The Alewife

Love and Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

Anna, we will not forget you

Freedom of the press is one of the main attributes of democracy. Journalists are people whose duty is to inform, to let people know what’s going on around the world. The right to report is as important as the right to know.

That’s why even during wars journalists can’t be touched. When soldiers are taken hostage, it is, of course, terrible and the world is trying to do it’s best to save their lives.

Anna Polikovskaya

But when journalists become hostages, we are all shocked. Because it prevents them to report, and it deprives other people’s right to know the truth. Because journalists are not fighters, their goal is not to win the fight, but to reveal and retell.

And when our colleagues are murdered because of their work, because of their willingness to tell the truth and somebody’s unwillingness for this truth to be discovered, we can’t keep silent. The least we can do is to pay tribute.

And the fact that we have to do this is distressful for all the journalists in the world, and for the whole country where such things happen.

In October 7, 2006, one of the most well-known Russian journalists Anna Politkovskaya was killed when she was returning home from a store. She was just 48 years old.

All the journalists in Russia knew her, not necessarily in person, but everyone had read her articles. And in the universities, at the departments of journalism, she was always one of the examples of how we should work, and what we should do. She was one of the best political investigative journalists may be not even in Russia, but in the whole world.

And most of the world state leaders, including US President George W. Bush, presented their condolences to Anna’s family and her Russian colleagues, staff of the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”, where she worked.

Anna was born in the USA, but she devoted her life and love to the motherland of her parents, who worked in the Soviet Embassy in the United States. She became well-known because of her investigations of anti-terror operations in Chechnya.

Although not everyone agreed with what she wrote, all acknowledged her braveness, courage, and fidelity. Her career started in 1980, when she graduated from the department of Journalism of the Moscow State University. She received numerous Russian and international journalistic awards and awards from human rights organizations.

“Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that this murder is related to Politkovskaya’s work” – the Union of Journalists of Russia wrote in its address regarding Anna’s death.

“We consider that this crime is the defiance to all the journalists of Russia, the defiance to the future of the country, which all of us want to see prosperous, free and safe. We appeal to the law-enforcement authorities to hurl all effort and resources into the quickest disclosure of this terrible murder” they also wrote.

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

Lost and Found

We are living in a very big world with billions of people around, and only few of them are people we love and care about.

Sometimes I try to imagine, how many nice people live on the same planet with me, and the only reason we are not friends is that we don’t know each other.

Maybe that’s why, when I get to know someone who becomes my friend, I consider it as a gift, and I’m trying to do my best not to lose this person.

Arpine Babloyan

There are always ties between us and someone we know, but these ties can be torn so easily… We can never tie ourselves to people we don’t want to lose. And that means, we can lose them any time.

Maybe that was the initial purpose of marriage – to tie ourselves to people whom we love and don’t want to lose, no matter what happens? But there is nothing that could be close to marriage with friends. And we lose them. Sometimes we think that we have close friends among people we see often – our classmates, colleagues or neighbors. But when we graduate or change workplace, or move to another town, this friendship dies. It happened to everyone.

Each of us has someone, who was our good and very close friend of ours, and now this someone still lives somewhere – but he’s not around, and you don’t know what’s going on in his life. You still remember him, and this memory is sweet and dear to you – but you lost each other. Personal life, work, leisure take all our time, and it’s very hard to keep ties to people.

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

What happened to our holidays

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union there were a lot of country-related holidays. And as the country hadn’t existed any more, celebration of such holidays would be strange. But people still wanted to have their long weekends. So what really happened to the holidays?

As in Soviet Union there was no religion, there were no religious holidays as well, but the fall of communism added one extra holiday to the Russians – Christmas, which Russian Christians celebrate in Jan. 7. It is not as popular as the New Year, which is always fun.

Arpine Babloyan

By the way, in Russia Christmas tree is in fact the New Year tree. Religious people often go to church. All others – just relax. Relaxing doesn’t necessarily mean drinking, but in most cases, unfortunately, it is so. And it turned out that during this “holiday period” workers were practically useless in the office or factory.

They were all sleepy, hung over, they didn’t want to work because they were getting ready for the next holiday, they came to work late and left early, and their condition in some jobs was unacceptable. To be practical, Russians, by law, don’t work from Jan. 1 till Jan. 10.

The country is drinking. I mean, celebrating. Most businesses are closed for the whole 10 days.

It was a disaster, because back then I worked in a magazine, which had to be published in time, no matter what. And during the holiday it was impossible to reach anyone to get information, receive press releases, most people would say something like: “Are you working? You are crazy? Come on, it’s a holiday! Relax!”

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

Dear Diary, you are now a blog

Dear Diary!

Today I had a great day! I went shopping with Grandma, played with my cousin, ate soup, watched TV and went to sleep. Good night, Diary.  Oh, Forgot to say. There is a new boy in our neighborhood. His name is Tim.  Now good night.

This was written on July, 5, 1992, in a thin yellow notebook which happened to be my first diary.
I was 10 years old, and started this diary for my Dad, who asked me to write about my everyday life while I was at Grandma’s country house for my summer vacation. It’s funny to read it now, after more than 10 years.

My grandma had passed away. My cousin married one of the most annoying women I’ve ever known.

Tim, who was my first big and desperate love for seven long years--I don’t even know how he’s doing now.

But reading these pages drives me back to my childhood, my joys and sorrows, like a virtual time machine with the only function – observation.

After several years I started locking and hiding this diary.

But still, what I wrote there seemed like a message to someone I’ve never known. I often used expressions like “you know” or “can you imagine,” although my diary was my own secret treasure.

I was writing from the deep bottom of my heart, writing things that I’d never wanted anyone to know. For some people it’s good to “cry it out.” For me it was better to “write it out.”

I gave it all up shortly after the death of my grandmother, I was 16 when it happened. And I never thought I’ll start anything like this again.

But in some way I was wrong.

2 years after I started my paper diary, on the other end of the world student Justin Hall started writing his diary on the Internet. And in 1997 the word “weblog” appeared.

The author of the term was John Barger, who created it from the expression “logging the web.”
In 1999, Peter Merholz divided the term in 2 parts – we blog. A new verb “to blog” was born, and it meant writing diaries on the Web.

Since that time and nowadays the quantity of blogs is constantly growing. (Right now about 75 thousand weblogs appear on the web daily, that is approximately one page every second). Students study blog phenomenon in the universities.

All the biggest dictionaries have the word “blog” included. Blogs started playing roles in political and cultural life of the world. There were several cases when people lost their jobs because of their personal blogs.

For example, Delta Airlines fired one of its employees after she put a picture of her wearing uniform in her blog.

Microsoft fired a guy who put in his blog photos of the computer Apple G5, which is not compatible with Microsoft Windows.

In Russia one girl was expelled from college because she shared her thoughts about one of the professors with her blog readers.

There was even a trial on that case, because the college staff printed out her blog page and put it on the wall in one of the classrooms. The girl considered it as interference in her privacy.

According to the research made by the magazine Advertising Age, there are about 35 million of active blog readers in the US (which is about ¼ of all working US residents). In general, each of them spends on blogs about 3.5 hours a week, which is 9% of all time he spends at work.

This means that in the year 2005 the United States’ economy lost about 5 billion of working hours because of blogs.

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

My brush with Reality on TV

Monday through Friday, 9.00 a.m. till 5.00 p.m. – work. Evenings – kids, dinner, everyday routine. So tired can’t wait to go to sleep. Saturday – going out with family. Sunday – shopping, cleaning, so tired can’t wait to go to sleep. Sounds familiar?

Well, most people’s lives are attached to similar guidelines. Being bothered with dull and predictable reality, one turns to reality shows, that now exist in all kinds, all channels, covering all imaginable subjects.

Talent search, job hunting, dating, surviving, losing weight or just living everyday life – for some reason other people’s problems seem more interesting than problems of our own.

Is it a hidden passion to peep and eavesdrop or a desire to feel involvement to the magic world of TV, being a witness of unpredictable scenarios of reality shows? No one would ever know.

The first reality show in a modern meaning was the PBS series “An American Family.” It was about a family going through a divorce, and it was broadcasted in the United States in 1973.

Then, came talk shows, showing a moment of drama, as did the Jerry Springer Show (debuted in 1991). Now we can name dozens of real-shows – “The Apprentice,” “American Idol,” “Survivor,” “Biggest Loser” and celebrity reality shows, like “The Osbournes,” and many more.

Shows of this kind became a real boom in Russia, when the first one, “Za Steklom (Behind the Glass)” was on.
Several people were put in a house with cameras all around, broadcasting them chatting, eating, getting to know each other and even having sex. The participants later became one-day celebrities, some of them got jobs on TV, yellow press was writing about who married whom and who went where.

Another one, the talent search show, named “Star Factory” had almost the same conditions – people living together with no contact to outside world, but, with all that, they tried to sing, dance, and their goal was to become a star.

This one is still on air, either in its sixth or seventh season; I stopped counting when I moved to States.

Needless to say that nowadays half of young Russian singers are products of the Star Factory.

Since then, real-shows appeared and disappeared so fast I could barely remember their names.

About two years ago I was yet in Moscow, Russia, with my 10-month-old daughter, desperately waiting for my husband who had left for US on business for half a year.

I was deliberately looking for a job. If wasn’t that much of a rush, I just couldn’t stay at home any longer, and loved my job, so I sent a CV to several TV channels, and basically that was it.

One day I got a phone call from a reality show I’ve never heard about before.

They invited me for an interview, and asked to come to the recording of one of the programs so I could see what the show was like. So there I was, sitting among the audience.
The show was called “This is love.”
Some man proposed his girlfriend in front of all the audience, she said yes and everyone was happy.

Another man tried to make his ex-girlfriend return to him, she said she’d think about it and everyone was kind of happy, too. All followed by surprises, presents, tears, fears and other side effects of love.

Then it came to the third story, and suddenly the anchorman came up to me and asked to come to the guest seat.

That was a real surprise, as I realized that the show was not about job hunting, and I couldn’t even imagine, how I might be related.

Although I worked on TV for quite a while, I was nervous.

No rushin' in Soviet lines

by Arpine Babloyan

Next in line, please

I hate standing in lines. I’m not sure that here in the States people really realize what lines are. But those who came from former Soviet countries know that exactly what I mean.

There were times, when stores were empty. And if something (no matter what) suddenly became available for purchase, everybody wanted to buy it. So there were lines.

Soviet citizens saw the line and hurried to take their place without knowing why people are staying in a line and what they were going to buy at the end.

When I first saw the commercial “Whatever it is, you can buy it on E-Bay”, I thought in Soviet times it could be “Whatever it is, you have to buy it.” Just in case. Time may come, when it can be useful, and there will be no chance to find it.

There was a period, when people could purchase goods, including food, only if they had a special “Buyer’s card,” that looked like ID, with a name and a photograph on it. I was 10 years-old, and I didn’t have the right to purchase.

But I often went to stores with my parents, because there was a “shopping limit.”

For example, if it was canned ham, we could buy only 2 cans per person. So my mom “demonstrated” that she had me, and we could get four cans.

Several times, when I was on my way home from school, an elderly lady or a senior man called me: “Dear girl, can you please go to the store with me and tell them you’re my granddaughter, so I would be able to buy 2 additional pounds of sugar…”

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

by Arpine Babloyan

In the Soviet times everyone was talking about equal opportunity and social rights.

Although in fact, there were no such things; kids were taught theory, and I as a kid knew this theory very well.

No rich, no poor. No private property. Everyone is middle class.

With all that there was a Russian folk tale about Ivan-the-Fool, who was lazy and not at all smart, but in the end somehow turned to be married to the princess with all corresponding details of happiness and wealth.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union this fairy tale became reality. Sociologists and culturologists called it a phenomenon, and the new social class was called “New Russians.”

Those were people who could use their chance of living in the edge of two totally different countries to become notably rich without actual help of education and intelligence.

No one really knew what they were doing for life, and they might’ve been doing whatever, calling themselves “businessmen” or “private entrepreneurs,” and being actually on the verge of illegality.

Because belonging to the middle class was not cool anymore, they started attracting attention by showing their money. 

Sometimes, literally, opening wallets so that everyone around could see that they have a real cash, lots of it.

Love & Fashion by Arpine Babloyan

I’ve heard about St. Valentine’s Day for the first time in late 1980s or in early 1990s. I don’t remember exactly, how it happened. But all of a sudden citizens of former Soviet Union realized that Western world has a few more reasons to drink vodka – like Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, and yes, Valentine’s. So, Russia began considering itself related to all these holidays, that happen to be, thankfully, not only reason for celebrating till gone, but also for some nice and sweet traditions.

Just to remind – Saint Valentine was a priest, who supposedly lived in Rome in 3rd century b.c. He became famous for secretly marrying legionaries who were not allowed to get married, by doing this he fell into disgrace of the emperor, and finally was arrested and died in prison, or was executed. But except illegal weddings, he was also writing love letters for those who couldn’t do it themselves well, bringing to peace those who quarrelled and gifted flowers to the brides. He was a real protector of love, and so he is nowadays.

Not all Russians know that in the old times Russia had its own “Day of loving hearts”. It was celebrated on July, 8 in favor of Peter and Feuronia, who loved each other till death… and even after. They died on the same day, and before death asked to be buried in the same grave.

But their suit wasn’t granted, they were buried separately, and on the next day were found lying together. People separated them, but again in the morning they happen to lie in one grave. So they were consecrated saints.

Read 'Love & Fashion'

Check out Arpine Babloyan's new column in the February edition of The Alewife on the street now!

Contra dance interrupted

by Arpine Babloyan

After 25 years, the New England Folk Festival Association Jan. 29 will dance for the last time in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post on Huron Avenue.

“The building belonged to the veterans, they owned it until a couple of days ago when they officially agreed to sell it to the City of Cambridge,” said Calvin R. Howard, N.E.F.F.A. member, who has danced at the post since the beginning.

When the building closes for its upcoming renovation by the city, the dancing will take place in Medford Center, he said.

The plans of the City include renovating the building, making it permanent place for the West Cambridge Youth/Community Center and an improved home for the VFW Post.

The style of dancing put on by the N.E.F.F.A. is called contra dancing, which is similar to Western square dancing, but for the bolo ties, wide skirts and formality, said Peter Barnes, whose band, Dark Carnival, performed Dec. 22.

Western square dancing is more like a re-enactment, while contra dancing is still very current, he said.

Although, many of the songs played date back to the 18th century, when they were brought over from England, he said. “In fact, one of the songs we play called “Hull’s Victory” celebrated a victory by the U.S.S. Constitution over the British.

“Another difference is that unlike Western square dances, at least half the dancers are under 20 years old,” he said.

“I have played the VFW post hundreds of times since the 1980s,” he said. “I was probably there for the first time there was dancing.”

Sign Up Today for a Free Satellite TV System with DISH NETWORK

Barnes said he enjoyed his gigs at the VFW post. “It’s a great hall to dance in, and I also enjoyed the clash of cultures that took place there.”

There was an interesting mix when the young, folky liberal contra dancers would interact with the older, non-participating VFW-types, who would watch holding their drinks from the bar downstairs, he said.

There was more interaction when the dancers wanted a drink they themselves have to go downstairs, he said.