Happy Armenian Independence Day, live from Marash - the Original!! It has been a crazy couple of days, flying to Istanbul, then to Adana, then driving to Gessaria (Kayseri now) and spending the night there. We went to a beautiful Armenian church there that was restored and reopened in 1996, thought it really isn't used. It has an Armenian bahag who is from the Black Sea Coast, moved to Istanbul, and now is doing this. His name is Garo, and I am not sure who in his family converted to Islam, but he is Muslim if I undersood correctly. His child is going to Armenian school in Istanbul now. So a very interesting story. So much to take in. Gessaria is a large city of half a million now. Most people do not seem to know about Armenians, or care. We took a cab, and the driver told us his grandmother was Armenian. When we asked what happened to all the Armenians, he didn't seem to know, and then said that the Armenians and Turks must have loved each other a lot, and become one. No kidding. My grandmother was from the area, an orphan who did not even know her family name. Marash (which has a new, longer name too now which I forget) is where my grandfather is from. So it is insteresting to be in both towns in one day. So many thoughts and emotions go through your mind... too many to record in general, let alone here. One big problem though is the incredible difficulty there is finding English speakers.

Tomorrow we will try to find Lena's dad's home. He was born here, and is with us. It will be quite something if we find it. I was joking that we could collect a whole lot of rent! Another funny one was this rug salesman in Gessaria. The best English speaker we found the whole time! He was surprised we knew anything about rugs, and had some idea that Armenia was a very rich country.

Now onto another subject that is annoying me a great deal. HETQ. This news "organization" has been incredibly meanspirited. When they wanted to talk to me about the protests and the beatings which I was very open about online, I explained I could not, because I did not want it to be associated with my job. That is fair enough since it has nothing to do with my job, and they did not know and had no business being involved with my personal opinions. HETQ went and lifted a great deal of material from my website and published it, both noting where I work, and then going on to explain that I said was sensitive about it!! When I got mad at them, they were dumbfounded and still insist that my job title must be printed to prove its veracity. How ridiculous. Then they added to that by saying we are not even "sources", since they merely took the information themselves from my website! Because it can be read for free and linked to, they feel that no copyright can possibly apply and we are somehow not their sources. Hmmm, I think they need to consult a lawyer about copyright laws. They are clearly quite ignorant. To make a long story short, they took a situation where things could have been quite coordial and friendly, and made a really ugly and meanspirited mess out of it. Don't be surprised to read this stolen from my website onto theirs with another ridiculous commentary following it...