latimes.com

March 10, 2005

CALIFORNIA CLASSROOM

Abstract art is usually in the eye of the beholder

Look carefully at the lines and shapes in this painting. What do they remind
you of?

Not even people who study art agree. Are they a person riding a horse or a
man kneeling next to a bride? What do you see here?

The artist, Arshile Gorky, often drew and painted shapes that were puzzling.
They had special meaning to him, but he thought people should come up with
their own ideas when they looked at his paintings.

When this painting is viewed up close, you can see the drips and slashes
Gorky made by painting quickly. You can also see areas where he painted over
something he’d already drawn.

Although the painting might look spontaneous and wild, Gorky actually made
many drawings of it. He even painted out and drew over layers of paint on
this version, changing things as he went along.

An incredibly strong man, Gorky made some of his paintings so heavy with
thick layers of paint that only he could move them.

Gorky was born in Armenia and moved to the United States as a young man. His
birth name was Vostanig Adoian, but he changed his name, using Russian
words. Arshile is the name for the Greek warrior Achilles, and Gorky means
“bitter.” What might this tell you about how he saw himself?

On April 3, kids ages 5 and older and their families can see this and other
paintings in “Into the Unknown: Abstraction From the Collection at MOCA, the
Museum of Contemporary Art.” For more information, call (213) 621-1712 or
visit .

This Learning Link was provided by the Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S.
Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Cambridge Chronicle

Oleana chef knows where the spice is right

By Alexander Stevens
Thursday, March 10, 2005

Diners at Oleana in Cambridge seem to like the flattened lemon chicken with
za’atar, served on a Turkish cheese pancake. They also love the basturma
with hummus.

“We don’t ever take [those two dishes] off the menu,” says Oleana
co-owner and chef Ana Sortun. “They never go away.”

Those dishes, as well as just about everything on the Oleana menu, are
made possible by Cambridge’s proximity to Watertown, and its neighborhood
full of authentic Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish, Armenian and Greek food shops.
Once or twice a week, Sortun or another staffer makes the 10-minute trip
from Oleana to Mt. Auburn Street in Watertown to pick up the spices,
cheeses, yogurts and specialty meats that are the foundation of Eastern
Mediterranean cooking.

The Watertown collection of authentic food shops may be unique in the
entire country. Conveniently clustered near each other, these are the stores
that help give Oleana its zing. And Sortun says they’re crucial to her
restaurant.

“If these shops weren’t here,” she says, “I’d have to go to Montreal.
Or figure out a way to import them myself.”

In Sevan Bakery, the aroma of spices is so rich that it might inspire
visitors to try cooking this cuisine, even if their knowledge of Eastern
Mediterranean cooking begins and ends withshish kebob.

“This is an undiscovered cuisine, because it’s not trendy like shopping
in Chinatown,” Sortun says. “People who are Armenian or Greek know where
these stores are, but the mainstream doesn’t.”

But Sortun is changing that fact, one class at a time. Three years ago,
she offered a tour of these Watertown shops to a culinary arts class at
Boston University. The tours became popular, and she extended them to the
general public. She presents another on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For Sortun, the tour centers on Sevan Bakery (599 Mt. Auburn St.). The
shop seems to evoke her warm memories of her time spent in Turkey studying
the cuisine. She’s clearly inspired, even emotional, about the care the
family-owned business takes in selecting food. It shows in the products and
produce. Sortun points out zucchini and cucumbers that are thinner than
Americans are used to because they’re not loaded with water; instead they’re
packed with flavor.

“Look at how blond those walnuts are,” she says, standing at Sevan’s
extensive nut bar. “You’re not going to get any of those bitter walnuts you
find elsewhere.”

She turns and points out a bottle of honey with a rich amber color
that’s so lush that it glows. Other honeys look jaundiced by comparison.
Running her finger over a row of jars imported from Turkey or Greece, via
Canada and New York, she says, “You don’t see those labels anywhere else.”

As with all the shops on this tour, Sevan has a distinctly European
feel. Pick a cheese and you’ll walk away with it hand-wrapped and moist, not
cellophane-wrapped and bar-coded.

“At most supermarkets, you’ll find one kind of Feta, and it won’t be
very good,” she says. “At Whole Foods, you’ll find three kinds of Feta, and
they’ll all be good. Here there are five kinds of Feta, and they’re
delicious.”

Sortun is a recognized figure in this neighborhood – the shop owners
know her by name, and tell her what’s new and good. They allow her to roam
into the Sevan kitchen in the back of the store, where cooks are making
lahmejune – thin, crisp bread sandwiched around meat. Combing bread and meat
is a favorite of this style of cooking, juices absorbed by the bread, and
delivered to the taste buds.

Sortun points out that the vibe is entirely different at the
neighboring Arax. There’s some overlap between Sevan and Arax, but mostly
the two stores complement each other. Sortun stops at Arax for vegetables,
picking up a handful of fresh summer savory and inhaling deeply.

“That’s fresh za’atar,” says Sortun. “It’s very hard to find.”

Across the street is an organic butcher, where tour patrons not only
learn about the meats, they try out a yogurt and soda water drink that
polarizes the visitors – they either love it or hate it. Sortun loves it.
Next to the butcher is Fastachi, where they’re nuts for nuts. Not within
walking distance, but also part of the tour, are the organic wine store,
Violette, and Fepal, where she treats patrons to an authentic falafel.

Sortun says that by and large, foods offered at these stores are not
cheap – comparable perhaps to the prices at Whole Foods. But not only does
she feel that it’s important to support the independent, family-owned shops
that help give a community its identity, she also knows, firsthand, that
fresh, authentic foods make a difference in a meal. Oleana is her proof.

Sortun has been enamoured of Eastern Mediterranean cooking since her
first trip to Turkey to study the cuisines.

“It changed my life,” she says.

She says the testament to the food is not just how it tastes, but how
it makes you feel. Americans are accustomed to meals loaded with butter and
cream. After eating, we feel bloated, incapacitated. By comparison, after
eating a four-hour meal in Istanbul, “they push back their chairs and
dance,” says Sortun. “That’s how the food makes you feel. If you went to
France or Italy and ate a four-hour meal, you’d be in a coma.” Ana Sortun
leads the Watertown Market Tour, Saturday, March 12, 10-2. Price: $75,
includes lunch and gratuities. To register, call 617-353-9852.

Christianity Today

Christianity Today, Week of March 7

Os Guinness Looks Evil in the Eye

The author of Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and
Terror talks about “life’s greatest dilemma.”
Interview by Stan Guthrie | posted 03/10/2005 09:00 a.m.
Author and lecturer Os Guinness has written or edited more than 20 books,
including The Dust of Death, The Call, and Invitation to the Classics.
Earlier this month, HarperSanFrancisco published Guinness’s latest work,
Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror. Senior
Associate News Editor Stan Guthrie interviewed Guinness.

Why did you write this book, and why now?

I actually had the date September 11 marked down in my calendar for a dinner
discussion in Manhattan on evil, which was suddenly made all the more urgent
by the terror strike, and I found myself in a passionate discussion of evil
among leaders in New York and Washington.

Far earlier than that, evil has somehow been the horizon of my life ever
since I was born in China in World War II. Twenty million were killed during
the Japanese invasion that swirled around us, and five million~Wincluding my
own two brothers~Wdied in a terrible famine in Henan province, in three
nightmarish months. My parents and I nearly died, too. Later, I witnessed
the climax of the Chinese revolution and the beginning of Mao’s repression.

So my own life challenged me to think about the problem of evil at a very
early age. This left me wanting to address what I have never seen elsewhere:
a book that tackled both the personal and the public issues together: Why do
bad things happen to good people? And what does it say of us, after the most
murderous century in human history, that the people who did these things are
the same species we are?

Talk of evil is in the air, from the President’s listing of the “axis of
evil,” to the televised beheadings by the Muslim terrorists and the Abu
Ghraib prison abuses, and now the tsunami disaster. Several new books,
including yours, are grappling with the topic. Yet you say in the book that
we are illiterate when it comes to evil. How so?

Sadly, the terrorist strike found the United States as unprepared
intellectually and morally as it was militarily. This is the country with
the most radical and realistic view of evil at its core~Wexpressed in the
notion of the separation of powers in the Constitution because of human
nature and the abuse of power. But various philosophies and ideas have
undermined that view over the last 200 years, so that American views today
are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals
still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and
better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to
judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster
life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of
sentiment and clichés. All of these views and others are shown up as
bankrupt by the savage reality of September 11~Wand Auschwitz and the other
terrible atrocities right through to the ghastly spate of car bombings and
beheadings in Iraq.

Do you consider natural disasters like the South Asian tsunami to be evil,
or simply unfortunate?

Following the tsunami, we saw a rush to judgment from many Muslim, Hindu,
Buddhist, and some Christian spokesmen. It happened for this or that reason,
they said. This is quite wrong. We simply do not know why it happened or why
God permitted it, and we can be as cruel as Job’s “comforters” when we say
we know why when we don’t. We Christians must begin as Jesus did when he
dismissed his contemporaries who judged the victims of the riots put down by
Herod or those crushed by the collapsing tower. In the biblical view,
natural disasters are the dark, sad fruit of a world gone awry because of
the Fall, and they are clearly part of the creation that is groaning in
anticipation of its coming restoration.

You say modern evil is worse than evil committed in prior eras. Why?

I am not saying we are more sinful or more evil than previous generations,
but that we are more modern. The modern world has simultaneously magnified
the destructiveness of evil and marginalized traditional responses to evil.
>>From the Armenian massacre in World War I, through the Ukraine terror
famine, Auschwitz, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of
Cambodia, down to Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Congo, the terrible toll
reaches into the hundreds of millions of humans killed by their fellow human
beings. And the reason for the destructiveness is not weapons of mass
destruction. The reason lies in the unholy marriage of modern
industrialization and modern processes and attitudes with killing. And by
marginalizing traditional responses, I don’t just mean that notions such as
disturbance and dysfunction have replaced sin, and “grief counselors” have
replaced pastors. We have gone far further, and as Roger Shattuck and others
have pointed out, we have destroyed so many moral boundaries and limits that
we have made evil cool.

Many in the liberal intelligentsia say monotheism~WJudaism, Christianity, and
Islam~Wis the greatest source of man’s inhumanity~Wif that is the right
word~Wto man. Yet you say some of the worst atrocities, such as the Soviet
Gulag and the Cultural Revolution, were committed in the name of secularism.
Which is worse as a source of evil~Wsecularism or religion?

Monotheism is the “great unmentionable evil” at the heart of our culture,
Gore Vidal thundered in the Lowell Lecture at Harvard in 1992. His charge
has been picked up widely and unthinkingly by educated people. The
accusation is in fact ignorant, prejudiced, and dead wrong. On the one hand,
monotheism is unquestionably the most innovative and influential belief in
human history~Wfor instance, its link to the rise of science. On the other
hand, more people in the last century were slaughtered under secularist
regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, and in the name of secularist
ideologies than in all the religious persecutions in Western history
combined~Wmore than 100 million by the communists alone. The point is not to
trade charges and countercharges about whether religion or secularism has
produced more evil, but to challenge secularists to engage in serious
discussion about public life with a great deal more honesty and humility.

Evil can be overwhelming, both to our faith in God and to our faith in man.
How should we respond to evil in terms of our own faith?

It is often said that after Auschwitz there cannot be a God~Wevil is so
overwhelming that it is the “rock of atheism.” But as Viktor Frankl pointed
out, those who say that [about evil] were not in Auschwitz themselves. Far
more people deepened or discovered faith in Auschwitz than lost it. He then
gave a beautiful picture of faith in the face of evil. A small and
inadequate faith, he said, is like a small fire; it can be blown out by a
small breeze. True faith, by contrast, is like a strong fire. When it is hit
by a strong wind, it is fanned into an inextinguishable blaze.

For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that he came to faith in Christ through
“the hell-fire of doubt.” The turning point for him after all the evils he
had experienced was several hours spent looking at a painting of the descent
of Jesus from the Cross, after which he wrote, “I do not know the answer to
evil, but I do know the meaning of love.” The Cross~Wor as I put it, “no
other god had wounds”~Wis only one part of the Christian answer, but we need
to have a fully strong and adequate faith.

What would you say to someone who is suffering from evil?

Suffering is uniquely individual, so there are no recipe answers. The first
part of reaching out in love is to listen and try to discern where and why
the person is hurting, and only then to bring the reassurance that the
gospel brings to that particular hurt. We must never forget that listening
is love, that comforting someone with an embrace without words is love, and
that if we do not know why someone is suffering, to pretend that we do and
say what God is doing in his or her life can be insensitive, cruel, and dead
wrong~Was Job’s comforters were. That said, evil can torture the mind just as
it can torture the body, and it is wonderful to be able to bring specific,
comforting truths of the gospel to bear on specific points of anguish and
see them make a difference. For example, I have seen more people helped by
coming to appreciate the outrage of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus~Wand its
significance for the notion that “the world should have been otherwise”~Wthan
by a hundred worthy expositions of the Fall.

How do you maintain your faith as a Christian in the face of pervasive moral
horror?

I think you have the question the wrong way around. Where else are we to go?
Which other faith comes close to matching the biblical answer for its
combination of realism, hope, and courage? Buddhism, for example, has been
described as the most radical No to human aspirations ever formulated. And
while I personally have sometimes admired the nobility of great atheists I
have met such as Bertrand Russell, there is a bleakness to the nobility that
is almost unendurable. “Atheism,” in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, “is a
cruel long term business, and I have gone through it to the end.”

In contrast to all such views, the gospel is truly the best news ever~Wwith
its prospect of a world in which evil and suffering are gone, justice and
peace are restored, and the very last tear is wiped away.

Do you think the current focus on evil has any upside?

Recognizing silver linings is not the same as knowing why God allowed
suffering and evil in the first place. That, we simply do not know. The
silver lining must never be made into the purpose. But in the biblical view,
there is no such thing as “useless suffering.” People often cite growth in
character through suffering, and C.S. Lewis is famous for his idea that
suffering is “God’s megaphone” and gets our attention. A rarer silver lining
that is very important in answer to our postmodern, relativistic,
nonjudgmental age is that absolute evil assumes and requires absolute
judgment. When an atheist instinctively says, “Godammit!” and actually means
it, he is right, not wrong, and is unwittingly praying a prayer that blows
apart his atheism.

At the end of the day, it is challenging and sobering to look at human evil
in the white of the eye. But from the very depths of my being, with no
attempt at propaganda or special pleading, I would say after years of
looking into the question, that there is no answer to human evil deeper and
more adequate than the answer that is ours as followers of Jesus. But we
need to speak it out, and act it out, with clarity, courage, and love today.
The world is hungry for it, and so are many in the church.

–Boundary_(ID_Cg4LEACj4R3JykwUU1Rarw)–

Cambridge Chronicle

Cambridge people

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Kamenova wins bridge award

Ljudmila Kamenova of Cambridge recently won the Mini-McKenney Award
for outstanding bridge performance in her category last year. She was named
Eastern Massachusetts Bridge’s Rookie of the Year.

EMBA’s next tournament will be Feb. 25-27 at the Armenian Cultural
Center, 47 Nichols Ave., Watertown. Players will compete at all levels, from
beginner to expert. For more information, call Ruth Barton at 781-270-1157
or visit

MARBEHEAS REPORTER

Fearer: The flavor of the immigrant kitchen

By Myrna Fearer/ Creative Kitchen

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Mention Ellis Island and people immediately think of the place where most of
the immigrants first landed when they came to America, a place that stood in
the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom. Tired, hungry
and confused after their long, exhausting trip in steerage, these folks,
speaking the language of their native land, went through a tedious and
frightening process that included a physical exam to see if they would be
allowed to enter this golden land, a land they dreamed of for so long.

They came from the poor farms of Ireland, escaped the pogroms of Russia
and the massacres in Armenia. They were Italian, English, German, Austrian,
Greek, Danish, French. And though they spoke many different languages, grew
up in countries that bordered the balmy waters of the Mediterranean Sea or
the cold waves of the North Sea, they all had the same dream in common –
coming to America for better opportunities for themselves and their
children.

And with them came their customs, their clothing and their food, the
familiar dishes they would re-create that would make the land of their own
childhood seem less far away. It was the comfort food that would turn a cold
water flat, with a bathroom shared down the hall, into a home – their home.

Tom Bernardin, a graduate of St. John’s Prep, Class of 1966, and The
College of the Holy Cross, is a preservationist and a collector of Statue of
Liberty memorabilia. He was also a National Park Service tour guide at Ellis
Island for three years before it was restored to its original appearance.
His fascination with the immigrant experience whet his appetite to do
something tangible in the way of preserving the flavor of the past. The
result is “The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook.”

Bernardin donated several copies of “The Ellis Island Immigrant
Cookbook” to his alma mater, St. John’s Prep, which were sold at the auction
last Saturday.

“In giving tours of Ellis and talking with the immigrants, I became
aware of how important food was to their experience,” Bernardin wrote in his
introduction. “…(It) was a means of bringing with them and preserving this
part of their earlier lives.”

Through a national recipe search, Bernardin received many original
recipes from immigrants, their children or grandchildren. Often, recipes
were accompanied by anecdotal or biographical information. The result is a
fascinating compendium of recipes and an inkling into a bygone era. Some of
the spelling is phonetic, but Bernardin decided not to change anything in
order to keep the integrity of the recipe.

No cookbook that covers many different ethnic foods would be complete
without a good Irish soda bread recipe right from The Old Sod, especially
with St. Patrick’s Day around the corner.

NELLIE O’LEARY’S IRISH SODABREAD

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick melted butter

1 1/2 cups raisins

2 tablespoons caraway seeds

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/3 teaspoon baking soda

Sift flour, salt, baking powder and sugar; add melted butter and mix.
Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Combine buttermilk, egg and baking soda.
Make a well in the center of the batter. Pour liquid ingredients and stir
into flour mixture. Place in large iron frying pan, well-buttered. Use a
knife to make a cross on the top. Moisten with melted butter.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for an hour or until golden brown and shrinks
from the side of the pan.

Jeanette Caruso of Bloomington, Ill., talks about her folks who came to
Ellis Island from Italy on the same ship but didn’t meet until long after
their arrival. Caruso sent along her mother’s special artichoke recipe.

STUFFED ARTICHOKES (Italy)

8 to 12 artichokes

2 tablespoons Italian bread crumbs

1 1/2 cups grated Romano cheese

1 1/2 cups chopped parsley

10 cloves garlic, cut up

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 ounce lemon juice

olive oil

Cut tops (of artichokes) off a little and soak in lemon juice, then put
upside down. Pull apart and stuff with mixed ingredients. Cook in pan with
small amount of water and steam; then drain and put your oil on them.

Florence Collatos of Andover was very proud of her father, Harry J.
Kaniares, who left his small Greek village at the age of 14 and came to
America. As a youngster, he had already realized there was no future for him
in his small village. Hard work and perseverance met with several successes
as a candy store proprietor in this country, a shoe shine parlor owner and
restaurateur, with many restaurants to his credit. Egg lemon soup is a
popular restaurant item, but Collatos says that none is as good as her
dad’s.

GREEK EGG LEMON SOUP

1 chicken for broth (3 quarts)

1 cup rice

4 eggs

juice of 3 lemons

Boil a chicken for broth. Cook 1 cup of rice. Add rice to 3 quarts of
chicken broth.

Separate 4 eggs. Beat egg whites until foamy. Eat egg yolks and add
juice of 3 lemons. Beat again.

Mix yolk-lemon mixture to egg whites by beating. Slowly add broth into
egg mixture, 1 ladle at a time while beating. When half of broth has been
beaten, add all the rest of the broth and rice and stir.

Rena Weinstein of East Northport, N.Y., sent along her grandmother’s
noodle pudding recipe. Grandma Celia passed through Ellis Island at the
beginning of the 20th century and was still a joy to her family at the age
of 94 at the time of this book’s first copyright in 1991.

GRANDMA CELIA’S NOODLE PUDDING (Russia)

1 stick butter

1 pound medium egg noodles, cooked

4 eggs, separated

1/2 pint sour cream

1 pound pot (Farmer’s) cheese

1/2 cup milk

1 pound can crushed pineapple (a recent addition, according to
Weinstein))

3/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Melt butter in baking pan. Beat egg yolks.
Add sugar gradually. Add sour cream, pot cheese, milk, pineapple and melted
butter. Pour over cooked noodles and combine.

Beat egg whites until stiff and carefully fold into egg yolk mixture.
Turn into greased rectangular baking dish, about 10 x 13 inches. Set in oven
and bake 1 1/2 hours or until firm and brown on top.

Makes 8 to 10 servings.

If you want a copy of the cookbook, contact Tom Bernardin on his Web
site:

The Arlington Advocate

Guidance notes

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Armenian Women’s Educational Club Scholarship is available for students
who are US citizens or have a resident alien card, have Armenian
Heritage, graduating from high school in the Greater Boston area, and
are accepted to a four-year college or university. Application deadline
is April 30. Award amount is $1,000. Visit the Guidance Office.

cbsnews.com

Books

‘Journey from the Land of No’

NEW YORK, March 10, 2005 (CBS) – The year 1979 was a pivotal one in
the history of Iran and that country’s relationship with the United
States. The shah had abdicated and was replaced by the Ayatollah
Khomeini.

Angry demonstrators took control of the U.S. embassy and the whole
world watched as 52 Americans were taken hostage.

But as these events played out on the world stage, they also were
part of the daily life of a young Jewish girl growing up in Tehran.

“People are shocked to find out I’m a Jew, and I lived in Iran until
a few years ago,” Roya Hakakian tells The Early Show co-anchor
Harry Smith. “Isn’t it ironic that the Iranian Jewish community,
its history in Iran, precedes that of the Muslims in Iran, and hardly
anyone knows about it.”

Hakakian was a witness to the revolution and writes about it in
her new book, “Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in
Revolutionary Iran.” Click here to read an excerpt.

In the book, she describes her wonderful family life and how it turned
around after the revolution.

She says, “I think of the Iranian revolution, even until today with
all the criticisms we are making about it, it’s the greatest event
I have in my own personal life, something I would not switch with
anything else in the world. It was because it took place for all the
right reasons. The fact that it went wrong is a tragedy. But it took
place because people demanded more civil liberties, more democracy,
openness — all the kinds of things that all the Middle East is really
vying for these days.”

The burst of emotion that is going on in Lebanon now is very similar
to the feelings Iranians felt at the time, Hakakian says.

“I’m willing to argue that it all began in Iran,” she explains. “Iran
is really where the center of this earthquake was in ’78, and the
reverberations are still being felt, since ’78.”

Back in the ’70s, her family lived harmoniously in a very diverse
society. She says, “We lived on an alley that I called, The Alley of
the Distinguished, in the book. We had Armenian Christian neighbors,
and Zoroastrians. And all kinds of people, along with my kind, Jewish,
and we had a fabulous time.”

But it all changed for the worst. The revolution did not bring about
the positive changes her family thought it would bring.

She says, “Transformation from those moments of ecstasy and euphoria,
and the complete conviction that things were going to be a lot better
than they had been, to a dark history we experienced two or three years
later are very important, not just for us as Iranians, but for the
rest of the world. Because Iran in ’78 and ’79 was one of the most
modern countries in the Middle East. And it became a fundamentalist
nation. How? Why? Why was it that religion become so powerful? In a
country that had that modern experience in a matter of two or three
years. I think those lessons are important for all of us.”

She notes that today Iran is a hopeful place, “not because of what
the headlines say, but because I think the general public recognizes
the fact that religion and the affairs of the state need to be
separated. And I think that is a huge leap forward.”

So who is to end the religious oppression?

“That’s the million dollar question,” she says. “But the important
thing is that as far as a cultural and sociological perspective is
concerned, people have come to the conclusion that we don’t want
theocracy any more; we have to separate the two institutions.”

The book has been getting rave reviews. It was named “best non-fiction
of the year” by Elle magazine.

VARTAN GREGORIAN, STEPHEN FEINSTEIN, AND PETER BALAKIAN TO BE
FEATURED AT BANQUET HONORING GENOCIDE SCHOLAR VAHAKN DADRIAN

NEW YORK, March 10 (Noyan Tapan). Carnegie Corporation president
Vartan Gregorian and Holocaust specialist Stephen Feinstein will
be the keynote speakers, and author Peter Balakian will be Master
of Ceremonies, at the upcoming “Lifetime Achievement Award” banquet
honoring Dr. Vahakn N Dadrian, the eminent scholar of the Armenian
Genocide, the Press Office of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America reported. The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America will bestow a special Lifetime Achievement Award
on Dr. Dadrian during a gala banquet on Saturday, April 2. His
Eminence Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the Diocesan Primate, will
preside over the event and present the award to Dr. Dadrian. In
addition, the banquet guests will view a multi-media presentation
on Dr. Dadrian’s life and work, by the Zoryan Institute. Dr. Vahakn
N. Dadrian is recognized as the world’s foremost authority on the
Armenian Genocide. Over the past 35 years, he has laid the scholarly
groundwork for the study of the Genocide, and with his mastery of five
languages and his ability to integrate the disciplines of history,
law, and sociology, Dr. Dadrian is uniquely qualified for the work
of piecing together related facts from scattered sources. In addition
to his success in placing the Armenian Genocide in the mainstream of
international scholarship, Dr. Dadrian is one of the pioneers in the
field of comparative genocide research. His multi-level methodological
framework for the field of comparative genocide studies is considered
a major contribution to an ultimate “theory of genocide.” Vartan
Gregorian is the 12th president of Carnegie Corporation of New
York. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997,
Dr. Gregorian served for nine years as the 16th president of Brown
University. Gregorian has taught European and Middle Eastern history
at San Francisco State College, the University of California at
Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1972, he
joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed the
Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history.
He was founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1974, and four years later became
its 23rd provost, serving until 1981. For eight years (1981-1989),
Gregorian was president of the New York Public Library. In 1989
he was appointed president of Brown University. Gregorian is the
author of The Road to Home: My Life And Times; Islam: A Mosaic, Not
A Monolith; and The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1880-1946. He
has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese
governments. His numerous civic and academic honors include some
56 honorary degrees. In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the
National Humanities Medal. In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded
him the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award. Stephen
C. Feinstein is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of
Wisconsin-River Falls, where he has taught history and art history
since l969. He has taught courses on Russian art and architecture and
lectures on Western European art. Dr. Feinstein has been a frequent
lecturer at universities in the U.S. and Europe on artistic responses
to the Holocaust and problems of representation. Since September 1997,
Dr. Feinstein has served as director for the Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, whose purpose
is to provide a resource for teaching about the Holocaust and other
forms of genocide. Since the establishment of CHGS, issues surrounding
the history and memory of the Armenian Genocide have been a central
part of both the program and the center’s website. Peter Balakian
teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance
H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities; he specializes in American
poetry, poetry writing, American literature, modern Irish poetry,
and genocide studies. His dramatic 1997 memoir, Black Dog of Fate,
told the story of his awakening to the Armenian Genocide, and its
unspoken effects on his own family. The book proved to be a milestone
in the popular recognition of the Genocide, and has gained worldwide
notice through its numerous translated editions. It was listed among
the New York Times and Los Angeles Times “Notable Books,” and won the
PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for memoirs. In Dr. Balakian’s recent book,
The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response
(2003), he returns to the theme of the tragedy of 1915 – this time
from the perspective of contemporary humanitarian responses to the
widely reported annihilation of Turkey’s Armenian population. The book
spent a number of weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and
was a “Notable Book” for both the Times and Publishers Weekly. Beyond
his roles as scholar, memoirist, and advocate, Dr. Balakian’s first
vocation is as a poet; collections of his arresting poems include:
June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000 (2001), Dyer’s Thistle
(1996), a translation of Siamanto’s Bloody News From My Friend (1996),
Reply From Wilderness Island (1988), Sad Days of Light (1983), and
Father Fisheye (1979). He has contributed his poetry and essays to
The Nation, Art in America, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review,
Partisan Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry, among other
periodicals. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim
Fellowship.

GOVERNMENT RELEASES 654 MILLION DRAMS FOR ANTI-FLOOD MEASURES

   YEREVAN, MARCH 10, ARMENPRESS: The government of Armenia has
decided today to release 65 million drams from its reserve funds to
agricultural ministry, which has to implement a range of anti-flood
measures. A deputy territorial minister Vache Terterian said the
decision was prompted by last year’s floods that caused serious
damages to agriculture and industrial infrastructures.
   He said the money will be used to prevent damages in Ararat,
Armavir, Gegharkunik, Kotayk, Vayots Dzor and Aragatsotn provinces.
   In the next week river-beds will be cleared and defensive fences
will be repaired. Last year the government had to release 834 million
drams in emergency aid to communities that were damaged by floods.

–Boundary_(ID_fRiRQay64/ygUMIOOJMJWA)–

ELECTION DAY APPOINTED

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
10 March 05

On March 5 the president of the Republic of Nagorni Karabakh signed
a decree by which the day of the election to the National Assembly
of the Republic of Nagorni Karabakh was appointed on June 19, 2005.

AA. 10-03-2005