Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Dec. 3, 2014)

Maxim

Cunning is a poor substitute for sagacity.

… La Rochefoucauld

A Toast

To Church: The first time one goes he has water thrown on him, the second time he has rice thrown on him, the third time he has dirt thrown on him.

A Conversation for the Birds

In the local pet shop, the owl keeps saying, “To who? To who?” And the parrot keeps correcting him with “To whom? To whom?”

From the Word Lab

Baptes: Priests of Cotytto, the Thracian goddess of lewdness. They received their name from the Greek verb bapto, to wash, because of the so-called ceremonies of purification connected with her rites. The midnight orgies of the priests were so obscene that they disgusted even the goddess herself.

A Joint Night Out

I crept upstairs, my shoes in hand,

Just as the night took wing.

And saw my wife, four steps above,

Doing the same damned thing.

Anti-TARC Talk

Not only did the Turks slaughter one and a half million of our people in the most barbaric manner, steal our properties, and abduct our children, but, moreover, they destroyed our entire Western Armenian culture, drove our survivors into exile, and pressed us to abandon our identity through assimilation. The Great Powers did nothing to save the civilized Armenians, nor to punish the perpetrators of these great crimes because they were interested only in grabbing Mid East oil. Now those same powers are trying to convince the remnants of the unfortunate Armenians to parley with the Turks in a civilized manner.

What’s in a Name?

Antaramian: Armenian in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, antaram is defined as unfading.

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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