Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (March 12, 2016)

Flemish Proverb

Honor is better than honors.

Auditing Qualifications

The best audience is one that is intelligent, well educated—and a little drunk.

… Vice President Alben W. Barkley,

Classic Riddle

According to one legend, Homer had traveled to the island of Ios, which an oracle had warned him would be the place of his death (the Greeks never listened to prophecies involving their own deaths). During his travels around the island, Homer came upon some fishermen. He asked them how their day was going and they responded with this riddle: “What we caught, we threw away; what we didn’t catch, we kept. What did we keep?” Unable to solve the riddle, Homer eventually died on the island, refusing to leave until he discovered the answer.

Answer: Lice.

To an Inconsistent Fair

When I sent you some melons, you cried out with scorn,

“They ought to be heavy and wrinkled and yellow!”

When I offered myself, whom those graces adorn,

You flouted, and called me an ugly old fellow.

… Ali Ben Abd

Blessed Are the Hungry

A worldly-wise hobo arrived in a southern city, and made his way to the wealthy section where he spied a prosperous-looking matron sitting on the porch of her house. He opened the fence gate and immediately dropped to his knees and started to chew the grass of the front lawn. “What are you doing?” asked the lady. “Eating, ma’am, I’m so hungry I can eat grass.”  “Why, you poor fellow, do come by the back door. The grass is longer and greener there.”

What’s in a Name?

Bostanjian: Turkish in derivation, identified as an occupation, bostan is defined as cucumber, melon, garden; a bostanji is a cultivator and seller of such produce, or gardener.

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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