Silent march

The above photo is from a silent march against domestic violence that took place last week. I only was able to walk for 30 minutes or so as the march weaved through central Yerevan and later ended with a candlelight vigil. A lot of signs were in English. Some of the folks who organized this were from the diaspora. I've mentioned it before, but the subject in Armenia is a bit of a taboo in both rural and urban areas. Some NGOs and the American Embassy are making in roads on reversing the stigma associated with domestic violence.

When I lived in India there was also a big push to educate women to seek help if they were being beaten. I recently met some Iranian women who are studying in Yerevan who also have spoken out about the issue in Tehran. If Armenia adopts laws to protect the victim and enforces them this will be a huge step forward.

Lets give thanks to pomegranates

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans! We had a Thanksgiving meal this afternoon. Though we swapped turkey for chicken, the meal was still delicious thanks to the help of the tasty pomegranate.



The Armenians here were taken by the holiday. Though family is incredibly important in this country, no similar national holiday exists. Thanksgiving -- a day for pausing, reflecting, and thanking -- an easy way to transcend cultural barriers.

Iluminated Manuscripts

The Matenaderan is Yerevan's ancient manuscripts museum and home to the largest collection of Armenian manuscripts. Unfortunately, picture taking is prohibited, though I was temped to sneak a few shots of the intricate gold illuminated manuscripts, the guard lurking around made me think twice.



The museum holds a fully preserved 7th century Our Lady Gospel. The museum is also running an exhibition on manuscripts from Cilicia, a Mediterranean town in modern day Turkey that used to be an Armenian kingdom in the 11th century.



Outside the museum are six statues. The three shown in the photo above capture Anania Shirakatsi a 7th century mathematician who helped establish the Armenian calendar, Mkhitar Gosh responsible for establishing Armenia's first laws, and Frik, a 13th century Armenian poet. I had never heard of Frik. Here is an excerpt from one of his poems:

Plant me in the good earth, so I will firmly hold
Southern winds of spring blow, so that I will flower
Prune me and dig weeds out, that I wake and be spright
Dew of life, pour on boughs of my heart, to soften.
Irrigate me gush, so that I green and bud

for more on Frik refer to google books: The Heritage of Armenian Literature: From the sixth to the eighteenth century, p. 524.

More on Yerevan's New Museum

The Times, Michael Kimmelman makes a detailed report on the Cafesjian Center for the Arts..

Check out the article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/arts/design/19abroad.html?ref=global-home

and the NYT's slide show

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/18/arts/1118ABROAD_slideshow_index.html

Dolma, dolma, dolma

Ruth Reichl has written, “There’s no better way to experience a culture than to stand at the stove with a wonderful cook.” Reichl speaks truth.



The love, care, and time our office manager/cook puts in to making these dolmas (as seen above) captures Reichl's point. Dolma is a Turkish word basically meaning stuffed thing (so says wiki at least). Dolmas are vegetables usually grape leaves, cabbage leaves, egg plant, peppers, or tomatoes, stuffed with meat, rice and spices or with a scrumptious veggie mixtures. You can really stuff the veggies with anything, one of the cabbage leaves today had a mix of dill, mashed potatoes, and carrots. Sublime.

Many folks call this food their own stuffing the bellies of people in Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and in parts of South Asia.

This blog, TheArmenianKitchen.com, provides useful recipes for dolma making:

http://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/2009/04/dolma-armenian-meal-in-vegetable.html

How did I miss the Gorkies?

Over the weekend, I made my way to the newly opened Cafesjian Center for the Arts. It's a lovely museum funded by a well off Armenian-American who understands and appreciates the importance of art. The museum is modern, refreshing and colorful.



It is located inside the five levels of the Cascade, a garden tiered monument in Yerevan. One has to go outside to get to certain nooks of the museum providing clear views of the city. The collection includes Pattie Boyd's photographs. The wife of George Harrison and then Eric Clapton, Boyd's pictures offer a look into the lives of the Beatles in the late 1960s. Lots of photos of her time with John, Ringo, Paul, and George in India as well as youthful pictures of Clapton -- who by the way developed a heroin addiction when Pattie first said rejected his advances.

Overall it's a beautiful museum and an ideal investment of diaspora dollars.

The best part of the collection is Arshile Gorky's seven paintings and sixteen drawings...which I had no clue about and missed. For another day.

Tightrope

For someone who came to Armenia to learn more about the people and politics, my work at the documentary company has taught me most about the survival of art...and challenged my views on what art actually is.

Instead of some hackneyed commentary that will bore you to death, I thought it was time to put up the trailer to the company's newest film "The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia." It is premiering at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) at the end of the month. IDFA just put up the trailer on YouTube. The film is about the disappearing art of tightrope dancing in Armenia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFQOaoyNl-s

Weekend Weddings

Armenians like to have weddings on every day of the week, but like in America, Saturday remains a popular day.



The picture was taken a few weeks ago in a moment of wedding over load. As I was walking down one of Yerevan's main streets on my right were three or four wedding groups in the park taking pictures. On my left were a series of Mercedes wedding motorcades. The motorcades usually range from six to twenty honking cars. The just newly weds are in one of the upfront cars usually with at least one car behind or in front of them with a video camera. Many times I have seen couples hanging out of the car or limo's sun roof waving away like pageant winners. These wedding modorcades follow no traffic laws and they make themselves heard by their honks well in advance of seeing them.

I explained the idea of a wedding crasher to one of the guys in my office today and mentioned (mostly jokingly) how easy it would be to follow these motorcades. He told me how there are in fact professional wedding crashers here in town. He has a few friends who wait near one of the cities main intersections for a big motorcade, start up their engine, start pounding the horn and after a few miles find themselves dancing and drinking.

Chess

Before it gets too cold, I thought it was time to capture the older men who play chess on Yerevan's streets.



Chess is a national obsession for this small country. They have reason to be proud, taking many world championship titles. They also have titans that are much like the Tiger Woods of chess here. Last year after team Armenia won the gold at the World Chess Olympiad (yes it is called an olympiad), they were greeted to a ticker-tape parade.

One family I have met here have a son with chess prowess. Next week, the 2009 World Youth Chess Championship begins in Antalya, Turkey. This young boy will be competing.

http://wycc2009.tsf.org.tr/

I will report a week from now to see how the young Armos do.

Jackolantern

On Halloween I made caramel apples. Not being able to find caramels in pure form, nor having the cooking wherewithal all to endure making my own caramel from scratch, I found chocolate caramels. Lacking a handy microwave, I simply added a quarter cup water and some caramels and stirred in a pot making sure not to let the sticky liquid burn. Then I got out the granny smith looking apples I bought in the market and dipped the apples into the chocolate caramel goo.



As for Halloween night I ended up at an expat bar that was filled with jackolanterns. The pumpkins look a bit discolored from the orange beauties in the States, but I was thrilled to see them. I drank a MGD in light of it being an American holiday, though Miller is owned by South African Brewers, so who knows how patriotic I was being.