Norooz Pirouz - 1390

Today is Persian New Year. Sal Tahvil (the stroke of new year, which is not midnight by default) is at 4:21 PM, PST. Layla, Cary and I will go to Mom and Dad's with Sheila, Shahrzad, Annahita, Azita, and Farzad to ring in the new year. I had planned to make a Haft Seen and I didn't. But mom  made me a sabzeh for our home. So at least that's something.

Today Layla is 19 months old. Perfect time to list some milestones:

She can count to 10, and kind of count to  whe- teen, ho-teen, so-teen, whatever those are. She's been doing that for a few weeks now. Last weekend was Sheila's birthday and she demonstrated her counting skills on Meow Meow, pointing to different parts of the cat with each number. When she got to 9, she stuck her finger in his butt  and he took off. We were laughing so hard.

She mostly sleeps in her crib, and (almost) half the time she sleeps through the night. This morning she slept in till 8! That's a record.  But she requires snuggling with us in our bed to fall asleep still. Then we transfer her to her crib. Still working on that part.

She's in a new class at school, and her teacher left for grad school and she now has a new teacher again, so she's had a lot of adjusting to do with those changes. She has a lot of separation anxiety issues when I drop her off. Even at home if I want to leave the apartment, she'll cry and Cary has to distract her so I can leave without her crying.

She lets us know she has peepeed or pooped, she's been doing that for a couple months. It is not consistent, but it means she's slowly on her way to being potty trainable.  I tell her to sit on her potty when I'm sitting on my potty. This is long term work in progress, but I'm pretty sure she'll figure it out soon enough.

She's very talkative. She even talks in her sleep. Most of the time no one can tell what she's saying. But if I video record her talking, then watch it couple of times, I can tell she's actually saying real words that are relevant to what's going on. She lets me know when she's hungry (hunny), sleepy, if she wants milk (nok), her pacifier (she calls it her "Mi" which no one has figured out why), if she wants to watch Sesame Street (Elmo), if she wants to read a book, if she wants more of something (she signs that), if she's done (all gone).

She still says "Oh nyooo!" and smacks her hands on her cheeks. Now she follows it up with a "H-happen?" which is her version "what happened?", her hands extended in an "I don't know" kind of way. There are hand gesture's involved with most things.

There's also  "oh nyoo, where go".

She smushed her finger in the front door and ripped off skin and bruised her finger. It was bloody and traumatic. I don't know if I closed it on her finger or she did. She likes to "open close, open close" and I let her close it, but I may have helped her shut it on her finger. I wasn't paying attention, and was carrying lots of bags. I wanted to kill myself.

She loves her cousin Sheila and her cousin Annahita. Sheila speaks English, Anna speaks Persian, and Layla speaks her own language. But these three girls are crazy about each other. When they get together, they squeal, run, hug, and jump up and down with excitement. Then they're quiet because neither speaks the other's language.  It's funny, strange, and kind of hopeful that they will each teach the other their own language, and Layla will benefit from both of them.

She watches a loooot of Sesame Street. Since we go to Pasadena 5 days a week, I put my iPad in the car holder and let her watch episodes of Sesame Street that I've downloaded.  She watches SS maybe 4 out 5 car rides. Sometimes when I think she's sleepy I won't play it, but if she might get restless or start crying on the road, and the commute is ~40 minutes, I don't risk it. So that's1 1/2 hours of SS. Not the kind of parenting I thought I would subscribe to. I do appreciate that she interacts with what she's watching and anticipates things and will call out answers. Sometimes I'll not play SS and sing to her and talk to her, but it's not easy to entertain a kid for 40 minutes, while driving, and not turn around and talk to or touch her.  It is what it is and we make the best of it.

Layla with her Mi

Layla without her Mi

 Oh yeah, she knows all of her colors (few months now), tons of animals by name and sound, she loves to draw and color (including on our walls), she loves to climb, and she loves to read and be read to.

It's an hour after I started writing this. Layla and I took a shower together. One of my favorite things to do with her.

I just want to add that I am grateful for my parents.  I'm not surprised by the good things they have done and continue to do, because it is very typical of them. But I am surprised by the number of times that their goodness needs to be tested and exercised by people that don't deserve their goodness. Maybe the people that deserve their goodness the least, need it the most to guide them from the selfish, hurtful lives they lead and teach them how to be better people. I am so proud of them and hope that they get to be together in the years that Layla, Sheila, and hopefully one more baby, grow to be adults so that they can be examples for them for many many years to come. Amen.

Norouz

I took Friday off since it was Norouz. The exact moment of the vernal equinox was 4:44 am. I went to Mom and Dad's house for some nahar.
Here is mom's sofre haft seen.Here's Dad "keeping an eye" on Sheila. He's her horsey.

Then went to Aunty Mahin and Aunty Zarin's new house afterwords for shahm.

As usual, monkey was center of attention whereever we went. As it should be

Persian Breakfast

It just occurred to me that Cary has never had a Persian style breakfast. I tried to tell him what a Persian style breakfast consists of. As with most food, words and pictures don't quite get the full description across.

The base of a Persian breakfast mainly consists of noon, paneer, o gerdoo : bread, cheese, and walnuts. In addition you can have little sides of Persian cucumbers, grapes, tomatoes, various jams, honey, sabzee jahd (green hand eaten veggies). We had some medium boiled eggs, tokhmeh morg assali, which means the center is the consistency of honey and still dark orange. There were a few breads: lavash, which is a flat bread; noon barbari, which is a flatish bread that rises about an inch, crispy on the outside, so fluffy on the inside, and is baked into short wave patterns, sprinkled with poppy seeds, the smell of which reminds of the few years I lived in Iran, its one of my favorite smells; and some raisin walnut bagel to round off our bread selection.

So the way you eat it is, you take a piece of lavash (for example) the size of the palm of your hand, put some feta, a couple of walnuts, wrap it into a loghmeh (like a hand roll in sushi terms) and eat, and eat, and eat. Your next loghmeh could include some jam, or maybe on a piece of noon barbari instead of lavash, add a slice of Persian cucumber or tomato, shove some grapes into your mouth. The jam in the picture about is home made quince (beh). Wash it down with some chaee (tea). Before you know it your stuffed. Its a perfect family, interactive, sitting around the table chatting, kind of breakfast. Nothing needs to be kept warm or cooked, except the tea and maybe the bread, so everyone can hang out and enjoy. I love Persian breakfasts.

Paper on Iranian Blogosphere

I came across this abstract of a paper that maps out the Iranian Blogosphere (via swissmiss):
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public

The title of the paper is Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. You can download the PDF version of the entire paper at the link above.
It is for the Internet and Democracy Project.
The last line of the abstract says:

"Given the repressive media environment in Iran today, blogs may represent the most open public communications platform for political discourse. The peer-to-peer architecture of the blogosphere is more resistant to capture or control by the state than the older, hub and spoke architecture of the mass media model."

I've only read a few pages so far (there are 68 pages total), but I found this interesting:

"Iranian bloggers include members of Hezbollah, teenagers in Tehran, retirees in Los Angeles, religious students in Qom, dissident journalists who left Iran a few years ago, exiles who left thirty years ago, current members of the Majlis (parliament), reformist politicians, a multitude of poets, and quite famously the President of Iran, among many others."

I have minimal literacy skills. When it comes to Persian reading and writing, I have the skills of a pre-schooler. I can write my name and know some of the alphabet and that's it. If I ever had a reason or motivation to dust off my old Persian school books, it would be to read these blogs.

Nowruz Party

Saturday night Vicky picked me up and we went to our friend Parima's house for a Nowruz celebration. Her wonderful family throws an amazing Nowruz party every year. I wish I would have taken more pictures, but I was so busy talking and eating and enjoying myself, that I only have pictures of the sofre ye haft seen, and regretfully have no pictures of Parima, her sweet family or most ofour friends.

The only picture with a person, is of Vicky while she's taking a picture of the sofre, funny enough.

I'm really kicking myself for not taking pictures of the food too. Koreshteh fesenjoon, ghaemeh, ghormeh sabzee, koko sabzee, sabzee polo, really good white fish, kabob, and ash. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. The food itself is the reason why I didn't take pictures of the food, once I started eating, I forgot about my camera. Plus I didn't want to embarrass myself (or Parima) by taking pictures of the food with everyone there and trying to eat. I know how annoying that can get (according to Cary). But I did get to take home some food which was just as delicious on Sunday as it was on Saturday.

My resolutions

Yesterday at 10:48:19 pm was Persian New Year. It's the year 1387. I had high hopes for my first Persian New Year post. I planned on growing my own sabzee and laying out my very first sofre. I planned to post pictures of the each of the elements on the sofre with very thoughtful description of each, not copied and pasted from another source. But I didn't.

Here's one picture of my mom's sofre.

For those of you who've never heard of Persian New Year, you should Google "Persian New Year" and you'll get a bunch of links with explanations. I didn't want to include any links to sites that I wasn't really sure were accurate. I'd rather spread zero information then propagate misinformation.

I had also planned to start with a post about chahar shanbeh souri and show pictures and explain how we used to do it when we were kids. Well chahar shanbeh souri should have been Tuesday night, but I was celebrating Cy's birthday and truthfully, I just completely forgot.

bad dokhtar Irooni! bad!

Tradition says that at the stroke of New Year, the people you're with, the health you're in, and the general state of you at that moment, is how you will be for the entire new year. So you always celebrate with family, wearing brand new clothes, eating sweets, kids get new money or gold coins from adults, and everyone's spirits are high.

So Shashar and Jack were supposed to be on a plane to Hawaii last night for her friend Orlena's wedding on Saturday, but their flight was canceled. So Cary picked them up from LAX and raced to my folks house and we were all together for the stroke of nowrouz before the clock struck 10:48. Funny how things work out.

Since Shashar and Jack are actually in Hawaii now, I'm posting this picture of Sheila so that they don't miss her too much. She's eating her sabzee polo and must. She prefers to challenge her food to a duel than eat it.

When there are young kids in the family, its a lot more fun to celebrate traditions like chahar shanbeh souri and seezdah bedar. Sheila is our reason to get back into celebrating these traditions and step up our game. Back in the day, we'd go to Hess Park in PV and barbecue, eat ajeel, fly kites, play Frisbee, backgammon and dodge ball.

This pictures has nothing to do with anything. Its just super cute. Sheila's zipping up Cary. Every time he pulled the zipper down, she would run over and zip it up. She's really into his goatee. I'm not.

My resolution for next year is to grow my own sabzee, to celebrate chahar shanbeh souri, and put together a unique, modern, and personal sofre. Also, I would like to include all of my friends in this so they can enjoy the festivities.

Happy Birthday Cuzzie

Today is my cousin Cyrus' birthday. He's still raising funding to complete his documentary on Cyrus The Great. Go to website at Spenta Productions to find out more. There's nothing like a donation to an independent filmmaker to make his birthday extra special!

I took this picture last night when I stopped by my folk's place. Its a reflection of Cy and Sheils off of the Sofre-ye-Haft-Seen, part of the Persian Nowruz celebration. More on that tomorrow.

Just had dinner at Puran's in Los Feliz. Puran is a Persian owned restaurant, but not a traditional Persian food restaurant. They have some really great Persian infused flavors and ingredients. Like the lentil pomegranate soup and lemon barley soup (soup-e-joh). There are a lot of different foods to choose from. My mom and aunts always get the pepper steak with pommes frite. Cyrus got the salmon stuffed with this olive spread. Jack got the mushroom rigatoni. The food's really fresh and flavorful. Plus they have paper covered tables so you can doodle while you eat. Jack drew this in honor of Sheila because she always says Bah Bah (Persian for yum yum).

If I never mentioned it before, let me just say that my Cuzzie is one classy dude. When they told him the restaurant didn't serve Coors Light, he settled with an Amstel Light. When it comes to his whiskey, he won't take chances.

He bring his own Jack Daniel's in a flask. He likes to take swigs when no one is looking, because he's always afraid of getting in trouble by the man.

Actually that's about as far from the truth as the tip of Pinocchio's nose. He couldn't give less of a crap of getting in trouble from anyone. I think he sneaks the hip flask in to create an air of mystique. He's a bad boy, a rebel if you will.

We were all stuffed. Thanks for dinner Aunty Zizi. It was delicious.

Pappy's home

My Dad just got home from Iran today. He brought lots of goodies with him, mostly the edible kind. My favorite. He's home just in time for Persian Nowruz (translates to new-[year]-day) which is March 19th at 10:48:19PM, the moment of the vernal equinox. The date and time changes every year.

Back to the goodies that Pappy brought home. First off, you should all know that we Persians invented fruit roll-ups. Its called lavashak in the mother land. Its so sour that the thought of it makes my mouth pucker. Excuse me while I mop up the drool. It comes in flavors like pomegranate and red currant, which I'm pretty sure we invented those too. I've eaten enough lavashak to make my stomach burn and melt the skin off my tongue. So good.

We may have invented cotton candy also, I'm not totally sure and wouldn't want to toot our horn and be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we invented the stuff of which cotton candy is a knock off of. Its called pashmak, and instead of grainy fluff (cotton candy), it consists of fine strands of sweet wispy threads. So good. I found this Australian website called Pariya, that sells pashmak and other Persian stuff in tasty flavors like saffron (the best of which comes from Iran), rose, and pistachio. I've never ordered it from them, but one of these days I plan to. They call it Persian fairy floss. Cute.

Back to my Pappy....he got us some goodies:

The package of baghlava opened in my Dad's suitcase and the stickyness spilled over the other stuff. So everything was sticky and spread out over the kitchen counter so we could wipe it down. We did not invent baghlava, we just pronounce it different (with the gh instead of a kh). See, I'm not one of those types that tries to take credit for everything.

Several packages of lavashak can be seen at the bottom center of the picture above. It comes in a variety of thicknesses and fruits (real fruit, none of that artificial color, flavors, and corn syrup BS) . You can see a package of dried figs (upper right) and a package of white mulberries (yellow bag) and blue box of nougat with pistachios. Mmmm good.

This is sohan. It is like a brittle, but instead of peanut, this one has pistachio and almonds. Really good, you can't just have one bite, you have to eat the whole box. So so good.

This is an assortment of cookies. Rice flour cookies, chickpea flour cookies, almond cookies. Delicious with a strong tea.

Dried white mulberry (toot, that's what its called, toot), ajeel which is a Persian version of a trail mix, dried plum, and dried fig.These are little bottles of liquor that they gave my Dad on the flight to and from Iran. The one on the left is empty because liquor is not legal to consume in Iran. The one on the right is full (you can see the little stopper on the chimney top). They give the ones that are full of liquor to passengers when you leave Iran only.

Tomorrow is my cousin Cy's birthday. More on that and Persian Nowruz through out the week. We're going to party like its 1387.

In Search of Cyrus the Great fundraiser

Saturday night was a big night that my cousin Cyrus Kar and my whole family had been anxiously anticipating for a long time. We are all big supporters of his documentary film In Search of Cyrus the Great, which chronicles the life and leadership of the Persian King, Cyrus the Great. The fundraiser, held at the Freud Theater at UCLA, included lectures by scholars Dr. David Stronach, Dr. Abbas Milani, Dr. Jennifer Rose, a dance performance by the Djanbazian dance troupe, amazing singers Sussan Deyhim and Dariush, stand up comedian Max Amini, ACLU legal director of Southern California Mark Rosenbaum and Miss Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam who was a lovely mistress of ceremony.

It made me so happy to see all of these people volunteering their time and energy to support my cousin. Almost 400 people came to be a part of the benefit. He has sacrificed so much to tell the story of Cyrus the Great. Each of the speakers at the fundraiser were so certain that Cyrus Kar was the person who should be telling the story of Cyrus the Great through his documentary. Not just because of his passion about Persian history, but because he has been relentless about researching and finding out the truth and speaking to every professor, historian, and archaeologist to better understand and verify the story of Cyrus the Great.

Here is my cute cousin Cyrus Kar. When he was introduced and walked in, everyone in the theater stood up and gave him a standing ovation. It was very moving and I'm so glad he was appreciated in that way.

Here's my mom with Mark Rosenbaum and Dr. Abbas Milani. Mark is the attorney that spearheaded the effort to get Cyrus out of jail in Iraq. He's awesome, my family loves him and the whole group of ACLU attorneys and staff. Dr. Milani is a Stanford professor who's speech was really compelling. I wish I could have recorded it and included it in this blog.

These are some of the items that were up for silent auction.

These dolls are all handcrafted, each represents a different ethnic tribe that has existed in Iran.

Here is Anjelica and Uncle Amir in the top row and Ameh Shalah and Mamanjoon before the show started. I didn't get pictures of all of my family and our friends there. Sorry to everyone who I didn't post a picture of.

Here is my Aunty Zarin and Shashar.

My mom and her girls.

For more pictures and highlights, check Cyrus' website http://www.spentaproductions.com/ and he will surely post an update of the fundraiser soon. Right now he's busy finishing up his documentary since he's been busy with the fundraiser for the last couple of months.

Mamanjoon

Today I went to my grandmother's apartment to keep her company and to have some fun together. My Mamanjoon has dementia and its pretty hard for her to keep a handle on things. Since my Babajoon (grandfather) passed away a little over 2 years ago, her dementia has worsened at an exponential rate. She forgets information 10 seconds after you tell her. She doesn't have a concept of time, how much time has passed and how much time is left till something is about to happen. She gets sad because she doesn't think she has seen family for days, weeks, months, even if she had seen them that day.

On the flip side, when she does see a family member, like her children, grand kids, great grand daughters, or siblings, she gets instantly happy. She especially loves her great grand daughters, Sheila and Lauren. When Sheila and Lauren aren't with her, she settles for kissing their pictures.

Before going to her apartment today, I had developed and picked up a batch of pictures from Thanksgiving 2006, Thanksgiving 2007, and Lauren's 1st birthday. I got a bunch of simple frames and a scrap book to put all of the pictures in so that she could look at them in between visits from Sheila and Lauren.
You could say I made a bit of a mess. The dining table was bare before I got there. Oops. It's better than my bedroom floor. But that's not saying much.
Here's Mamanjoon keeping busy with scrap booking. She had a lot of trouble doing simple tasks like putting tape on the corners of the pictures, even after I showed her how to, but she really tried hard. I would finish putting tape on the picture and ask her where to put the picture and she seemed to enjoy being involved in that part of the process. Sometimes it seemed taxing for her. She hums constantly, like she has a song in her head.

Mostly she just wanted to kiss the pictures. Especially the pictures with Sheila and Lauren. She talks to the picture and gets totally swept up and carried away and "ghorboun salighe's" the pictures.

Here is some of our finished product. I tried to involve her in every decision as far as picture placement and which decorative elements to put on the page. Sometimes it was very confusing and overwhelming for her, but mostly she liked having pictures of the people she loves in front of her. She would just get lost in that. I kept telling her that we made the scrapbook together, and she didn't entirely understand.

I think I might have over stimulated her. I was really trying to keep her occupied and not get bored.

Below is the rotating 4-picture holder that she really liked. It is of Sheila staring at her necklace, grabbing her necklace, and then putting it in her mouth.

She kept turning the pictures and it finally occurred to her that each of the 4 pictures showed a succession of events and became really excited that Sheila was slowly plotting to get the necklace in her mouth. It was really cute.
This is Mamanjoon showing me her family portrait. Her mother, all 8 siblings, and her are in the picture. She is the cutie in the top row second from the left. Her mom is to her right.

I had a lot of fun with my Mamanjoon. It makes me sad that she gets upset about her memory loss and dementia. She is aware of it, but even gets confused about being confused. But I'm glad that she is able to be happy about the simplest things. Just showing up at her door makes her more happy than anything else you could give her or say to her. She really doesn't ever get sad if she is in the same room with someone she loves. I am very grateful for this. I hope the day never comes when even that doesn't make her happy.

We should live each day grateful for all the things we don't even know we are taking for granted.

Cyrus the Great

In an effort to see the completion of the documentary film "In Search of Cyrus the Great", there is a fundraiser being held on January 26th at UCLA. My cousin, Cyrus Kar, along with my whole family and many of our friends have invested blood, sweat, tears, money, and time in seeing this project's completion.



For more information, please go to the website below where you can read about Cyrus the Great and his influence on the United States constitution, my cousin Cyrus Kar who was thrown in Abu Gharib while filming this documentary, and how to attend the fundraiser or how to make a tax-deductable donation to this important project.

http://www.spentaproductions.com/UCLA_Cyrus_the_great.htm


I could write volumes about the story behind my cousin's efforts and ordeals in getting this film made. It's one of the most important stories you've probably never heard of because it involves a first hand experience of the injustices the US government is enforcing in Iraq and in here in the US. Since the only people reading this blog at this time are my friends and family and probably already know about the whole episode, I won't go into it. But if someone comes across this blog and wants to hear the whole schpeel, leave a comment and I'll be happy to fill you in.

On a separate note, I'd like to send a shout out to my cousin Marjon on her birthday.

Peace.