It was a Sunday full of discoveries. My son Erik picked me up at 8 in the morning and we drove to the bank of the LA River in Glendale, to join a walking tour of the river. Yes, a real river runs through Glendale! It’s a river where you can swim and kayak, and I hadn’t even heard about it until recently.

Halloween, pumpkin patches, and fallen leaves are images that come to mind when I think of autumn. Festivals are other images associated with that time of the year. Among all Fall Festivals – from October Fest to Harvest Fest – there’s one that I don’t want to miss: that’s the Arpa International Film Festival.

Saturday September 21, is Armenian Independence Day, which I’d say holds a special place in the hearts of all Armenians. It certainly does for me. The day signifies an important milestone, the realization of a dream held for generations that suddenly and unexpectedly happened 22 years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union.

What was daily life like in Western Armenian provinces and communities before the Genocide, and how did families adapt as they emigrated to the U.S.? Stories and memories passed down to parishioners of United Armenian Congregational Church, printed in the church’s Herald publication over the past four years, are a rich source of cultural history.

Armenians Among Many Young Business Leaders, Entrepreneurs on Elevé Skydeck
BY ELISE KALFAYAN
Clear skies and a perfect sunset graced the impressive Elevé Skydeck last week for the May meeting of Glendale Young Professionals . The business networking group has been able to meet in new downtown Glendale locations including Elevé Lofts and Skydeck, 9021PHO restaurant [...]

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.