors we are Ken’s secret advisory board and braintrust. I can most definitively put those rumors to rest by simply stating that Ken is head and shoulders smarter than each of us. It should be noted, however, when we talk Armenian politics, we ride much slower than normal. Yet, somehow the heart rate still reaches aerobic levels… go figure.

As Team Quartermaster, I found a source for Armenian Cycling jerseys from bikethings.com (www.bikingthings.com/arbijearcy.html) in June of 2009. We needed to outfit our club so that when we were clogging the bikepaths discussing Armenian issues, all the other cyclists would know who we are. We discussed this purchase thoroughly at one of our rare dinner meetings. Come on, we are Armenian, so food is always involved and perhaps even more important than the exercise. After a long and lengthy discussion of “I dunno, what do you think?”and “Wow… bike jerseys are really expensive.” The club agreed and we began the process of ordering the jerseys. Indeed it was a process. It took a few months from to get our jerseys. The process was elongated for a few reasons. First, believe it or not, bikethings does not stock Armenian Jerseys. I guess they are not big sellers. Go figure. So, these jerseys are made only when they they have a firm pre-paid order in hand. Secondly, the jerseys are made in Colombia, so even when they are done, it would still be about 10-15 days before we got them. Lastly, finalizing our order was delayed because bike jerseys have a different sizing protocol so it took some time for those of us that wear XXL shirts to come to grips that our bike jerseys would be 4XLs due to the European sizing standard used. As good Armenians, we were none too short on vanity.

Once we got the jerseys in late August, it took more intense planning to find a date when we could all gather for photographs. We decided to gather for photographs on September 20, 2009 though Ara and Claude were in absentia. Our Public Relations Vice-President, Koko, arranged for the renowned sports photographer Suzanne Tchamitchian, coincidently his wife, to take both still and action shots which we are releasing to the public along with this article about our club.

We learned later that we were donning the official Jersey of the National Cycling Federation of Armenia (www.cycling.am). We, due primarily to age, weight, and pace, could never ever be mistaken for Armenian National Team but when we are wearing and cruising along, we feel like we are representing our great nation and people.

So, if you are ever in Chicago and the weather is good enough to bicycle, come and join us. We can set you up with a bicycle. If you want to join our club, we would love to have you. The dues are practically nothing… actually there are no dues. All you ever have to do is show up for rides… if you can or want. We certainly accept social only members. In either case, you will have to get your own Armenian National Team Jersey. And if, by some miracle we are going too fast for you, just ask a question about Armenian politics and we will slow right down.

November 2009: It’s the Stupid Economy

November 6: Was that the quote that Bill Clinton used in the 1992 election? No, it is not. Clinton said “It’s the economy, stupid.” He used this to convince voters that George Bush was out of touch with what was important to the American voters. It helped win him the presidency.

The unemployment report that was released earlier this month showed unemployment at 10.2%. These are the highest numbers since 1983. These numbers, the official unemployment rate, are reported by the Department of Labor. This rate represents 27.4 million Americans who want full time work and cannot find it. Not included in this rate are another 12.4 million people who want full time work but have part time jobs, temp jobs, or have simply given up and stopped looking for work. If these 12.4 million people are counted, the so called “real” unemployment rate is 17%. Ugh, that is a depressing number.

President Obama announced this week that he will be having a job forum in December. It is the right thing to do for the unemployed and it probably a good thing to do before the 2010 mid-term elections. The last time this was done was in 1993. It was called by the newly elected President Bill Clinton who wanted to follow through on the “It’s the economy, stupid” message that helped get him elected. Clearly, the economy is still a huge issue despite the indicators that show we have bottomed out and that we are supposedly in recovery.

November 13: On Friday afternoons, when I can, I venture over to Hemingway’s Cigars in nearby Highwood, IL. In a smoke free state, it is one of the few places I know where you can smoke. The place is owned by an Armenian fellow, Raffi, who has big screen TVs and leather chairs to accommodate guys like me. I go there and meet up with my friend Dro Kholamian. We smoke cigars, watch TV, and talk about things.

Today, we talked about the economic state of this country. It was not just Dro and I but also other patrons all of whom are pretty serious businessmen. The mood was not as gloomy as it was earlier this year, but it was not optimistic by any means. Everyone was concerned about the high unemployment levels, the difficulty still, to get home loans, and the looming commercial real estate collapse that was once a recurrent story in the press and is, of late, suspiciously absent.

Dro and I were in agreement on a few points. First, with the number of manufacturing jobs that have simply gone off shore, we wondered if we could maintain any economic prowess as a service based economy. Second, will we come out of this recession a different country then we were before this recession? Would we come out of this downturn permanently altered looking more like a European country, say UK, Italy, or Greece, than the United States at the turn of the century? These are excellent questions that have been on my mind for some time.

It would not be so bad to more like Europe. People live well and live with less. We are too used to excessive consumer spending and accumulating simply way more goods than we really need. I have even written about this in March 2007 http://thissideoffifty.blogspot.com/2009/01/march-2007-consumerism.html. We could stand to be more like the Europeans. Many of my friends lament, however, the direction in which we are headed. They worry about having a Value Added Tax imposed on us. They worry about, not only a return to the welfare state, but surpassing what we ever had here. I am not so sure.

I voted for Obama. I am still giving him a chance though, like the cartoonists, and late night television hosts, the luster has worn off a bit. But, I am not as worried as everyone else. I have great faith in the fickle and malleable voters in these United States. In the elections earlier this month, Republicans gained two governors and the press with rife with interpretation. Next year, 2010, how will people vote if unemployment is still high?

Not to worry, we have an unemployment summit looming.

November 16: President Obama is in Asia. He was visited China over the weekend and is in Japan today. There were several articles about his visit to China and how the Chinese officially and unofficially view the US and will treat the President. This article I read on Yahoo, http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3356993, kind of summed it up in a quote of one Zhou Jun a 38 year old owner or manager of a garment business in Shanghai:

The U.S. is a very big and strong country, military-wise, economy-wise. It's still important. But compared to before, China has a lot more influence on the world.

This is the same kind of thing we heard in the 1980’s from Japan. Back then Japan was a more dominant economy then I perceive it to be today. They were a juggernaut in autos, consumer electronics, and many other industries. Back then a bulk of our trade imbalance was with Japan. The Japanese were buying US companies and real estate at an alarming rate that worried many people. It is not so different than what we are seeing and worrying about the Chinese today.

The Japanese economy overheated and suffered major problems in the 1990s from which they still have not fully recovered. Does a similar fate await China? Perhaps. But, a difference in China is that they have one quarter of the world’s population i.e. their own very large base of consumers. They have a growing proportion of the world’s manufacturing base. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next five to fifteen years. But, if I were to make a prognostication, I would say that China will continue to grow in terms of GNP, national wealth, militarily, and thus have a greater influence on the world stage.

Consider the following list of countries that hold US Securities, basically our creditors. The numbers are billions of dollars.

China, Mainland 797.1
Japan 731.0
United Kingdom 225.8
Oil Exporters 189.2
Carib Banking Ctrs 180.2
Brazil 137.2
Hong Kong 124.7
Russia 121.6
http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

China holds $797.1B in US Securities. Hong Kong holds another $124.7B. All together this means the US owes China $921.8B or almost one trillion dollars. No wonder the Chinese government and people believe they are or will soon be the dominant economic power in the world.

Note that with all this talk and worry about China, let us not forget about Japan. This country is our number two creditor at a not so paltry $731B! Between these two Asian countries, they hold $1,652.8B. This is a serious chunk of change.

I heard a talking head on television or maybe National Public Radio say the following. “If you owe the bank thousand, then the bank owns you. If you owe the bank millions, then you own the bank.” We owe China a trillion dollars. I am not so sure we own them, but we certainly are mutually dependent economically. China is most interested in having a vibrant US economy with a strong dollar.

November 23: I also heard on a radio talk show another talking head. I believe it was a conservative comparing yesteryear with today. The speaker was referring to the 1950s and early 1960s. These were the golden years after World War II when the United States had the strongest and most dominant economy in the world. We also were the only industrial power that did not have most of their industrial base destroyed during the war.

At the end of the ware, we simply turned our factories from the production of war supplies and munitions to commercial goods. The world had no place else to buy many of these goods. They did just that… for about twenty years.

The speaker compared those times to now. Stamps were 3¢. Only one person, most always the husband, worked. Health care was readily available. Homes were easy to buy. Food was cheap. Gasoline was 25¢ a gallon. Now, both husbands and wives have to work to support the home. Stamps are 44¢, gasoline hovers between $2.50 and $3, homes are expensive and all of a sudden harder to buy, and so on. The speaker had really compelling examples that made me miss “the good old day” for a few seconds.

Sure, things were simpler then. But then, most households had only one car. That is laughable today. Houses were smaller, there were way less conveniences in terms of appliances and the appliances today are infinitely more reliable. Sure stamps only cost 3¢, but I can e-mail this letter to almost 400 people for about that. It quickly became an unfair comparison. I worry more so about what we will look like in the years to come when we emerge from this morass.

I remember reading an article on the auto industry in The New Yorker, a few years ago. It was relating the health care burden for retirees. This was costing General Motors between $1,000 and $2,000 per vehicle. It contributed in some part to their filing bankruptcy earlier this year. These benefits date back to the UAW negotiations with the company back in the 1950s – the good old days. The New Yorker article (gee I wish I had saved it) mentioned that after negotiating this with General Motors and the auto industry, Walter Reuther advocated a national health plan. He was summarily pounded down and vilified as a communist by many business leaders led by the then head of General Motors. The article pointed out that if we had listened to Reuther then, the US Automotive companies would have been better off at the time the article was written circa 2006.

I remember when I started working at Ford Motor Company in 1976. Everything was covered: Salary and health and life insurance. I remember thinking that this was a kind of capitalist socialism. The state in this microcosm was Ford Motor Company. Looking back, my thinking was not so far off.

Yeah, I was some kind of visionary alright. That and $2 will get me a double espresso at Starbucks.

November 26 – Thanksgiving Day: It is early Thanksgiving morning. We are in Detroit at my parents’ home in Livonia. Save for the hum of the refrigerator, the house is quiet. I am sitting at their kitchen table finishing this letter. I am looking out the window across the backyard at a little wooded area. The trees are free of their leaves, the sky is a pale blue striated with purple grey clouds that are visibly moving from west to east. The thermometer in their window indicates that it is a balmy forty-five degrees. It is a perfect time to reflect before the football, family, and food.

As mentioned earlier, we could come out of this recession looking more like a European country. Generally, we view that as a negative but that may be too harsh a view. In such a case, taxes will grow at a crazy pace making just about everything more expensive. As a result, people simply have to worry less about consumerism and more about the quality and durability of the goods they buy.

Note that the same double espresso that cost me $2 at my local Starbucks cost me $8 when I was in the UK two years ago. Are we headed in that direction? Without a manufacturing base, I cannot fathom anything else. How will be pay for health care, roads, military, and education? Will we end up with the European style Value Added Tax on top of our Income Tax? Um… I can see that coming as well.

What we are living through is basically watching the economy re-set and get to a new level of equilibrium. It sounds pretty a natural and inevitable progression. It seems harmless unless you are on the negative side of living through it and having your lifestyle dramatically adjusted because of it.

An ancillary benefit of all this might be that we simply focus more on the quality and durability of our lives than on the quantity of things we accumulate.

That may not all bad.

October 2009: A Meandering Potpourri

I have written before on the how I come to choose the topics of this letter. This month no topic jumped out at me. So, I am providing a true mix of musings and meanderings.

Quicksand, Amnesia, and One-in-a-Million Shots: I was watching a movie the other day. It is one of my favorite movies: Apocalypto. It is one of those movies, in this day and age of cable television, that always seems to be on. It is one of those movies that whenever I run across it, I will watch. It is one of those movies that I do not believe I have ever seen from beginning to end. Yet, I have seen the entire movie several times.

This film was a Mel Gibson production and takes place in the waning days of the Mayan Empire in present day Guatemala.

I have actually been to the Mayan ruins in Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras. They are quite impressive and showed a culture that was incredibly advanced in their understanding of astronomy and at the same time quite brutal in terms of human sacrifice. Apocalypto pays tacit acknowledgement to the astronomy and focuses more on the brutality.

Quicksand plays a large role in adventure movies. It always involves a chase scene when a hero is being chased by the villain. Either, as in Apocalyto, the hero falls in causing the viewers to believe that all is done. Or the hero avoids the quicksand only to have the villain fall in. In the case of the hero in quicksand, there is always a twiggy branch to grasp onto or a trusty horse (did anybody say Trigger?) that allow the hero to escape. In the other case of the villain, the quicksand either makes quick work of them with the audience thinking they got exactly what they deserved. Or, the hero actually saves the villain and brings them to justice.

Where does one ever see quick sand? It does not seem very prevalent. Sure, I have got my shoe or boot stuck in some pretty mucky mud, but never quick sand. So what is quick sand?

It is nothing more, or less, then fine sand heavily saturated with ground water. The sand looks stable but it will not support weight. The few websites I read stated that quicksand is found near river banks, coastal areas, and marshlands. Quicksand is rarely more than a few feet deep. People do die in quicksand but it is not from suffocation. Death comes from simply being stuck and dying of starvation or, in the case of coastal quicksand, drowning in the incoming tide.

Yes, people get stuck in quicksand. They get stuck because they struggle and wedge their way deeper in the struggle. In can be very hard to get ones feet out when they get stuck in the denser sediment at the bottom of quicksand. The best thing to do is not to struggle and get prone to float on the mixture, which is denser than we are.

Remember Teddy Roosevelt's mantra: "Walk softly and carry a big stick." Walking softly is sensible, but it's the big stick that could save you.

If you fall into quicksand, resist the natural instinct to kick your way out. That just separates the sand from the water, forming a very dense layer of sediment at bottom where your feet are. Instead, you need to stay calm and lean back, so you get as much of your body surface on the water as possible. That's where the big stick can help; if you can place it under your back and perpendicular to your body, it can help you float.

Courtesy of the Discovery Channel: http://dsc.discovery.com/survival/how-to-survive/how-to-survive-quicksand.html

In other movies, another ploy is often used: Amnesia. Generally, a key character gets some type of temporary amnesia which becomes central to the plot. In dramas, the person with amnesia is most likely the witness to a murder or other heinous crime. The audience is held in the suspense of hoping the hero will get his or her memory back and solve the crime before the criminals do in the amnesiac.

There is also a comedic use of amnesia. In these plots, the amnesia is caused by a bump on the head. In this case, the poor amnesiac keeps getting conked on the head falling into and out of amnesia as the madcap plot unfolds.

So how common is amnesia? I cannot tell. I searched the web and found lots of information on amnesia, learned that there were many kinds of amnesia, and decided most importantly to you, the readers, not to get to deeply into the various kinds of amnesias.

There was a movie like story that took place back in 2006. A fellow named Jeff Ingram was found walking around the streets of Denver, CO. Authorities did not know who he was and while he was fully functional, his memory was gone. He was shown on TV and his fiancé in Olympia, Washington saw the national newscast and recognized him. He was going to visit family in Canada but never made it there. They have no clue how he got lost or why he did not have identification on him. The news reports talked about him having spells of amnesia before but this one being much worse.

The fiancé, Penny Hansen, was the primary spokesperson for the family. As of last report, in 2007, the then 40 year old man was falling in love with his fiancé all over again. I could find no information on whether they got married or not. Oh well, I guess the reporters simply forgot all about them.

Another often used plot ploy involves the one in a million shot. All is lost, the bank is about to foreclose on our heroes. Financial ruin and loss of lifestyle is looming. Our hero takes his last piece of paper money, hits a casino, and through determination (as if probability is altered by determination) wins a fortune to not only stave off ruin but to provide enough to live happily ever after. Needless to say, this ploy requires a Vegas setting of the film.

A variation on the one in a million shot is, of course, Luke Skywalker’s improbable shot guided by The Force resulting in the destruction of the Death Star and saving the universe from the tyranny of the Empire.

The Halloween Queen: It is the evening of October 27^th. I had just gotten home at around 7 pm. I heated up some leftover pasta, dished out some salad, flipped on the TV and sat down to eat.

I was watching the History Channel because I was watching the History Channel during breakfast eleven hours earlier. In the morning, it was a show called Vampire Secrets. It explored truth versus lore about vampires. In truth, most of it is lore. This evening it was Modern Marvels: Halloween Tech. Well it is the week before the big holiday after all. This show delved into the business of Halloween: a six billion dollar business. There were segments on Knot’s Berry Farm’s 35^th Annual Halloween Haunt, the business of costumes, a profile of Spirit Halloween, and the Castle Halloween Museum.

I was fascinated on the segment on Spirit Halloween http://www.spirithalloween.com/. This company runs all the stores that magically pop-up in empty retail locations around October 1 and magically disappear by the first week of November. They have about $7.5 Million in sales and 80-90% of that all comes in the last ten days of October. In 1999, they had 63 seasonal locations. This year they will have over 600! That is amazing growth. They are a one month retail business and an eleven month planning and logistics business.

The story that caught my attention and the reason any of this is in this letter is because of the Castle Halloween Museum segment. This museum in Wheeling, West Virginia has over 35,000 Halloween items including noise makers, noise makers, masks, folk art, toys, candy, and almost anything else you can think of.

The Castle Halloween Museum is run by a lady, officially the curator and owner, who is dubbed the Halloween Queen. This caught my attention because we used to decorate our Connecticut house so much my wife, Judy, was called the Queen of Halloween by the neighbors. Then they said narrator gave the Queens name: Pamela Apkarian-Russell. Imagine that, the Halloween Queen was Armenian and she looked every bit of it too!

I perused the Castle Halloween website (http://www.castlehalloween.com/) and learned a bit more about Pamela Apkarian-Russell. She is authored several books, is a deltiologist (collector of postcards), appraiser, public speaker, and story teller. Of her nine books, five are Halloween related and two are on collectables. Two of her books are part of the Arcadia Publishing Images of America series. The first published in 1997 is Around Swanzey about six communities in southwest New Hampshire. The second book published in 2000 is The Armenians of Worcester. The Halloween Queen is indeed proud of her Armenian heritage. I will have to scoop up a copy of The Armenians of Worcester, perhaps the oldest Armenian community in the United States.

Milton Supman (1926 – 2009): Milton Supman passed away on October 23, 2009. Milton Supman? I never knew that was his name until I read an obituary. I knew him by his stage name: Soupy Sales.

I woke up early on October 23^rd. I had to catch a plan to go to Washington, DC. We were attending the engagement party of Ani Jerikian and Vicken Khachadourian. I was catching a 9:20 flight in order to spend time with my son Aram and his lovely bride of one month, Anoush.

I got on-line to check to see if my flight was on time. It was. While on-line, I did a quick check of e-mail. I noticed that my grade school friend David Ouzounian (a reader of this letter) had sent an e-mail with a foreboding title: In Memoriam. I had wondered who had passed away. There was nothing in the e-mail but a youtube link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcb87xi8cVg. Of course, I clicked on it and was delighted and saddened to see a clip from The Soupy Sales Show, circa, I am guessing, the early1960s. I did not know that old Soupy shows were on youtube. I was saddened because had meant that Soupy had passed on. I watched the entire 8:14 minute clip. It was classic and funny.

Pookie the lion, actually a lion puppet, popped in the window as he always did and was lip-syncing Mumbles a lovely jazzy scat number by the Oscar Peterson Trio. It was classic Pookie and featured some of the great dead pan looks from Soupy. I loved it. It took me back to my youth. I was glad Dave had shared it.

Soupy was born in North Carolina but had a most definite Detroit connection with people of my generation. He had a show, Lunch with Soupy, on the ABC affiliate WXYZ from 1953 until 1960 when he went to Los Angeles and then to New York where he gained national fame with a late afternoon show using the same format he had developed and perfected while he was in Detroit.

Lunch with Soupy in Detroit and later The Soupy Sales Show in New York were both kids shows. These were live TV shows, as a lot of television was in those days. Soupy entertained the kids with his goofy antics, his animal puppets including Pookie and his two dogs, the gruff White Fang and the loveable Black Tooth. We would laugh, most certainly, at the pies in the face, for which he was most famous. But Soupy also appealed to the parents delivering comedy on two levels. I never really got much of the adult humor but relish them now in the clips that are on line. Watch the clip in the above link and you will see exactly what I mean.

Truth be told, I was not happy when Soupy left Detroit. A noon fixture in my life was taken away. I did not understand it and did not like it one little bit. It may have been my first lesson in realizing I was living in a world of constant change. It just did not make sense to me.

Soupy went on to be fixture on shows like What’s My Line and others. He was a regular guest on The Tonight Show and was even the guest host sometimes. His hair style changed with the times. Yet, always, there were two constants: the dead pan look and the pies. The New York Times obituary reported that “Some 20,000 pies were hurled at Soupy Sales or at visitors to his TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, by his own count.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/arts/television/23sales.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

I used to watch Soupy every day I could or, at least, every day my Mother would let me. Why not every day? As she would tell you today, both Soupy and The Three Stooges, my favorite shows, had an effect on me. I would get pretty wound up and act quite silly. If I got too silly, she would cut off the source of source of the silly energy and not let me watch the shows. Her advanced techniques in behavior modification worked and to this day I can pretend to be serious and well mannered for short periods of time!

RIP Soupy and thanks for all great shows and memories.