Tag Archives: Armenia

William Saroyan – A Daring Young Man

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

William Saroyan is the most well-known American/Armenian writer. His family arrived, like so many of the Armenian diaspora, fleeing the genocide at the tail of end of the Ottoman Empire. Saroyan had the seeds of greatness and genius. I think … Continue reading →

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On Home

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

We are all born for somewhere else, I think. While we all have a sense of place coded deep within our DNA, a source of conflict and anger to be sure but also something that gives a tremendous sense of … Continue reading →

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I Should Be Writing My Armenia Book

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

This essay represents a failure, not complete for I remain optimistic but certainly a success deferred. I should be writing my Armenia novel. Each passing day, it gets a little harder. My parenthesis utopia is moving deeper into the past, … Continue reading →

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A Parenthesis Utopia

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

One of the difficult lessons I learned from COVID and beyond (because the world won’t be the same, at least not for us) was how futile efforts at utopia are. When COVID hit in February 2020 I was living in … Continue reading →

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On Writing

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

It’s difficult to be a writer in America in 2022. Of course, it’s always been difficult to be a writer. Anywhere. It requires a measure of sacrifice; a Sisyphean sense of the futile; and an overinflated perception of self. Writers … Continue reading →

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An Armenian Sketchbook

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Vasily Grossman understood Armenia. And thusly, Armenia saved his live; as it did for Osip Mandelstam. As it did for me. Armenia saved his life, though he was to die only two years after visiting Armenia. Despite that “An Armenian … Continue reading →

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The Pandemic is Over

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Last night I attended a musical event hosted in Alexandria, VA by Common Sense Society, an organization dedicated to promoting the civilizational virtues of liberty, prosperity and beauty. Celtic music, love songs from times of war and hardship on the … Continue reading →

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Hope Against Hope

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

I read “Hope Against Hope” while Vladimir Putin bombed Ukraine. It is the biography of Osip Mandelstam written by his wife Nadezhda. Osip was a Russian Jewish poet in the early 1900s who was killed by Stalin during the terror … Continue reading →

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Musa Dagh

Posted on January 16, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Musa Dagh is a tabletop mountain on the Mediterranean in southern Turkey or northern Syria where 5000 Armenians set to be marched to their deaths in the 1915 genocide decided to make a stand. It is a true story, and … Continue reading →

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To Talk of Many Things… (Vol. #11 – Armenia and Azerbaijan)

Posted on November 28, 2021 by Joel D. Hirst

It has been just over a year since Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire to end the ’44 Day War’. A war started by Azerbaijan in order to gain back land they lost more than 25 years ago following a … Continue reading →

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