Manual Treadmills? OMG!

     There was an article in the July 7, 2015 Wall Street Journal, Treadmills Unplugged: A Gym Workout Powered by Your Feet, talking about manual treadmills gaining a foothold (pun intended) in gyms around the country.  

"Treadmills without motors, or manual treadmills, are popping up in high-end health clubs and at the CrossFit Games, an international fitness competition. Instead of pressing a button to start a mechanical conveyor belt, users make the belt go simply by moving their feet."

     Imagine powering a treadmill with one's own energy and exertion.  What a novel idea.

     Well it is not that novel an idea.  Before the fitness craze of the past thirty years, most treadmills were not powered be electricity.  Most were powered by whoever or whatever was on the treadmill.  I remember back when treadmills were becoming popular in gyms, I just assumed they were devices driven by manual power.  The only treadmills I could remember seeing were manual powered.  The idea of a treadmill driven by an electric motor seemed odd and counterproductive.

    Whatever was on the treadmill? Yes, whatever. Consider the definition of the word treadmill:

noun
1. an apparatus for producing rotary motion by theweight of people or animals, treading on a succession of moving steps or a belt that forms akind of continuous path, as around the peripheryof a pair of horizontal cylinders.
2. an exercise machine that allows the user to walk or run in place, usually on a continuous moving belt.
3. any monotonous, wearisome routine in which there is little or no satisfactory progress.
dictionary.com 

     Certainly, numbers two and three make sense.  What are they talking about in definition number one?  Consider the word treadmill itself.  One definition of tread is to walk and that makes sense since walking is one of things people do on treadmills.  Mill?  The first treadmills were not human exercise machines.  Treadmills were used to grind grain and they were powered by people or animals.  Treadmills were human and animal powered devices to generate energy for the milling of grain in places where water and wind mills were not practical or not known about.  In the 1800s, treadmills were used in prisons.  These prison treadmills, which were more like stair steppers, were used to punish prisoners while grinding grain.  These non-exercise treadmills were indeed monotonous and wearisome routines.  

     Eventually steam engines took on these monotonous tasks.  Gasoline engines and electric motors replaced steam engines.  Thus, an electric treadmill is kind of an oxymoron.  It is clear why I was confused by electric treadmills.  They didn't make sense. 

     When I was growing up and was first exposed to ecology, I had an odd notion.  Why couldn't we generate electricity by having everyone that was able, spend a half hour a day on a treadmills or bikes rigged up to harness that human powered energy?  People could exercise and perform a civic duty at the same time.  I never did anything with the idea thinking that hundreds of thousands of folks spending thirty minutes a day on a hamster wheel would never fly.  Silly me.  Clearly, my oxymoronic view of electric treadmills were rooted in this sophomoric notion of mine.

     NordicTrack makes a full line of aerobic exercise machines.  Their business began with a very simple, small footprint, and elegant (in minimalist Scandinavian way) cross-country skiing device.  There was definitely no electricity involved.  If memory serves me correctly, they followed up the success of their skiing product with a manual treadmill.  Their treadmill had many of the same simple and elegant design features as their skiing machine.  While the skiing machine was popular and made both profit and a name for company, the treadmill was not.  Looking at the NordicTrack website today, all of their treadmills are powered.  They had to follow the market.

     Of course electric treadmills make sense.  The first were used in medical facilities to get patients heart rates up very quickly and efficiently for stress tests.  Patients probably exclaimed, "that was quite a workout."  Folks who were better at commercializing ideas than I am, ran with it (yes, another intended pun).  The purpose of a treadmill is too get a good workout, not to generate energy to drive other machines.  Plus, manual treadmills were just too hard as the human was required to get it up to speed and keep it there... just like real running.

     Manual treadmills were too hard.  I tried one once.  It was even more monotonous and wearisome.  My pace was uneven.  Electric treadmills was easier.  They were easy to get a good workout.   There are programs to vary the pace and incline as well as tracking heart rates.  For me, I gravitated to stationary bikes.  Besides preferring biking to running, I liked that electronics on these machines were generated by the rider. 

     So, we have come full circle.  All things old are new again.  As folks are looking for more extreme and vigorous workouts, the manual treadmill is gaining popularity.  Perhaps we can hook them up to the electric grid...

     

      

Chidem Inch: Sedition Medition!

Not sure if this is an actual quote...
but it could have been.

     Some days, it is unclear what I should write about.  Other days, the topic is handed to me on a silver tray as on June 3, 2015.  There was an article in a Turkish Newspaper,  Hurriyet Daily News, with the headline:  "'Journalists, Armenians, gays are ‘representatives of sedition,' Erdoğan says."  Well thank you President Recip Tayyip Erdoğan.
     Needless to say, as too often is the case with Erdoğan, I felt a combination of being offended and amused.  It is bad enough, our last name means infidel in Turkish.  Now, being Armenian, I am a representative of sedition as well?  Sedition?  I was not sure what that exactly meant but I know that if Erdoğan was using the word to describe Armenians, gays, and journalists, it was not a compliment. Per merriam-webster.com. sedition is "the crime of saying, writing, or doing something that encourages people to disobey their government, incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority."
     I can not speak for the gays and journalists, but dang, Recip nailed it with respect to the Armenians.  We do exactly that.  Our lives, especially in the Diaspora are 110% dedicated to encouraging people to 'dis' the government of Turkey.  We most definitely are inciting both resistance and insurrection (dang, I may have to look this word up too).  It is a long standing plot of the Armenian people.  As a nation and race of people, we were directionless for the early part of our history.  Sure, we adopted Christianity, created an alphabet, built lots of cylindrical domed churches, and even had a golden age of sorts.  But, on those very rare occasions when we are honest with ourselves, we had no direction until...
      Our national goal became clear when the Ottomans conquered us in the early 1600s.  We knew almost instantly that our raison d'etre was finally revealed.  It was our job to be irritating agents of sedition to any and all Turkish governments.  We purposely allowed ourselves to be conquered by the Ottomans.  Cunning as we Armenians are, we allowed the Ottomans to treat us as second class citizens for centuries.  We fooled Talaat, Enver, and Djemal Pashas into orchestrating the 1915 Genocide basically tricking the Turks into confiscating Armenian lands, businesses, and monies.  All of this was just a ruse.  They were putty in our hands, puppets at the end of strings we held.   
      What a plan.  They never knew what hit 'em.  But, we didn't stop there.  We had them enacting Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code making it a crime to insult Turkishness.  You don't believe this?  Look at the number, 301, the very year Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion. Bwah- haha!  Enough?  No way, we just keep working at our national sport.  We even had Kemal Ataturk establish the Presidential Palace in the villa of one Ohannes Kasabian.  The mansion, known as Çankaya Köşkü, might or might not have been bugged.  For sure, we buried treasure underneath the floors.  Saroyan was not quite correct, for every time two Armenians met, we were not creating a new Armenia but rather laughing about the Turkish President sleeping unbeknownst atop of gold buried in the floorboards.  Çankaya Köşkü served as the Presidential Palace until the last piece of our master plan was put in place.  The code name for this last mission was Djermag Pigh.  Our agents convinced Erdoğan to build a new palace, Ak Saray or White Palace, the was so expensive and so ostentatious that it cost his party the election on June 7, 2015:

Turkish voters delivered a rebuke on Sunday to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as his party lost its majority in Parliament in a historic election that thwarted his ambition to rewrite Turkey’s Constitution and further bolster his clout.   ~ New York Times

     I will freely admit, as the self-appointed representative of Armenian infidel seditionists, that the gays and journalists could not have done this without us.  While they are wily and clever too, they needed our 400 year plan to humiliate Erdoğan and the AKP party in this most recent election.  
     The only thing that mystifies me is how Erdoğan found out we were part of this.  There must have been a leak within our ranks... unless, of course, we leaked it on purpose.  Alas, Erdoğan will never know.  Poor sap.

Answering Debbie: Why I am Driving a Toyota

     My car needed service.  I took it to a dealership on the way home from North Park University.  While waiting for my car, I noticed a poster of a photo I have seen before.  It is an old black and white photo in Grand Central Terminal with the sun pouring in through, I believe, the window on the east side of the building.  I took a photo of it and posted it on Facebook with the this message:  "A surprising photo to find hanging from the Toyota dealership in Lincolnwood, Illinois. Immediately, I felt a pull to whatever New York State of mind I thought I once had."

     A friend from Burns Elementary School, who now lives in Texas, made the following comment:  "That is a great pic, but how could you be from Detroit and be shopping for a Toyota?"
     I started reply and after about three hundred words, I decided I was writing a blog post.  So, here we are with my response to Debbie.

-- o --

     Well good question Debbie.  
     It is a question I am still sensitive to as I do care for both the city of Detroit and the people I know that work in the auto industry. 

     When I worked in the auto industry, I exclusively bought American.  Not only that, I exclusively bought Fords because that is where I worked.  I kept buying Fords even after I left Ford and worked for automotive parts suppliers TRW and Rockwell International.
      Because I began my career in quality, I knew that Toyota made better cars at that time. Fact. Period.  My first ever business trip was to visit dealerships that sold both Fords and Toyotas.  We were putting together a database so Ford could actually quantify the warranty repairs for their cars versus Toyotas.  In opening a file drawer, back then such information was not digitized as it would be today, we could tell immediately which folders were for Ford vehicles and which were Toyotas.  The Toyota folders were visibly much thinner.  Without any analysis, I knew that Toyotas simply had significantly less repairs than Ford cars and trucks.  It made a huge impact on me.  
     When I left that industry and became just a consumer,  I moved to Connecticut and worked in New York City.  Yet, I kept buying American cars out of a sense of duty and loyalty that I believe Debbie was invoking with her question.  Out of curiosity and getting a very good deal, I bought in 1994 Camry. Wow. Night and day difference. It was a great car.  It is arguably the best Camry vintage ever made.  I still kept buying myself American but I bought my wife Toyota sedans and then Lexus SUVs. 

     I bought myself two Chevy Blazers. They were OK.  Not great, just OK. I liked them well enough until they started to become very costly rattle traps at about 70 - 80K miles.  That was my expectation for American cars and they lived up to that low expectation.  After the two Blazers, I bought a 2002 4Runner. Again, it was simply a better SUV.  It is 2015 and I still have it. It has 146k miles and runs well. I plan on keeping it till it has at least 250K or maintenance costs more than $4000/year as that starts to equal the very low end of a new car.  It was an oil change and replacement of an air fuel sensor bank that took me to the Toyota dealership where the Grand Central Terminal poster was hanging.

     My auto buying choices are personal and have proven to be sound economic decisions.  My choices are not why Detroit and the auto industry failed.  General Motors and Ford failed me.  
      Regarding the downfall of Detroit, there were many contributors.  It was the auto industry, changing racial demographics, awful local governments, and white flight to name a few. I haven't lived in the city of Detroit since 1969 and the metro area since 1990. Debbie could have easily asked me why I left Detroit, but as she no longer lives there herself she knows the answer. Economic opportunity took me elsewhere. That move to Connecticut was the best single career decision I ever made. Sure, I miss people and places in the metro Detroit.  It was tough to leave but I did and it ended up being a good thing.

      As for the US auto industry?  To me the answer is inept corporate leadership at all three. They were unable to marshal their corporate talent to build vehicles that could cost effectively compete on design and performance quality with foreign automakers. It is that simple.  Look at the market share graph.  It speaks of epic management failure.  In the late 1960s, the Big Three had almost 90% of the US vehicle market share.  They are under 50% now.  This does not happen because they had sound strategies, excellent product development, and world class manufacturing.  
     This is pretty much how the rest of the world looks at the US auto industry leadership.  I do believe folks in Detroit might admit to it now too.  Since the shock of the Great Recession, it seems that the Ford and GM may finally have have management in place who have restructured and retrenched the companies to produce cars and trucks that can compete globally.  There is a great book, American Icon by Bryce Hoffman, on the transformation engineered at Ford by Alan Mulally who joined the company in 2006 and recently retired.  While the book is about the past ten years, it captures the ingrained feudal culture that paralyzed the US auto industry.  
      Sure I no longer buy American cars.  But, my loyalty continued past my employment with three car purchases which were not as fulfilling as any Toyota or Lexus product I have purchased.  I am not talking about toothbrushes, computers, or TVs.  We are talking about cars that, next to our homes, are our largest  purchases.  Should I spend $40K for a car that will last maybe 100K miles that costs me more to maintain and has lower quality out of loyalty?  Should, I continue to shop at Sears just because they are a Chicago icon and that is where I live now?  No.  Companies have to earn and retain customer loyalty... not expect it.
      Here is a quote on Toyota from Alan Mulally from circa 2006 (American Icon, page 130):  

They make products that people want, and they do it with less resources and less time than anybody in the world.  They're a magical machine.  This system of continually improving the quality, putting the variations into the product line that people want  and doing it with minimum resources and minimum time is absolutely where we have to go.  If you look at Ford, it's the antithesis.

     I look forward to the day when Ford or GM lures me back as a customer.
     Sorry for the long winded reply to your simple question Debbie.

Stand Up Desks

     The first time I ever heard about a stand up desk was when I read about the CEO of Schneider National sometime back in the 1990s.  It seems that Don Schneider worked at a standing desk because he was believed it made him more alert and created a greater sense of urgency.  I was intrigued and never forot reading that because no one I knew had or worked at a stand up desk. 
     What is a stand up desk?  Historically, they were not so rare.  Think of the Bob Cratchit desk without the stool.  Think of the maitre'd desk at many restaurants.  They especially make sense for restaurant seating staff as they need to be eye to eye with customers, they are always moving, and thus getting into and out of a chair is wasted time and motion.
     A few years ago, I heard about them again from my son.  He had gotten one in his office and just loved working standing up.  He told me that they were now fully electric and could be raised and lowered by a switch.  I did what I normally do in such situations:  I Googled it.  There were a few companies making such desks that ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on the size and features.  The web search also revealed numerous articles touting both the evils of sitting in a chair all day long and the health benefits of working on one's feet for at least four hours a day.  

There's an emerging body of research that suggests sitting down all day at work, then sitting in front of the TV at home, can heighten the risk of serious illness, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and other ailments, and premature death.

Physical inactivity has been identified as the fourth-leading risk factor for death for people all around the world, according to the World Health Organization.  ~ CNN Money  

     At that time, I was working out of my home office for both my consulting projects and adjunct teaching. There was no way to justify replacing the desk in my study which was a piece of furniture with one of these desks that would never pass the decor standards of my dear wife. I pursued the idea no further... that is until I began my full time position at North Park University.       I have an office at North Park.  It is, how shall I say it, not very big:  7' x 10.5'.  It is small.  I could get all the hand-me-down furniture available in the basement of the house in which the School of Business and Nonprofit Management was located.  I thought about getting one of those cool electric stand up desks but given the plentiful amount of surplus, i.e. free, furniture and a department furniture budget which was smaller than my office, I didn't ask for a $2000 stand up desk.  
      My office is functional.  The only thing I really wish I had was more desk space which is a spartan 4' x 2.5'.  Next to my desk is an empty square space of 2.5' x 2.5' which I knew should be better utilized somehow.  I thought of getting a bigger desk but facilities has not been the most responsive as they are understaffed and the fact that I already have a desk.  I then thought about buying something myself an end to table for storage and desk extension.  I looked around and could never find anything that was suitable from the criteria of price, dimensions, and style.  So, I did nothing.
     A month ago, I was in an office supply store and walked by the furniture section and saw an offering of stand up desks of varying sizes a few of which looked small enough and reasonable priced to be candidates for my empty space.  I wrote down the dimensions and basically did nothing for a month as it was the end of the semester exam and grading time.  One of the small stand up desks, actually it was really a stand up table, looked like it would fit.  It was not electric but could easily be adjusted.  It cost $200 which was at the upper limit of what I wanted to spend.  
     Before buying the desk, I looked online.  There were a lot of stand up workstations between $60 - $350.  While the dimensions were provided, I did not want to buy anything I could not see, touch, and ensure worked to my satisfaction including the maximum height of the work surface.  I stopped at another office superstore just to see what was available from them.   They had a very study stand on which I could easily use as a computer while standing.  If I lowered it, I could use it as a text book stand.  Best of all, it was the last one and priced to go at $100.  I bought it. 
     It is the stand in the photo.  It is a perfect size of my workspace.   As my first stand up activity, I wrote and posted this blog.  I am so trendy.

Deflategate

From sports-rings.com:  Patriots Super Bowl Ring Parody

    Yesterday, it was all over the news that Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, announced that the Patriots would accept the punishment handed down from the NFL in regards to the under-inflated football scandal.  The Patriots will be fined $1 million, lose two draft picks, and Tom Brady will be suspended for the first four games of next year.  Brady is, however, appealing his suspension.  There has been almost no limit to the interpretations of Krafts acceptance of the penalty in the press.  For me, it is Kraft cutting his loses, realizing that there is probably no defense for what they did, and moving forward.  There might have even been a negotiated settlement for both the NFL and the Patriots to put this behind them quickly.
     Let me state that I am a Patriots fan.  I am not a live and die fan as I am for the Michigan Wolverines, but I generally like both head coach Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.  They have accomplished some great things.  Belichick has coached in 31 post season games (29 of them with the Patriots).  He has won 22 of them (21 with the Patriots).  Brady was his quarterback for most of those.  They have been in five Super Bowls together and have won four of them.  This is quite impressive.  I like Belichik because he is a great strategist.  He is a great strategist, first, in terms of continually refreshing his roster and thus always be competitive.  Secondly, given time, no one prepares better game plans the Bill Belichick.  I am a Brady fan not only because he went to Michigan but more so because I was not high on him when he was there.  I guess I am compensating and reveling in his remarkable NFL legacy.
     Deflategate is not the first cheating issue the Patriots have been accused of.  There was the Spygate scandal of 2007 when the Patriots were caught taping and deciphering the New York Jets defensive signals early in that season.  One transgression might be forgivable.  Two?  That could be a trend or the tip of the iceberg.  I am still reeling from the disintegration of my admiration for Lance Armstrong and would hate to see a repeat of that.  I really don't want to have to say, "Say it ain't so Bill.  Say it ain't so Tom."
      Yet, football at this level is war.  Even more so, it is big business with big egos who want the brass... er... gaudy gold and diamond ring.  There are those that will do whatever they think they can get away with to increase their chances of winning.  I am not condoning it but stating what has to be an obvious fact.  That is why there is a league with rules.  That is why there are referees in the games.  That is why there are league officials that review records and game films.  They want enforce the rules.
      To me, the NFL has some responsibility here.  There is a term we bandy about almost without thinking about it:  A level playing field.  In sport, if the playing field is not level, it could favor one team or the other.  The way sports like football get around it by switching sides so both teams has the same amount of time with the field, wind, and sun being either an advantage or a disadvantage.  When it comes to the footballs themselves, the NFL has fumbled.  Why would they allow each team to have and manage their own balls that they use on offense?  There should be a game ball.  It should be in possession and control of the referees to ensure it is a regulation ball and properly inflated.  The same ball should be used the entire game with strict rules of when, why, and how it can be changed during the game.  I, for some naive reason, assumed this was the way the sport was run and thus did not full get what all the fuss was about when the Deflategate story first broke.  Basically, the NFL needs to make it close to impossible for this to ever happen again... by simply leveling the playing field.

Letterman

     Tonight is David Letterman's last show on CBS.  At 68 years old, he is calling it quits after over 35 years as a late night television host.  It is certainly a retirement worth noting as David Letterman has been a late night icon longer than even Johnny Carson who hosted the Tonight Show from October 1, 1962 to May 22, 1992.  David Letterman began his run with NBC on February 1, 1982 with Late Night with David Letterman.  The show came on after the Tonight show.  Late Night with David Letterman ran until June 25, 1993 when David left NBC for CBS to host The Late Show with David Letterman.  The NBC show ran from August 30, 1993 until tonight, May 20, 2015.
     It was assumed that Letterman would have gotten the Tonight Show hosting when Johnny Carson retired.  Letterman paid his dues following Carson for 11 years on NBC.  It seemed natural Letterman would get the job.  He did not.  When Jay Leno was named as Carson's successor
     For most of Letterman's late night career, I lived in the Eastern Time Zone.  That meant the Late Night with David Letterman came on at 12:30 on weeknights.  While I was only in my thirties, I did get up early for work and thus rarely watched the show.  On the rare occasions when I did watch it, I thought Letterman was hilarious.  We moved from Detroit to Connecticut in 1990 and the story was basically the same.  When he moved from NBC to CBS in 1993, I watched The Late Show with David Letterman religiously every night that I wasn't traveling.  I watched it in bed from the opening monologue to the Top Ten List.  It was fabulous.  My closest friends at work used to watch the show the show.  We would talk and laugh about his one liners and his Top Ten lists.  He was very fresh, timely, and very New York. We seemed to be the right demographic for the show.  It was almost as if we could not get enough and we couldn't.
      It took a year or two, but I finally figured out that The Late Show with David Letterman was taped in Manhattan at the end of my work day.  So, I sent in a letter and asked for tickets.  I did this a couple of times and actually got to go on the show twice.  It was pretty cool.  I loved being in the Ed Sullivan Theater.  I could not believe how small the set and theater were compared to what it seemed like on the TV.  I remember enjoying the show but, oddly, for the life of me, I cannot recall the guests. 
     David Letterman lived in New Canaan, CT.  We lived in the next town over in Wilton.  I remember seeing Letterman, on Spring and Summer Saturday mornings, driving through town in bright red Ferrari.  Very cool.
     Yes, I religiously watched The Late Show with David Letterman.  I religiously watched it from from the first day it aired on CBS.  After a few years, something happened.  Either I aged past the show's target demographic or, dare I say it, it started to get stale and repetitive.  I slowly lost interest and in recent years have rarely watched him nor have I watched any late night talk shows.
      Because of how much I loved his show for a few years, I will certainly watch his final show tonight.   As Bob Hope would say and sing, "Thanks for the memories." 

Some favorite Letterman moments:

1. Carson as a guest on Letterman
   Love the first 1:35.
2. Letterman working the drive thru at McDonald's
3. Adweek's 10 Best Top 10 Lists

Legends of Football

    OK, let me step away from the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and address another favorite subject of mine:  Football.  You are probably thinking, "Yeah, he is going to write about Harbaugh and Michigan, return to glory, blah, blah, blah."  No, I am not going to write about Michigan Football and their energetic, enigmatic, and very well compensated head coach.  I am  writing about something different and something new.  Well, it is new to me.
     I am a bit of a TV junkie.  Being part of the first generation that grew up with TV, it has always been fascinating and captivating.  There is the warm glow of the screen that is a window to the world.  It is also a window to a world where everything is reconciled in either thirty, sixty, or ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes i.e. sitcoms, TV crime shows, and movies.  When football is not front and center, I am surfing the channels and channel guides for a movie I may not yet have seen or perhaps one that I have seen countless times.
     I was surfing the other night... very late night.  The channel guide offered something called Legends of Football.  I thought "Hmmm, this could be educational."  Rather than hit INFO to see what I was in for, I hit OK/Select.  I expected to see a documentary on Y. A, Title, Archie Griffin, Jim Brown, or Joe Namath.  Maybe it would be about legendary rivalries like the Packers and Bears, Harvard and Yale, or perhaps Bo vs Woody.
     I could not have been more wrong.
     It was not Legends of Football as I had misread but rather Legends Football. Legends Football is an Arena Football League.  I have watched a little Arena Football which is football that is basically played on a hockey rink sized field covered with astroturf.  I have never watched more than a few minutes because it is... not my cup of tea.  It is not footbally enough to hold my "let me see what else is on TV" attention span.
     Legends Football, however, is not your grandfather's Arena Football League.  No Siree.  The players are all girls.  The Legends Football League is the Arena Football equivalent of beach volleyball.  We are talking athletically fit women in bikinis.  Football in bikinis?  I kid you not.  Their uniforms are bikinis with

shoulder pads and what appeared to be hockey helmets.  It was 2 am in the morning, I was not sure if the game I was watching that pitted the Chicago Bliss against the Atlanta Steam was real or a parody.  
     It is a real league.
     The Legends Football League was founded in 2009 by Michael Mortaza who continues to run the enterprise.  It was, not surprisingly, first called the Lingerie Football League.  The idea was born out of a Super Bowl halftime event called the Lingerie Bowl on some pay-per-view channels.  When it was founded, the players actually wore bikini lingerie.  In 2013, the league decided to rebrand itself to be taken and respected more.  The decided to don the more modest uniforms shown in the photos here.  If the new uniforms are more modest, you can see why I might think this is all a parody. I found articles claiming that the wages were horrible and players were suing the league because the league thwarted their efforts to unionize.  I tried to find out how the league and teams were doing financially.  That web search yielded nothing.  
     I did go to the Chicago Bliss website to find out how much tickets were going for.  I got a "website unavailable" screen.  Ticketmaster wanted to sell me two tickets to the next game against the Atlanta Steam for $76.30 each.  Wow... this is more expensive than I had expected.  One articledid say that the Atlanta team was drawing 2500 - 3000 people per game and that was enough to breakeven.
      OK... we are talking small potatoes in terms of attendance and finances.  This explains the fact that I ran across a game at 2 am.  I only watched it for like five minutes max.  I was totally in awe in how such an inane concept became an actual business.  I then changed the channel to see whatever else was on TV.  Cheesecake aside, I would have probably found an infomercial for a revolutionary weed whacker more interesting.  As I surfed away from the Ladies of the Gridiron two thoughts crossed my mind:

1. Political correctness is applied haphazardly.
2. Where have all the feminists gone?
3. There is only 127 days to the start of Michigan football.

      

     
   

Chidem Inch - The G Word

Chappatte Cartoons FB page
Patrick Chappatte is an editorial cartoonist for The International New York Times

     Armenians and Turks are split on many issues regarding their shared history.  Depending on how one looks at it, there is a case to be made for the vortex of this disagreement to be about the G word:  Genocide.  
     Per the United Nations, their Legal Definition of Genocide is:

Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

     Armenians believe what happened beginning on April 24, 1915 was a Genocide. The Turkish Government has evolved over the years but still shies away from using the G word. Their defense began with "What?  Nothing happened... what?" When that no longer worked, they tried to paint the Armenians as having massacred more Turks than Turks killed Armenians. That really did not work much better. Now, in the Erdogan era, their line is that it was a horrible time of war, both sides suffered, and there is a shared pain and loss. While this is a huge move for the Turkish Government, but it is not enough for the Armenians. Our way of life in our ancestral homelands was abruptly ended. Those who were not killed, starve to death, or Islamified were scattered around the world. 
     On April 12th in Rome, Pope Francis presided over a mass and memorial service for the Centennial. Catholicos Karekin II of Echmiadizin and Catholicos Aram I of the Great House of Cilicia were present and participated in the service. In his homily, Pope Francis said that what happened to the Armenians was Genocide.  Basically, the Turkish Government bristled.  Maybe flipped out is a better word.  I am sure in private conversations Erdogan, Davutoglu, and Cavusoglu may have even bestowed my last name to Pope Francis.  President Tayyip Erdogan dressed down the Pope in no uncertain terms.  Per NBC News:

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan condemned Pope Francis on Tuesday for comments that the 1915 mass killing of Armenians was genocide, warning him not to make such a statement again.  

"We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out of their genuine context and be used as a tool to campaign against our country," Erdogan said in a speech to a business group. "I condemn the pope and would like to warn him not to make similar mistakes again."

     The very next day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,via a spokesman, labelled "the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago 'atrocity crimes,' but he isn't supporting Pope Francis' description of the killings as 'the first genocide of the 20th century.'" (NY Times)  While Erdogan's outrage seemed to bolster the Pope's view, at least from an Armenian perspective, Ban Ki-moon's statement had no visible impact on anything I read.  Neither Armenians nor Turks seemed to react to this.  Perhaps it is because no one really knows or cares who the Secretary General of the UN is (take that Ban Ki-moon).  Many Armenians just assume that he was a paid dupe of Turkey and the US who also refuses to use the G word.
     One side or the other is going to have to give up their position on the G word.  The New York Times cartoon kind of nails it from the Armenian perspective.  What happened could not possibly be Genocide because Raphael Lempkin had yet to define the term.  It seems the Turkish Government could claim a grandfather clause, "How could you possibly call that Genocide?  Heck if they had known it was going to be considered a crime, Talaat, Djemal, and Enver probably would not have done it."
     Yes, one side or the other is going to have to give up their position on the G word.  Likelihood of that happening? Your guess is as good as mine.

Chidem Inch - Descendants of Survivors and Saints

     There are very few Genocide survivors alive at this writing. Those that are still with us are, well, 100 years old or older. They were mostly likely babies or infants when the Genocide happened and probably do not have any memories of those dark days. In a few years, there will be no one that was born in the Armenian villages that are just shadows to the descendants of those survivors. 
     I am the grandson of three Genocide survivors. My maternal grandmother, while Armenian, was actually born in the US. My wife is the granddaughter of four survivors. All our grandparents have passed away. In essence, in our family, our direct link to those times and our Armenian homeland are gone. Yet, we feel the pain, the lack of closure, and the injustice of what was done 100 years ago. It is a collective we as well. Every Armenian community in the world are planning commemorative activities this month leading up to April 24th and as a kickoff to a year of events and activities. Social media is full of sentiments, testimonies, and reactions to the Kardashians, the Pope, the Armenian Catholicoi, and, of course, the Turkish President and Prime Minister.
     I live in the US. Since coming here, our family and the families of most survivor immigrants have done well. Their children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren are thriving. We have lives as good or better than those survivors would have dreamed for us. Yet, amid all of this good, we carry the hurt, sorrow, angst, anger, and sense of injustice and outrage that is transmitted from generation to generation. Why is that?
     Certainly, we do not feel it in the same way as our the survivors did. We cannot fathom what they went through and how they survived eventually migrating with nothing to this country. They got jobs, got married, had families, and built Armenian communities to both have some sense of familiarity and some sense of preserving what was so suddenly and brutally ripped away from them.
     These survivors reared my parents generation who in turned bore and reared my generation of Armenians. Maybe it is as simple as that. Maybe whatever we are all feeling, collectively, around the US and around the world is just because we are children and grandchildren of that surviving generation and that has become part of our collective psyche that gets transmitted and filtered from generation to generation.
      I want to say that it is profoundly strong and powerful simply because it is profoundly strong and powerful in me and others I see around me. It is not universal because I know peers who have drifted quite easily and freely into an American lifestyle without the burden of this history. I do not believe I can or would even want to live any other way. I guess I am saying that it is ingrained in me. It is ingrained in us. Witness a post by my contemporary Stepan Piligian on Facebook on April 14 referring to the canonization of the martyrs of 1915 on April 23rd:

To think, in 9 days we may all be sons and daughters, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Saints of the Armenian Church. What a blessing.

Çidem İnç - Hagop Martayan

     On the third post of this Chidem Inch series, I have resorted to the modern Turkish spelling of this bit of Armenian slang.  I am using it in honor of Hagop Martayan (May 22, 1895 - September 12, 1979), the man who created the modern Latin based alphabet of the Turkish language. 
     At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was no more.  Out of the ashes and redrawn borders the Republic of Turkey was born.  Under the strong hand of Mustafa Kemal, he forced a redesign of many aspects of Turkish life and culture.  He wanted the Republic and it's people to face Westward and engage Europe culturally, politically, and in commerce.  Mustafa Kemal forced Turks to take last names.  As odd as it may sound today, most Turks did not have last names.  To set the example, he changed his name to Kemal Ataturk.  He went on the push for Westernization of music and clothing including banning the wearing of the traditional fez.  
     Traditionally, Arabic script was used for Turkish.  The script was not the best match for the Turkish language for a litany of reasons but was presumably adopted since it was the alphabet and script most widely used in the Islamic World.  Thus, another key part of Ataturk's transformation was to create an alphabet that was modern, Western, and facilitated the teaching and learning of Turkish in the Republic and to foreigners.  Ataturk gave this task to the person most suited for the job; an Armenian named Hagop Martayan a prominent

linguist and man of letters at Robert College in Istanbul.
      Martayan worked and created a Latin rooted alphabet that perfectly suited to Turkish.  He created an alphabet of 28 letters modifying some with cedilla's and others with umlauts to create a system that was consistent, free of special rules, diphthongs, and other such things were bothersome when using Arabic letters to write Turkish. 
     Martayan labors were a great success.  Ataturk was pleased and bestowed a new, modern, and more suitably Turkish last name on Hagop.  Hagop Martayan became Agop Dilaçar.  Dilaçar means the revealer of language, a most appropriate moniker.  
       Martayan lived all of his life in Turkey.  He was a citizen of that country and a significant contributor to that society.  Yet, he was a proud Armenian and carried on, in a way, the legacy of Mesrob Masdots.  His alphabet which is easily learned is actually is the best at transliterating Armenian, case in point:  Çidem İnç.
     He was a family friend of my friend Sonia Derman Harlan who speaks very highly of him.  There is a Turkish website that refers to him as one of the "good Armenians."  Armenians native to Istanbul know of him.  To us in the diaspora, he is not so well known and an oddity because he stayed, contributed, and thrived in the Republic of Turkey.  We have a hard time processing and digesting how all of this was possible.  In a Civilnet interview with Rober Haddeciyan, editor-in-chief of Marmara newspaper, related a story of how Martayan sang a Tashnag anthem in front of Ataturk.  To the amazement of all in attendance, Attaturk not only left him alone but supported his right to do so. 
      With the new alphabet and his new name in place, Attaturk next wanted an appropriate signature.  Again he turned to an Armenian.   Hagop Vahram

Çerçiyan was also a teacher at Robert College.  While he taught math and geography, he had also studied the Palmer Method of handwriting in the US.  He was tasked with creating the official signature of Ataturk. 
    Amazing two Armenians, two Hagops, played a role Ataturk's modernization efforts.  
    Çidem İnç indeed.

For Further Reading:

• http://civilnet.am/2014/04/09/dilacar-martayan-armenian-linguist-modern-turkish-language/#.VSyDGpNcuPU 
  
• http://100years100facts.com/facts/modern-turkish-language-owes-lot-armenian/ 
• Other links from the 100 Years 100 Facts page: 
• Vercihan Ziflioğlu. “Atatürk’s signature came from hand of Armenian-Turkish master”, Hürriyet Daily News, 29 October, 2010
• Dil Derneği. “A. Dilâçar” (in Turkish)
• Wikipedia: “Agop Dilaçar” 
• Wikipedia: “Hagop Vahram Çerçiyan”

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