paul chaderjian

Asbarez 100th by Paul Chaderjian Words are what I am. Words are what I have. Words are what I can offer. They are at my core, in my ink and on my paper. They are from my heart, from my memory and from my soul. They are what define us, make us and drive us. They are what awaken us and put us to eternal rest. Words are our prayers, our religion and our aspirations. Words are our harmony, our discontent and our collective dream. Words have come naturally, have come with sacrifice, have come at great financial cost. They have flowed and flow with thought and with an agenda, a program. They are mine because I write them for the moment, and yours for reading them well into the future. We write them together because the words come to us, and we read because these words are our gift from you to us and from us to you. It's what we share. It's our passion. It's what creates our communion and our community. We read words, reread them and can never have enough. We...

Asbarez 100th by Paul Chaderjian During the great catastrophes being inflicted on the Armenian people early in the 20th century, perhaps it was divine intervention that created two voices that would incubate and protect the soul of an ancient culture well into the 21st century and beyond. In the same year, 1908, in the same month, August, and in the same small farming community in Central California, Fresno – William Saroyan is born in Armenia Town. Down the street on what is now known as the Fulton Mall, also born is the newspaper which you are reading now – the Asbarez. In concert, independently and prolifically, these two voices would tirelessly work on re-establishing the Armenian identity, creating a new homeland in the Diaspora and recommit themselves to the ancestral lands around Ararat. Call it divine. Call it mythical. Call it the result of cosmic alliances and astrological forces. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Call it history that in August 1908 in Fresno two great ...

Asbarez celebrates one hundred years of dedication to the Armenian Cause and community-building by Paul Chaderjian GLENDALE, Calif. - While much has happened in the world since the first issue of Asbarez was printed 100 years ago, the newspaper’s mission to keep readers informed has never veered off course.  Since August 1908, when each individual letter of the alphabet was hand-picked and positioned on a printing plate, and well into the 21st century, when the Internet makes instant electronic newsgathering possible, Asbarez has continuously chronicled the global Armenian experience with ever-increasing velocity. Asbarez Editor Apo Boghigian credits this century of existence to the volunteers who have rallied around the paper since its first days. “ Asbarez wouldn’t have survived without the resources of its vast community of correspondents,” Boghigian says. “It also wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for the generosity of the individual volunteers and tho...

by Paul Chaderjian The 23rd melted into the 24th, 1915 became 2008, and I’m wide awake at the intersection of Atwater and Minneapolis in the metropolis of Los Angeles. It’s April 24 at 2:22 A.M., and I can’t sleep. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this; this wasn’t how it was supposed to play out. Twelve hours ahead in Yerevan right now, thousands are making an annual pilgrimage to Tstitsernakaberd. But what’s the point? Later this morning, the bluetooth-wearing, 7-jeans-clad, chain-smoking young people will get into their cars and drive around with the tricolor hoisted out their windows, take over Hollywood Boulevard and then shout for justice at the Turkish Consulate on Wilshire, but what does that have to do with me? Can our genius only do this much 93 years later? U.S. proclamations, being pandered to by politicians seeking office, political speeches, and lots of songs and poetry recitations can’t bring back the dead, erase the trauma, erase the nightmare, vocalize Mun...

..two decades back, some six years before we would hear about the Internet, when big hair was fashionable and English literature was focused on apathy and indifference in the affluent America of the Reagan era, a group of young Armenians, fresh out of college, picked up their Hi8 cameras to show their community what was ravaging the homeland and what the diaspora needed to confront. There had been an earthquake, massacres in Sumgait, and talk of independence, and a weekly show called Horizon would bring these stories to KSCI TV in Los Angeles every Saturday at 5:30 P.M. courtesy of the Armenian National Committee. In those days of a somewhat lost innocence and naivety, when the sons and daughters of the diaspora were tipped that there was a homeless Armenian living on the streets of Hollywood, the would-be filmmakers and reporters took the cameras out after midnight to track down a man named Hagop. We gave him food, interviewed him as if he was an exotic animal in a zoo, then reporte...

....and Boghos Kupelian takes a swig of the Armenian brandy and congratulates the three dozen young Armenians gathered on the second-floor office of the former Atwater Village, California, warehouse that has served as the temporary office of the West Coast Bureau of the Armenian Reporter. The occasion is a visit from our editor Vincent Lima from Yerevan. I have invited the sixty-plus active contributors to the Reporter to come, meet up, chat, and enjoy lahmejune and boregs and tahn from Sassoun Bakery . . . and brandy. The latter was the idea of Boghos’s son Roger Kupelian. As I walk from one friendly face to another, it dawns on me that not only have we just finished producing the first year of an exceptionally interesting, avant-garde Armenian newspaper, but we have actually engaged young Armenians to participate in something uniquely Armenian. Thanks to the leadership of the newspaper’s owner and the support of our growing circle of subscribers and advertisers, we have reached ...

-- Hye Riders Set Example of Charity and Outreach By Paul Chaderjian PASADENA, Calif. – The appetizing aroma from skewered kebobs barbequed over an open flame, a giant and inviting bounce-house for kids, loud Armenian music and nearly two dozen powerful and picture-perfect Harley-Davidson motorcycles greeted supporters of the annual Hye Riders motorcycle club toy drive. "We heard about what they’re doing," says Sam Kartounian, " and we figured it would be a great way for us to support this small niche in the Armenian community. I think it’s really commendable what they’re actually doing, being that the whole image of bikers is kind of stepping out of the whole realm of what Armenian society dictates." Throughout the sunny Sunday afternoon, Armenians from all over Southern California, Armenian, Hispanic and African-American bikers and their families -- as well as those simply wanting to enjoy a good Armenian picnic -- stopped by the Pasadena Armenian Community...