The degradation, the humiliation, the callousness, the disregard for human life, the debasing of all that is decent about humans, and treating others as mere chattel, as I watched this, I kept drifting from the movie, Django Unchained, to the description, given in Roupen Der Minasian’s Memories of an Armenian Revolutionary, of life in Turkish occupied Western Armenia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

January 12 marked the date of the California Democratic Party’s 43rd Assembly District Election Meeting.

One of the rays of hope emanating from the Republic of Armenia is the very evident beginnings of “civil society”, as it is now vogue to refer to the phenomenon. I like to see it more simply, as something starting from Classical Greek times, of people acting like full citizens.

If you own some property and lease it to someone else for some activity, usually, but not necessarily economic, you expect the lessee to clean up after her/him/it-self, right? You don’t expect garbage lying around. You don’t expect mounds of poisonous stuff that will persist, effectively, forever.

The last few days have been very Armenia- and Armenian-ful, with a Teghood focus. That’s the virgin, old growth, forest in the northern part of the Republic of Armenia that’s being decimated by a massive mining operation.

Last weekend I saw the movie, Lincoln. It was very moving.

I have intentionally used Western Armenian pronunciation and an otherwise differing spelling of a very threatened forest’s name. I have to address a minor point that’s a major irritant to me. It’s one thing to use Eastern Armenian pronunciation to transliterate Armenian words to English.

Evidently, it wasn’t enough that we learned about the trafficking of women from Armenia for use as prostitutes in the Persian Gulf states from the exposé done by Ara Manoogian some seven years ago. No doubt, this odious practice continues.

As usual, when it rains, it pours good events in the LA area, and the preceding weekend was no exception to that rule.

With all the election related activity, my focus had gotten directed away from Turkic activities, but it’s time to remedy that.

Everyone knows the current administration hasn’t been significantly better or worse, substantively, than previous presidential administrations when it comes to things Armenian.

Well, it’s finally over, except for the counting. As usual, some are happy, other sad, at the outcomes of the various races. It was a mixed bag for most people. Following the same format as my final set of recommendations before the election, an overview of the outcomes follows.

This is becoming a nasty pattern. I realized it after being tempest-tossed by Hurricane Sandy and American Airlines for the last handful of days.

When you are read this, it’s likely there are ten or fewer days left the November 6th election. If you’re voting absentee (i.e. by mail) make sure you drop your ballot no later than Friday, November 2, because ballots must be RECEIVED by election day, a postmark is not good enough.