I’m not sure of this made the local news or not, but on June 6th, 2004 at 4AM, an anti-tank grenade was detonated outside this Stepanagert casino, waking up people kilometers away. This casino is said to be the largest in Artsakh and is located near the bazaar and across the street from one of Stepanagert’s largest school.

I was happy to hear that no one was injured in the explosion, but was saddened to see that the Casino did not sustain noticeable damage that would close it down for an extended period of time.

Yesterday I went to Stepanagert to take care of some NK Arts business. I met with the Deputy Minister of Culture in regards to a display that we have at the youth palace for our Nungi Ceramics project.

After talking business, we started to talk politics. For an hour he and I exchanged ideas and views that seemed to be the same. I’m glad to see that everyone seems to have similar ideas on how this country should be. Now all that is left is to find a way to take actions to ascertain that dream.

He told me about some of the social problems Stepanagert is facing, one of them being the recent rise in the price of cemetery for New Years.

He told me of how in the past carnations were 70 dram each and this year when he went to the cemetery to take flowers to his mother’s, uncle’s and a couple of friends who were killed during the war. As he was entering the cemetery one of his friend’s father was coming out of the cemetery upset and crying.

He stopped his friend’s father to ask what had happened and he said it was nothing and said he was going home.

It has become a tradition to visit the cemetery on January 2nd and take flowers to your loved one.

The deputy went to purchase carnations and learned that the price was 300 drams (more than 4 times more expensive then the prior year) each and being that he only had 2,000 dram with him, he was only able to purchase 4 carnations as appose to 3 carnation for each person he was to visit.

He got on his phone and called the owner of the flower stand to see why the sudden rise in prices of carnations and why he was trying to profit off of the emotions of those visiting their loved ones? He mentioned to him that his friend’s father left upset because for him to feel at peace with himself on this special day that he would pay his respects to his son, he didn’t have the money to take flowers, thus he didn’t even visit his son’s grave.

The man made some defense of how he had without charge placed 500 flowers on graves and for that reason he had to charge more this year.

The Deputy told me that instead of gifting 500 flowers, he should have sold flowers at a normal price and the flowers would have made their way to the graves.

It should be noted that this was not the only place that was selling carnations for 300 dram, it was about the same everywhere in Artsakh and the start of the price hike I would guess started some place in Armenia.

If you recall I have made mention of an expected price increase on bread after the New Year. Well the price remained the same, but the weight of the bread was reduced by over 20%, thus we had a price increase. Also remember that Artsakh had a record breaking year for it’s wheat harvest and prior to the government allowing 390,000 tons of wheat to be exported, the price of flour was 7,000 dram a sack and the Prime Minister in July announced that there would be no price increase because of the record year. The month of the harvest, so much wheat was exported, that the price of flour almost doubled and is now the same as sugar. Shame on you Mr. Prime Minister, you keep digging your hole deeper and deeper.

Well still no sign of snow, but the weather at night is getting down towards freezing.

I was up early this morning working on editing my 1997 journals. It’s slow going, but fun to go down memory lane and remember things that I don’t even remember happening. What an adventurous life I have had for the last 10 years. Almost think it would make for an interesting book.