Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (March 28, 2015)

Well-placed Amplification

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

… Rumi, 13^th-century Persian poet

Zodiac

The 12 signs of the Zodiac are associated with the 12 Roman deities, thus:

Spring

The Ram is wise Minerva’s sign.

The Bull to Venus we assign.

The Twins to Phoebus the divine.

Summer

Mercury the Crab delights.

For Jupiter the Lion fights.

Ceres the Virgin’s care invites.

Autumn

Vulcan the equal Balance brings.

For warlike Mars the Scorpion stings.

To dawn Sagittarius clings.

Winter

The Goat to Vesta we allot.

Juno prefers the Water-pot.

And Neptune has his Fishes got.

Have a Heart

Join your neighborhood program for the homeless and bedless.

Give a sheet.

An Armenian Would-be Proverb

To be civilized is to be vulnerable.

What’s in a Name?

Memleketian/Memleketlian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a location, or related thereto, memleket is defined as dominion; country; town; a man’s home district. Memleketli is defined as inhabitant; fellow countryman.

Bio
Latest Posts

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.