Behind the scenes of the Neapolitan series

The Neapolitan Armenians

(AKA swan song of a departed editor)

by Paul Chaderjian

NAPLES, Florida - Try as you might. Try with as much effort as you can muster. But on some days, you can’t write a straightforward story to save your career. Call it fate.

So, dear reader, if you buckle your seat belt, we’re going to go on a journey to Southwest Florida, and it’s going to be like a roller coaster of thoughts.

Maybe it’ll be fun. Maybe Vincent will indeed print this. Maybe the woman who criticized my last article about the Armenian church on mychurch.com and said I write because I like to hear myself write is right.

(Vincent, will you please, please keep this opening?)

+ the fine print

(Grish, put this in eight-point font but keep these instructions in the published version. Let’s give our readers between-the-lines dialogue they can feel voyeuristic about).

So I slammed my Camry’s driver-side door on my fingers when I jumped in as I was summoned to the office to get this assignment. Six stitches, x-rays, a tetanus shot, and waiting for a physician’s assistant to assist me ended the four hours after I got the call with an $1,800 Thank You note from Providence St. Joseph Medical Center across the street from the Armenian Reporter offices. I got on a plane at LAX, all bandaged up, to cull quotes for the Neapolitan series.

And no, I did not accept the painkillers the PA offered to give me. Made me feel tough.

(Ishkhan, is “Neapolitan” appropriate to use in this context? Please keep my question and your answer as parts of the final text, OK?)

(It is. – Ishkhan)

Since we’re on the subject of fingers and bandages, and medicine: Cambridge researchers this week published a paper with data proving the long-held belief that the human mind lives on the edge of chaos, and at a critical point between randomness and order.

I don’t have to tell you there’s a lot more external chaos than usual out in our world this week, this month, and this year. Jobs disappear. Wealth disappears. Countries go bankrupt. Drug cartels fight governments. Planes fall out of the sky. The world is one fire, as one of my two Canadian muses, Sarah McLachlan, would say. (The other muse is the Atomic Egoyan).

And as our world is out on the edge, because our minds are on the edge all the time, maybe you and I can also be out on the edge and connect the randomness of all the elements in this article into an entertaining, yet informative, stream-of-consciousness experience, at a critical point between “the author has gone nuts” to “wow, that was one helluva way to tell the story of one Armenian community on the edge of Florida.”

Incidentally, among the scientists who penned the Cambridge study was one Manfred Kitzbichler, and the reason I had the opportunity to do a story about Neapolitan Armenians was that I had set off from California to interview a U.S. senator with a similar-sounding surname. I won’t mention her name so that Google won’t bring her supporters or team back to this nonsense of an introduction about Neapolitan Armenians. Meghk e.

+ prologue

(Grish, go back to 12-size font and keep these instructions in your layout. Remember, voyeurism gets people to watch reality TV. Maybe it’ll get people to read. And thank YOU, reader, for staying with me on this one).

So, even though Saroyan never wrote the words “When two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia,” you can apply this falsely attributed quote to what has happened in Southwest Florida.

For the record, in an article in the Arts & Culture section of this fine newspaper, published on November 1, 2008, author Zaven Khanjian - one of the producers of the posters misquoting Saroyan - discovered much to his surprise that the actual line from Saroyan’s pen was: “When two of them meet in a beer parlor twenty years after, and laugh and speak in their tongue…”

It’s a world of misses, what can I tell you? Misquotes, misinformation, missed opportunities, missed ones, missed recognition, missing people...

Armenians that go missing from the North, so-called snowbirds, have been coming to Naples God knows since when. For all practical purposes, we know that the group that talked to us had started coming as early as the 1970s.

By coincidence, and to their surprise and bliss, a few Armenians started running into other Armenians, and born was a community that now boasts at least 200 families during “the season.” You’ll hear people talk about “the season” a lot in the articles this and next week. People down here use that term a lot to describe the time they’re all down here and away from the cold, wet, sleet-covered Northeast and Midwest. When it’s winter elsewhere, the snowbirds make their way to the edge of the Everglades, where the sun shines and people always look happy.

+ February 28, 2009

We set out to discover the Armenian community of Naples. The team included John and Aram from the Midwest, the writer of this series, and his US-Armenia TV cameraman, Arsen – the two latter from La-La Land (a.k.a. Los Angeles).

The players aren’t as important as the mission. Bosley has instructed us to get to know the folks around here and what their community life is about.

Bosley and his boss Charlie are my homage to the late 70s ABC hit series “Charlie’s Angels,” starring Farrah Fawcett. In their TV lives, Charlie called the shots and Bosley made it happen. A similar dynamic plays out in the lives of journalists, hence this randomness at the edge of chaos and hence order.

Our first stop is Andre’s Steakhouse, and oh boy what a story this man has to tell. The article is somewhere in this issue, so stick your fork deep and we’ll serve you the best thousand pounds of steak ever. And be sure to stop by Andre’s when you’re in Naples. He’ll take good care of you.

Read on, my friends...