Uncle Garabed's Notebook (Oct. 2, 2010)

Chinese Proverb
A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.

Double Duty
Italian is the only language in which the word vago (vague) also means “lovely, attractive.”
…Italo Calvino
P.S. Vago is the nickname for Vazgen in Armenian.

From the Word Lab
Robert Frost, in his poem “The Road not Taken,” opens with “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” which sounds all well and good, until you take it apart and realize that the word diverge means to part from a common point, in other words, a fork in the road. So, he is writing about one road diverging into two. However, he can get away with it because it’s what they call poetic license.

Seek and Ye Shall Find
An English lady well versed in the French language but not too well disposed toward the French people, said to a Frenchman, whom she met at a friend’s house: “O monsieur! How revolting it is that in your French dictionaries you may find the most obscene terms!” “Why, madame,” retorted the son of the Gauls, “you must certainly have looked for them.”

From My Persian Dictionary
Chit: chintz.
Káhin: Christian clergyman.
Kashish: ” ”
Kissís: ” ”
Dár-chíní: Cinnamon.
Halkah: Circle, coil, curl.
Hál: Circumstance, condition.

What’s in a Name?
Kenajian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a trade, kina is defined as henna; thus a kinaji is one who makes or sells henna.

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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.