We were traveling this last week…

Four days in LA visiting the grandkids, and three days in Richmond getting to know a city we’ve never been to. Here are some impressions:

Glendale, LA 

When in LA, K and I often stay at the Glenmark Hotel in Glendale. It’s about equidistant between the homes of Number One and Number Two sons.

The Glenmark is a clean but otherwise unremarkable hotel, except for the rooftop garden, which has a great view and allows smoking – cigarettes, cigars, and hookahs. The hookahs are the most common smoking device here, perhaps because the Glenmark is smack dab in the middle of Little Armenia, one of the largest Armenian communities outside of Armenia.

When we first stayed here, I knew nothing about Glendale and almost nothing about Armenians, except that they were nearly exterminated during World War I. (Turkey was trying to turn Armenia into an Islamic state by murdering more than a million Armenians.)

Every time I’ve been here since, I’ve done a bit more reading about Armenia’s history and culture. I’ve learned that it is a smallish country (about 3 million people) that lies in the Caucasus Mountains on the Asian side of the border between Asia and Europe. It has a long history, dating back more than 2,000 years, and was one of the earliest Christian civilizations.

Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union until 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up and Armenia achieved its independence. Since then, from what I’ve read, Armenia has tried to maintain good political and trade relations with both Russia and the United States. That’s never been easy, and it’s especially difficult now because of the war.

In addition to my reading, whenever I have a chance, I have conversations with the locals in Little Armenia and try to understand what they think of their history and culture and how it is for them to live abroad in communities like this one.

Those conversations have left me with a very positive impression of Armenians – or at least Armenians living in LA. Those I’ve spoken to don’t complain about their terrible history. They’re much more likely to talk about how happy they are to be in the US and their optimism for the future.

They are generally patriotic to America, but also very much attached to their fatherland. They don’t see a contradiction in that. (And neither do I.)

They are initially reserved when interacting with strangers, but become friendly quickly when they are spoken to with courtesy and respect. From what I can see, they have the warmth of the Italians, the pride of the Spanish, and the temperament of the Greeks. They look a lot like the Greeks, too – handsome, with strong facial features, olive skin, dark brown eyes, and black hair.

Altogether, they seem like admirable people. They have built a community in Glendale that is safe, family-oriented, welcoming, economically bourgeoning, and culturally rich. They seem to have blended into an LA version of American culture, without giving up their own.

Richmond, VA 

Instead of flying directly back to Delray Beach, K and I thought we should spend a few days somewhere else – somewhere we’ve never been. From LA, there were a half-dozen cities that could be reached reasonably by plane. Richmond was the one we chose.

Richmond is historically important. It was the last city to fall to the Union Army in the Civil War. And it has embraced its history, the good and bad, with what is, in this time, a refreshing mix of candor, compassion, and pride.

Richmond reminds me of Baltimore in that it is a once-rich city that has fallen into bad economic times. Walking down Broad Street was like walking down some stretches of Charles Street in Baltimore, but worse. At least half of the storefronts are boarded up. And most of the other half are occupied by government offices and businesses that look dreary and near broke. It’s sad.

And yet, there a fair number of good and enjoyable things to see and do in Richmond. These were our favorites:

* Hollywood Cemetery 

Thousands of fun-to-read tombstones dating back hundreds of years on 140 acres of rolling green hills, populated with giant magnolias, white oaks, and myrtle overlooking the James River. The most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever seen.

* Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) 

 K and I were surprised by the size of the building and the quality of the several collections that comprise the museum’s permanent collection. This is not a regional museum. It doesn’t offer the breadth or the depth of the Met or the Louvre. But it has a half-dozen collections that are as good as any.

* Civil War Museum 

Lots of interesting facts and relics from our country’s most deadly war. But the highlight for us was the film you can see upon entering the museum. It made me want to watch Shenandoah, which I’d never seen before.

* Louis Ginter Botanical Gardens 

 50 acres with over a dozen themed gardens, including a Rose Garden, Children’s Garden, Fountain Garden, Asian Garden, Victorian Garden, Woodland Garden, Healing Garden, Perennial Garden, Edible Display Garden, Community Kitchen Garden, as well as a conservatory, library, and café.

 But what I most enjoyed about Richmond, and I don’t think I’m making this up, is how warm and courteous everyone seems to be. Another thing I couldn’t help but notice: Racial relations seem to be better, or at least more cordial, than they are in other cities I know. There is definitely more casual smiling and eye-to-eye contact.

Obviously, I might be deluding myself. Is there something special about Richmond? Is it a Southern thing? If you know Richmond, let me know..

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How to Improve Your Understanding of Everything 

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) 

They say the best way to learn is to teach. Because teaching something you think you understand will help you understand how much you really don’t know.

That’s been true for me – from trying to teach Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady Sonnets” when I was in graduate school, to teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu students how to gain top position with the “scissors sweep,” to teaching apprentice copywriters how to craft emotionally compelling sales letters.

The idea that it’s easy to think you know something you don’t know was a favorite topic of Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who made important contributions to the fields of quantum mechanics, particle physics, quantum computing, and nanotechnology.

Notwithstanding his amazing accomplishments as a scientist, he said the thing he most enjoyed was teaching students about the art of learning while he was a lecturer at Cornell and Caltech. He believed that anyone with ordinary intelligence could learn the most complex subjects “as long as he/she was willing to study hard.”

And he developed a system for that. Learning specialists call it “the Feynman Technique.” If your curiosity dog is not too old to learn new tricks, you’ll enjoy reading about it here.

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Beat This!

I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in February 2010. (I’ve written about that ordeal several times.) After a four-day slog, our little group was finally at 19,000 feet, just a few hours away from reaching the apex, and feeling pretty good about our accomplishment, when we were passed by a man with crutches and prosthetic legs…

That was Kilimanjaro. The following story is about another man that did the same thing – but on Mount Everest, which is, at 29,000 feet, 9,000 feet higher than Kilimanjaro!

Click here.

 

The Greatest Pop Singers of the Last 100 Years? 

Earlier this year, Rolling Stone magazine published its list of “the top 200 rock & roll singers of the last 100 years.” In presenting the list, the editors pointed out that these are the greatest singers, not necessarily the greatest voices.

I had fun going through it, and so I linked to it below, hoping you’ll enjoy it, too. The first 50 names on the list did not surprise or disappoint me. Nor do I think they will surprise or disappoint you. Some of the names ranked from 50 1o 100 were surprising, and there were a few I disagreed with. From 101 to 200, there were many I didn’t know. (But I’d like to get to know.) See what you think. Click here.

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500 Years of Female Hair Styles 

I fell into another YouTube rabbit hole last week. This time, I probably saw two dozen video clips of women doing amazing things with their hair. My favorite was this one, a fast-motion history of women’s hairstyles from the 1500s till today. Click here.

Please tell me if you find this as fascinating as I do… or if you think I should mention it to my therapist.

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From KK re my review of Holy Spider in the June 2 issue: 

“Thank you for your spot-on recommendation of the film Holy Spider. When I mentioned it to my wife, her intense entomophobia made her cringe. After I read her your critique, she agreed to watch, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. We prefer foreign films as well, but the thought of an Iranian film did not hold much appeal. I was happily surprised to find out afterward that it is a Danish-Swedish-German-French co-production!”

My Response: I’m glad you both enjoyed the movie. I remember watching it and thinking, “How could this have been produced in Iran?” As it turns out, it wasn’t even shot in Iran. It was done in Jordan.

The director, whom I’d never heard of, is apparently known for making movies that are problematic and sometimes misunderstood. Click here for a good piece on that.

 

From KD re my book Seven Years to Seven Figures

“In the middle of 2020, I was broke, working my 9-5 job, and had no hope for the future. I was stuck in a hotel with COVID when I picked up a small green book off the lobby library shelf. It was called Seven Years to Seven Figures. Mind you, I don’t normally read for fun and was honestly looking to kill time….

“That book completely changed my life. When I opened it, I was close to $50,000 in debt, living paycheck to paycheck. It’s been only three years and I now have zero debt, with assets under management at around $1.2 to $1.8 million. I am forever grateful. I often recommend the book as my number one read to all my friends and family that see how drastically my life has turned around.”

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