11-August-99 Circle
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It was a beautiful rainy day -- I think I've explained that possibility before -- and I drove in to work. I brought one of the tapes from Yerevan and at lunch time went out to Belmont to the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, where I had got my language tape. The woman over there was completely taken aback at getting a present. I mean, really, the audio tape had cost me about 75 cents in Yerevan, so bringing it over was a bigger deal than buying it.
The tape I gave them was of a child vocalist singing some of the songs of Sayat-Nova. Anne and I had walked along Sayat-Nova Street in Yerevan several times before running across his name as a songwriter tape. Evidently Sayat-Nova was an 18th century Armenian minstrel who wrote in all three major languages of the Caucasus, Armenian, Georgian, and Turkic (I learned that from the people at NAASR.) They had a video of a movie about Sayat-Nova, and were happy to have the audio tape to complement it.
Then I went over to the St. James Church in Watertown and asked for Anahit, with whom I had spoken on the phone a couple of times a month ago. I thanked her for the advice she had given me and talked a little about where I had been. One of the churches at Lake Sevan was where her father had been baptized!
I think the biggest reason I made those visits today was to find people who were at all interested! Realistically, unless you're of Armenian descent or have lived near a town with a big Armenian community, you probably haven't spent nearly as much time daydreaming about seeing Armenia as about Paris or Rome.
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