Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (July 4, 2015)

Super-Diplomacy

We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.

–Memo from a Chinese Economic Journal

Facing Facts

Friends are relative, but relatives are not always friends.

From the Word Lab

Cuckold: A man whose wife is unfaithful. From the cuckoo bird, where the allusion to the cuckoo on which the word cuckold is based can be appreciated by those familiar with the nesting habits of certain varieties of this bird. The female of some cuckoos lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving them to be cared for by the resident nesters. This parasitic tendency has given the female bird a figurative reputation for unfaithfulness as well.

Weak Conviction

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

… Stephen Hawking

Ornithological Lesson

If people sing when they are happy, birds undoubtedly are always happy because they are singing all the time. In any case, they have a knack for rising above it all.

So, there!

Edo: What’s worse than eating hash at a restaurant where you don’t know what’s in it?

Bedo: Eating it at home where you do know.

What’s in a Name?

Beshigjian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a trade, beshigji is defined as a cradle builder.

• 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.

Latest posts by CK Garabed (see all)

• A Reminiscence: John Najarian - February 19, 2020
• Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Aug. 5, 2017) - August 7, 2017
• Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (July 22, 2017) - July 22, 2017