Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Nov. 14, 2015)

A View of Life

One life—a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.

 

… Carlyle

 

Blasphemy

Leap Year is proof that God isn’t perfect.

 

The Shrewdness of Imbeciles

It is recorded in Dean Ramsey’s amusing Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character that a well-known idiot, named Jamie Fraser, belonging to the parish of Lunan, in Fofarshire, quite surprised people sometimes by his replies. The congregation of his parish church had for some time distressed the minister by their habit of sleeping in church. He had often endeavored to impress them with a sense of the propriety of such conduct, and one day when Jamie was sitting in the front gallery wide awake, when many were slumbering round him, the clergyman endeavored to awaken the attention of his hearers by stating the fact, saying, “You see even Jamie Fraser, the idiot, does not fall asleep as so many of you are doing.” Jamie not liking, perhaps, to be thus designated, coolly replied, “An’ I hadna been an idiot I wad ha’ been sleeping too.”

 

On Knowledge

Strange how much you’ve got to know

Before you know how little you know.

 

Folk Wisdom

If the opposite of pro is con, then what is the opposite of progress?

 

Newspaper Retraction

“Correction—We yesterday spoke of Mr. Hamilton, of the Chestnut Street Theatre, as a ‘thing.’ Mr. H., having complained of our remark we willingly retract, and here state that Mr. Hamilton, of the Chestnut Street Theatre, is no-thing.”

 

What’s in a Name?

Sheramian: Armenian in derivation, identified as an occupation, sheram is defined as silk worm; thus, a silkworm cultivator.

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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