www.CaucasusNow.com

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Happy Almost Halloween. Please enjoy the oldie from the Daily Show. It's Ed Helms trick-or-treating on Embassy Row. He happens upon the Armenian Embassy after rejections from the Egyptians & Brazilians.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-31-2002/d-c--halloween

I welcomed some more music exposure into my life last night. At Yerevan's Club 12, I saw Katuner, means "cats" in Armenian, play some fine jazz. The club itself was a smokey, cozy place,(unfortunately everyone, in Armenia smokes like a chimney), but it makes for good atmosphere.

After frequenting the Chicago's music strongholds like Kingston Mines and the Green Mill in my last years of college, I found myself feeling like a jazz and blues know it all, despite being far, far from it. Learning more about how jazz has manifested itself in different ways throughout the world's cities has been an vague interest of mine for sometime. Getting to see how the Armenians actually mix their different flutes and employ home spun rhythms into a Charlie Parker rendition brings a sort of amazing cross-cultural purpose and creative exposure to being in a new country.

Back to the band, Katuner, was founded five years ago by Vahagn Hayrapetyan, who is the force behind the jazz scene here. Vahagn is a middle aged man with a New York Yankee's fan from the Bronx look to him. When he plays his energy is contagious.

This YouTube piece is poorly cut, but gives you a good idea of the band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGI3zIjvIKo

Vahagn is on the keyboards, his band includes guys who play the trumpet, saxophone, cello, trombone, as well as different wind and percussion instruments. Everyone in the band comes out of the Armenian Navy Band (more on them later). Katuner just came out with a new CD. Their first three songs on their myspace page gives you a good taste of what they do.

http://www.myspace.com/katuner

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I don't remember what sparked it when we began talking about my desire to change the world. This is always an opportunity for storytelling among my parents, my father especially. This time it was my mother who was beating down upon my dreams and hopes for the possibility of another world. You can't change the world, she always tells me with conviction, trying to convince me to give up my fight against poverty, racism, violence, inequality, and so on. She tells me what she knows and I listen because I think her words hold clues to her disappointment with the world.

I am seeking answers and clarity about what was happening in the years before we immigrated, to find some rational, coherent chain of events that could explain the conditions under which we were living in. She tells me things like the reason that they cut the light was to sell candles to the population. Or how some people still had light from generators because they had power and/or money. The rest of the population, if they were smart enough, would attach cables in the yards to steal light from people/institutions who had light. I find it most bizarre that the government was trying to make money from the people so they cut the light. But this belief can also be due to the major increase in people's distrust of their government after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Our government was awful, she tells me. They did not care for environmental concerns and now people are dying in alarming numbers from cancer. You cannot change them, she tells me. The people are corrupt and this has forced anyone who can leave to leave. In a political climate where people were ending up on hit lists for opposing the government, or politicians were being assassinated, and international aid was being pocketed more than it was being used for aid, people found ways to emigrate to secure better futures for themselves and their families. You were probably luckiest if you got to the United States.

This country is asylum for my parents. When my father came back from Armenia several years ago after a brief visit for the first time since he left, he was enraged. I think it was partly because he could no longer recognize the faces and the faces could no longer recognize him in the streets of his home country. When my mother came back she was blessing the streets here, how paved they are, how orderly things work, how much more at peace she is. She tells me that she has changed a lot since first immigrating and that she has adapted to life in the United States. Your father is still in Armenia in his mind, she tells me.

He once told me, when he was still driving taxis in NYC, that there are secret places in the hills of Armenia that only he knows how to get to and that this place will never be home for him. Maybe it's because he is getting older in a country that is still foreign, maybe it is that he is heartbroken from time and its chain of events, maybe he has seen too much death and destruction as a doctor in a particular time and place in the world, and he can no longer fight.

I tell my mother, this is why I am here, as the next generation, to continue the fight. She still doesn't understand why I am fighting, what is it that I am so upset about in this country of plenty. And I realize that there is so much she still does not know about me. I want to tell her that I am fighting for the peace of mind to walk down any street in this world holding my partner's hand and be unafraid. So much of who I am is bound with queerness and so many gaps are left in conversation with my mother when I am still lying to her about who I am.

http://www.cba.am/CBA_SITE/downloads/Press_release_ARM/vor_20.10.09.pdf


Հոկտեմբերի 20-ին ՀՀ Կենտրոնական բանկն ընդունել է նոր որոշում: Կարդացեք այդ որոշման 2.2) դրույթը: Իմ հասկանալով, ՀՀ բանկերը պետք է մոտակա վեց ամիսների ընթացքում իրենց կապիտալում չունենան ավելի քան 7% արտարժույթ: Դրանով, փաստորեն, բանկերին ստիպում են ազատվել իրենց արտարժույթից: Դրանով հավանաբար պայմանավորված վերջին օրերին դոլլարի կուրսի թեթևակի անկումը:
Այժմ բանկերը շահագրգռված կլինեն պահել դոլլարի կուրսը, որպեսզի իրենց կապիտալը չորակազրկվի:
Կապրենք, կտեսնենք թե ինչ է լինելու:

I’ve been back in Yerevan for about 10 days now, observing society from afar. I say that because my day job precludes me from cruising around the city, trying to figure out how people are getting by.

There’s one observation that is unmistakable. Two clearly distinct Yerevans exist—central or downtown Yerevan and the other districts as one entity. With each passing day the disparities between the two realities are more noticeable and pronounced. The fancy clothing boutiques and posh “lounges” as trendy restaurants are called here are on the rise, while Armenia is supposedly suffering from an economic “crisis.” Construction of “elite” apartment buildings is going strong despite reports in the news that the sector is in a slump.

There’s no telling where the hundreds of millions of dollars (amounting to well over $1.5 billion!) entering Armenia in foreign aid from the IMF, European Union and Russia will go. Apparently much of it is going to boosting the country’s cash reserves and trickling down to the banking sector which will provide loans to businesses, but when someone (without connections) applies for a loan the funds are supposedly unavailable to them.

RFE/RF reported yesterday that the “crisis” has hit the allocation of social services and thus pensioners will have to continue contending with the meager pensions they receive. Part of the foreign aid could easily have been redirected to boost the social security funds—the EU recently pledged to allocate $149 million to Armenia as an “anti-crisis” safeguarding measure, despite a statement made by Armenia's Minister of Finance on October 9 that Armenia would not seek new loans. It wouldn’t take much to do so. Pensioners could for instance do much better with a $100 monthly stipend in place of the $68 they are currently getting. That’s still not a lot but it sure is better than what they’re getting now. Since they would have more money to spend they would in turn assist in helping to boost Armenia’s “struggling economy,” but it seems the government authorities believe otherwise.

The way I see things, people who are unemployed can’t find jobs because there aren’t enough opportunities for them and weren’t to begin with, even before the “crisis” hit Armenia. Or, they are simply too lazy to work, which is not an exaggeration. Farmers are struggling not because they don’t till the soil and yield high-quality crops, but because they fail to turn a profit due to corporate greed, being forced to accept abnormally low prices offered to them by canneries, wineries and distilleries. The young sons and nephews of men in roles of power and influence earned though government connections are doing just fine with handouts or salaries presumably being paid to them for doing very little related to this or that enterprise they are connected with.

So as long as people can afford to put food on the table, own a car and have at least one phone (I know at least three people who find it necessary to have two lines—for instance, one for messaging and another for making and receiving calls) there won’t be any calls for social reform or regime change by any means. With the exception of pensioners who don’t receive stipends from relatives working abroad, people seem to be living well. The food markets and stores are thriving because people need to eat and have the money to eat well. Only the poor and downtrodden, who had long ago met their fate before the “crisis” plagued Armenia, are struggling, and they will continue to struggle so long as job opportunities for them remain out of reach. And an opened border with Turkey is certainly not going to help them, not when the Armenian government continues to stall in promoting investment in the regions of Armenia. It’s just going to make the rich even wealthier.

I don’t know what else to say about Armenia's socioecomonic situation. It seems like I keep repeating myself. Nothing is really changing for the good. It may appear so on the surface, but I really think most people particularly those living in the “other Armenia” outside of Yerevan are going to struggle, no matter whether anti-crisis measures are implemented or not.

In Dilijan, I ate a simple, but delicious mushroom & apricot soup which reminded me about how good stewed fruits can be.



As for fresh fall fruits, the sister-in-law of the b&b owner I stayed with asked me to go on a walk with her. We ended up in the home of local artist named Aesop (as in the fables). It seemed they both were eager for me buy some of his works, lots of sculptures made out of twigs and sticks. Unfortunately, I am not rolling in drams here so I politely refused and in return was offered coffee, pears, and roasted nuts. Not a bad deal.

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