The Winter Solstice

 

I have a theory.

It is a theory about our ancients and the keen knowledge some of them developed about the cosmos.  This is not based on science or any research I have done.  Perhaps, it is more a notion.  But, as it is the Winter Solstice, I thought I would share it.

I think of the time before any of the diversions we have today.  I am certainly talking before the internet, television, radio, and recorded music.  I am thinking well before electricity was harnessed and electric lights.  Let’s go back even before printed books, and even further, before scribed books and scrolls, before chiseled cuneiforms and painted hieroglyphics.  I am speaking of the time when the days were for working and nights were for whatever you could do by firelight and the few things you could only do in the dark.

One of the things you could do in the dark was stare at the night sky.  In the days I speak of, there was no ambient light on Earth.  The skies these days, in city and suburb, have a few visible stars and constellations.  We are lucky to see the Orion and the Big and Little Dippers.  But back then, the entire cosmos was visible to the naked eye.  There were millions of stars to seen and it was marvelous.  It was amazing, enchanting, and captivating.  The cosmos was the television and movies of those days. 

The brightest and most curious of ancestors started to see seasonal patterns and share them with others.  The also passed them down bright and curious kin or clansmen in the form of lore.  The notions of equinoxes (the two days a year when day and night are approximately the same duration) and solstices (the two times a year when we have the longest and shortest days).  They learned to be able to predict, to some degree, when solar and lunar eclipses might take place.

We are kind of amazed when learn about the astronomical layout of Pyramids, Greek Temples, and Mayan temples and cities.  I am amazed but not so surprised based on the theory I just laid out.  When last in Armenia, we viewed older churches positioned in such a way that the sun would shine directly through a circular window onto a royal gravestone in the middle of the sanctuary on a special day e.g. the summer solstice or the day the royal passed away.  Minoan sailors were navigating by the stars as early as 3000 to 1000 BC!

Why do I write about it today?  Well, it is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere.  It is the shortest day of the year.  The sun rose this morning at 7:17 am and set this afternoon at 4:22 pm here in Chicagoland.  People have celebrated this time of year throughout history across many different regions and cultures.  Often, the date signals the end of one growing/harvest cycle and the start of another.  The shortest day of the year also makes it the longest night of the year.  The winter solstice marks the end of the dying of the light and the rebirth of the start of another cycle.

Humans may have observed the winter solstice as early as Neolithic period—the last part of the Stone Age, beginning about 10,200 BC.

 

Neolithic monuments, such as Newgrange in Ireland and Maeshowe in Scotland, are aligned with sunrise on the winter solstice. Some archaeologists have theorized that these tomb-like structures served a religious purpose in which Stone Age people held rituals to capture the sun on the year’s shortest day.

 

Stonehenge, which is oriented toward the winter solstice sunset, may also have been a place of December rituals for Stone Age people. ~ history.com

Maybe, my theory is not much of theory but rather just accepted fact.  Nonetheless, I have always been fascinated how the ancients observed and codified all of this and how we still observe them to this day.  Many of our Christmas traditions are rooted in winter solstice traditions pre-dating Christianity.  This includes the use of evergreen trees and wreaths and the burning the Yule log.

For me, in recent years, the winter solstice has become even more special because it is my daughter in-law Anoush’s birthday!  Happy birthday Anoush!

Contagion: Vaccines, a New Strain, and Hope.

 

Washington Post

While we are experiencing surges in Covid-19 infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths, there has been some glimmers of hope.  There are two vaccines approved for use in the US.  Less scientifically, people are looking forward to the end of this year and the start of the new.  In the latter case, it is like people believe in a jinxed year more than viral biology. 

I certainly have been one of the hopeful, for both reasons stated.  I am hoping that the vaccines help put this all behind us with zero to minimal side-effects.  I also am amongst those that look forward to the start of our next trip around the sun to be a much better year.  Heck, I was pretty hopeful and excited about that start of 2020:  The Dawn of a New Year and Decade. 

Yesterday, we all read or heard some news that makes our hope for the 2021, well, less hopeful.  It seems that in the United Kingdom, that the virus this Covid-19 morphed, mutated, transformed, or simply evolved into a strain that is more contagious.  This is horrible news.  One report stated that this new strain spreads 70% faster than the strain that killed millions and wreaked havoc on our work and lives this year.  According to a December 19^th article in the Wall Street Journal:

The early conclusion, according to British scientists, is that the virus has mutated to change the so-called spike protein on the surface of the virus, increasing the protein’s ability to cling onto and enter human cells. These changes allow the mutation, known as N501Y, to spread 70% faster than earlier versions of the virus, early analysis suggests.

This new strain is responsible for the majority of new cases in the UK.  As a result, there is a severe lock down there from December 24 to January 4.  The goal is to minimize Christmas gatherings that would accelerate the spread of the virus.  Several countries in Europe and around the world have banned air travel to and from the UK.

While this new strain is more contagious, preliminary evidence does shows it is not more fatal than the variant we have been fighting for the past year.  Thankfully, scientists believe the current vaccines will still be effective against this strain. 

Viruses mutate faster than we can react.  As the CDC and other medicos have advised, it will not get us out of this alone.  We still have to observe the precautions we have come to know:  avoid large gatherings, wear masks in public, and wash our hands often.  It requires the cooperation of all of us to make these little sacrifices to beat this thing.

Back on May 1, it was a spring day where my hopes were high.  There was a beautiful rainbow that day which bolstered the hope even more.  I wrote a post, Contagion: Promise of Utopia?, which basically expressed a hope that this pandemic may foster an era of greater cooperation and understanding amongst all of humankind.  In retrospect, I was even more naïve than I admitted in that post.  On May 25^th, George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis and protests erupted all over the country.  There were people who took advantage of it and looted businesses.  At the same time, people protested the lockdowns, defied wearing masks, and demanded a return to normalcy.   It was nothing close to the better world I had envisioned.  But, perhaps that is the problem with Utopias; they are conceptual and can never be realized.

On December 7^th, my cousin Christopher Merian posted the following on FB:

I have been wearing a mask every time I am out in public. I’m not sure why being considerate to others for the common good is now being mocked by some who are calling it “living in fear”, but it needs to stop. When I wear a mask over my nose and mouth in public and in the stores/Supermarkets/Pharmacies/Offices - I want you to know the following:

-  No, I don't "live in fear" of the virus; I just want to be part of the solution, not the problem.

-  I'm educated enough to know that I could be asymptomatic and still give you the virus.

-  I don't feel like the "government controls me". I feel like I'm an adult contributing to the security in our society and I want to teach others the same.

-  If we could all live with the consideration of others in mind, the whole world would be a much better place.

- Wearing a mask doesn't make me weak, scared, stupid or even "controlled". It makes me caring and responsible.

- When you think about your appearance, discomfort, or other people's opinion of you, imagine a loved one -- a child, father, mother, grandparent, aunt, uncle or even a stranger -- placed on a ventilator, alone without you or any family member allowed at their bedside.....Ask yourself if you could have helped them a little by wearing a mask.

I am inviting you all to copy this and post it on your wall as your post if you agree with me, as I did.

I certainly agree with Chris.  I do believe we can all follow his very simple and pragmatic suggestions for the greater good.  The would be Utopian enough for now.  It is also crucial as the pandemic is surging, and, after all,  it is season of good will toward men and peace on Earth. 

At least this is my hope…

The 'Incredible' Ara Topouzian

This Halloween

I started this little project, My December Challenge, on December 1^st.  The challenge is to write a blog post every day this month.  It is kind of a bloggy advent calendar.  With this post, I am nineteen days into it.

At the onset of this project, I had two concerns.  First, I was a bit concerned that I would be able to actually live up to my own challenge.  In this regard, I worried about two things:  Would I be able to find enough topics to write about and would I have the time and discipline to write every day?  My second concern wouldn’t actually stop me from completing the project, but it would be something I probably would have to deal with at some point.  Simply stated, I was wondering when and how Ara Topouzian would start giving me grief about this.

Notice that I didn’t say “if Ara Topouzian would start giving me grief.”  That he would do this was a given from the get go.

Ara and I have a history of playful banter on FaceBook.  We basically bust each other’s chops as often as we can.  The goal is to be an irritating nuisance to the other.  If we can do it subtly and deftly enough to get a rise out of the other… well that is how you win at this game.  Over the years, we have had some real fun with this.  Mutual friends and acquaintances have inquired to either or both of us if we even like each other.  Before proceeding, allow me to state unequivocally that we do in fact like each other.  We are good friends.  Our families have been friends for two, going on three generations.  We actually find this ludicrous game we play amusing.  Yes, you might have guessed it.  We are idiots.  We are morons.  We are basically ten-year old goofballs. And, I do not see this slowing down in the least.

The last time I penned a post like this was on August 18, 2013.  The post, The Wily Ara Topouzian, was about him changing tactics and trying to get under my skin by being what I called “furtively sincere.”  He is basically up to his old tricks again, this time regarding my December challenge. 

Case in point, I posted a photo of our house all lit up for the holidays.  A friend Andrew from Philadelphia and I had the following exchange:

 

The exchange went on and Ara jumped in:

 

Ara began slowly and has been making such comments with greater frequency.  I know what he is doing, and I know he knows I know.  This is how this works.

Part of this “thing” we do includes a Halloween tradition that I started several years ago.  I would carve a pumpkin in a most traditional and mundane way.  I would put the jack-o-lantern next to a photo of Ara and claim it was my aim to carve a pumpkin in the image of Ara.  To sum up how well I believed I did it, I would include the catch phrase for this idiotic tradition, “Nailed it!”

 

After a few years, Ara jumped in and started posting similar photos.  This year, Ara took it to a new level this year.  He involved his children.  It was awesome:

So, I made a little video:

      To close, I have to thank Ara for the topic of this blog.  Whew, it is getting more challenging to find fresh ideas thirty-one days in a row.  In the spirit of complete disclosure, I have started do the preliminary research and creating outlines and storyboards in case I am so desperate for topics that I actually have to write the blog that Ara suggested:  Outside Warmers, A Retrospective.

Missing the Dead Store and Malls... Or Not

 

I drove by two malls in the past two days.  One was the Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills and the other was the Northbrook Mall in Northbrook.  Lord & Taylor was an anchor store at both.  At Hawthorn, the store is already closed.  The signage is already down and there is only a shadow of the cursive logo of the venerable department store on the walls.  At the Northbrook Mall, the store was still open but there was a “Store Closing” banner hanging from the roof.  The full chain will be gone sometime in 2021.

I never really knew Lord & Taylor growing up in Detroit.  The department stores near our house in Zone 27 (48227) in Detroit Federal’s and Montgomery Ward.  They were across from each other at Grand River and Greenfield.  It was quite a commercial area that included a men’s fashion store, Harry Sufferin’s, and a women’s store, Himelhochs.  All have gone out of business though Himelhochs still has an online presence. 

The other department stores we used to frequent were Sear’s and Roebuck’s and JL Hudson’s.  My maternal grandmother, Grannie, loved Sear’s and we would go to the Oakman Boulevard store in Detroit near her home.  My mother would occasionally go to Hudson’s.  Early on it was their iconic downtown store and later it

Hudson's Toy Department

was at Northland, the first shopping center in the US.  At the time, Sear’s was the largest retailer in the US.  They are technically still in business but have been on life-support for at least ten years.  Hudson’s was bought by the Minneapolis based Dayton’s and operated as Dayton-Hudson’s while they grew their Target discount brand which eventually became their only stores and brands. 

We tend to get attached to stores especially those tied to our youthful experiences and memories. Many of us favored some stores over others.  We liked the atmosphere, the service, the prices, the attitude of the sales staff these places.  We loved the locations and the goods we bought for ourselves and the gifts we bought for others.  We remember the windows during the holidays.  We loved the Santa at our favorite stores.  The older and more magnificent the store, the more we bonded to it… and miss them all the more today.  That is the power of nostalgia in the midst of rapid change.

People still reminisce about the Hudson’s in downtown Detroit.  People miss the grandeur that was Marshall Field’s in Chicago even though it retains some of the that old tradition in its current manifestation as a Macy’s (and who knows their future is).  Most cities there was one iconic store.  In New York city were several, a hierarchy of them.  Certainly, there were Macy’s and Gimbels (gone).  There is Saks (lifesupport).  There is Bergdorf-Goodman’s and Bloomingdale’s.  Bonwit-Teller and

Henri Bendel are two other long gone stores.  Finally, there were the neighbors:  B. Altman and Lord & Taylor.  Both of the gone.  The B. Altman store on 5^th Avenue is part of NYU and the Lord & Taylor building is about to become an Amazon office complex.  B. Altman closed before I worked in Manhattan.  I did get Lord & Taylor a few times but as Saks was two blocks from my office, that was my go to store in Manhattan.

 People miss the closed stores.  But the reason the stores close is a combination of the world changing, management not keeping with the times, and, ultimately, people ceasing to shop there.  The dichotomy is that the stores we miss so much are gone because we stopped frequenting them.  We are fickle and a bit complicated.

Do I have a favorite store that I am missing?  Not really.  I do have a mall that I somewhat am nostalgic about.  I remember when the Fairlane Town Center and Hyatt Regency opened in Dearborn.  I was at the University of Michigan – Dearborn, which is basically across the street, at the time the both opened in the 1970s. 

Fairlane Town Center

There was a lot of hype.  Both were built on a grand scale, magnificent, and were seemed to portend a grand and positive change in the city.  I frequented both when I was in school and working at Ford Motor Company.  I loved going to Fairlane to shop and the Hyatt for lunch.  Lord & Taylor was an anchor store at the mall and it may have been the first Lord & Taylor store in Michigan.  The hotel ceased being a Hyatt in 2012 is currently closed after two revival attempts failed.  The Fairlane Town Center is on life support.

Do I miss them.  Just a little.  Am I upset that the hotel is closed and the Mall dying?  No.  Not really.  Markets, demographics, and people preferences change.  I totally understand and accept this while still having a few fond memories.

Harry Minassian (1937 - 2020)

 

On June 26th, Udi Harry Minassian passed away.

Harry was a well-known and talented oud player and singer in the Armenian American community.  He was devoted to the kef style of music especially the Turkish part of that repertoire.

I meant to write something immediately upon his passing but did not.  On June 30^th, Ara Topouzian penned a beautiful and tribute and retrospective in The Armenian Weekly.  On July 15, Ara posted the article on his blog, HYE Times, and included a lot more photos.  His article was translated into Turkish and published in Agos in Istanbul.  On October 1, The Armenian Mirror-Spectator printed another excellent tribute by Harry Kezelian. 

Both Harry and Ara’s articles, provide biographical facts, photos, and quotes from other musicians.  The both noted that in 1969, the great Udi Hrant Kenkulian gave Harry Minassian and four other American Armenian oud players a certificate butting them with honorifc title Udi (oud master).

What can I add to what Harry and Ara wrote?  Just me own reflections.

When I was learning to play, Harry Minassian was not the first oud player I listened to and tried to learn from.  My Dad had Harry’s first album, Near East Enchantments.  I did listen to this album as I began to take up the oud but I wasn’t ready for Harry at that time.  I listened to Detroit’s favorite son oud player Kelly Kuchukian.   I then listened to John Berberian, George Mgrdichian, Richard Hagopian, and Marko Melkon.   A few years into my studies, I listened to Near East Enchantments again.  This time, it resonated very nicely.

There was not an Armenian song on the album.  They were all Turkish.  Every cut became a favorite with Kizilciklar Oldu Mu, Zanuba, Ararim, Kanemam, and Ege Çiftetelli became part of our (the Johnite Band in Detroit) repertoire.  Another song, Baghjede Mish Mish (Bahçede Miş Miş or Arabim Fellahi if you want to find it on YouTube but sadly not Harry’s version) was the most haunting song on that album from my perspective.  I learned it and enjoyed playing as I practiced it but I never heard it played live by any of the Armenian bands around the country.  

As good and influential as his recording are, Harry truly shined in his live performances.  There is no doubt that Udi Harry was a good oud player and a good singer.  But, he was not the best oud player.  Neither was he the best singer.  But, his magic was his singing combined with his playing.  I am not sure anyone in our American Armenian community was any better at both.  It was like one plus one equaled five.  He had an approach, pacing, and stage prescence that just made people want to get up and dance. 

To me he shined most on Sunday’s at Kef Time Hartford.  People showed up in droves for the Saturday Night Dance in Hartford with the likes of Richard Hagopian, Buddy Sarkisian, and Hachig Kazarian playing everyone’s favorite dance tunes in Armenian and Turkish.  People danced and partied into the wee hours of the morning.  Then on Sunday afternoon, Harry would take the stage most often with Leon Janikian and Roger Krikorian.  The hall on Sunday was smaller and more informal.  The crowd filled the hall, but was also smaller and much more informal.  If people were dressed up on Saturday night, they were in jeans on Sunday.  If folks were drink scotch on Saturday night, they were drinking beer on Sunday.  On Sunday, everyone came to hear and dance to Harry perform the classic Turkish songs of our American Armenian community.  Harry did not disappoint.  People brought their own mezza.  They were relaxed.  They were able to talk and hear the music which is rare at the bigger dances.  Those Sundays were gathering unlike any other in our community.  It was like a big happy family.  People would dance to their favorite songs with a beer bottle in their hands.  That atmosphere, vibe, being lifted by the music, with good friends, food and drink (I do believe we call that kef) was all centered around the mastery of Harry Minassian.  I am not sure we will ever see the likes of those Sunday afternoons again.

Thank you Udi Harry for those beautiful times.

The Polarization in America

 

Brown University

This is not a new topic for me but here I am tackling it again:  The Polarization in America.  It bothers me.  I find it stifling and am pretty certain it prevents us from truly solving the issues and problems we have.

We are about to inaugurate a new president in 35 days.  As yet, President has not conceded to President Elect Biden.  All indications are that Trump’s fight to overturn the election results will continue on into the new year and culminate when the House and Senate meet in joint session to confirm the December 14 Electoral College votes.  From what I can surmise, it seems that if seven or more Representatives and one or more Senators raise objections to the results, both houses must deliberate separately… or something akin to this.   The talking heads on TV all think this has an extremely weak chance of overturning the election.  Armed with real and fake news, people are polarized on this.

Four years ago, excluding the not conceding part, the situation was familiar.  The supporters of Hilary Clinton were besides themselves with the notion of Donald Trump becoming President and Trump supporters were joyful in what they thought would be the second coming of Ronald Reagan.  It is just the opposite today.

The biggest problem for me is this polarization at the national level.  To quote from a post on Janury 22, 2017, The Inauguration and the Day After, I wrote the following:

 We are divided people.  The divisions are along the overlapping lines of:

• Liberal and Conservative
• Rural and Urban
• Coastal and Inland States

We are further polarized issues that arose this year with the Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter initiative after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the hands of the police in May.

I see issues and problems that need to be solved.   They include, in no particular order:

• Fixing our decaying infrastructure
• Improving race relations
• Having thoughtful and realistic policies to address:
  - The costs and quality of higher education
  - Making healthcare available and affordable to all
  - Climate Change
  - Relations with China, the Middle East, and, well, the rest of the world
  - Immigration
  
  

I am pretty certain China will eventually replace us as the number one economy in the world.  If the 20^th Century was the American Century, are we now in the Chinese Century?  Are we going skid and tumble into some ill-defined 2^nd place or do we want to be more planned in both staving it off and being preparing ourselves to be a #2 to be taken quite seriously?  China has a one party and a more planned approach to capitalism.  It seems to be working.  We need to borrow from their play book a little.  We cannot swing right and left swings of policy and programs every four or eight years while they are more steady and true to their course.  What is that course they are on?  I think it is to improve the economic stature, well-being, and global influence of their country.  Hey, should we define a similar course, in our own way, that works for us?  Their model is hardly a panacea, but I do believe our current method of keeping up them is not competitive or effective enough.

If we were only to do one thing, I believe that a worthy objective for of this nation would be to improve the quality of our education system.  We should focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (that STEM thing we only talk about). 

How do we fund these initiatives?  Well we could stop being the policemen of the world.  We could stop fighting decades long costly wars where winning (whatever that means) seems illusive.  In this “defund the police” year, I am not advocating abandoning defending our military.  We have to have a strong military to defend ourselves.  The emphasis here is on defend and ourselves.  That would take less money then we are currently spending on “defense.” 

We can then reallocate budgets to focus on investing in the quality of our country to truly make America great again.

An Ides of December Porpourri

Waiting for some snow

 

It is mid-month of trying to post on this blog everyday this month.  It is time for another potpourri. 

Cold Weather:  It is good to have some cold weather.  We are in the upper 20s and 30s all week.  We may actually get some snow.  It is not the kind of really cold snap I like to see.  But, it is the kind of temperatures we should be having in the middle of December, the kinds of temperatures I remember when I was a kid.  It was rare not to have a White Christmas growing-up.  Lately, it has become rarer to have one. 

I hope we get a snow storm.  Our house is decked out and ready to glisten and glow under a blanketing of  good old fashioned Christmas snow.

A lot of my friends don’t like winter, even the mild variety we have been experiencing.  They complain about it.  Not me, I want a few blizzards that cancel everything.  Such storms have me marveling at the beauty of fresh fallen and drifting snow that covers everything in a pure white blanket.  It is good to venture out, bundled up, on foot and especially if no one else is out.   

I also don't think it is really Winter unless we have at least one below zero cold spell. You know the kind where the weathermen are saying it is -6 but it feels like -97 and if you are foolish enough to venture outside any exposed skin will freeze.  The frigid quiet is peaceful and calming.

A good winter does my soul good.

Thankful for FaceTime:  With the Pandemic, we have not been able to visit our children and grandchildren who live at opposite ends of the country in DC and LA.  Others I know have gotten on airplanes and driven to see their families.  In all three households, we take the protocols seriously.  Hence, no travel and a lot of FaceTime.

Today, I was speaking with both sets of grandchildren for most of the afternoon.  Sure, I had other things I was supposed to be attending to.  Yet, when any grandkid calls, I drop what I am doing if I am able.  It is one of the great pandemic pleasures to speak with these engaging and charming little ones. 

When I was younger, we lived in Detroit and my paternal grandmother, Agnes, lived in Watertown, MA.  There wasn’t anything close to FaceTime.  We did have the telephone, the old rotary dial landline house phone, with what they called a party line (google it the concept is foreign to you).  We didn’t just pick-up the phone and call her whenever we wanted.  It was long-distance and that was big thing back then because it was ridiculously expensive.  A short ten to fifteen-minute call cost like $3 or $4 if my recollection serves me well (a Google search was useless here) which is equivalent to $23 or $28 today.  Needless to say, the calls were infrequent and shorter in duration.

Thank goodness for FaceTime and WiFi!

Michigan Football:  Michigan was supposed to play Iowa on Saturday evening December 18^th.  Today, that game was cancelled because of the ongoing Covid outbreak on the Michigan team.  Apparently fifty players will not be able to play.  This is the third game in a row that has been cancelled for this reason.  Michigan’s record is a dismal 2 – 4 and they did not win a game at home.  Unbelieveable.  The four losses… they were really painful to watch.  I loved the two wins, however.  They exciting games to watch.

Head Coach, Jim Harbaugh, has a year left on his very lucrative contract.  There are all kinds of rumors and theories about his future.  Will he return to the NFL?  If so, who would take his place.  The rumor with the most credibility claims that his contract will be extended at a lower pay rate but with higher incentives.

I hope he stays and turns it around.  I think a coaching change would set us back. 

A Piece of Good Writing... From a Car Review?:  Sure, I am reading Saroyan.  I have another book I have queued up to read by Nikolai Gogol. These are great writers to be sure.

Not all great writing are from the masters.  This past Saturday, I read a car review in the Wall Street Journal by Dan Neill.  He pens a column called the Rumble Sheet.  This review was about the 2021 Genesis G80.  The review of the car was Neill’s normal good job.  This week I loved the fresh and candid style of the preamble to his review which I share here.

MUCH OF THE reader mail this column receives, thank you, is phrased in the form of a question: Which car should I buy? This question gets harder every year. Lately, many of my correspondents want to know which three-ton super-SUV behemoth I would recommend? Um, none. It’s my duty to observe that the supersizing of the U.S. private fleet represents a public health threat and a failure of regulatory and tax policy (I’m looking at you, Section 179 of the IRS Code). On average and at the extreme, SUVs and trucks have gotten too big, too wasteful and there are too many on the road. Don’t buy one.

 

See? Sort of sucks the air out of the room.

 

Another bloc asks my preference among traditional four-door sedans—midsize plus, premium-luxury category, rear or all-wheel drive, $50,000 to $75,000. If these readers are able to charge at home, I advise them to immediately Pass Go, buy a Tesla, and join the 21st century. Otherwise, the usual suspects include BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Lexus GS, Cadillac CT5 and Audi A6.

I've Been Reading

 

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

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

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

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

 

To

Roupen Darbinian

Editor in Chief

Hairenik Monthly

Hairenik Daily

of Boston

America

and the World

a great editor

with thanks and admiration

 

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

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

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

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

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

A Lesson in a Cup of Coffee?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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