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Chris Bohjalian's Blog

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May.20.2013
It was over thirty years ago that the Hollywood Blockbuster Season gave us “Odorama.” Yup, 1981’s version of 3-D was a scratch and sniff card with numbered aromas. When a number flashed on the screen, we in the audience would scratch. It was a John Waters gimmick for his film, “Polyester,” which...
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May.12.2013
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If you are a little boy and want to test your mother’s love, color in the leaves on the dust jacket of her first edition of Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Or draw the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon battle cruiser in the sky on her first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man...
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May.05.2013
You might not know it from what I share in this column, but I played some pretty serious football and baseball as a boy. First of all, I was on the same high school football team – the illustrious Bronxville Broncos of Westchester County, N.Y. – as Roger Goodell. Yup, that Roger Goodell....
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Apr.28.2013
It has been almost two weeks now since the Boston Marathon ended in a nightmarish terrorist attack; it has been nine days since Boston was paralyzed by a manhunt and Watertown was a battleground. The news cycles are moving on. But among the elements of the story that will stay with me a long time...
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Apr.21.2013
The other day we had some massive trees cut down in our yard and the fellow taking them down wanted to be sure that he didn’t accidentally incinerate the center of Lincoln by dropping a six-story maple on the lamppost at the edge of our driveway and causing an electrical fire. That would have put a...
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Apr.21.2013
The other day we had some massive trees cut down in our yard and the fellow taking them down wanted to be sure that he didn’t accidentally incinerate the center of Lincoln by dropping a six-story maple on the lamppost at the edge of our driveway and causing an electrical fire. That would have put a...
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Apr.14.2013
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IN THE coming days, Armenians around the world will come together to acknowledge what I have come to call “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.” April 24 marks the 98th anniversary of the night the Armenian religious and intellectual leaders were rounded up in Constantinople — and the...
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Apr.07.2013
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Josie Leavitt is coming to Burlington, Vermont tonight and hoping to kill. “I bombed. I killed. The language of comedy is all very violent,” she said. It’s worth noting that Leavitt said this in almost the same tone of voice with which she had gleefully shared with me the color of the nail polish...
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Apr.05.2013
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Rock-and-roll t-shirts? Check. T-shirt cannon? Check. Old family photos? Check. Nine days from today it begins: "The Sandcastle Girls" Lucky '13 Paperback Book Tour. 13 stops in 13 days in 2013. Please join me!   April 14Fresno, CaliforniaCollege State University, FresnoArmenian Studies...
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Mar.31.2013
Other than weddings and funerals, there are only two times a year when I am likely to wear a necktie to the church here in Lincoln, Vermont: Christmas Eve and today, Easter Sunday. This is true with the vast majority of men in the congregation. There are usually 100 to 125 people in the sanctuary...
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Mar.26.2013
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Robert Frost was born on this date in 1874. Most historians presume he is playing softball in this Bread Loaf photo from the 1940s. I've always suspected it was Tai Chi. (Photo courtesy of the Middlebury College archives.)
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Mar.23.2013
We are now on the cusp of an M2M world – M2M being the techie shorthand for machine-to-machine, not a typo for candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand. And while I will always be more interested in a world that revolves around chocolate than I am in a world that spins around computers, I...
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Mar.17.2013
Most of us who have lived in Vermont for any length of time know the basics of sugaring: You have to boil about 40 gallons of sap to get a single gallon of syrup. A sugarmaker should expect to lose 15 to 20 hours of sleep every spring to boiling. And as global climate change curtails the number of...
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Mar.10.2013
It was two weeks ago tonight that many millions of us watched Kristen Chenoweth ask movie stars on the Oscar red carpet, “Who are you wearing?” I’ve always found the phrasing of that question a little creepy – a little too “Silence of the Lambs,” if you get my drift. Then we got to watch Seth...
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Mar.05.2013
Mark your calendars -- and please join me! April 14Fresno, CaliforniaFresno State CollegeArmenian Studies DepartmentLeon and Pete Peters Educational Center Auditorium(In student rec center, corner of Shaw and Woodrow Avenues)5241 N. Maple Avenue2:00 p.m.Questions? (559) 224-5878 April 15Vernon...
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