Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Nov. 3, 2012)

Likewise

It is a great happiness to be praised by them who are most praiseworthy.

… Philip Sidney

 

A Double Entendre Toast

A wee little dog passed a wee little tree

Said the wee little tree, “Won’t you have one on me?”

“No,” said the little dog, no bigger than a mouse.

“I just had one on the house.”

 

From the Trivia File

Why can’t a mule (offspring of a donkey and a horse) reproduce?

The sterility is attributed to the differing number of chromosomes of the two species: Donkeys have 62 chromosomes, whereas horses have 64. Their offspring thus have 63 chromosomes, which cannot evenly divide.

 

From the Word Lab

Antserots (literally, without hands) is the Armenian word for napkin, which came into use when Armenians stopped using their hands to wipe their mouths while eating.

 

Entry in an Autograph Album

I often pause and wonder

At fate’s peculiar ways,

For nearly all our famous men

Were born on holidays.

 

What’s in a Name?

Turkomans: Here is what Brewer has to say about it: A corruption of Turk-imams (“Turks of the true faith”). The first chief of the Turks who embraced Islam called his people so to distinguish them from the Turks who had not embraced the faith.

Zohrabian: Persian in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, zohrab is defined as shining red.

CK Garabed

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.
CK Garabed

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