Gee Whiz... GE!

      General Electric is an iconic corporation. It was founded 126 years ago in a merger of the Edison Electric Company and the Thompson-Houston Company. It has been a bright and shining star in American Industry. In the early years they produced power generation equipment, all kinds of electrical devices from electric motors, alternators, light bulbs, and various other industrial gizmos. Over the years, they expanded into locomotives, airplane engines, and household appliances of all sizes. They were a blue-chip stock that were almost a must in any portfolio.
     They built a sprawling headquarters, manufacturing, research and development center in Schenectady, NY. I remember in the 1980s when I was studying and working in the field of reliability engineering and life data analysis, it seemed that the seminal books and articles were all written by industrial engineers and statistician at the GE research and development center in Schenectady.
     Jack Welch took over GE in 1981. He ran the company until 2001. He was named The Manager of the Century by Fortune Magazine in November of 1999. He was nicknamed Neutron Jack because, like the neutron bomb, he gutted the company of employees while leaving the buildings intact. He had a very cut, dry, and harsh style. Every business in the GE portfolio had to be #1 or #2 in their market or he would sell-off the business. He routinely fired the bottom 10% of his management team. One way of looking at his leadership approach was that he created a nimble, fast paced, and performance driven management team. Another perspective was that he built a cut-throat culture built on fear and intense pressure that could not be sustained. But Welch was eminently successful taking the market capitalization of GE from $14 billion to $144 billion during his tenure.
     The name Gary Wendt is rarely mentioned regarding General Electric. In fact, there is not much about him in any web-search. People remember Jack Welch but not Gary Wendt who was Welch’s clear #2 for many years. Wendt ran GE Capital, the newest part of GE at the time. It quickly became the part of the company that that was the heart of the Welch management style.
     GE was headquarted in Fairfield, CT two towns over from Wilton where we lived. A lot of their GE Capital Businesses were located in the area, so I knew a fair number of executives. I even interviewed with several divisions when they were about to implement Six Sigma. It was clear that I was not GE material. I could not promise stellar results off the top of my head having done no analysis. That is what they wanted. I thought people were kidding me when they said you had a nanosecond to impress a senior executive. But that was certainly the case.
     When Welch got the Manager of the Century award from Fortune, he was quoted in the article as follows:

I'm not retiring because I'm old and tired. I'm retiring because an organization has had 20 years of me. My success will be determined by how well my successor grows it in the next 20 years. I've got a great management team, and they're ready to get the old goat out of there so they can do their thing. 

To be vital, an organization has to repot itself, start again, get new ideas, renew itself. And I shouldn't stay on the board. I should disappear from the company so my successor feels totally free to do whatever he wants to do.

      Well… in the next 20 years, his hand-picked successor Jeff Immelt, did not do a very good job at all. Immelt retired in 2017. He left a mess for his successor John Flannery who is working hard to restructure the company. When Immelt retired GE’s market capitalization was $252 billion. This month it had fallen to $120 billion. On June 19th, GE was dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Per Bloomberg:

General Electric Co. suffered a crowning ignominy Tuesday as overseers of the Dow Jones Industrial Average kicked the beleaguered company out of the stock gauge it has inhabited for more than a century. 

Once the world’s most valuable company, GE will be replaced by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., the Deerfield, Illinois-based drugstore chain created in a 2014 merger. The change will take effect prior to the open of trading next Tuesday. Down 26 percent, GE is the worst performer in the Dow in 2018, as it was last year, as well.

     The DJIA is the oldest, most widely known, and most followed stock market index in the US if not the world. It was originally made up of 12 companies in 1896. It grew to 20 companies in 1916. In 1928, the list was expanded to the current number of 30 companies. The editors of the Wall Street Journal select which companies are in the index. There is no set formula, but the editors look for the biggest, best performing, most economically influential US based companies.
     Here is the original 12 companies.

• American Cotton Oil
• American Sugar
• American Tobacco
• Chicago Gas
• Distilling & Cattle Feeding
• General Electric
• Laclede Gas
• National Lead
• North American
• Tennessee Coal & Iron
• U.S. Leather Pfd.
• U.S. Rubber

     GE was one of the original companies in the index. They were the only one still in the DJIA and… they were dropped. Given they were replaced by the Walgreens Boots Alliance exemplifies how non-industrial the index and our economy have become. GE leaving the Dow was more shocking to me than when GM was dropped in 2009.
     In a June 24 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, General Electric’s Long Unwinding, Andy Kessler wrote that GE acted more like a hedge fund than an industrial corporation. I leave you with this quote from his piece:

[Per Welch CFO, Dennis Dammerman,] “We’re going to take these large gains and offset them with discretionary decisions, with restructurings.” I’ve seen it. I invested in technology companies only to see GE Capital come in and write big checks. It’s an old corporate accounting trick—some called it a honey pot, others a cookie jar. When the investments went public, GE could time the sale of stock for when it needed to book additional profits to make up for a shortfall elsewhere. Jeffrey Immelt took over as CEO at the end of 2001 and kept the Welch legacy going, growing assets at GE Capital to more than $500 billion for a globally expanding business of loans, leasing, factoring, equity finance and insurance.

Mr. Welch had a famous leadership lesson—be No. 1 or No. 2 in any business, or get out. Sadly, as a hedge fund, it was dead last. During the 2008-09 financial crisis, its honey pot was destroyed. GE even took $3 billion from Warren Buffett to meet short-term obligations. Mr. Immelt and GE have been unwinding this hedge fund ever since.

The Securities and Exchange Commission complained about GE accounting in 2009 and earlier this year. Once investors figured out the game, GE stock sold off—meaning its access to capital shrank. That’s what markets do.

The Smart Phone Generation

https://www.kqed.org/pop/25280/millennials-monthly-
basement-dwelling-snake-people-who-cant-find-stamps

     It is a changing world. Often times in many different fields, we are reminded that the pace of change is accelerating. Things change quickly, and that change comes at us faster and faster with each passing year. It seems this has been the opening lines of any and every text on quality and management I ever picked up. I am certain it applies to all fields of study and endeavor.
     Mostly, this change is paced by technology. Just consider how we have listened to recorded music. I have seen us go from 78 rpm records to LPs and 45s, which gave way to 8-tracks and cassettes, only to be usurped by CDs which were rendered to the trash bin by MP3s which we no longer have to worry about because with have streaming services that learn what we like and play more and more of those genres over time. We went from listening to music on phonographs which there was one or less of per household to everyone having their own device on which they devices. We went from phonographs to boom boxes which gave way to walkmen to disc players to iPods. The life span of each of these technologies seemed to be half of its predecessor. Now all of this happens on our phones.
     Our phones? We each seem to have one and they are full of functions that just a generation ago seemed like science fiction. Besides listening to music and, duh, making phone calls, we can take, edit, and enhance amazing videos and photos on our phones. We can share those videos and photos with anyone we know via text or email. We can share it with the world in general by any number of social media apps. Whatever we might be able to watch on our TVs at home, we can do that and even more on our phones. Students can access the full resources of their libraries from their phones… after hours… while seated in an easy chair wherever they may and do all the research for and even write a term paper on their phones. It still boggles my mind.

Note: I could do everything except write a paper on my phone… the small screen and writing with only my thumbs are just too limiting. I did try using voice recognition to dictate a Blog Post Using Voice Recognitiononce. I did that back in 2014 and have not tried it since. It might be a good way to get a draft down as this is now available on lap and desktops. Will we soon be lamenting about the no longer writing by typing the way some of now miss handwriting?

     So, change is inevitable, and it happens faster and faster. What doesn’t change? What is constant? What stays the same? I believe it is us… we people, we human beings, and how we act, react, and think to each other. It is our constant coming to grips with what happens regarding how and why we fall in love. What happens if the object of our affection does not see us in the same way? What happens if they do? Of course, all of religion is based on why we even exist and, most certainly, what happens when we pass. This just seems to be part of life. I am not a scholar on this, but these seem to the same things we have grappled will all throughout the history of mankind. I am not sure the smartphones, yoga apps, Instagram, snapchat have had any real impact answering these big questions to any greater satisfaction.
     To some degree, every generation seems to think that the younger generation behind them are not as dedicated and hardworking. To the same degree, every generation looks to their parents’ generation as being stodgy and stuck in their ways. Actually, I do think the millennials are not all that different. Smartphones and social media have made communication amazingly fast. For sure all our lives, and perhaps more so for the millennials, are more congested with communication and diversion because of these amazing devices. These young folks I see are juggling home, school, work, and the constant staying in touch with everyone they know. Most are great young people and working hard on all fronts for their future. To me it seems like they are juggling way more than I ever had to when I was their age. The down side is that they, in large part, will only do work if the task will earn them points i.e. have a direct impact on their grades. These young folks are constantly prioritizing and re-prioritizing and many of them do it with style.
     It will be interesting to see what my grandchildren’s generation will be like.

Thanks for the Birthday Greetings

 

   It is my birthday. As the day draws to a close, I am doing my daily writing and reflecting on the day that was not as I had planned it a few days ago. 

      I was going to attend a farewell party for a valued colleague who was moving on to a new position. I was even invited to say a few words which I was delighted to do for my friend. Then, I was going to have lunch with some old friends. We have been trying to get together for several weeks and finally settled on my birthday which made me feel good. Lastly, we had dinner planned with the family. In between, I was going to do some writing, exercise a bit, and prepare for a course that starts in a week.
     Plans changed as plans often change. My wife often says we should probably just start with Plan B and avoid all the fuss.
     We took water in the basement on Friday and today was spent coordinating workers, prioritizing what we were going to keep and what we were going to throw out, taking phone calls from the insurance company, adjustors, and contractors.  Throughout the day I was getting birthday greetings and well wishes by phone, text, and Facebook posts and Messenger.

     When folks found out what I was dealing with, they felt bad that I had to do such on my birthday.
     Yeah, it wasn’t what I planned to do. But truly, at my age, which is either This Side of Fifty, This Side of Sixty, or This Side of Medicare, the actual day is really not that important to me. A late card or gift doesn’t bother me. I am honored to get a greeting and even more so a gift. If and when a friend or family member apologizes about missing the day, I simply tell them, “I am not a kid where the actual day means that much.” A week late? No problem. Just as happy to hear from you.
     The only way in which I was ever really into the day, June 25, was to know which famous people shared my birthday or what notable might have happened on this day. I think I was looking for some link that would inspire me to be something more, something better. I even wrote a bit about it in my June 2010 Letter. While it is kind of fun and interesting to know these things, I truly believe there is no relationship, no correlation.
      A few years ago, I was at a conference on my birthday. As is the norm at conferences, there is a Pareto Principle, an 80/20 rule, in play. 20% of the speakers deliver 80% of the interesting content, while the remaining 80% of the speakers only provide 20% of interesting content. So, at this conference, when the lesser 80% of the speakers had the stage, I read my birthday wishes and thanked each and every person for their greeting. I liked that I had done that and decided to do it again the following year. Well, a year later, I had a much busier day, and failed miserably at thanking everyone separately. I did what most people do and wrote an appropriate post thanking everyone.
     This year I thought I would change it up a bit and write a bloggy bit to thank everyone for their thoughtful greetings and well wishes. They really kept my spirits up today. I greatly appreciate it!

Çidem İnç - Bank Ottoman: Memoirs of Armen Garo

Garegin Pasdermadjian

     While reading The Fool by Raffi, I had already decided to read Armen Garo’s memoirs next. The only translation I knew of was in 1990 and was published in Detroit. It was one of the many Armenian excellent projects of our family friend Armen Topouzian who passed away last year. When I finished the Raffi book, I was still in Detroit and sought out the Armen Garo book on my parent’s bookshelf. I was surprised not to find it as I thought for sure that they had it. I know I had seen it somewhere. Actually, upon returning home, I was surprised to find it on my own bookshelves.
     Armen Garo was the nom de guerre of Dr. Garegin Pasdermadjian (1872 – 1923). He was born in Garin (Erzerum). Garegin studied first at Sanasarian College in Garin, later getting a degree in Agronomie in France, and eventually a PhD in Physical Chemistry in Switzerland. He was known early on for his role in the Zeitun Resistance. He became an Armenian hero because of the August 26, 1896 raid on Bank Ottoman in Istanbul. Papken Siuni (Bedros Parian) planned the raid but as he was killed in the first moments of the raid, Armen Garo, being educated and fluent in French and Turkish, became the leader of the Armenians. Later, Armen Garo was the Ambassador to the United States from the 1918 – 1920 Republic of Armenia.
     There are things I should have known and probably did not remember from my Armenian Education in the Armenian Youth Federation. First, Bank Ottoman was not an exclusively Ottoman Bank. It was established 1856 as a joint venture of the British, French, and the Ottoman Government. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation decided to take over the bank to bring to the attention of the Brits and French the plight of the Armenians which included the massacres perpetrated under Sultan Abdul Hamid II 1895. While the takeover is viewed as a major heroic deed, revered in song and history, by the Armenians, it was viewed as an act of terrorism by the Ottoman Government. The takeover evoked some European sympathy and attempts to influence the Ottoman

Bank Ottoman in 1896

Government nothing came of it. Outside of the Armenians, it is barely a blip in Turkish, British, or French history. The surviving Armenians of the Bank Ottoman takeover were taken aboard the director of the bank’s, Sir Edgar Vincent, private yacht and given safe passage to Europe and exile from the Ottoman Empire.
     After the incident, President Grover Cleveland spoke out against these atrocities as part of a longer address to Congress and reported in the December 8, 1896 New York Times. He stopped short of any intervention as is often the case in such circumstances. He closed his comments on the Armenians with the following comment to the Ottoman subjects:

For centuries our forbears have been living with you in peace and harmony...but recently your government, conceived in crimes, began to sow discord among us in order to strangle us and you with greater ease. You, people, did not understand this diabolical scheme of politics and, soaking yourselves in the blood of our brothers, you became an accomplice in the perpetration of this heinous crime. Nevertheless, know well that our fight is not against you, but your government, against which your own best sons are fighting also.

     Change did come however. The Young Turks, officially the Committee of Unity and Progress, took control of the Ottoman Government in 1908. There was a brief honeymoon period in which the Armenians were encouraged that unity and progress might actually happen. The exiles returned home, and Armen Garo became one of the ARF deputies in the Turkish Parliament. He served from 1908 to 1912 where he lost an election to a more pro-CUP Armenian. He then took an active role in ARF military activities in the Caucuses perhaps foreseeing the dark events of 1915.
     When the first Republic of Armenia was founded on May 28, 1918, Armen Garo became the first and only Ambassador to the United States. After the fall of the Republic to the Soviets, Armen Garo was overwhelmed with had happened to his people and country. He died in Geneva in 1923 at the young age of 51.
      As Simon Vratzian wrote in the introduction to these memoirs:

When Armen Garo arrived in Paris in November, 1922, only a ghost was left of the Armen Garo we knew. He was worn out and broken down, yet he had not lost his hope for the future. He wanted to hear endlessly about events, the accomplishments and the comrades in Armenia. He would sigh with deep sorrow that he had been away from it all… “Oh, but if I could only breathe the air and eat the grapes of Erevan all my ailments would be cured,” he would say quite often.

     The book is an easy read. It is not a finished or polished memoir but rather taken from Armen Garo’s notes and journals presumably without a lot of editing. It was clear that Armen Garo was a bright, educated, and pragmatic man. He was deeply devoted to the plight of the Armenian people. Given that we just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the 1918 Republic, these Memoirs of Armen Garo were a great read.

First Father's Day without...

Three Generation Photo:
Nephew/Grandson Jacob Niffin, Dad, and me

     It is Father’s Day. It is my first Father’s Day since my Father, Aram Martin Gavoor better known as Sonny, passed away on June 3.
     It has only been two weeks. At times it doesn’t seen that long and at others it seems like two years. Time moves differently, in funny ways, in times of grief or crisis. It is simply bent by the swirl of emotions.
     In perusing Facebook today, I saw postings of others honoring their fathers who passed away ten, fifteen, and twenty of more years. Their posts were touching and honoring the memory of their father. As they say, while the pain of loss eventually subsides, the hole in our lives remains. I mourn and miss my Dad for sure. At the same time, I have to be thankful that I had him just shy of 65 years. Those in the Facebook postings lost their Dads in their 30s and 40s. These same folks were the first to tell me it doesn’t matter at what age one loses a parent. I see their point for sure.
     With Dad’s passing, we were positively overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, memories, and condolences. As a renowned track coach in Armenian circles, he was a dynamic, sometimes larger than life, influence on many young people. Those who could came to the viewing or funeral and shared their memories while others called, texted, sent emails, or posted them on Facebook. They shared touching memories about how they never forgot what he had told them way back when and how that message or inspiration still guided them today. Other stories had we on the lighter side. People waited up to an hour and a half at the viewing. There were 220 people at the hokedjash (the traditional Armenian memorial dinner after the funeral). While we were mourning his passing, it was truly a celebration of his life, a life well lived.
     We, in the family, collectively wrote his obituary which was published in The Armenian Weekly. This post is not really about Sonny Gavoor the coach or community figure, but, as it is Father’s Day, more about Sonny being my Dad. As the emcee at the hokedjash, I gave my speech in between the other speakers. For the closing, I chose to, wanted to, and probably even had to share a moment that stood out in my mind. It was a simple memory but important to me. It was, certainly, cathartic for me but did not have the impact I wanted it to. In retrospect, it was a bit lame after all the great coaching vignettes. It was better suited for this venue but, let’s face it, I was not thinking so clearly at that time.
     Here is what I spoke about:

One of my fondest memories was back in 1967. It was in September barely a month and half after the riots that rocked the city. We were painting the outside of our first house, a two-flat house on Freeland, that we were then using as a rental property. The weather was glorious, the kind of September days we live for in Detroit with the bluest of skies, golden almost autumn sunshine, and temperatures in the low 70s with just a hint of fall crispness in the air. We painted. While we painted, we listened to baseball games on the radio. That year the Tigers were in a heated pennant race with the Red Sox and Twins. It was a Field of Dreams kind of memory. On different weekends we listened to the radio play by play by George Kell and the icon, the legend, Ernie Harwell. We painted and felt like were at the game. We didn’t talk at all during the game. Kell and Harwell did all the talking. We talked plenty before and after the games. I wanted the Tigers to take the pennant. Dad was a fan of both the Tigers and the Red Sox… oddly he never really favored one over the other at this time. In the weekends of painting, we listened to games against the Red Sox, Senators, Yankees and Angels. I have no recall who actually won they games. I remember the nailbiters against the Red Sox and we lost both of those games. The Tigers did not win the pennant, the Red Sox did. But we got a glimpse of the greatness the Tigers would display in 1968. Most importantly, it was a beautiful memory of baseball, fresh air, painting, and hanging out with my Dad.

     Later my wife, Judy, asked why I chose to share that story. It was a treasured memory to me, but I never asked myself why it was. When she asked me that question, I thought about it. I knew it was kind of a dud and I knew she felt the same way, hence the question. There were certainly many other memorable times and significant moments. Why did this one stand-out to the point where I wanted to share it with others? After some reflection, I decided this was important to me because it was a rite of passage kind of memory.
     I was all of fourteen years old. It was the first time, that we did something when he didn’t have to really tell me what to do or how to do it. It was the first time, I felt I was an adult and we were working together as men. I was about the same age, a little older, as when Jewish boys are Bar Mitzvahed. It was the first time I did not feel like a boy around my Dad. I do believe my relationship with him changed from being a kid toward being more adult. That was pretty cool and why this memory sticks out.
     The only thing we didn’t do was crack a beer at the end of day… which he did. Today, I had one in his honor this being my first Father’s Day without him.

FOMO

http://www.ihglobe.com/culture/life-with-fomo/ 

     I have heard the concept before, but last night I really heard the acronym FOMO for the first time. It is a slang acronym that stands for “Fear of Missing Out.” According to dictionary.com it means:

a feeling of anxiety or insecurity over the possibility of missing out on something, as an event or an opportunity.

     It is indeed a condition, a side-effect, of our obsession with social media. It happens when one goes online, primarily to Facebook or Instagram. One encounters posts and photos of people having fun, attending some very cool looking event, or travelling to some exotic location. It appears that everyone is doing something more meaningful, far more fun, exotic, or way cooler than anything they are doing at that moment. As a result, one then feels lesser, more insignificant, and less important, all because of this fear of missing out… and comparing themselves to others.
     I have had to come to terms with this myself. I have seen folks travelling hither or yon and wishing I could do the same. I have seen friends playing music here or there with various musicians and wish I were with them. I have had to learn to appreciate what everyone else is doing without feeling like I was missing anything. I have also had to learn to appreciate all of what I do… much of which I am aware causes FOMO in others.
     Part of coming to terms with FOMO is the feedback other people have given me in person. They will make comments like, “I cannot believe all the stuff you do” or “Wow…

blog.datis.com

you have a pretty full life.” Hearing such comments was a bit of a slap in the face, a zen-like, slap in the face. Indeed, I do have an interesting and fun life. I have a great family and enjoy all the gatherings that we do. I have a cool encore career as a college professor that allows me to continue to travel around the world as well. I play music. I write. What am I missing out on? Not much really. Actually nothing. So, I have learned to simply be aware and thankful for all the cool and wonderful things I am doing and, simultaneously, appreciate and marvel at what everyone else is also doing.
     Sidebar: Before the internet and social media explosion that has facilitated this FOMO concept, I had a similar thought about American television and movies. By the 1980s and 90s, our TV shows and movies were available throughout the world. I believed that the distribution of this media to some of the poorest peoples in the Middle East. They see the lifestyle, bounty, luxuries, and conspicuous consumption that some these TV shows and movies flaunt. I could see how zealots could use a kind of FOMO to radicalize people who have nothing and who barely scrape out an existence.

www.inforum.com

     The cure for FOMO? Do less social media. Take a sobering look at the things that you actually do and the people that you interact with. You might be more fulfilled and happy than the FOMO fog has you feeling. Lastly, if there are things you really wish you might want to do from a hobby, travel, avocation, or vocation… pursue them. Will it all be exactly what you envision? Sometimes. In reality, most of the time for most of us not. For me, things do work out but never as I envisioned them, but I have realized that 70-80% of a vision or goal (many goals) can be quite fulfilling. So, no FOMO… Live Your Own Life (LYOL) and as the hippies used to say, Keep On Keepin’ On (KOKO).

Chidem Inch: Our Literature is Unread

Raffi

     It is May 28, 2018. It is Memorial Day in the United States. It is also the 100thAnniversary of the establishment of the Armenian Republic that lasted from 1918 – 1920. It is the kind of day where both my American citizenship and my Armenian heritage have converged and are in sync.
     We went to a commemoration in Lake Forest’s Market Square hosted by the local American Legion Post. Afterwards we went to visit the graves of our family members. We went to the two cemeteries where the Armenians who migrated to Waukegan from 1900 to 1920 are buried. There I saw grave markers from people that I knew and never knew that stated that they were from Harput, Khapert, Kharpert – Tadem, Tadem, or Khoulakiugh (also in the Harput or Kharpert region). They were both proud of where they were from. They were making a statement of preserving where they were from and why they were buried half-way around the world in a corner of Northeast Illinois.
     It made me think of places, I have heard about and read about in memoirs and histories but never actually seen. It made me think about being Armenian in the Diaspora and, in my case, the United States. In his famous quote, William Saroyan’s stated“whose literature is unread” in reference to Armenia and the Armenians. Indeed, for the most part, our literature is unread. Very few in my circle of Armenian family and friends have ever talked about reading this novelist or that poet.
      I have actually read some of our poetry. I have three books of Armenian poetry with translations in English either on the facing page or in an appendix. I have enjoyed reading selections of the poems of Kouchag, Charents, Toumanian, Varoujan, Siamanto, Isahakian, Gaboudikian, Sevag and others. I especially like Sarmen. He is not a major poet but at least two of his poems have been put to music and are songs I actually perform. The language he uses is closer to the Armenian I grew up with. I read all these poems in Armenian and then in English. I repeat the process over and over again. I understand a bit more or a bit differently in each reading. That is the beauty of poetry.
     When I was graduating from Armenian school, I wanted to read and learn more Armenian. I wanted to study further. I would have benefitted from studying Armenian at the university level. Sadly, I was in school before either Wayne State University or the University of Michigan was offering Armenian courses. I did ask our Der Hayr, our parish priest, about what I might do. He suggested I read Malkas nee Ardashes Hovsepian (1877

Malkhas

Trabizon – 1962 Beirut). He thought Malkhas’s novels were at a level that would have been only a little challenge given where he thought my vocabulary level was. He said he would get me book to read. He never did and I never followed up. I came to learn later that Malkhas was a neighbor of my Uncle Reuben and Aunt Rose Marie in Washington, DC in the 1950s. His three-volume classic, Zartonk (Awakening), has been translated into English. I need to secure copies in both English and Armenian and finally get to reading Malkhas.
     The classic book that probably every Armenian should read is a novel, Kentuh or The Fool, from the late 1800s by Raffi. Raffi (nee Hakob Melik Hakobian) is so notable in Armenian history that his nom de plume is a popular Armenian name to this day. I know several Raffi’s. They were all named for the famous writer… that most of us have not read. There is a decent biography of Raffi on Wikipedia.
     While most Armenian’s know of Raffi, some lesser number can name any of his books, and even less have read any of them. Raffi is best known for his classic novel: Khentuh (The Fool). It is important in our history. This book came at the time when, as a subjugated people of the Ottoman Empire, we were waking to the idea of wanting and need more self-determination and freedom. Thus, reading The Fool is important for any Armenian who takes his or her culture and heritage seriously. I had never read it. So, while in Detroit the last two weeks, I took Donald Abcarian’s translation from my parent’s bookcase and read it.
      I immediately saw why Raffi was so important. He highlighted the plight of the Armenian peasants in the eastern millets. They were subjected to over-taxation and pillaging from Turks and Kurds. He highlighted the complicity of some self-serving Armenians working with the Turks. He, to me at least, was surprisingly critical of the clergy who seemed to preach that the peasants’ lot was God’s will while trying to maintain their status in the community and scratching out a living. As for the church hierarchy, he seemed to note that they were more interested with their career tracks than their flock.
     His heroes were the few Armenians that were educated and abhorred by the status

quo. They dedicated their lives to educating, awakening, and arming the peasants. This was important because how the Turks would squeeze and crush the Armenians in wartime when the enemy was a Christian nation. Raffi wrote about this in 1880. This was well before the Hamidian massacres, the Adana massacres, and well before the 1915 Genocide. He foretold this by relating the events of the 1877 – 1878 Russo-Turkish War.
      I know of a small group of Armenian fellows, all retired, in Chicago. A few years ago, they would meet for coffee and breakfast as retired Armenians around the US are prone to do. These fellows had a mission beyond the normal catching-up and solving the world’s problems conversation. They were reading The Fool in Armenian. I was impressed and made a mental note to do the same myself someday.
      The Fool is available online in Armenianand English(translation by Jane Wingate). It seems that someday is here thanks to the internet.

Farmers and Factory Workers

Desecdents of Nishan and Almas Asoian in front of offices at
the Andover Country Club.  This renovated structure was
their farmhouse in the 1930s

     Things change. I know this. In life, some things change rather abruptly. Other changes are so gradual they I might not even notice it happening. But when I do I am taken aback and blog about it.
     I realized just this past few weeks just how few farmers and factory workers I actually knew.
     I teach Microeconomics. One of the central topics is the study of Perfectly Competitive industries or markets of which the best examples are agriculture. Many producers grow the same product say a class of corn, wheat, or, something that many Armenians in Fresno made their livelihood at, growing grapes for raisins. There are many growers and they have to accept the market price.
     I have been teaching this class for four years now and am just realizing that no one in our family farms. We haven’t had a farmer in the family for decades. My father spent summers in Andover, Massachusetts where his maternal grandparent’s families, the Asoians and Lusignians, all worked the land. I have met some Armenians in Fresno that still farm but they are not related to me. I know a lady at the university, she told me that her father, who recently passed away, and his brothers are farmers in Kansas. The father of another lady who reported to me at Newell Rubbermaid is also a farmer. Growing up in Detroit, my friend Brad’s family had a farm in Hale, MI. When I visited the farm in the Boy Scouts, they were no longer working the farm themselves but leasing the land to neighboring farmers.
      A childhood acquaintance, Bruce, took being a hippie quite seriously and actually got himself back to the land. He eschewed his suburban upbringing and may have even dropped out of college and became a farmer in rural Michigan. I was always amazed that he did this, basically going against the grain of what everyone else I knew was doing. An internet search showed that he is still active and participating in farmer’s markets selling vegetables, herbs, eggs, wool, and maple syrup. I have always wanted to sit down and get his perspective on this… but we were never that close. I may actually talk to some local folks, at our local farmer’s market that have done essentially the same thing.
      In the same vein, I know and less and less folks that work in factories. I grew up in Detroit. Back then, Detroit was more of a manufacturing town than it is today. I knew a lot of people, friends, family, and neighbors that worked in manufacturing plants. In the summer of 1973, I actually worked in a machine shop myself. My maternal grandfather, Levon, worked in the Ford Foundry at the Rouge Complex.  That experience provided great motivation to excel in my studies. Today? The last of my extended family have retired from their factory jobs. So, at this time, I can barely of anyone I know that actually works in a factory.

Ford's Rouge Complex c. 1927 - Wikipedia

      There are few factors in play here. First, times have changed. There is simply less family farmers and less factory jobs these days. Corporate farming has taken over the production of most foods we buy in the grocery stores. The loss of manufacturing jobs is well known and well documented. Secondly, my demographics have changed. In the Detroit I grew up in, we lived in a neighborhood that had blue and white collar, executives

and factory, workers living side-by-side. This influenced my experiences in school, Boy Scouts, and church. Now? Since I moved from Detroit, I have lived in mostly amongst households had the same kinds of executive positions I had. While this was OK for the most part, as my children got excellent educations and experiences… just different from mine growing up.
     I wonder what the next fifty years will bring.

The MEME Arab Concert - A Conversation with Sophia Uddin

Sophia Uddin

     This coming Sunday, May 27, the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble (MEME) of the University will present The Arab Concert. This concert marks the end of the 20th Anniversary of this wonderful ensemble. The concert begins at 6 pm in the concert hall of at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts located at 915 E. 60th Street in Chicago. Come and listen to our amazing ensemble for 40+ musician present classical, folk, and popular selections from the vast Arab repertoire. If you are remotely interested in this genre, this is not a concert to be missed.

     There are myriad benefits of playing in the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble of the University of Chicago. One of them is hearing the exceptional talents of a few musicians. For example, our maestro, Wanees Zarour, is an unbelievable composer, arranger, and musician who is accomplished and world-class on several instruments from violin to oud to bouzouk. Where he really shines, in my humble view, is on the def, the tambourine popular in Arab and Turkish music. He dazzles me with the way he makes that thing talk. His articulation, timing, and ornamentation surpass what I imagine, and I have a pretty good imagination. He also makes it all look so… effortless and natural. 

Jim Stoynoff

     Another favorite of mine is Jim Stoynoff. He is a clarinet master. He is a fixture of Greek, Macedonian, Balkan, Turkish, and other Middle Eastern genres in Chicago for sure and around the US. He is an honorary member of MEME for his talent, years of dedication, being a friend and mentor to all, and his exceptional knowledge of Makam Theory which he has made a lifelong study. Certainly, I love to hear Jim’s taksims introducing various pieces and his improvisations in the pieces during the practices and concerts. But, a bonus for me, is simply hearing Jim warm up before practice. I often find myself stopping my tuning and warming up simply to listen to Jim… in awe and admiration. As we practice around 27 times throughout the academic year, I get to hang out with and hear Jim that many times. 
     Jim and Wanees were born listening to this music.  I believe that for some of us the appreciation of and dedication to this music is in our very DNA. In MEME, I am truly impressed with the musicians that do not come from the heritage and only got into it because of MEME. The third musician, to whom this piece is truly dedicated, is Sophia Uddin, a superb violinist and our concertmaster. She is truly amazing in all three concerts: Turkish, Persian, and Arab. To me, however she shines the most in the Arab concert. When Wanees asks her to demonstrate a passage for the rest of the strings, I actually think she has played with orchestras in Beirut, Damascus, or Cairo her entire life. Her feel, interpretation, and style simply amazes me. 
     I had the opportunity to chat a bit with Sophia and ask her a few questions:

What this music means to you?
Because I didn't really play any Middle Eastern music until a few years ago, I don't have any long-ago memories associated with it. However, since joining MEME in 2013, this music has come to occupy a special place in my heart. Because I grew up playing almost exclusively Western classical music, Middle Eastern music presents a total paradigm shift. It's a way for me to challenge myself on the violin and as a musician (for example, learning to hear whether half-flats are in tune, and learning to produce them on the violin...or learning to play in a G-D-G-D tuning rather than G-D-A-E).

I also love the sense of community from playing Middle Eastern music. When I joined MEME, I noticed two things. First, I noticed how friendly everyone is with one another. Second, I noticed how Wanees is not the "orchestra conductor" in the Western symphony orchestra sense; he's never standing up front with a baton during our shows. It's a very different approach to musical hierarchy than I grew up with, and I love that. Rather than being told exactly what to do in every measure of the music, we're thrown into a situation where novices, masters, and everyone in between play the same music together. This gives the newcomers (like me!) the opportunity to learn organically from the masters.

Finally, especially in today's political climate, I am especially glad to be playing Middle Eastern music, because for me it is a way of showing support and love to cultures that are discriminated against in the US right now. It's easy to feel pessimistic about where the US is headed currently, but it helps cheer me up to remember that this is still a place where a descendant of Oregon trail pioneers and Muslims from the Indian subcontinent (i.e., me) can spend every Thursday playing Middle Eastern music with amazing people from all over the world.

What has being part of MEME meant to you?
Being part of MEME has been wonderful! It's a friendly, welcoming environment and has become a cherished group of friends. Back in 2013 when I joined, I was new to Chicago, and didn't know very many people around the city. The lovely people in MEME were among the first who made me feel at home in a new city.

MEME is also a great way to give my brain a break from studying. I'm in the U Chicago MSTP which means I spend a lot of time reading papers, writing, and memorizing things. It is wonderful to have one protected night a week where I can forget about all that and just play music.

How you got into playing this music?
Honestly, before joining MEME I didn't play any Arab, Turkish, or Persian music! The closest I came was a folk music ensemble I was in for a couple years as a kid. We played lots of Irish and bluegrass fiddle music, as well as a couple Balkan and Klezmer songs. My parents had a couple world music CDs that we'd listen to as kids, and those had a couple Egyptian songs on them if I recall correctly, but the first time I learned to play this music was when I joined MEME.

What brought you to MEME?
When I showed up in Chicago to start my program at U of C, I didn't know anyone in Chicago and I didn't know about MEME, but I had been playing violin in chamber groups and orchestras since high school. I knew I wanted to continue playing, but after beyond-wonderful experiences playing in chamber groups and the school orchestra at Swarthmore college, everything else felt like a letdown. My quartet in college used to practice ~10 hours a week so that we could focus on thorny, dissonant music like Schoenberg and Bartók, and I couldn't envision building something like that from the ground up again with entirely new people. I decided I needed a total genre change, and I found out about MEME just by scrolling through the U of C website that describes all the ensembles. I showed up at the first practice of the quarter for the 2013 Turkish Concert, and after that I was hooked. 

MEME performs three concerts a year: Turkish, Persian, and Arab. How do you relate to these different styles and genres?
Given that I have no background in any of these traditions, they all seem equally new to me although quite distinct from each other. I suppose the Persian music seems a little closer to the Western music I grew up with because of the harmonies, but they all have their own challenges.

I found your website... tell me a bit about the music you compose.
I've been composing for a long time, but the first time I had any formal instruction in it was in college, where I was lucky enough to study with Gerald Levinson who was one of Olivier Messiaen's students. In college I wrote a lot of typical "Western art music" - atonal chamber music pieces with extended techniques all over the place - things like that. The largest-scale piece I've ever written is a still-unperformed piano concerto that clocks in at about 45 minutes.

After I moved to Chicago, I got a 7-string electric violin and started playing live with a few prog rock-ish bands - The Gabriel Construct which is my fiance's band, and Pavlov(3) which is tapping musician Matt Tate's brainchild, to name a couple. This is exciting because now, I have real live musicians to work with, and I get to write for actual performances rather than for the desk drawer. It has been fun learning to compose outside my comfort zone (drum set! electric instruments!) and to practice my own music with the bands. People always remark that my rock music is a bit unusual; I don't think I'll ever be able to escape my roots in avant-garde Western classical music, and I'm fine with that. I've also noticed more and more Middle Eastern influences slipping into my compositions the longer I play with MEME. 

      While Sophia is an amazing musician and contributor to MEME, she is, like many members of MEME, also a student at the University of Chicago. All of the student musicians are talented musicians and gifted students. Sophia, for example, just completed her PhD in Computational Neuroscience and is rolling right into the university’s Pritzker School of Medicine to pursue her MD. On top of all this, she is genuine, warm, and engaging person. All I can really type at this point is: Wow! 
     So, on Sunday, May 27 come on down to the Logan Center at the University of Chicago and listen to Sophia, Jim, and their colleagues in the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble perform the Arab Concert orchestrated, arranged, and led by Maestro Wanees Zarour. It will be a real treat.

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Margot Kidder (1948 – 2018)

Pinterest

     I heard that Margot Kidder passed away on May 14. She was way too young at 69. The early press releases did not disclose the cause of the death.  The obituaries noted that she had struggled with a spinal injury from a car accident in the 1990s. In that decade, she also suffered from a serious breakdown in 1996 due to a bipolar disorder. She had gone from stardom to broke and then rehabilitated herself in this century where she returned to acting and political/social activism including supporting Bernie Sanders in the most recent presidential election.
     Margot Kidder was most well-known for the three Superman movies she made with Christopher Reeve. The movies Superman I, II, III were made in 1978, 1980 and 1983 respectively. While I certainly watched those films, they were not necessarily my favorites. I thought that Margot Kidder played a spunky and entertaining Lois Lane but that is not why I remember her.
     Margot Kidder first caught my eye in Playboy magazine of all places. She had a photo shoot in the March 1975 issue. The photos were all in black and white and of all the various photos I had seen in Playboy, Margot Kidder’s were the most memorable.
     All the other photos in Playboy were, what was then called, cheesecake. They were topless or nude pin-up shots meant to stimulate and entice men. Kidder’s photos were certainly topless and nude, but they were so much more. I recall, when I first saw them, that they were not the run of the mill Playboy photos but were actually art. They were stylish, stylized, classic, as in Greek Sculpture classic, and she was perfectly and beautifully suited for the role. They were unforgettable. Like I said, hers was the only photo shoot from Playboy that I actually recall. The photo here is, I believe, one of them: black, white, and artistic. The full photo shoot was nowhere to be found online.
     Kidder only agreed to do the photo shoot if she could could write the copy for the accompanying article. Her words resonate well today given what I have read about young girls dealing with the reality of not being, drop-dead, model gorgeous. I checked with a few buddies about my age, they two recall these photos as being the best they had ever seen in Playboy.  None of us recalled reading the accompanying article back in 1975.
     Playboy? Really? Yes, I have to admit that I did buy the occasional issue and look at others back in the 1970s. Of course, I bought or looked at them for the photos mostly. But, I did read some of the articles and interviews. Out of all the articles and interviews, the only one I recall was the March 1974 issue in which they interviewed Groucho Marx.  There must have been something special about the March issue in back then.
     These days, Playboy magazine is almost a thing of the past. I cannot even recall the last time I have even seen one.  The once popular magazine that was published monthly is down to six issues per year. In March 2016 they did what would have been unthinkable in the 1970s, they stopped using photos of nude women. Compared to the photos and porn floating about the internet these days, Playboy was the softest of the soft porn. Of course, in the 1950s and 60s, it was scandalous which accounted for its popularity at the time. Per the Los Angeles Times in an article on January 2, 2018, “U.S. circulation has dropped to less than 500,000 an issue from a peak of 5.6 million in 1975 amid struggles in the broader print magazine industry.” The private equity firm that now call the shots since the passing of Hugh Hefner is actually thinking of shutting down the magazine.
     It is funny that the magazine circulation peaked in the only years that I recall both an interview and a collection of special photos of Margot Kidder.