Archbishop Ateşyan: We are ready to be cultural bridge between people of Turkey, US

Archbishop Aram Ateşyan, deputy patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate, based in İstanbul, told Sunday’s Zaman after returning from the Los Angeles Anatolian Cultures and Food Festival that Armenians are ready to be a bridge between the people of Turkey and the United States.

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An Armenian from Turkey in Los Angeles...

Markar Esayan

Last week I visited Los Angeles to attend the fourth Anatolian Cultures and Food Festival, held between May 16 and 19. I wanted to write about my impressions before the effects of jet lag took hold and while my memories were still fresh. I was enthusiastic as this was my first visit to Los Angeles. I wasn't enthusiastic just because I was making my first visit to a place or because I would see all the major historic or religious landmarks of Anatolia within a 60,000-square-meter area in Orange County. I also have many relatives and friends living in this city and across the state, most of whom I hadn't seen for years. Perhaps it would be possible to catch up with some of them on everything during my tight schedule.

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Obama Talks Climate Change. California Is Acting on It

Bryan Walsh*

The Salton Sea area of California's Imperial Valley
was once a thriving tourist destination,
but it deteriorated and dried up from the effects
of global warming (Brian L. Frank / Redux)

It’s not the happiest time to be an environmentalist. Climate change hit home last year with brutal force: 2012’s historic drought singed much of the Midwest, turning farms to dust and withering the corn crop. Other parts of the U.S. suffered through storms like Sandy and massive wildfires. Average annual temperatures in the continental U.S. beat the previous recorded high by a full 1°F (1.8°C). And the future is uglier still: over the weekend, British economist Nicholas Stern warned that climate change could be even worse than he predicted in his sobering 2006 report on the financial impact of warming, while on Jan. 28 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a draft report outlining the serious threat sea-level rise poses to the coastal U.S.

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Turks, Armenians and Ottomans

Mustafa Akyol

Akdamar Church, Van/Turkey

I really was not expecting to eat the best lahmacun of my life on the western coast of the United States. (Lahmacun, a sort of thin pizza with minced meat, is prominent in Turkish cuisine.) However Jack’s Bakery, a small family restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area, went beyond all my expectations. Not only its lahmacun, but everything I tasted here were both very delicious and very “Turkish.”

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