The short but powerful film Straw Dolls is set for a most appropriate premiere date: April 24

I wrote an item last July about director Jon Milano’s ambitious plan to make a film called Straw Dolls based on the memories of an Armenian Genocide survivor.

Milano’s task seemed daunting. Then a graduate student at Chapman University, he proposed to raise enough money through a crowd-source website to produce a short film showcasing the story in a way that would garner support for a feature-length version.

A mere nine months later, the initial iteration is complete and set to premiere on April 24. A full schedule of screenings is still taking shape, but Milano’s film has been accepted by the Ridgewood Film Festival in his native New Jersey.

Making such progress in so little time is certainly to Milano’s credit but hold the applause until you’ve seen the film. I have, and I assure you this is an extraordinary accomplishment.

The story is compact but powerful: A father and daughter are preparing to flee their farm when their path is blocked by Turkish soldiers escorting Armenians who are destined for deportation. The daughter hides, while the father poses as a Turk to avoid the fate of his neighbors. Much of the film’s sparse dialogue consists of conversation between the father and the Turkish captain. It becomes clear that both know deportation means death.

Just over 17 minutes long, the film shows Milano to be an astute story teller who understands the power of suggestion. We are told little about the characters, yet we learn a great deal from their motions and glances.

This approach wouldn’t work without a cast capable of conveying great emotion wordlessly yet subtly. Save some of that applause for Marco Khan and Mary Apick, both highly skilled and experienced actors—and both, by the way, born in Iran of Armenian descent.

Please watch for Straw Dolls as it rolls out across the country. You don’t have to be Armenian to be touched by this story, but you should bring some extra tissues to the theater if you are. 

Turkey’s blockade has walled off Armenia for more than 20 years. For the good of both sides, Mr. Erdogan it’s time to tear down that wall

Normalization of relations is the buzz phrase that dominates international discussion of Turkey and Armenia. It is understood to be a critical step in resolving a range of important issues, most notably peace in the southern Caucuses.

Asbarez.com photo

It sounds like a simple matter to open a couple of embassies and stand by to collect a bounty of tourist dollars and trade duties. But nothing is simple when reason is distorted by history.

As Armenians worldwide commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey continues to insist that the systematic slaughter of a million and a half innocents was merely an unintentional consequence of the First World War.

Turkey has repeatedly cited Armenia’s refusal to accept its version of events, which is rejected by the vast body of international genocide scholars, as an obstacle to normalization. But Turkey imposes far more concrete obstacles in the form of links, locks and barbed wire. The gates at every crossing on Armenia’s border have been shut tight for more than 20 years.

This is more than a symbolic gesture. It was meant to punish Armenia, and it worked.

A little background: Some 70 years after collapsing under a Turkish and Russian onslaught, Armenia wobbled back to life in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This new Armenia is landlocked, hemmed inside borders drawn by fate and Stalin.

Any chance for relations to develop with Turkey ended when war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In support of its ethnic and religious cousins in Azerbaijan, Turkey closed all border crossings to Armenia in the summer of 1993. A ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been in place since 1994, but the blockade remains.

The Turkish and Armenian governments agreed to protocols for normal relations in 2009 but the agreement was never ratified by the legislatures. 

The president of Armenia recently withdrew the protocols from parliament, leaving the normalization process dead for now—and leaving little Armenia, about one quarter the size of Cuba, in a bind. With its borders to Turkey and Azerbaijan closed, Armenia’s only trade routes are across its much shorter borders with Georgia and Iran.

Which would you choose?

Both offer limited reach to the world beyond, and dealings with Iran have been limited by international sanctions arising from concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

But if Georgia sounds less frightening, do a bit of Googling and you’ll be reminded that Georgia has volatility problems with separatists that led to an armed clash with Russia in 2008. Georgia and Russia remain at odds over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russia still maintains troops.

There was at least a glimmer of light along Armenia’s Western front last summer when the Turkish press reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prepared to open the border to create good will ahead of the Genocide commemoration.

Nothing came of it, but business interests on both sides have become increasingly vocal about their desire to see the barriers tumble. Some 200 journalists and scholars gathered in November at Ankara University to discuss the continued blockade. There was broad agreement that open passage would benefit both countries.

Not only do Armenians and Turks want to trade with each other, they already do—up to $200 million annually. But with no direct access, it’s all done round-about. Beyond trade, there’s the plum of increased tourism for both countries. Moreover, it’s hard to see how it could hurt either population to get more familiar with the other.

The most potent argument for a change in Turkey’s closed-border policy may be that it hurts Turkey as well as Armenia. By limiting Armenia’s access to the West, Turkey has limited its own access to the East where so much of the world’s trade is headed as Asia booms.

In ancient times, Armenia was a major passage along the trade route between Europe and Asia. It could be again if Turkey recognizes that by blockading Armenia it is also blockading itself.

Armenians from around the world will gather in Yerevan on April 24th. We'll be there.

Lucine Kasbarian, friend and fellow writer, reported enthusiastically last year about the reception her books received at the Armenian Pavilion at the London Book Fair.

Thanks to the efforts of London’s Armenian community, Armenian authors were showcased at one of the largest and most important events in publishing. At Lucine’s suggestion, I made a note to check into this year’s fair to see if there’d be a similar arrangement.

Of course, that note got swamped among a zillion others in my to-do pile as I tended to details of publishing and publicizing Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me.

So I was caught a bit off guard by news that the 2015 London Book Fair is almost upon us (April 14-16) and that, sure enough, there will be an Armenian Pavilion. It will be even more prominent, as this is an important year for all Armenians—and writers have an essential role in telling the Armenian story with one loud and clear voice. 

This extraordinary opportunity has prompted creation of an Armenian-American Writers Guild, allowing authors from this country to support each other and share the cost of exhibiting their works to this influential audience of publishers, agents and book sellers.

Last minute or not, I’m in.

In fact, I agreed to attend the fair as a representative of the American contingent. It’s all still taking shape, so details will be coming later. But I’m excited for all the obvious reasons, plus a few more.

It was clear from the moment we started our hurried preparations that Robyn and I couldn’t go to London without hopping across the Channel to visit my cousins in Paris. But why stop there?

We’ve fiddled about whether to go to Armenia for years, but this is quite clearly the right time as we’ll be on the correct side of the Atlantic in time for the April 24^th Genocide centennial commemoration.

So we’ve booked a flight from Paris to Yerevan, where we’ll join company—and hands—with Armenians from around the world.

How could anyone think Jerry Tarkanian would ever throw in the towel?

            You don’t have to be a sports fan to know the name Jerry Tarkanian.

          Tarkanian, who died Feb. 11 at age 84, made headlines for years as one of college basketball’s greatest coaches. While he became famous for his lopsided record (761 wins /202 losses), he became familiar as the bald-headed guy who chewed through towel after towel as his teams raced up and down the court.

          Tarkanian might well be remembered as an entirely lovable character except for this: The people who ran college basketball clearly did not love Jerry Tarkanian. 

          I always thought that was funny in a culture where winning is revered above all else. But after reading his obituaries, I don’t see anything funny about the way Tarkanian was bullied and ultimately betrayed by the sport to which he devoted his life.

          One of the many anecdotes illustrating that devotion has stuck with me for years: Tarkanian once encountered a distraught colleague while crossing campus after practice. Tarkanian asked why he was so upset. The bewildered professor wondered aloud if Tarkanian could possibly not know that the space shuttle had blown up.

  Tarkanian’s response: What’s a space shuttle?

          The point was that there was precious little room in Tarkanian’s life for anything—or anyone—that didn’t dribble, pass or score, He watched basketball, read about basketball, talked about basketball and most likely dreamed about baskeball.

          He’d been that way since childhood. Tarkanian grew up in the Armenian immigrant enclave of Fresno, California, son of a Genocide survivor. As Tarkanian told it, his mother “fled her homeland on horseback with only the clothes on her back after her father and eldest brother were beheaded by Turkish soldiers.

He was 13 when his father died, and his mother eventually remarried. His step-father insisted the boy’s sport obsession would be his ruin. He told Jerry to become a barber. His mother, however, stood by him as he played basketball for Fresno State.

Tarkanian went on to coach the Long Beach State team in 1969 while not yet 40 years old. He coached there for five years and led his team to the N.C.A.A. tournament four times, winning 99 of 116 games. Fans and players cheered, but the sport’s ruling body decided there must be something fishy about this upstart’s extraordinary success.

He’d moved on to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas before the N.C.A.A. decided Tarkanian had been cheating. The same accusation recurred throughout his career, as Tarkanian and his teams were intermittently suspended.

The most serious and lingering complaint against Tarkanian was that he recruited players with questionable academic credentials. It’s a charge that goes to the very core of college sports as a vital part of a young person’s education and not as some sideline venture designed to raise money and inflate a school’s profile.

          Oh, wait: Isn’t that what college sports became a long time ago? Does anybody really think college basketball players—or football players, or baseball players—get recruited because they’re really good at quantum physics?

          I don’t know where the N.C.A.A. draws the line between athletic prowess and intellectual achievement, or even if it should. What I know is that despite the controversies and harassment, Tarkanian transformed a UNLV team once jokingly called the Tumbleweeds into a college basketball powerhouse known as the Runnin' Rebels. They won the N.C.A.A. championship in 1990 by the biggest margin ever.

The next year, the N.C.A.A. came down hard on Tarkanian and the school. Tarkanian fought back even harder. He insisted, as he always had, that he’d never broken the rules. He sued the N.C.A.A. Six years later, they settled up and paid Tarkanian $2.5 million.

By then he’d moved home in a very real way, to coach his old team at Fresno State. His old community embraced him in a way college basketball never did.

Tarkanian retired from coaching in 2002, embittered by his experience with the sport’s ruling body. “They’ve been my tormentors my whole life,” he told a news conference. “I’ve fought them the whole way. I’ve never backed down.”

Anyone who knows Armenians could have told the N.C.A.A. from the start that he never would. 

The opportunity for all of us to tell the Armenian story is too precious to pass up

I read a few excerpts from Stories My Father Never Told Me to an enthusiastic audience last Sunday at St. David Armenian Church in Boca Raton.

I was quite pleased that the book received such a warm response. Even more important, the audience responded strongly to the message at the end of my talk.

As we commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Genocide, Armenians face unique challenges posed by the Turkish government’s continuing and emphatic denial of history.

Few other ethnic or religious groups are subjected to taunts and insults merely for mourning their dead.

The pressure applied by the deniers is sometimes invisible but it has been extremely effective in distorting news stories and in blocking Armenians’ access to some media outlets and speaking venues.

I’m told that even some well-known Armenian-Americans have opted out of appearing at commemorative events because they fear professional setbacks. I was incensed when I heard that. After all, our grandparents weren’t allowed to opt-out of the Genocide.

The irony of any Armenian in this country being afraid to speak out is extraordinary: in Turkey, where false history is a matter of law, they’d face real sanctions. But here, any Armenian with a story to tell can’t be stopped.

Here’s how I put it on Sunday in a message I’ll repeat each time I speak:

As a long-time journalist, I’m a great believer in the power of free speech to educate and invigorate a society—and I’m certain facts obliterate falsehood if they’re allowed into the light.

For Armenians, that light has never been brighter or more powerfully focused than it is this year as we commemorate the Genocide’s centennial. We must all take that opportunity to tell our story as loudly we can, and let the truth prevail.

On the anniversary of the Genocide, it's important to remember those who heeded the call to stand and fight for survival

Armenians everywhere are commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, an earnest and energetic campaign by the rulers of the Ottoman Empire to end their existence.

Vartan Aslanian,
Armenian freedom fighter

I’ll be writing about the commemoration throughout the year, looking back on the Genocide and at its continuing effects. But I think it’s important to note that the centennial calculation is deliberate but not precise.

Although the final extermination plan was launched in 1915, Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were repeatedly brutalized and slaughtered throughout the latter part of the 19^th century.

Massacres perpetrated by Sultan Abdul Hamid II beginning in 1894 claimed hundreds of thousands, and are often cited as the precursor to the Armenian Genocide.

In fact, persecution and intimidation of Armenians predates even that catastrophe. Raffi’s great novel of Armenian awakening, The Fool, was published in 1881. Set against the background of the then-recent Russo-Turkish War, it portrayed a weak and timid Armenian population that could not survive unless Armenians learned to stand up and fight.

Many responded to the call. Allied with the Young Turks, Armenian freedom fighters were instrumental in restoring parliamentary government to Turkey in 1908. The celebration was short-lived, as the triumvirate that consolidated power turned on the Armenians with genocidal fury.

As the Genocide commemoration proceeds, you’ll see many images of mutilated victims and the emaciated survivors then known as the Starving Armenians. You should see at least one image of an Armenian who did what he could to stop the madness.

The Armenian freedom fighters didn’t succeed, but they deserve to be honored along with the martyrs.  

Remembering the man who started the rush, as Florida's population passes New York's

We toured the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach the other day as a treat for visiting family. It was a treat for us, too.

The delight of the Flagler isn’t just in the exhibits but in the place itself, a magnificently restored, 75-room relic of the Gilded Age where a sea of gold leaf shimmers in the glow of chandelier crystals as numerous and luminous as Saturn’s moons.

Built just after the turn of the 20^th century, the building originally known as Whitehall was the winter home of Henry Flagler, who may have been America’s most brilliant inventor. He’s usually described as a railroad magnate and founding partner of Standard Oil, but he’s best remembered here as the man who invented Florida.

Of course, Florida had been around for a few million years before Flagler arrived, although much of it was under water most of that time. Eventually the waves receded enough to make way for the folks we called Indians, who were followed by the Spanish.

Then along came Andy Jackson, who single-handedly declared war on both in 1818. Jackson won, and Florida became American territory before graduating to statehood in 1845.

All the essential elements of America’s tropical paradise-to-be were in place—balmy breezes, unrationed sunshine, sugar-white sand—but the place itself was so remote and inaccessible that it might as well have been on the moon.

Flagler didn’t bring Florida closer to the rest of the country, he brought the country to Florida. He built a series of hotels along the Atlantic Ocean and then built a railroad that connected them to each other and to the rest of America.

Countless millions have followed Flagler’s path in the past century. He is celebrated as the father of pretty much every notable city on the state’s East Coast, including Palm Beach and Miami. It was fitting that our visit to Flagler’s home followed the news earlier in the week that Florida had officially passed New York as the nation’s third most populous state.

Like other ultra-wealthy overachievers, Flagler drew a few raspberries along with the cheers. Ida Tarbell, one of America’s original muckraking journalists, revealed that Standard Oil’s dominance resulted from secret deals that drove competitors out of business. The company came to define monopoly and was broken up by the federal government.

The rapid transformation of Florida from lush wetlands to posh resorts led by Flagler’s efforts also caused numerous problems, including long-term damage to the Everglades and other environmental fallout that continues to bedevil the state.

But there’s no question that Flagler was a man of extraordinary vision and equally extraordinary determination. He came to Florida in his 50s, an age when most men of that era were nearly done for, and lived to see his vision become reality.

He died after he slipped and tumbled down Whitehall’s marble staircase at age 83 in 1913. We stood at the foot of those stairs on our visit, marveling at the grand entry hall.

But we bypassed the stairs and took the elevator up to the second floor. I may have followed Flagler’s footsteps to Florida, but that’s as far as I was willing to go.