Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (March 3, 2011)

Insider Tips

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen some years ago, I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in the kitchen.

… J.M. Synge

Advice to Young Lovers

Never kiss by the garden gate.

Love is blind, but the neighbors ain’t.

Daffy-nition

Vegetarian cannibal: One who eats only vegetarian missionaries.

From the Trivia File

Add insult to injury: To wound by word or deed someone who has already suffered an act of violence or injustice. Phaedrus quotes the fable of AESOP about a bald man who, in attempting to kill a fly that had bitten his head, missed and dealt himself a sharp smack. Whereupon the fly said, ‘You wished to kill me for a mere touch. What will you do to yourself since you have added insult to injury?’

From My Persian Dictionary

Diyár: district (large tract of country)

Tamáshá: diversion

Hakím: doctor, physician

Khamír: dough

Envy, Maybe?

Edo: Why does your dog sit there and watch me eat?

Bedo: I dunno, unless it’s because you have the plate he usually eats from.

What’s in a Name?

Yanukian/Yanikian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, yanuk is defined as burnt, scorched; touching, pathetic.

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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
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• Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (July 22, 2017) - July 22, 2017