The Library Arts and Culture Department, the Friends of the Glendale Public Library and the Associates of Brand Library continue to offer excellent free programs for the community

Am I lucky or what? Last year while I was doing a research online for a column about the “Water Feast,” an old Armenian tradition of dousing each other with water, I found pictures taken in Yerevan showing kids throwing buckets of water. I wished that one day I could be there in person, watching those kids in action and taking my own pictures.

“UNA VIDA ES POCO PARA BARCELONA…” “One life is not enough for Barcelona,” this is a motto I have on aT-shirt I bought in Barcelona a few years back.

My Mother’s Voice, a genocide survivor documentary based on the novel A Gift in the Sunlight, premiers this weekend at the Pomegranate Film Festival in Toronto.

Friday, September 21 was Independence Day for Armenia. Two days earlier, I had taken a taxi to Zvartnotz airport to pick up my cousins who were coming from Denmark for their first visit in Armenia.

Gurdjieff is an Armenian mystic and a scholar of the early 20th century. He believed that humans can transcend to higher levels of consciousness by improving their self-awareness.

A proposal for two 4.5 mile tunnels linking the 710 Freeway to the 210 Freeway (from El Sereno in Los Angeles through South Pasadena to Pasadena), each with four traffic lanes, with likely costs in the tens of billions of dollars, is set to come before the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority along with other options later this fall.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being at the opening ceremony of a day-camp at Proshyan village about 12 km outside of Yerevan. We arrived at around 11:30 a.m. at the village. Our driver took us directly to the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) center where boys and girls were playing in front of the two story building.

It was around 8:30 p.m. when I arrived at “Parev-Doon,” a hostel-type lodging in Yerevan. The aromas of homemade lasagna and pizza filled the air.

Glendale Arts, which books and stages events including a city-wide annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration, is now mobilizing to keep the historic Alex Theatre as its premier venue and Glendale’s cultural center. California’s closure of all redevelopment agencies has hit the theatre with budget and ownership threats. City officials enacted zoning changes in July to prevent any attempt by the state to claim and sell the property.

When I was growing up in Iran, Armenia was a Republic of the Soviet Union and a forbidden travel destination. By the 1980s, a small wedge had been created inside the “Iron Curtain.”

BY CATHERINE YESSAYAN
One of the main reasons I decided to visit Paris on my way to Armenia was to learn and write about the small community of Armenians living in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, a suburb located on the southwest edge of Paris.
My father’s family moved from Tehran to Paris when he was 9 or 10, and they [...]

“I am certainly one who appreciates all that America has to offer,” writes Glendale native Paul Ignatius in his personal memoir Now I Know in Part (2011). His maternal grandfather, Avedis Jamgochian, was likely the first Armenian to purchase property in Glendale (in 1911), and Ignatius was likely the first Armenian-American student at Herbert Hoover High School. His story spans the late 19th through 21st centuries, yet is so familiar to those like me whose families made the same journeys and ended up in the same places.

team of 30 volunteers, including eight doctors, a pharmacist, a chiropractor, a nurse/educator, pre-med students, and ancillary staff, headed to Armenia June 14 to set up and staff two-day medical clinics in Vanatzor and Stepanavan.