Suppose ...

SUPPOSE you are married, but you do not yet have kids and neither you or your spouse is in school (and therefore has no homework) and you do not own a house (and therefore have no lawn to mow or weeds to pull or flowers to plant) and you both have the night off work for the fourth night in a row (and will again tomorrow) and dinner is already taken care of (because you have plenty of leftovers to get rid of) and chores can wait until tomorrow (because you don't have to work) ... how would you spend your evening?

• 1. Watch television


• 2. Go to the gym


• 3. Play Scrabble


• 4. Something else

If your answer is 4 and it doesn't cost much money, what is it? We would LOVE to know! But, please folks, keep it clean. Our parents read this blog for goodness sakes!

Gray hairs and pimples

I went to dinner Friday night with some friends and one of them was complaining that she is too old for pimples. "Tell me about it," I said, pointing to a couple red spots on my jaw line. "I shouldn't have pimples and gray hairs at the same time!"

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When I got to the restaurant I thought I spotted a girl from high school. I dashed over to meet my friends without looking her way, but not really knowing why. I did know I'd been up since 5 a.m. and didn't sleep well the night before, and small talk with people I've seen once (at my high school reunion) in the last 12 years doesn't come super easily to me - especially when I'm tired. I realized soon that she was with her younger sister, and her sister's husband, all people I knew back when. One of them walked by, saw me, and said hello, and so I went over and chatted with them all for a bit. Her sister and brother-in-law had an 8-month-old son. She was married in the fall, and is pregnant. I was friends with her my senior year, and though we didn't keep in touch afterward, she has never been anything but nice to me. After I came home I wondered why I felt so awkward about seeing them. I wished I had asked more questions about their lives. I remembered a lot of old memories I haven't thought of in years. And then I realized, my feelings had nothing to do with them, but with myself. Back when I was in high school, I didn't know who I was and, like everyone else, was trying to figure it out. In some ways, I'm proud of the person I was then. But in other ways, I'm embarrassed. I don't know what people will remember about me, and I think that is what makes me uncomfortable. But I think the important thing to remember is that all of us have grown and changed in the last 12 years. We all have our accomplishments and failures and insecurities. And that shouldn't keep me from catching up with an old friend.

Remembering the Armenian Genocide

Today marks the anniversary of a genocide that began on this day in 1915, a genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. This is a very personal issue for me, and I am greatly disappointed today that President Obama went back on his committment to acknowledge the genocide, instead calling it “one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century.” I'm copying below a column I wrote on the genocide for the East Valley Tribune in 2007.

Armenian Martyr's Memorial in Phoenix

When my great-grandparents left their Ottoman Empire home for America in 1913, it was to escape a pending genocide that would claim the lives of their entire families.

Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide that killed 1.5 million and forced an additional 500,000 through the desert and away from their ancestral homeland.

Lessons from the first genocide of the 20th century remain relevant today, as a modern-day genocide ravages the Darfur region of Sudan, and as the Turkish government continues to deny the crimes committed against Armenians in its Ottoman past.

A Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians suffered massacres beginning in the mid-1890s, but the genocide is considered to have begun April 24, 1915, when more than 200 Armenian leaders were arrested in Istanbul and sent to join hundreds more in prison. The majority were executed.

Over the next eight years, the Armenians were driven from the land they called home for centuries and sent on a death march through the Syrian desert. In what the Ottoman Turks called a deportation, Armenians were forced from their homes and raped, robbed and tortured along the way. Many who were not killed starved to death. The course of the Euphrates was changed for a hundred yards because of thousands of bodies lying dead in the river.

In his memoir, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau Sr. wrote, “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. … I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.”

While the Armenian genocide has been well documented, the United States government has yet to recognize the atrocities as a genocide in order to protect its diplomatic relations with Turkey. Turkey continues to deny a genocide occurred, and under Article 301, it is a crime to “denigrate Turkishness.”

When journalist Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, was assassinated in January, most Turks assumed it was because Dink condemned the mass killings of Armenians. As thousands of Turks took to the street to protest the shooting and promote freedom of expression, Armenians around the world were hopeful that attitudes in Turkey are changing.

But the Los Angeles Times reported last month that there has been a backlash against Turkey’s intellectual community following Dink’s assassination.

“Shadowy nationalist groups have issued chilling threats against authors and thinkers who, like Dink, speak out against Turkey’s official denial that the mass killings of Armenians beginning in 1915 constituted genocide, or on the power of the Turkish military, or the status of minority Kurds,” the article said.

Prominent Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was tried in 2005 for insulting Turkishness after he told a Swiss newspaper “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” The charges were dropped on a technicality, and in 2006 Pamuk became the first Turkish writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

As Turkey continues to stifle freedom of speech and expression, it only hurts itself. On one hand, it makes the nation’s efforts to join the European Union more difficult. On the other, when prominent Turks are charged, it brings international attention to the issue and, hopefully, sparks dialogue among Turkish citizens about the genocide.

Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying “(W)ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

The Armenian genocide must be recognized, to honor the memory of those who died, to help stop the genocide in Darfur, and to prevent similar atrocities from being committed in the future.

The first step is to urge your senators and congressmen to sponsor Senate Resolution 106 and House Resolution 106, which asks the president “to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.”

The full text of the resolution is available online at www.anca.org.

Kiera's first birthday party

Just kidding, folks. I didn't go to Kiera's birthday party. I just posted that headline to see if Laura was paying attention. She loooooves reading multiple blogs about the same thing ;)

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So, it's been a little boring around here. Not a whole lot worth blogging about, unless you want to hear about the doctor's appointments I had today - you know, before my insurance changes next month. (I've decided going to the eye doctor is like torture for me. I seriously cannot stand anything near my eyes. Even puffs of air.) There's lots of fun things like that to do when you get laid off. Like sign up for unemployment, which I did on Sunday. The good news is (is it?) that my severance ran out on Tuesday, which means I am now eligible to return to work at the paper. I went to meet with my old (new) editor today and got a press badge and a story assignment. They're putting me on the "temp team" and I'll be working a whopping 12 hours a week, which is within their budget and low enough for me to still collect unemployment, but just how much remains to be seen. In other good news, the university offered me a graduate assistantship, which means I'd have a job during the school year for about 10 hours a week and it reduces my tuition. I need to meet with my advisor first to ask some questions before accepting, but I think it will be good. Now I just need to find something to keep me busy during the summer ... so I'm still looking for something part time and plan to start making calls about volunteering here in the next couple days.

In other excitement this week, Chris got me two free tickets to Monday night's Aces game so I finally go to go see the new stadium, and I have to say it's pretty awesome. There's lots of grass general seating area, plus all kinds of picnic tables and a drink rail so you can stop and watch the game from almost anywhere and set your beer down if you like. The game wasn't bad either - there was a grand slam, and the Aces won. Next time I go I'll take some pictures. Tonight, my friends and I are decorating cupcakes. They're for a shower only one of four of us is going to, but hey, I love decorating cupcakes. And it sure beats watching TV!

I'm in business

So, thanks to Kat's suggestion and all kinds of time on my hands, I went ahead and opened an Etsy shop today! It's a work in progress and I'm still figuring out all the ins-and-outs, but you can check it out here. Yay!

The departed

I have always had something of a fascination with cemeteries. I think it has less to do with the fact that I grew up in a house on the top of Cemetery Hill and more to do with the feeling of peace I've always found in a cemetery. When I was in high school, I'd go for walks and sometimes they'd take me through the cemetery. I'd stop and look at the gravestones and wonder about the people they were.

Today, I was headed to my cousin's in Dayton and was a bit early, so decided to stop up the road in Virginia City for a little while on my way. Virginia City, as far as I can tell, is much like Tombstone, Ariz. - it has a lot of historic buildings and an old west feel, was once a boomtown but now is packed with touristy stores and attractions. Not wanting to pay to go to the Mark Twain Museum, I went to the cemetery instead. I walked around and looked at the headstones, some dating back to the 1800s and one as recent as 2001. Some in very good condition, and others dilapidated. Some opulent, others simple. The graves seemed to have been buried at random, the layout didn't make a lot of sense. But I liked the feel of it. I like to walk through and imagine the lives of the people there. Like Catherine L. Noel, died May 20, 1896 at age 48. Her husband Solomon Noel, died just four months later ... Sept. 22, 1896, at age 58. Did he die of a broken heart? Or James F. Brown, died June 12, 1882, aged 38 years, Native Ireland. Was it mining and a dream of striking it rich that brought him to Nevada in the first place, or was it something else? And did he ever find what he was looking for?

If I don't find another news job, these might be the kinds of stories I'd like to dig up ... it's just a different kind of journalism is all.

The rub

I heart baseball. I've always enjoyed watching a game. So much, in fact, I chose to have my bachelorette party at a Dodger game.

So I was pretty excited to hear Triple-A baseball was coming to Reno. Couldn't wait for opening day. I talked about having my 30th birthday bash at the ballpark. When I became the multimedia reporter, I started regularly filming construction of the new downtown stadium, and made a video about it, which (thank goodness) I posted the day before I was laid off. The day I was laid off happened to also be three days after tickets for opening day sold out. (It also happened to be media day at the ballpark. One of the first things I said to the executive editor was "But what about all the Aces videos I was going to shoot today?") I hadn't bought any tickets for the game, of course, because I was going to be part of the credentialed media working the game. So now, here it is, Opening Day. Chris, the beat writer for the Aces, will be there. And most of the newsroom it seems. They are all a-Twitter about it. (See what I did there?) I know I can go to any other game later in the season. But it just won't feel the same.