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.

BY ELISE KALFAYAN
The global village created by the world wide web gives the Armenian Diaspora great opportunities to connect, but it also poses challenges to identity. May’s Facebook IPO in some ways reflects the village’s condition today – its financial prospects are questionable and its loyalties indefinable. In contrast, libraries throughout the world are rich [...]

What do you do when it’s pouring outside? The first Sunday of spring, March 25, was an unusual rainy day. Since I was not inspired to do anything I stayed home and watched TV.

Little League baseball in Glendale was a semester-long refresher course each year on the American way of life. Demanding coaches, a hectic schedule, and a win-lose setup were just a few of the subjects players and parents had to master.

What better way than to spend the first Sunday of spring, outdoors under the Southern California sun, and raising funds for a good cause! Come join us and participate in a walk-a-thon at Pasadena High School benefiting Vanadzor schools in Armenia.

2012 is The Year of the Armenian Book, but I don’t need an excuse to visit any bookseller, bookstore, or online book site. These are interesting times for the product known as ‘the book,’ as the market struggles to keep up with changes in digital publishing technology.

Learning a slice of history from the city of Tabriz, where Armenians have thrived for centuries, is one of the attractions of a special March 10 banquet planned by “Jan Tavriz.” The group strives to preserve Armenian heritage in Tabriz and in the northwestern region of Iran known as the province of Azerbaijan.

Following the passage of the French Senate bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, the author submitted a timeline, which reflects her disappointment at President Obama for not honoring his campaign pledge to recognize the Genocide.

“SOPA/PIPA” have been major topics online, but I didn’t read up on them until a message appeared on my blog’s upload screen last week from the project leaders of WordPress.

In Tehran, when I was growing up, my father’s side of the family belonged to the Armenian Evangelical Church, which was founded by Protestant Missionaries from United States in the mid 1800s.

Libraries are quiet places; perhaps that is why the news hardly mentioned that in addition to slashing funds for higher education and home health care, California’s recent lower revenue report triggered $16 million in cuts eliminating all funding for the California Library Services Act, the state literacy program, and the Public Library Foundation.

On Sunday morning, my sister-in-law called and said she had one extra ticket for Ruben Matevosyan’s sold out concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium that evening. I told her that I could use the ticket.

Instead of flocking to the shopping malls on Thanksgiving weekend to grab the best bargains, around 500 people, concerned with Armenian issues, headed to the Universal City Sheraton to hear and learn about the latest developments in Armenian culture, the Hai-Tahd (the Armenian cause) and the challenges facing our homeland. Organized by the Armenian National Committee-Western Region (ANC-WR), the three-day ANC Grassroots conference was a huge success.

Since food seems to be a big part of our celebrations, it’s natural to gather frequently during the holiday season around our dinning room tables and share our gratifications and remember the less fortunate. This year while gathering around the table and celebrating the season there will be a surge of relief knowing that American troops will be back from Iraq. We will rejoice that many families around the nation will spend the holidays with their loved ones returning from half-way around the world.