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Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Jan. 14, 2012)

Spanish Proverb

If I die, I forgive you; if I live, we’ll see.

 

The Loyal Toast

This time-honored toast to the King (or the Queen) of England is normally drunk while standing, but it is the Royal Navy’s privilege to drink it sitting. The story is that the custom arose when George IV, when acknowledging the toast in a ship, bumped his head on a beam as he stood up.

 

Das Ist Alles

My name is Alice

And I like to sing;

And when I sing

I’m Alice like anything.

 

Bejabbers!

In Ireland, a writer is looked upon as a failed conversationalist.

 

See or Be Seen

A certain Baptist parson was sometimes quite pointed in his rebukes for disorderly deportment in church. One Sunday a young lady in the congregation had changed her seat several times during the delivery of the sermon. As she was about to take yet another seat, he said to her: “That’ll do my daughter; sit down, and keep still for the balance of the sermon. Everybody has already seen your new calico frock.

… Henry Ward Beecher

 

Daffy-nition

Fox: A chicken that gets a mink from a wolf.

 

What’s in a Name?

Soghanalian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, soghanali is defined as onion or bulb-like. It could also be a geographic location, as George Aghjayan informs us that there was a village in the Palu region named Sogana/Sagona, which is now called Andilar. Soganali in that case would be defined as a native of Sogana.

CK Garabed

CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist
C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.
CK Garabed

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