My Greek Odyssey

A Greek Christmas

The Greek Madness

By Katherine Kizilos

"Many orderly and predictable events take place in Greece. The new underground rail system in Athens, for example, is handsome, well-designed and a model of efficiency. All around the country, bread rises and is baked in thousands of reliable bakeries. Well-dressed children go to school and do their homework and play soccer in the park when siesta time is over. Church bells ring on name days and everybody visits their parents at Easter. In many ways, Greece is still a traditional society, which means a Greek is more likely to follow custom and convention than an Australian - because here it is easier for a person to cut loose and declare themselves free of all ties than it is in Greece.

For all that, the Greek reputation for madness is not unfounded. Public drunkenness is rare, but it is not unusual for people to yell at each other in the street (and then, perhaps, to embrace), to push in, to smoke too much, to become argumentative, or to buy you, a perfect stranger, a meal for no reason except that they like the look of you and why should you be sitting there all alone on such a beautiful evening? If the ability to strike up a spontaneous friendship is a sign of madness, then the Greeks are barking.

Greeks can also be exasperating, particularly in banks and government offices. As a rule (with honourable exceptions) the melancholy facts of bureaucracy and paperwork do not bring out the best in the Greek people. There may be historical reasons for this, connected to the long years of Greek subjugation under the Ottomans and the sense it gave them that any official - even a bank teller or a post office clerk - is a powerful person who can use his influence for personal advantage.

My own experience is that everyday dealings in Greece - shopping, ordering coffee, asking for directions - are unpredictable. You can never tell where the simplest exchange will take you. One can be met with great kindness or exasperating rudeness, sometimes in dizzying succession.

Whether or not you like this is a matter of temperament. On a recent trip to Greece, my son, who does not speak Greek, witnessed a long and intense conversation between a husband and wife as we traveled down a mountain together in a car. He watched their hand gestures, listened to their raised voices and their laughter, and wondered what it was all about.

Peas, I told him. Green peas. They are particularly good this year. Nick wants Sophia to buy more peas."

Read the whole thing at the Global Greek World blog here.

Traveling Through Pelion on Horseback

The following was written for MGO by an acquaintance who I ran into at our Greek festival in July.   Beth was so enthusiastic about her recent trip to Greece and so enamored with the people she met there that I asked her if she would write about her experiences; she graciously accepted.  If you want to find what is left of the "real" Greece, look to the countryside, far from the large urban areas:

I just went to Greece for the first time in my life.  It is a trip that I will do again, and I will take my family.  I fell in love with a beautiful country.  I didn’t do the typical trip to Athens.  I didn’t see the Acropolis, not even from the air.  I didn’t explore the big city.  Maybe someday I’ll do that. Instead, I left the Athens airport for a 6-hour drive northeast to the Pelion Coast town of Katigiorgis, where I stayed with 3 other women in a fantastic little hotel on the water.  We were preparing for a 7-day horseback riding tour of the Pelion.  This is an area of Greece that I don’t think even attracts many Greek tourists.  It was largely untouched, unspoiled and absolutely beautiful. 

Our cab was met in Volos by “Erikos” LeFort, who was to be our guide for the next week.  Eric lives in Katigiorgis with his wife and two young children.  He is French, but has lived in Greece for 25 years.  His wife Olga is Austrian.  His two children, David (12) and Annie (7), are beautiful children, exceedingly polite and fluent in several languages.  They were unspoiled, hard workers.  The whole family is obviously dedicated to the care and raising of their several horses, most of whom Eric has bred and raised on his own.  He is an accomplished horseman, and made certain we were taking care of his horses in the manner that he expected.

Eric drove us to Katigiorgis, and met us for dinner on the first night.  We ate at a taverna on the beach, and he introduced us to all manner of Greek delicacies. That first night, the fish was fresh out of the water, and in its entirety on our plate.  That bothered one of the girls with us, but I thought it was delicious!  The next morning we watched them catch the fish for that night’s meal.  We quickly learned that we should not fill up on our first course, which was usually bread, tzatziki, fresh feta cheese and other delicious food.  There were several more courses to come.  I have tried to decide which meal became my favorite, but I can’t, because each place we visited (and it was different for each meal, because we were riding from town to town each day) had a different flair, a different flavor and a different sort of food.  Even though there were often foods that had the same names (tzaziki), each taverna had its own variation on the flavor and presentation.

The next morning, we were without Eric for breakfast.  He had told us where to go.  We ordered yogurt and honey (after some hard work, because no one spoke English), and I immediately fell in love with Greek yogurt, which I’m still eating at home for breakfast every morning.  In our all-too-short week in Greece, I found that I really appreciated the Greek style of dining.  The foods are simple and healthy (there were, however, french fries with every meal except breakfast, which I found interesting), and I loved the slow, leisurely pace of meals.  There was nothing hurried.  The late night dinners (often as late as 9:00 or 10:00, by the time we cared for the horses) were usually on a waterfront someplace; they felt very luxurious to me, even though they were usually in simple tavernas.  We lived as the weather dictated.  We often rode earlier in the day for a few hours, and then took a long lunch break at some beach or picnic spot, and then rode later in the day.

Our riding took us over and through a beautiful land.  Our destination each night was a seaside town (except for one night, which we spent in Vizitsa, up in the mountains); we rode up the west coast of the peninsula, over the mountains and down the east coast, with our final night back in Katigiorgis.  Each town was beautiful in its own way.  Each step I took into the Aegean Sea felt like a walk into a luxury bath.  Each beautiful piece of marble I found on the beach I wanted to take home with me.  Every person we met was friendly kind, welcoming and warm. 

We were enchanted by the bakery in Lafkos, which we visited after our first day of riding.  The baker showed us his very old slate oven, and we inhaled the heavenly scents of the pastries and breads he baked and let us taste. In Lafkos, we stayed in a beautiful guest house.  Unfortunately, I do not know the names of any of the places we stayed.  We were lucky enough to not have to make the arrangements; Eric, our host, took care of all arrangements.  The Lafkos guest house was down a steep, cobblestoned alley.  There were no lights on after we finished a late dinner in the town square.  We felt like we had been transported back several centuries to a simpler time.  I had to laugh at the way the centuries collided when we wheeled our suitcases down over the bumpy narrow roads; we made much too much noise, I’m sure, for the local residents.  When we awoke the next morning, we were looking out over the sea from atop a hill.  It was a gorgeous and peaceful sight. 

I could spend a great amount of time detailing each place we stayed, but it could go on for pages.  They all had their own charm.  I could also hold forth about the food we ate, but if you’re reading this blog, you probably already know how incredibly tasteful and delicious the food is in Greece.  I will talk about the guest house we stayed in in Vizitsa.  We had climbed a mountain all day.  When we arrived, we had to pasture our horses on a hillside outside of town.  We then had to carry backpacks further up to the guest house, which sits atop the mountain.  We were told this was an old estate home that had fallen into disrepair.  The Greek Ministry of Tourism paid the town to renovate it, and it was stunning.  We walked into a life of luxury and ease for the night.  The dark wood, inside and out, was chestnut, according to Eric.  To us, it all looked like teak or mahogany.  There were hand made lace curtains in the windows.  The furniture was antique.  The views were stunning, and my bedroom had the best view of all.  If I looked straight down, I looked into a courtyard canopied by kiwi plants, and brightly colored flowers everywhere.  If I listened, I could hear the water trickling down the chutes on the sides of the cobblestoned roads, coming from the underground springs.  If I looked straight out, I looked to the sea, and could see the Greek mainland in the distance.  I wanted to just stay there forever, eating the fresh grapes off the vines, the fresh cherries from the trees, and the kiwis under which I ate my breakfast.

I want to share some of my observations about Greece and the Greek life I observed.  First and foremost, when I remember my trip, I remember the constant and genuine smiles on almost every face we encountered.  More often than not, we couldn’t understand each other, but that didn’t seem to matter.  I learned enough words to get my needs met, and people were patient and understanding.  I was constantly thrilled at the cleanliness of every taverna and guest house I stepped foot in.  I never found any place less than spotless.  Even the courtyards we rode by on our way through towns, such as Argolasti, didn’t appear to have a speck of dirt.

Greece is so cheerfully colorful!  The painted flower pots made from plastic buckets in peoples’ yards were so pretty.  The flowers were amazing!  I never knew how an artichoke grew until my visit to the Pelion Coast.  I rode under, by or through more fruit orchards than I’ve ever seen.  There were some fruits that I had never seen before, and I still don’t know what they are, because Eric only knew the Greek and French words for them.  I had never seen olive groves before.  I found them peaceful and spectacular.  We rode through millions of olive trees; I just loved their soft green color and the way the sunlight filtered down through.  I could have lived under the olive trees and been very happy.  We also noticed the fields of Queen Anne’s lace; we have that flower in northern New England, but it never seems quite so beautiful here.  We looked out over one field up in the mountains, and it looked like a sea of white, but it was Queen Anne’s lace swaying in the breeze. 

I noticed that Greece doesn’t have much green grass, so I couldn’t understand how all of the vegetation was so incredibly lush, until Eric explained that there are underground springs that nourish the plants, but that the grass can not reach.  I remember riding the streets of one town, and we saw grass in someone’s yard.  We quickly realized that was the home of someone who was very well-to-do.  I actually found I preferred the more authentic look of the whitewashed homes and courtyards that displayed such gorgeous flowers, rather than grass.  I am not an expert in flowers, but my traveling companions were very good at identifying flowers, many of which I had never seen or even heard of!  I could only appreciate their lushness and beauty.

As I said about the town of Lafkos, I often felt, during our ride, that we had time traveled back a few centuries.  Much of our riding took us through areas that were uninhabited, and purely agricultural.  We often went hours without seeing another person.  It is not often, in our crazy, busy American lives, that we have the chance to dwell in the serenity that I found in the orchards and trees of Greece.  Sometimes there were no signs of human existence, just as I imagine our world was several hundred years ago, when everyone traveled by horse or foot, and there were no speedy means of communication, no cell phones and no electricity. 

I was continually amazed at Eric’s knowledge of the ground that we covered, because there often didn’t seem to even be a trail that he followed.  Somehow we always ended up where he said we would!  He also had a very thorough knowledge of the area; he could share history and stories about where we were that I found fascinating. 

One of my favorite memories during our riding was one afternoon when I found myself riding next to Eric’s son David, who had been fairly quiet for most of the ride.  That afternoon we started teaching each other words in our respective languages, although David was already very fluent in English.  I learned so much from him; he taught me about the educational system he is part of in Greece, about how the young people of rural Greece lives their daily lives, and what his views are of the world.  He is a well-traveled, very well rounded young man, who will be successful in whatever he chooses to do in his future.

The gorgeous marble beaches were most welcome sights when we did arrive at our destination, whether it was a middle of the day stop or our destination for the evening.  Stepping into the sea felt like gliding into a silky bath.  It was so gorgeous, and so refreshing.   I often played with my new 12 year old friend David; we would run and jump off a pier, or I would attempt to follow him and his calloused feet up a huge rock to jump into the water (I have never seen children with tougher feet!).  It felt like we had no cares; we were only on a quest to see who could make the biggest splash.  He taught me to be careful not to step on the sea urchins, but no one loved to cannonball in and scatter a school of fish more than he did!

I did puzzle over what most people did for work.  I decided that my traditional view of the 9-5 job simply doesn’t apply in Greece.  People must work the fields when the time is right, and I’m sure they work around the heat, which means there is a break during the middle of the day.  I’m guessing there are a lot of jobs related to agriculture, and we weren’t there during a planting or a harvesting season.  I also imagine many work in the service industry, but it’s so hard for a foreigner to even identify what, or where, these services may be.  There are often no signs on doors to identify businesses; if you didn’t have someone with you to know where to get a frappe or a loaf of bread, you might be very hungry!  I love that about Greece; I felt like I never knew what delight I might find behind an unidentified closed door!  It seemed that the stress level of everyday life is relatively low, and therefore, much healthier than it is here in America.  Maybe I didn’t have time to see below the surface, but what I did see, I sure did appreciate.

My trip to Greece almost didn’t happen, because I was anxious about leaving my own two young children for more than a week.  I would have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.  I have traveled many places, and had many wonderful experiences, but I don’t think I have ever felt so quickly at home.  I often feel a yearning to return to Greece and the lifestyle I observed there, even though I can not call it home.  I felt comfortable and at peace in that land, especially the rural, non-commercial area to which I traveled.  I am honored to have experienced that part of our world, even if for a short while.  I hope I can return someday.  My host and his family were so proud of their country and their horses; they made me feel like I belonged there.  It felt like I lost a part of my family when I said good-bye to them.  We have been in touch, and I do hope that someday our paths will cross again.  Maybe Eric will be my guide when I take my family to Greece to re-live the experience I had on the Pelion Coast.

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO HERE

Summer Travels

We woke up early the day of our departure for a long weekend to the island of Naxos. There was an air of excitement and expectation.  My son Chris woke up bleary eyed to a plate of warm crusty bread spread with creamy butter and marmalade. Anna had been methodically at work making her last minute preparations while my mother in law Maria made breakfast. I poured myself some fresh brewed coffee without which I am quite useless in the early morning hours. Thano finished shaving,  took a few gulps of his half finished coffee and grabbed two suitcases heading for his parked car. I followed his lead grabbing a few more things, all stacked neatly on the veranda. We were just finished packing the car when my friend George and his family pulled up in theirs. His two young daughters, visibly excited, hung there heads out of the window with big infectious grins. We said our goodbyes and within a few minutes we were careening up the road to the port of Rafina from which we would depart.

Rafina was buzzing with people and cars getting on waiting ferries to travel to any number of Aegean destinations. There is something tantalizing about making this particular journey, as if one is leaving the "real" world, with all its cares behind. We are suddenly thrust, after a voyage filled with excited anticipation, into the sun swept alien world of whitewashed islands, that despite all the incursions by curious tourists like myself, still maintain much of their serenity, beauty and quiet grandeur.  Living in a state like Maine, that is similarly overwhelmed by the influx of tourists each year, I can empathize with those who live on the islands year-round. I can just imagine them wishing secretly for the advent of winter and the retreat of tourists to their respective homes, despite the economic bonanza we provide.  I cannot speak for the general state of the many ferry lines that sail regularly to the Greek islands. Greeks often complain about the delays, the service, the high prices,  ad infinitum.  Personally I have always been impressed by the efficiency, the speed and the very comfortable seating, not to mention, the hot cheese pastries known as tiropites.

After a four hour trip we arrived in Naxos.  We got our first views of the Portara or "Great Door," an ancient gateway at the mouth of the harbor. The main town, Hora, is dominated by a Venetian castle known as the "Kastro" surrounded by the classic, simple white buildings common in the Aegean.  We quickly drove our vehicles off the ferry and to one of the local hotels where we were pleasantly surprised by the nice clean accommodations situated a short walk from the beach.  The maid who had just finished cleaning our room started gathering her things apologizing for the small delay. I noticed her familiar accent.  "Are you from Albania I asked?" She winced and avoiding my eyes, nodded yes.  "Both of my parents were born there.," I confessed. She broke out in a broad grin and asked me to stay put while she fetched the other Albanian maid who had been cleaning an adjacent room.  Introductions complete, I returned to our room where everyone was getting ready to go to the beach and asking where I had been. In Greece, no matter where one goes, he is accompanied by the ever present "parea." The concept of being alone with oneself is confined, I think, only to monastic communities. No wonder they thrive in Greece. Most Greeks love the company of others. Parea is essential, even if it means endless negotiations, heated at times, to determine what to do or how to do it. Chatter interspersed with coffee and food is unceasing, the subjects varied. Difficult subjects are rarely avoided, in fact, Greeks are drawn to controversy like a moth to light.

It didn't take long, after our dip in the sea, to venture out into the bustling town center and its narrow streets. Greece is in many respects a nation of shopkeepers. Little shops and eateries abound especially when there are plenty of tourists to spend money in them. Tourism brings approximately twenty million tourists to Greece a year, most in the summer. For a country with a population of ten million, one can begin to contemplate the ramifications.  Tourism has been described as the "new colonialism," overtaking the local culture or way of life and superimposing a very different  society in its wake.  Who is to say whether all of the changes and disruption are worth it or not? Fifty years ago the inhabitants of many Greek islands barely eked out enough to subsist on. They died from easily treated maladies and the only hope their children had for a future was emigration. Now the money is flowing into these once remote islands. They are awash in cars and four wheelers, real estate prices are exorbitant, there is a taverna or souvenier shop on every corner. The nightlife in Hora is pulsating into the early morning hours. The tavernas and cafes are full, music blaring, tourists gladly parting with their Euros. The shops are arrayed with expensive clothing, artwork and jewelry.  There seems to be however, a disconnect between the average Greek's assessment of the economy, which has been squeezed by inflation, a strong Euro, and rising energy costs versus the obvious display of ostentatious wealth and free wheeling spending, fueled by credit cards.  For all the emphasis on material wealth and the fact that Greeks have bought into the understandable desire to enjoy a higher standard of living, I wonder whether life in Greece is truly making Greeks happier?

We walked down the narrow streets of Hora and began our climb to a restaurant at the foot of the Castle in a small plateia (square) overlooking the harbor. The plateia was full of tables packed with people speaking different languages obviously enjoying themselves and their meals. Looking on passively from his perch on an imposing column was a bust of "Kapetan Vangelis," the pseudonym for a young Greek Army Officer from Naxos who had fought and died in the Macedonian Struggle over a hundred years ago.  As we sat their trying to figure out what to order, I gazed up at him, wondering what he might think of the present state of his island, his country and the assembled crowd before him.  Naxos was the center of the Cyclades Island chain for many centuries. It is one of the more fertile areas of the Cyclades islands owing to its greater annual rainfall. Large cisterns gather and store the precious water for future use.  Driving through Naxos one can appreciate its many cultivated areas which include vineyards, terraced lush green fields and fruit orchards. Even the locals will proudly point out that the economy of Naxos is diversified and not dependent on tourism alone. Wind and solar power, both found in abundance in the Cyclades, have the potential for making this region self sufficient if  other obstacles can be overcome. Greek creativity at the private local level is inspiring. For centuries, Greeks got along and even did well without a strong intrusive central government.  The economic miracles wrought by those Greeks, willing to put their work ethic and imagination to good use is well known.  In my humble view, one of the greatest problems here is the inefficiency of the government. Often corrupt, it is saddled with an old boy network and a outmoded bureaucracy that is the biggest impediment to meaningful, much needed change in this country. Since laws are often unenforced or enforced selectively, Greeks spend most of their time trying to ignore them.  Greeks of all political stripes will complain bitterly about their government while simultaneously giving it more and more power over them by expecting it to fix everything on their behalf. It's all very confusing and self-defeating.

The next day we decided to take two consecutive day trips exploring the island. Armed with recommendations culled from the locals at the hotel, we set out to visit two very different beaches. Mikri Vigli is a bit of a drive from Hora but offers a beautiful place to swim with crystal clear water and plenty of sandy beach.  Appolonia Beach on the other hand is a small fishing village with a small beach surrounded with outdoor cafes and seafood tavernas. We took a detour off the beaten tract to visit the fortified Byzantine era monastery of Christos Fotodotis ("Christ the Light Giver").  Thanks to EU monies it is being restored as a historical site.  As we were returning to our hotel, we stopped in one of the many well kept villages in the hills overlooking the sea. We settled down at a table under the shade of a huge oak tree. Thano ordered some wonderful spoonfuls of fruit preserves that used to be part of the traditional hospitality offered in a Greek home, served along with glasses of cool water. Sitting there swirling the sweet taste in my mouth I was taken back to my childhood days when I watched my yiayia entertaining her friends from her native Politsani who had been transplanted to Maine. My eight year old cousin, Evridiki, would go from one chattering person to another, gently laying an embroidered napkin on each guest's lap and then handing them a small dish of delicious preserves made from cherries or orange peels. We tarried awhile there under the old oak tree, enjoying its shade and the warm breezes coming from the sea.

It seems the islands of Greece all have their own unique history. People were living on Naxos for three thousand years before the birth of Christ, however, the golden age of the island was the 7th and 6th centuries BC.   During that period Naxos was master of virtually all the Cyclades and developed its trade and its art, particularly sculpture. Examples can be encountered at the archeological museum in Hora. Interestingly, the building that houses the museum was once a Commercial school that the famous Greek author, Nikos Kazantzakis, attended. The interior is relatively unchanged and I took quite a fancy to strolling the halls in the footsteps of this great writer. Adjacent to the museum is an old Catholic monastery and church.  Naxos was a Venetian duchy for centuries and even when the Turks assumed control the Venetians were allowed to continue the administration of the island. There is also a Byzantine Museum which I found to be a disappointment although the adjoining Venetian Museum was well worth the time.   The old town of Naxos or hora stands at the heart of the massive Venetian castle also called Kastro that was built by Marco Sanudo, the first Duke of Naxos in the thirteenth century after he captured it in 1207. Of the seven towers that were originally built, only one remains as of today. One can also see remnants of ancient Venetian houses, schools and other magnificent works of architecture. One of these structures is The Venetian Museum also called the Domus Venetian Museum that is located at the Kastro’s north entry.The museum is actually an 800 year old Venetian house belonging to the DellaRocca family.  Walking into the house is like taking a walk back in time. The tour lasts for about forty minutes and is offered in both English and Greek. The forty minutes allows a guided tour of the entire house including the reception hall, bedrooms, dining room, nursery, gallery, library, chapel, study and balcony with a breathtaking view of the port of Naxos and the Portara. Once that is done, you are taken down to the vaults to view original paintings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs and jewelry which gives one a glimpse into life on Naxos in the 19th century. The history of the Greek inhabitants of Naxos, like that of Greeks everywhere, is a testament to their ability to survive and prosper under difficult circumstances. Invaders come and go. They have been swallowed up or left in a hurry and rather than assimilating the Greeks, the Greeks have assimilated them. Two things seem to be timeless in Greece: the Greek language and the Greek spirit. Although that spirit still lives in the nation's modern day progeny, it is seldom hardened lately by adversity or chastened by war and poverty.   

On the last night of our stay we parked our vehicles in the long line for the ferry and waited for its arrival. In the middle of the harbor I noticed a little chapel on a tiny island. In the old days, travelers returning to their island home, perhaps after years of absence, were greeted by the lonely little white-washed church.  I suspect that many, passed through its low doorway, bending down in humility in the act of entering the House of God. They lit a candle, bent low again to touch the floor and then kissed and crossed themselves in front of the icon of the child Jesus and his Holy Mother, giving thanks for their safe journey. Nowadays, we forget to give thanks. We have lost our sense of humility.  Life is more certain, we are in control or at least we think we are. 

Once aboard, I wandered up on deck for one last view of Naxos as it disappeared into the night. Another island in the Aegean, more memories to store away. What is it about these sunny, wind swept islands that makes you always want to come back?  Is it their timeless natural beauty, the sense of history under every rock and around every corner or is it the majestic combination of color, sky, sea and light?  It is all very alluring yet not as captivating as the sight of Ithaka and home in the hazy distance.

 

Greece off the Beaten Track / Part II

Greece off the Beaten Track / Part I

Greece is a small country. Fortunately for the rest of us, God packed an incredible amount of beauty into this small piece of his green earth. When I lived in Greece I was lucky enough to see it on a number of memorable occasions from the air in low flying aircraft and helicopters. Getting a bird's eye view of such majestic terrain gives one an enhanced sense of its beauty. If you want to understand Greeks and see the real Greece, you need to get off the beaten track and as far away from Athens, as possible. When I came across this documentary series I knew I had to share it with MGO readers. For those of you who have been to Greece, I hope you will discover new places you will want to visit. For those who have never been to Greece, I hope you will be motivated to experience what the rest of us who have been there, already have. Bon voyage.

PART II TO BE POSTED ON 5 APRIL.

Summer Travels in Greece

This last summer we decided to forego our usual side trip to the Aegean isles. Instead, my family and I joined a group of Greek friends who were taking a road trip to the area around Mount Olympus. We all stayed at a hotel on the coast, near a town called Leptocarya (approximately a three hour drive from Athens), where we enjoyed the seaside beach. Leoptocarya is rather touristy but we were well situated for day trips to some of the surrounding attractions. In this and future posts I'll try to describe some of those attractions. A short drive southward is a town at the foot of the mountain, called Neos (New) Panteleimonas, adjacent to the Byzantine castle of Platamonas. It is one of the finest and best preserved castles in Greece and guards the traditional trade route from Thessaly in central Greece into Macedonia towards the second largest Greek city of Thessaloniki. On a clear day you can see the penisula of Halkidiki in Northern Greece.  If you continue in the direction of Mt. Olympus for about 3 kilometers you will arrive at the scenic village of Palios (Old) Panteleimonas. It has  a lovely tree covered town square next to the Church of St. Panteleimon and a fountain from which you can drink the sparkling clear water coming down in mountain streams from the home of the ancient Greek Gods. Not only is the panoramic view breathtaking, the architecture and surrounding natural beauty is a cameraman's dream. We were there in August, enjoyed pleasant temperatures, a gentle offshore breeze and didn't have to fight any pushy crowds.

Kazantzakis on Greece

Nikos Kazantzakis on Greece:

"The further away one is from one's country, the more one thinks of it and loves it. When I am in Greece I see the pettiness, the intrigues, the idiocies, the inadequacies of the leaders and the misery of the people. But from afar one cannot distinguish the ugliness so clearly, and one has more freedom to create an image of the country worthy of true love. That's  why I work better and love Greece more when I am abroad. Far away from her I am better able to grasp her essence and her mission in the world, and thus my own humble mission. Something special happens to Greeks who live abroad. They become better. They take pride in their race, they feel that being Greeks they have the responsibility to be worthy of their ancestors. Their conviction that they are descended from Plato and Pericles may perhaps be utopian, it may be an act of autosuggestion going back thousands of years. But once this autosuggestion becomes faith it exercises a fertile influence on the Modern Greek soul. It was thanks to this utopia that the Greeks survived. After so many centuries of invasion, slaughter and famine they should have disappeared. But the utopia, which has become faith, does not let them die. Greece still survives, I think it still survives through a succession of miracles."

A Home Away From Home

I've been coming to the small Greek town of Loutsa for over twenty years. It is my home away from home.  My in-laws small cottage surrounded by fig trees, olive trees and two massive Pines is a modest affair.  I wouldn't recommend Loutsa as a destination for anyone visiting Greece for the first time,  there are too many other much more beautiful and unforgettable spots in Greece to do that. Nevertheless, this little spot on the Aegean coastline of the Attic peninsula is loaded with fond memories for myself and my family.  We have spent many summers here and my kids have grown up surrounded by family and friends.  Two of Anna's childhood friends, I'll call them Calliope and Dimitri,  now live here year round. They have become permanent fixtures in our lives along with other neighbors and relatives. 

For many Greek-Americans the bonds between Greece and themselves melted away long ago.  Perhaps their grandparents arrived in the Promised Land many years ago and they have lost touch. During the early days of the Greek Diaspora to America, when you left Greece, no matter how much you longed to return, it became harder as time passed. Many Greeks frustrated by the poverty and political instability of their homeland, tossed a rock behind them as the old Greek saying states and determined to start a new life.  With the passing of each generation the ties to Greece become more tenuous.  When Greek-Americans do return they are often strangers in the land of their forefathers. They are seldom able to readjust seamlessly if at all.  Often they have difficulty with the language, the mindset, even the way of life in the old country. They either see Greece as a wonderful adventure in a land where they are faced with a mixture of the new and the familiar or a nightmare, confirming in their minds why papou or yiayia left in the first place. Immigration to the US from Greece has slowed to a trickle. Thus, in Greek-American communities throughout the US centered around the local Orthodox  Church, things are changing.  These parishes now often include a mixture of other Orthodox ethnicities and American converts. There is no longer a new wave of Greek immigrants to reinvigorate the Greek orientation of these communities. 

All of us see Greece through our respective prism. Regardless of where we come from and how we end up in Greece, we see Greece through the prism of our own experiences and history. For me, my Greek neighbors, friends and relatives shape my personal thoughts about Greece. For example, Calliope and Dimitri are representative of the type of Greek family that I have come to love and admire. Perhaps they are a disappearing commodity, buffeted by the economic and social forces that are changing Greece and its people. Our two families have become quite close.  Dimitri is a self-made businessman who makes and sells  jewelry. Years ago he decided to move his family permanently to Loutsa to live in the home built by Calliope's father. A two story affair, the in-laws live on one floor and the Dimitri's family lives on the other. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Calliope's mother takes care of their two young daughters and this allows Calliope an opportunity to help her husband in their shop. Last year Calliope's father had a stroke and was bedridden for a few months during which time she assumed control of her father's care. In addition, Calliope tends a vegetable garden and a gaggle of chickens, rabbits and goats, a labor intensive activity, yet one that helps defray the ever increasing cost of food.  The family lives well, is comfortable, and has been able to weather the economic transition to the Euro with the accompanying rise in prices and decrease in disposable incomes.

Dimitri is, I think, one of an increasing number of Greeks who have moved to the outskirts of Athens into communities once inhabited only during the summer. It takes Dimitri 45 minutes of travel to get to his workplace.  Half of his commute is by car and the other half on the Metro, which takes him directly and quite efficiently into downtown Athens. A friend of his was appalled at Dimitri's move to Loutsa. "Why would anyone in his right mind want to live in a ghost town? A place where one is not even able to drink a cup of coffee at a cafeteria or go shopping?"  His friend,  on the other hand prefers living in a city choked by bumper to bumper traffic, incessant noise, air pollution and a steadily decreasing quality of life. A lifestyle he wouldn't give up for the dubious advantages of life outside the city, after all, it only takes him fifteen minutes to drive to work.  Unfortunately, he also has to spend another 30 minutes looking for a parking space. Go figure.

Loutsa is still semi-deserted in the winter since most of the people that own homes there only return to take up residence in the summer. As a result Loutsa resembles many of the isolated mountain villages in  rural Greece. I'm not sure how the central government apportions the tax revenues to localities however, I believe it is based on population. Small communities that do not have a significant population all year round suffer accordingly. The lack of basic services and more frustrating the lack of a community ethos creates all kinds of intractbale problems. Loutsa has become for me a closeup view of some of the problems that I think are common to other small communities outside of the concrete jungle of  Athens. It's always dangerous to make generalizations especially based on only cursory knowledge and periodic opportunities to observe and study, however, this community has become  a window of sorts into some of the underlying problems facing the Greek eparhia (countryside).

During the first half of the twentieth century Greece was basically an agrarian nation. It's people were scattered in villages throughout the country which is about the size of the state  of Alabama. As Greece became increasingly industrialized and as the available jobs and opportunities became centralized in the capital city,  Greece experienced a massive exodus away from the villages to the two main population centers, Athens and  Thessaloniki as well as to other countries. The countryside, which was based on farming and the many islands where fishing was a major livelihood lost a key commodity: young people and the labor they provided for these endeavors.

Once well populated and bustling villages were left in the hands of those either too old or just unable to leave. The central government's policies were basically oriented toward the main urban areas.  The rural areas, where government control was minimal were left very much to their own devices. As a result the remote countryside became a recruiting ground for the Communists who tapped into the dissatisfaction of  subsistence farmers while taking advantage of the government's low profile. Even today one can see that the rural countryside and the small villages suffer from a lack of government services, incompetent local government and a lack of funds. The standards of healthcare, roads, schools and other vital elements that determine the quality of life in any community have been sadly neglected.

Part of the reason for this neglect is that the central government has failed to decentralize power and to allow revenues to trickle down to be spent by the locals rather than some bureaucrat safely ensconced elsewhere.  The nanny state which is fed and nourished by its big brother in Brussels  has centralized decision-making to such a degree in the government ministries in Athens that local development plans for a town like Loutsa are drawn up far away.  The  all important "sxedio" or plan for Loutsa, in progress for the last twenty years, yet still a long way from fruition, is not a creation of Loutsa's residents.  It was created by people who have never lived in the community and never will. Walk through Loutsa today and you will find expensive luxury homes going up at a frenzied pace. Unfortunately, those homes are being built on streets that have been unpaved for decades and in a community which is starved for money and cannot deliver basic services.

Travel to any small village, even a good size town like Loutsa, in Greece and I doubt that you will see even a rudimentary dispensary or health clinic equipped with a relatively simple life saving device known as a portable defibrillator. Survival in emergency medicine is predicated on the type of care one receives in the first golden hour. For residents in rural Greece, the chances of getting the right care during that first critical hour are slim to non-existent.   Small communities in Greece, once the lifeblood of the country seldom have well paved roads, a volunteer fire department, decent sanitation services, adequate law enforcement, a library, well equipped schools and responsive local government with local control of funds. Even worse they lack the two most important key ingredients, young people and a future.

Perhaps my views about the neglect of the "eparchia" are overblown and less than accurate. I'm always willing to listen to contrary views. If we have learned anything from the recent catastrophe in Greece this summer, I believe it is that small communities represent a very important part of the country. They need to be revitalized. By so doing, perhaps Greece will find its soul.

Holocaust by Dean Kalimniou

"If the terrible fires that have blighted Greece recently have come as a consequence of the need for ritual cleansing, then the iniquities that brought them about must have been immense, for such cleansing is too much for anyone to bear. Thousands of hectares of forest and cultivated land have been transformed into a blazing inferno, thousands have lost their homes and face the prospect of a bleak winter without shelter and the heart-wrenching task of rebuilding their shattered lives. Moreover, some sixty-four people have lost their lives. Amid accusations that the arson that is said to have been deliberately committed was politically motivated, the attempts by opposition parties to capitalise upon the tragedy in order to score points from the government in the upcoming elections, the government’s ineptitude in responding quickly and effectively in order to prevent, manage and fight the outbreak of the fires, an enduring image remains: That of the hapless mother immolated by the merciless rage of the fire, surrounded by her four young children, also sacrificed to its pitiless fury.

It is difficult to see how this is not a holocaust in its original sense - defenceless victims sacrificed on the altar of a society so dislocated, so ill-fitting and dissociated from itself, that its members turn on it and seek to totally destroy it. There are some 61 people that have been arrested on suspicion of having deliberately lit the fires that have caused so much devastation and misery. Though it remains to be seen how the criminals will be sorted from the scapegoats, it is interesting that in true struthocamilic fashion, the Greek people hesitate to take the opportunity to take a close look at themselves and their society and bravely identify the social dysfunction that is the catalyst for the commission of such heinous crimes of destruction against themselves."

Read the whole thing here.

Greek Women Drivers

One of my favorite stories about driving in Greece is a tale about a Greek taxi driver being cut off by a well to do Athenian matron driving a BMW sports car. The taxi driver incensed by this unprovoked assault on his manhood immediately speeds up and pulls up beside the shiny sports car waiting at a light. He sticks his head out and yells "Hey Kiria (Mrs.) Katina,"  a sobriquet reserved for any Greek female, regardless of driving expertise, with the temerity to drive a car in what should be a man's world. "Why don't you go home and wash some dishes? The lady, late for an important appointment in Kolonaki, slides her Gucci sunglasses slightly down her nose, glares over the rims, and without hesitation replies: "Because I have an (expletive deleted) husband like you who washes them for me" just as the light turns green and she sails away.  Now I don't know if that every really happened, but it certainly sounded something like a few Greek ladies I know would say, including my wife.

Despite my reluctance to rock my boat or upset the Greek women in my life, I have to confess:  in a country known for incredibly bad drivers, Greek women drivers really excel at bad driving.  Some are veritable virtuosos.  This hypothesis is based only on my own personal anecdotal evidence.  Nevertheless, I would venture to say that there may be more than a few courageous readers out there, who having driven in Hellas, might timidly agree.  I am sure by this point, folks are rushing to type all manner of  scathing comments, insulting not only my intelligence and ancestry but my very sanity. Accept my humble apologies, however,  before you press the send button, stop, think again and watch these videos. 

Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, the video camera does not lie (even though we of the male species have been known to do so, in extremis only, of course).

Exploring Greece

Just returned home to Loutsa after a five day trip to the Mount Olympus area. It was good to get away from the debilitating high temperatures we experienced in the week prior and we even experienced a torrential downpour which I found not only a refreshing change from the arid, hot weather but also opportune, given the threat of fire always looming over the Greek countryside.  Having covered a good bit of Greece in the last two weeks I can assure everyone that Greece is not ablaze as often depicted in the nightly news here. TV journalists can always be relied on to give a less than accurate if not sensational view of current events.  During my travels I saw one small blaze that was well under control. A helicopter was dropping water on the embers and we passed quite a few firefighters and firefighting equipment on the move. I am not downplaying the problem of forest fires in Greece nor the catastrophic fire that destroyed a significant part of the Parnitha forest. The environmental impact is huge and Greeks have a long way to go before they become good stewards of the truly beautiful country they own, if ever. Forest fires however, do serve a purpose and occassionally (not always)  these fires can be allowed to burn. It is nature's way of renewing the forest and cleaning out all the accumulated debris.  The issue is complex and as is often the case in Greece, it is politiciized, to the detriment of all.  Neither major political party has been able to make an impact on this problem which has been rearing its ugly head every summer for decades.  When I lived in Greece, forest fires used to be blamed on the Turks, now the focus has shifted to others.  I rather think it is often carelessness, someone throwing away a lit cigarette, although there are certainly good reasons for arson such as demand for prime real estate. Since laws have been passed to prevent the destruction of forest land, there are some more than happy to light a match so they can build on that land. Interestingly, Prime Minister Karamanlis asked and received assistance from the Russians after appealing to President Putin. It came with a hefty price tag.  More on that later. In the end it is the same old story. Greeks need to learn the importance on being self-reliant and not being dependent on others.

If you want to discover Greece, it is imperative that you spend as little time as possible in its two major urban areas, Athens and Thessaloniki. The real Greece, the Greece everyone needs to see, is only a few hours drive in any direction. I was suitably impressed with the small towns I visited. They are obvioulsy less crowded, clean, the air is breathable, the traffic manageable and they are teeming with shops and a vibrant nightlife. They're people are also friendlier and less likely to take out their frustrations on whoever crosses their path. Why anyone wants to live in Athens, where close to 50% of the Greek population is crammed into apartment block after apartment block and where the cacophony and pollution created by the constant stream of traffic is neverending, I cannot understand.  As far as I can tell the growth of suburbs around the periphery of the capital is progressing slowly.  For some reason Athenians can't imagine themselves living elsewhere.  For example a good friend lives in Loutsa with his family year round.  This small seaside town on the eastern coast of the Attic peninsula has a downside but from my viewpoint and that of my friend living there year round is preferable to living in Athens.  It takes my friend 45 minutes to commute to his workplace in downtown Athens.  Half of that is by car the other half by train.  A coworker of his refuses to even think about moving out of Athens. His commute time is fifteen minutes. Seems obvious. Unfortunately, you also have to factor in the half hour or more it takes to find a parking space. Who's better off? Go figure.

My vacation is just about over. I'll be spending the remaining days seeing friends and saying good bye to realtives.  When I return I will be writing about my travels and impressions.  I have lots of photos to share. I've also got some catching up to do in order to complete some promised posts. 

Update

Returned from an unforgetable trip to Northern Epirus via the city of Ioannina, where I spent two days visiting the mountain villages where my parents were born. I am still trying to collect my thoughts and put them to paper. The only way I can describe the experience is that it was incredibly moving especially coming on the heels of my father's recent death. In many ways it brought me closer to him and to my grandparents. Yesterday we made the pilgrimage to the island of Aegina and the women's Monastery founded by the great 20th century Saint named Nektarios.  We also visited the impressive Cathedral of St Nektarios and paid our respects to his relics.  Both of these subjects require separate posts to do them justice.  Tomorrow we leave with friends for the area around Mount Olympus, the home of the Gods. The Hotel we are staying promises access to the Internet and I am hoping to steal enough time to write a few lines, although I can now see that the bulk of the posts about this trip and the accompanying photos will only become available to my readers  after I return home.  Hope everyone is well. Best wishes.  Stavros

Living the Greek Reality

Arrived in Athens on Sunday, with my younger son, Chris.  We were met by the a cloudless sky and the warm embrace of family and friends.  The daytime temperatures are hovering over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It's hot but dry;  not unlike the weather in the US southwest. Needless to say this kind of heat is especially hard on a boy from Maine, yet I continue to adapt and overcome with frequent dips in the Aegean. For those of us who live in the Diaspora and do not have to endure the daily struggles engendered by the reality of life in Greece, returning to Greece is a time of family reunions, happy times and relaxation. Only occasionally does the "Greek Reality" intervene on our idyllic visions of Greek life.

My wife, Anna, arrived a couple of weeks before Chris and I so she could see her Mother through the ordeal of gallbladder surgery.  Gallbladder surgery is a fairly common surgical procedure, however in her case, there were complications which resulted in a second surgery only a few days after the first. My mother-in-law left the hospital after her initial surgery only to return a day later because of persistent vomiting and abdominal pain. She was diagnosed with a blockage in her small intestine and the young surgeon informed her that she would require a rather large incision to deal with the problem. My 75 year old mother in law who grew up in the crucible of the war years of the 1940s,  looked at him very seriously and lamented that she would be unable to wear the bikini she had purchased for the summer. He looked at her dumbfounded, whereupon she smiled and broke the tension by assuring him that the size of the incision was irrelevant as long as she could feel better and return to her home to cook for her son-in-law and grandson. True grit.

As often happens in Greece, unless you can afford premium care in an expensive private hospital, a relative who can stay at your bedside and ensure basic care is essential. That role fell to Anna. She was the stand in for a system that is either overwhelmed or inefficient. Suffice it to say that my mother-in law and Anna both survived and are glad to be home.  I claim no expertise about the status of health care in Greece nor can I wax eloquent about what they need to do to improve things. The record of socialized medicine has been a mixed one and most Europeans would be aghast at what they believe is the far worse system in that we have in the US which is partially based on market forces. Basically you get what you pay for.  The quality of health care in Greece as elsewhere can be dictated in part by the ability to pay.  I would venture to say that there are some world class facilities and doctors in Greece. Then again, the phenomenon of Greeks going elsewhere to seek medical care is not uncommon. That is if they can afford it. Based on my limited observations I would say that Greece has made huge strides yet still suffers from a poorly developed system of emergency medical services, corruption, as evidenced by the use use of bribes known as " fakelakia" or little envelopes containing cash,  and poorly staffed or equipped national medical service facilities especially in the remote areas such as the Greek islands.

The trouble with socialized medicine, as I see it,  is that it invariably gets mired in the self-replicating bureaucracy that affects all government enterprises. It is disease oriented rather than prevention oriented. There are no free rides in such a system, someone has to pay. To the simple minded, free healthcrae sounds great. I want the best care and I don't want to pay a dime. What you often get is rationed care and you pay through the nose.

Sorry I got sidetracked, this post was not supposed to be about health care.  It was supposed to be about returning to Greece after a one year absence. I must admit that I always look forward to the heroe's welcome that awaits me when I return. The new airport is only a stone's throw from my in-laws small vacation cottage in the seaside town of Loutsa. Loutsa is basically a working man's getaway outside of Athens. Someplace where families of limited means could plant some fruit trees and escape the summer heat. My in-laws came here thirty years ago and the small cottage where they spend their summers and the surrounding neighborhood hold countless fond memories of their children growing up and the good times. The neighbors haven't changed much. Still the same people. A few have died, the kids are grown up now and raising kids of their own. The rhythms of neighborhood life continue as they have in the past, to a large extent. Greece is not a mobile society. When you plant roots, they're permanent. Loutsa is changing, just like the rest of Greece, of course, some folks have moved here permanently year round. Others, of considerable means, are buying land and building truly impressive costly structures that tower over some of their poorer neighbors.

Within a few hours of our arrival in Greece we were taking a dip at our favorite swimming spot near the rocky shoreline. The water was crystal clear and you could easily see the bottom and the cool Aegean was not only refreshing but reinvigorating.  We were sitting down to a huge lunch surrounded by family and friends laughing and trying to catch up on all the neighborhood gossip. Chris was soon bouncing from house to house with his friends and we are settling into our vacation routine here. 

More later. Thank God for Internet Cafes.

The Prodigal Son Returns

Dear Readers,

I will be in Greece for the next three weeks.  Hopefully,  I will be able to find an Internet Cafe where I will be able to punch out a few posts and give you my impressions.  Looking forward to spending time with family and friends as well as making a  few side trips here and there. I am taking a digital camera with me so I can include a few photos of my travels. Hope everyone is having a good summer.

Semper fi,   Stavros

Nea Smyrni and Panionios

Back when I was a lonely Amerikanaki, newly arrived in the Patrida, the first relative that came out to meet me was a second cousin named Haralambos, known affectionately as Harilaki.  My Aunt Eleni, his mother, adopted me as one of her own and I became a frequent fixture at their home where the extended family lived. Sunday dinner at Thia Eleni's was the highlight of my week surrounded by my boisterous relatives.  The family had established itself in a neighborhood that was known as Nea Smyrni or New Smyrna. My Uncle bought some land and moved there from Politsani before the war. Many of the residents were refugees from Asia Minor.  Nea Smyrni became a rather fashionable, affluent area of Athens and I spent many pleasant  summer nights sipping frappes in the plateia there with my cousin and his friends. Harilaki and I became close and we spent many good times together. Now and then he would straighten me out about the nuances of life in Greece and sometimes find it necessary to administer gentle rebukes aimed at my incompetent "friends" in the  American State Department. In turn,  I'd assure him I would call the Ambassador the next day, we would laugh and then plan our next trip to the soccer stadium situated in the middle of Nea Smyrni, to watch his favorite team, PANIONIOS.  Harilaki was crazy about his team. I have never seen anyone so enamored by an athletic team. No matter how awful his team performed Harilaki never seemed to lose heart and woe to him who dared offer an offending word about the team. His passion and enthusiasm were infectious.  Fact is, I developed a soft spot for this team and their Athenian neighborhood. I still wear the blue and red scarf my Aunt knitted me and remember fondly the days when Harilaki and I roared our approval when our team's ball sailed past the defending goalie: PANIONARA!!!

XENITIA

It's cold here in Maine today with night-time temperatures below zero. The ground is frozen and covered in a crust of hard snow. To make matters worse, the wind is blowing.  Raw and merciless, it cuts  deep, right through your very soul. The sun peaks out occasionally just to tease us and remind us playfully, that it's still there. I would much rather be on an Aegean island called Nisyros. I wish the sun could warm these old bones and bathe me in the pure Greek light. I wish I could look up and see the blue, cloudless sky and watch the sun set in the wine colored sea. I wish I was faraway from cell phones, computers, televisions, the stock market, wars and all the useless accoutrements of modern life. I wish I could sit in the shade of a grape arbor, sip the nectar of the Gods and listen to little children play while smelling the aroma of fresh fish frying in olive oil. I wish I could feel the gentle sea breeze on my face and  hear the church bells in the distance. I wish could listen to cicadas  at dusk and revel again in the sounds of home.

The Greek Spirit II

The Greek Spirit

A Greek Photo Album

Photos by:

Kostas Balafas

Constantine Manos

Periklis Alkidis and Stelios Efstathopoulos.

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The Perils of Abandoning Our Orthodox Christian Faith

This post first appeared on Phylax Blog:

Recently I wrote a post on the importance of evangelizing young people in their Orthodox faith. Shortly thereafter I read in Kathimerini that Greek Orthodox priests will not be able to talk to or confess school children in the public schools of Greece. The shocking part is that the effort to ban this practice was led by parents and teachers. Not only am I saddened by this turn of events, I fear for the future of Orthodoxy in Greece and what it means for national survival.

Despite growing up in a multicultural society that emphasizes the separation of Church and State I was raised by my parents to love our Orthodox faith. This faith sustained generations of Greeks in captivity and I was always quite proud to know that although I cannot trace my ancestors back more than a few generations, they never gave up their Orthodox faith. Through their efforts and their tenacity, they gave me the gift of Orthodox Christianity and God willing I will be able to pass it on to my children and grandchildren.

There is an ongoing effort to de-Christianize the West and to secularize our societies. It is not strictly a Greek problem. It is insidious and incremental. It starts with little things like removing a Cross from public land, prohibiting any type of prayer in schools, prohibiting children from saying Merry Christmas, or banning children from wearing a Crucifix. While prohibitions against Christian worship abound, recognition and preferential treatment is accorded to other religions. In my own home state of Maine, in the US, Somali immigrant children are provided a room where they can pray during the school day while Christian children are prohibited from doing so. Being a Christian has never been easy.

In Greece where a vast majority of people consider themselves Greek Orthodox, there is a gradual chipping away of the power of the Church. There is and always has been a strong under-current of anti-clerical feeling in modern Greece and it has been heightened by the recent Church scandals. EU regulations have in turn done much to secularize a government that was traditionally very connected to the Orthodox Church. It is only recently that I have come to the realization that many Greeks living in Greece are estranged from their Orthodox faith. As this process speeds up it cannot help but impact the country's moral foundation. As I have argued before, as we Greeks turn away from our Orthodox faith, it becomes easier to rationalize self-destructive behavior. It becomes OK to abort a baby, after all it is not a real person. It becomes OK to be narcissistic, consumed with oneself, and ignore the needs of others. It is OK to lie, cheat, steal and yes, even murder. These aren't new behaviors, they have been around since Adam and Eve. What is new is that increasingly, there is nothing to make us think twice about committing unthinkable acts. As someone who deals with children on a daily basis in my practice I hear about some of the serious and intense problems that they face in their daily lives. Kids need someone to talk to and qualified priests, teachers and medical practitioners often fill that role and make a real difference in the lives of children.

One of my favorite Greek Saints, Saint Kosmas, was an itinerant preacher, who traveled throughout Greece, Albania and parts of Serbia, during the Turkokratia (Ottoman Occupation). He did a great deal to help poor, illiterate peasants turn back the tide of conversions that was sweeping the Balkans in the 18th century. There were many incentives for converting to Islam and it was the easy and profitable thing to do. St. Kosmas was also a great believer in education as well as an outspoken proponent of social justice and a bold preacher for Jesus Christ. They hanged him, of course. Perhaps he could have avoided that fate in modern Greece; one thing is for sure, he wouldn't be allowed in any Greek school.

Technorati : Greece, Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christianity, Saint Kosmas, Secularism

Confronting Islam

 

The recent firestorm ignited in the Muslim world by a homily given by Pope Benedict has once again provided all of us who don't insist on closing our eyes and averting our gaze an example of Muslim fanaticism. Whether it is shooting a sixty year old nun who has devoted her life to helping the poor in the back or the firebombing of Greek Orthodox Churches in the West Bank, it paints a less than positive picture of the adherents of the "religion of peace" that our leaders often remind us of. Every religion has it's share of psychopaths, unfortunately "righteous" Muslims have been conspicuously silent in the face of violence and intimidation by their co-religionists. Why the deafening silence?

The guy who really started this controversy was one Manuel II Palaiologos, a Byzantine Emperor, who spent a good deal of his time as Emperor, traveling the capitals of Western Christendom, hat in hand, asking for aid to keep the Islamic hordes from engulfing his entire kingdom. His efforts failed and he was forced to sign a humiliating treaty with the Ottoman Sultan that gave the Empire only a brief respite. He died in 1425 and Constantinople fell in 1453. During the 15th century, front line Orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia and the shrinking Byzantine Empire were confronted by surging Ottomans armies, the West refused to help unless the Orthodox converted to Roman Catholicism. As a result, the Orthodox had to live under Ottoman oppression for hundreds of years and the Ottomans reached Vienna before they were finally stopped. Today, Christians living on the front lines in places like Kosovo, Cyprus, Chechnya, the West Bank, Darfur and elsewhere deserve the support of Western nations. Instead of trying to make countries like Greece, Serbia and Russia, carbon copies of themselves, Americans and Europeans would do well to wake up to the fact that these countries have been fighting Islamic fascism for centuries. Perhaps it has been so long since the West has had to defend Christianity that we have forgotten how.

I think it is instructive that while others are running away from  Pope Benedict as fast as they can in the present crisis,  His Beatitude, Archbishop Christodoulos, the prelate of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece joined the Pope in condemning radical Islam. He said: "Many Christians on the continent of Africa suffer from fanatic Islamists. The example of Roman Catholic monks who were slaughtered last year because they wore the Cross and believed in our crucified Lord is still recent." In his sermon at the church of St Sophia last Sunday, Archbishop Christodoulos launched a verbal attack against the government. Referring to the objections raised by judicial officials over blessing ceremonies at the Council of State, he described their arguments as ludicrous and incapable of being criticized. As for the new history books distributed in schools, he pointed out that they make no reference to the role of the church in the Greek Revolution of 1821 and wondered whether history will be rewritten. "Modernization has to take place elsewhere so as to serve the people and get rid of bureaucracy," said Archbishop Christodoulos. Upon concluding, the Archbishop described his sermon as a form of wild protest, saying that the people have to demand from those holding their future in their hands to be more careful and traditional.

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Christodoulos are speaking out against the rising threat of Radical Islam and the creeping rot of secularization of Western societies that only makes us more vulnerable. The 14th-century Byzantine Saint, Gregory Palamas, once said to his Turkish captors: "It is true that Muhammad started from the east and came to the west, as the sun travels from east to west. Nevertheless he came with war, knives, pillaging, forced enslavement, murders, and acts that are not from the good God but instigated by the chief man slayer, the devil." This perspective is in sharp contrast to the deeply embedded Western perspective that all religions are in their fundamentals the same, evidence to the contrary is simply wished out of existence. The late Ayatollah Khomeini preached that "...Muslims have no alternative...to armed holy war against profane governments,...the conquest of all non-Muslim territories...It will be the duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power from one end of the earth to the other..." Maybe we need to take him and his followers at their word.

 

    Technorati : Archbishop Christodoulos, Bulgaria, Byzantine Empire, Chehnya, Constantinople, Darfur, Greece, Manuel Palaiologos, Orthodoxy Christianity, Ottoman Empire, Pope Benedict, Saint Gregory Palamas, Serbia

Selections of Modern Greek Poetry

THERMOPYLAE

Honor to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do
but showing pity also, and compassion;
generous when they are rich, and when they are poor,
still generous in small ways,
still helping as much as they can;
always speaking the truth,
yet without hating those who lie.

And even more honor is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that in the end Ephialtis will make his appearance,
that the Medes will break through after all.


Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)

               "DRINKING THE SUN OF CORINTH..."
 

    
Drinking the sun of Corinth
Reading the marble ruins
Striding across vineyards and seas
Sighting along the harpoon
A votive fish that slips away
I found the leaves that the sun's psalm memorizes
The living land that passion joys in opening.
  
I drink water, cut fruit,
Thrust my hand into the wind's foliage
The lemon trees water the summer pollen
The green birds tear my dreams
I leave with a glance
A wide glance in which the world is recreated
Beautiful from the beginning to the dimensions 
of the heart! 

                 Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) 

                         13-12-43  

 Remember me telling you: when the boats whistle don't be 
 in the port. 
 But the day that was leaving was ours and we didn't want
 to ever let it go 
 A bitter handkerchief will greet the tedium of return. 
 It really was raining a lot and the streets were deserted 
 With a delicate, vaguely autumnal flavor 
 Closed windows and people so forgotten 
 Why did they all leave us? Why did they all leave us? 
 I was clasping your hands 
 And there was nothing strange in my cry. 
   
 . . . One day we'll leave noiselessly and we'll roam 
 Through roaring towns and over desolate seas 
 With but one desire burning on our lips 
 It is love that we sought and they denied it to us 
 You forgot about our tears, our joys and our memories 
 Greeting while sails rippling in the wind 
 And maybe there's nothing else left for us to remember. 
  
 The anguished Why heaves up in my soul 
 I suck in the air of loneliness and desertion 
 I knock on the walls of my damp prison and I don't expect
 an answer         
 No one will ever touch the extent of my affection and 
 sadness. 
  
 And you're waiting for a letter which doesn't come 
 A far-off voice revolves in your memory and fades away 
 While a mirror gloomily measures your face 
 Our lost ignorance, our lost wings. 
 

                      Manolis Anagnostakis  (1925- ) 

                        Our Sun 

This sun was mine and yours; we shared it. 
Who's suffering behind the golden silk, who's dying?       
A woman beating her dry breasts cried out; `Cowards, 
they've taken my children and torn them to shreds, you've 
killed them gazing at the fire-flies at dusk with a
strange look,lost in blind thought.' 
The blood was drying on a hand that a tree made green, 
a warrior was asleep clutching the lance that cast light 
against his side. 
It was ours, this sun, we saw nothing behind the gold 
embroidery then the messengers came, dirty and breathless, 
stuttering unintelligible words 
twenty days and nights on the barren earth with thorns only 
twenty days and nights feeling the bellies of the horses 
bleering and not a moment's break to drink rain-water. 
You told them to rest first and then to speak, the light had 
dazzled you. 
They died saying `We don't have time', touching some rays 
of the sun.
You'd forgotten that no one rests. 
  
 A woman howled 'Cowards' like a dog in the night. 
 Once she would have been beautiful like you with the wet 
 mouth, veins alive beneath the skin,with love. 
  
 This sun is ours; you kept all of it, you wouldn't 
 follow me.      
 And it was then I found about those things behind the 
 gold and the silk: 
 we don't have time. The messengers were right. 

                    George Seferis (1900-1971) 

                  The Orange Trees of Sparta 

 The orange trees of Sparta, snow, flowers of love 

 sprang into whiteness at your words, 

 bending down their branches, 

 I hugged them to my small breast and went to my mother. 

 She was sitting under the moon worrying about me, 

 she was sitting under the moon and scolded me: 

 Yesterday I washed you, yesterday I changed you, 

 where did you run off to- 

 who filled you clothes with tears and 

 bitter orange blossoms. 

                Nikephoros Vrettakos (1912-1991) 

    Technorati : Constantine Cavafy, George Seferis, Greece, Greek Poetry, Manolis Anagnostakis, Nikephoros Vrettakos, Odysseus Elytis

Three Americans in Glyfada

Blogging provides many opportunities to exchange ideas and opinions with complete strangers whose paths you would never otherwise cross.  You can't help building a picture of what the person on the other end might be like.  I'm not sure if we project a different personality on-line or if we can't help but come across like the people we really are. Some people love the freedom that their anonymity provides them on-line and will often say things that they would probably never say in person.

In my short time blogging I have developed a circle of  acquaintances both here and at Phylax whose company I thoroughly enjoy. Granted we are constantly getting into terrible arguments over every conceivable issue, yet it's all lots of fun, occasionally frustrating and ultimately enlightening. One of the bloggers I met on-line is an American expatriate living in Greece.  He goes by the pseudonym, Scruffy American.  Scruffy is married to what my mom would describe as a "nice Greek girl"  and he has a little daughter who is obviously the apple of her daddy's eye.  I am always very careful to monitor what my kids do on-line and have laid down ground rules about talking to strangers. When I told my 17 year old son that I was going to Glyfada, an Athens suburb,  to meet some blogger friends, he rolled his eyes and said:  Dad,  are you sure these guy's are not serial killers?

Not only had I arranged to meet Scruffy, but also a retired Air Force Colonel who had less than nice things to say about my blog, not that very long ago. Well it turns out that we hit it off right off the bat. After all, we had much in common, we are all married to wonderful, very smart attractive Greek women (my wife told me to say this). When Americans get together in Greece where else but Dunkin Donuts. As my friend Demonax said: "Only an American like you would go to Greece and drink coffee at Dunkin Donuts."

The Colonel is an interesting character, born and raised in Alabama, the son of Greek immigrant parents he has lived in Greece for over thirty years. As a matter of fact he became a Greek citizen. I've never seen one guy glad handing so many people. There is no doubt that he could easily run for mayor. The good Colonel is an outspoken Democrat and he rarely minces his words. Back in the old days, there was a sizable US military presence in Greece. Glyfada, which was adjacent to the old US Air Force Base at Hellenikon was crawling with Americans and their dependents.  It was always a pretty fashionable suburb; now it seems to be growing even more fashionable and more affluent. Sitting outside we watched a parade of well dressed Athenian women moving methodically from one trendy shop to another, shopping like there was no tomorrow. If Glyfada is any barometer of  the Greek economy, business is good.

Scruffy has lived in Greece for twelve years and his Greek is quite good. This Californian sticks out like a sore thumb and is often mistaken for a Pole. When he shifts into his hyper-drive Greek people are taken aback, to say the least. As a former blogger I enjoyed his insights into blogging, living in Greece and surviving in Athens. He was also gracious enough to drive me up to Goudi in order to see the statue dedicated to the Greek Americans who served in Greece with the OSS during World War II.  It is tucked away in a remote area and has yet to be defaced or blown up, unlike the Truman Statue. We drove by the old US base, which looks unchanged and is beginning to fall apart and decay. It will be a nice piece of real estate when someone finally does something with it.

We parted company to go our separate ways,  promised to stay in touch and I traveled back to Loutsa to tell everybody about my adventure in Glyfada. Take care, guys. Semper Fi

Excursion to Kea, Part II

The ferry for Tzia leaves the port of Lavrio, located on the eastern coast of the Attic peninsula. Getting there is rather easy if you take the new highway. It makes getting around the Athens area so much easier. I say thank God for the Olympics. This year the windy weather or "meltemia" which usually arrives in August reared its ugly head in July. Most Greeks complain about it, as far as I was concerned it was a godsend. When you've lived in Maine, it is difficult to adjust to the dry heat in Greece. Greeks on the other hand, have a phobia of the "revma" or draft. They are convinced that they will all catch their death of cold from one. Even a nice warm breeze is a potential menace. The nice thing about the port of Lavrio is that it is much less crowded and busy than the other major port of embarkation for island hopping tourists, Piraeus. Ferries leaving from Lavrio are also less likely to be late unless the weather is inclement. The meltemia whipped up the seas between Lavrio and Tzia, so our voyage was very much a roller coaster ride, so much so that I spent most of it dealing with my wife and younger son as they vomited while hanging over the railing of the ferry. The ferry was filled to capacity with more yiayias then I had ever seen congregating in one location. A veritable yiayia convention, in all shapes and sizes. They were totally oblivious to the high seas and chattered away throughout the trip catching up on the latest gossip about this or that person. When we arrived thankfully in Tzia, the ferry disgorged more buses than I thought it could possibly hold. The horde of yiayias moved as quickly as if the signal had been given to abandon ship. One thing you learn in Greece is never to get in front of a stampeding herd of yiayias, unless of course you have been driven stark raving mad by their incessant caterwauling. Suffice it to say that thanks to my brother-in-law's quick action we were in the car and on our way on our sightseeing tour of Tzia. The first thing that strikes you about Tzia are the mountains that dominate the island. Interspersed are small, picturesque villages, many on the coast. The roads are narrow and tortuous but well maintained. If you stray off the beaten track prepare to run into a dirt road and a bumpy, dusty ride. We soon decided that our day trip to Tzia would become an overnighter, if we could find suitable accommodations. Their are no large hotels on the island (in reality a big plus) and as we inquired in place after place we realized that it would be difficult to find a place to stay. Rather than waste more time we headed for our first destination, a small remote church high up in the mountains overlooking the rocky coast. We began to wind our way around the mountain roads and I have to admit I said more than one prayer as I stared wide-eyed into the abyss below. Occasionally I would be distracted from the story of my life flashing before my eyes as we took in the expansive views of the island. We finally arrived at the monastery known as Panagia Kastriani ("Madonna of the Castle") just in time to see the buses unloading what seemed like hundreds of yiayias. Our friends from the ferry were still with us. We had arrived just in time to attend a Paraklisis service. During this service celebrants give thanks for the blessings of life. The blessing of five loaves of bread known as "Artoklasia" along with wheat, oil and wine, the staples of life, is done in remembrance of Christ feeding the multitudes. I am not sure how to describe the feelings I had as I stood with my family in the middle of these women whose faith in God had brought them to this little far off corner of the island. As they raised their voices in unison, I had no doubt that their prayers would rise up to God, along with the sweet smelling incense that permeated the entire church. The church was built on the same site that a buried icon depicting the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was discovered in 1700. As the story goes, some shepherds tending their flocks noticed a light on the rocky peninsula where the church is located. When they investigated further they uncovered the buried icon which now resides in the original church. This church is underneath a larger, more recently built church. The icon is adorned with hundreds of small silver or gold plates depicting arms, legs, hearts or persons, sometimes even the Greek word for thank you, "evharisto." These are votive offerings known as "tama." In Greece, when prayers are answered, people express their thanks by making such an offering. This custom is very old and has its origin in ancient times. As the service concluded and the celebrants began to re-board their buses, we found out that there were rooms available for pilgrims and that we were welcome to stay. The priest who lives there showed us around and told us about the history of the place. There is also a small communal dining area. The monastery's courtyard is perfumed by the scent of basil growing in large cans. We ended up staying in two clean, simple rooms with hot and cold running water, bathrooms and a shower as well as a delightful balcony overlooking one of the most beautiful views of the sea I have seen. The Panagia had blessed us and I like to think had brought us to this church for a purpose. There was a small library that we immediately began to explore with a treasure trove of books. Thano and I enjoyed it so much we spent time cleaning and dusting the library to return it to its former luster. The serenity I experienced in this place made me think twice about returning to the hectic, foreboding world I left behind. At dusk I sat alone on the wall behind the church and looked over the extension of land that juts out toward the sea with waves crashing on its rocks and the goats and sheep feeding on it sparse vegetation. It looks like the bow of a ship plowing through the sea. After making an offering we left the next day to visit Ioulida, the island's largest town. The locals call it Hora. It is situated on a mountain with a view of the sea below. As you approach you will notice the remains of the ancient fortifications and wall. The town is crisscrossed by narrow streets with tidy shops and tavernas. You really need a few days to explore the town properly. There is even a small archaeological museum. The landscape in Tzia is truly stunning, wild, virgin and sculpted by deep ravines. As you drive past Ioulida you will see a vast forest of oak trees, the largest and most impressive in the entire chain of the Cycladic islands. Tzia has a number of quiet, sec;uded, sandy beaches and as far as I could tell, they are often almost completely empty. We visited two: Ksila and Pisses. We had Ksila all to ourselves. Pisses on the other hand is inhabited and had a nice rustic looking wooden taverna with a view of the beach.  If you don't like jostling crowds you will adore Tzia. Tzia is mainly frequented by Athenians and has yet to be discovered by international tourists. Many middle class Greeks are building beautiful villas on the eastern and northern coast of Tzia, and they all have the obligatory view of the surrounding sea. Some even have swimming pools. This frenzy of building has attracted many Albanian stone masons who are skilled in the use of the abundant stone in the area. The homes being built are somewhat reminiscent of the ones I saw in Epirus in northeastern Greece and the Pelion region, above the city of Volos, in central Greece. After gorging on a scrumptious made to order lunch consisting of a family size omelet made from Kaseri cheese, ham, green peppers and accompanied by plenty of fresh crusty bread, we drove back to Korissia, the port of Tzia to catch the boat back. This time I made sure Anna and Chris took some Dramamine. It worked like a charm. As we sat in one of the local seaside cafes sipping Frappes (cold frothy Nescafe coffee) we were entertained by a rather funny but telling argument between two Greeks truck drivers. These guys went at it for a while, yelling and flailing their arms about some nonsensical problem. Eventually exhausted, they each retired to their respective corners, took a short break and decided to return for more of the same. They never laid a glove on each other. Greeks are rarely violent people, unless of course politics is involved. It was all quite fun to watch. During the return trip we got a closeup view of Makronissos, the infamous prison island that was the home of many political prisoners during the civil war and the reign of the military junta. It is a foreboding, empty silent place full of the ghosts of the past. As we sailed past it I couldn't help but think about the deep scars history has inflicted on the Greek psyche. As we neared home we all agreed that Tzia is a special place for us. After touring a good part of the island we soon realized that a true appreciation of this island's extensive attributes would require weeks, not days. Maybe next time, God willing. Come to think of it, maybe it is not a good idea telling all of you about Tzia, after all, it has been a well kept secret for a long time.

    Technorati : Albanians, Assumption of the Virgin, Attic Peninsula, DramamineFrappe, Epirus, Greece, Greeks, Ioulida, Kaseri cheese, Kea, Korissia, KsilaMakronissos, Lavrio, Olympics, Panagia, Panagia Kastriani, Pelion, Pisses, Yiayia

An Excursion to Kea, Part I

My wife's yiayia, Asimina, grew up on the island of Kea, Greeks call it Tzia. Most of her relatives from Tzia have either died or moved away, so that our connection with the island is tenuous except for the small chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas that Asimina built. Tzia is covered with these little churches, many built on remote hilltops or overlooking the sea. Asimina scrimped, saved and collected the money to build this simple testament to her devout faith in a loving God. It is a whitewashed building with a small bronze bell. It was built near a stream that runs into a green valley from the barren mountains surrounding it. We usually spend some time there cleaning, censing, filling and lighting the oil lamps while saying our prayers. My wife Anna had a deep affection for her yiayia and it rubbed off very quickly on me. Asimina was in her eighties when I met her, her face covered with the deep lines of old age, her gnarled bony hands and tiny frame covered with a thin layer of almost translucent skin. Despite all this she still cooked and puttered around the small Athens apartment where she lived. The apartment building was built to house refugees from Asia Minor; its deteriorating facade was pockmarked with bullet holes sustained in firefights during the Greek civil war. Asimina came from a poor family eking out a living on a rocky barren plot of land in Tzia. At the age of 23, like other young Greek women of her generation, she left her destitute homeland; in her case to work as a cook for a prosperous Greek family in Alexandria, Egypt. After contracting malaria she returned to Greece and was able to marry a young man who had prospects, a job at the German company, Bauer. For a while, life was good. They began raising a family and built a home in the Athens suburb of Maroussi. As the dark clouds of the Depression descended on Greece, her husband lost his job and subsequently the comfortable home that they shared with their three children. The family ended up in a small shack in Kesariani (a working class Athens neighborhood) and her husband's health began to deteriorate. He died suddenly just before the war came to Greece in 1940. With three children under the age of ten, Asimina managed to keep her family intact and survive the famine during the Nazi Occupation. In 1944, after liberation, the small shack where her family lived burned to the ground in fighting between Communist rebels and British forces. Having lost all their worldly possessions except the clothes on their back, the family's only shelter was some pine trees on the outskirts of Kesariani. They shared a solitary plate for their meals. My mother-in-law reminisced recently about waiting her turn to eat the meager portion of soup she received once a day. Asimina's children eventually grew to adulthood and raised families of their own. In 1989 my wife and I returned to Greece with our six month old first born son, Nicholas. Asimina suffering from Leukemia, had recently fallen and fractured her pelvis. Laying in her hospital bed she smiled broadly as we laid our son, her first great grandchild, in her arms. The blessings tumbled from her lips as she made the sign of the cross repeatedly over him and her eyes slowly welled up with tears. She passed away a few months later.

Technorati : Alexandria, Asia Minor, Bauer, Egypt, Greek Civil War, Greeks, Kea, Kesariani, Maroussi, Nazi Occupation of Greece

Home Again

Home again. Arrived on Tuesday and drove the five hour trip to Maine from New York City, so I could be at work the next morning. Needless to say, jet lag is no fun. My brief two weeks in Greece was, as always, bittersweet. Seeing family and friends and delighting in their company while knowing that our time together is limited. Luckily, my wife and two sons get to stay in Greece for another month before returning in time for school. My older son will be a high school senior this year and there is no doubt that it will be a hectic milestone in our lives.

This was my fourth visit to Greece since I left in 1987. During that time so much has changed, yet invariably there is something eternal about this land and its people. The first thing that you are struck by when you arrive is the light, " fos," it is brighter than any other place I've ever been to. Our arrivals now are a little easier. My in-laws used to arrive at the airport hours before our airplane was scheduled to touch down and camp there with assorted friends and relatives. I used to worry that they would lay out a red carpet and march out an honor guard of Evzones (Greek soldiers who wear the traditional pleated kilts). The new airport is thankfully close to their small cottage in the seaside town of Loutsa and within a few short minutes of our arrival my mother-in-law, who has been cooking for days, is laying out a sumptuous banquet. Banquets like this are described as "snacks" in Greece, designed only so that visitors can "peck" at food like little sparrows lest their blood sugar get dangerously low. In all fairness, I can understand her efforts to feed her loved ones given that she grew up during the Occupation, surviving on handouts and the meager rations her widowed mother was able to obtain. Ever since, her pantry and refrigerator have bulged with delicious foods and the aromatic smell of cooking food has always wafted through her house.

To say that yiayia and papou dote on my sons is an understatement. I remember sitting there stunned as yiayia put my thirteen year old son's socks on. Every morning she gets up at the crack of dawn to hike to the bakery and bring home fresh hot bread and tiropites (flaky dough pockets stuffed with cheese), right out of the oven. Then she stands over a hot stove trying to cook the perfect sunny-side up eggs for the boys because after all, they are "Amerikankia" (little Americans) and everyone knows they eat eggs for breakfast. God forbid should a yolk break and make it difficult for them to dip their chunks of bread. My younger son has a bad habit of eating only the soft part of the bread and leaving the crust for us lesser mortals. When I had a heart to heart talk with him regarding the matter yiayia immediately came to his aid and defended his right to eat bread any way he pleased. As far as Yiayia is concerned my son looks like a consumptive Dickensian waif who needs to gain about twenty pounds, so why quibble with what part of the bread he consumes?

Papou on the other hand doesn't exactly fall all over himself to cater to his grandson's every whim, but takes obvious delight in them and hangs on their every word. You can literally watch his chest puff out when introducing his grandson;s to the constant stream of visitors and relatives. During the civil war he was nearly beaten to death by a right wing death squad because he had a beard and looked like a guerrilla. After a lifetime of work and trying to survive, Papou's spends his remaining years sipping coffee, smoking and occasionally showing his superior gamesmanship playing tavli (backgammon). At periodic intervals he will drop everything to drink yet another coffee and talk to his friend Mitsos under the shade of a fig tree. Sometimes when he feels particularly energetic and his wife aims a few well chosen words in his direction he may don his paint stained shirt and pants and start painting a portion of the fence surrounding the house. I think he is working on the five year plan and expects completion in 2010 barring any unforeseen visits from his buddy Mitso.

My brother-in-law Thano, who I am particularly close to, exemplifies in my mind everything that I admire in the Greek character. He is the epitome of "filotimo", the Greek sense of doing the right thing at all times, irregardless of the consequences. He works for a shipping company as a logistician, handling the difficult job of keeping ships and crews supplied with the things they need to do their jobs. Thano failed to get into a Greek university, to the shock and disgust of his high school teachers. As a result he was summarily cast into the real world, without "meson" (connections) but with two things that are becoming harder to find: a work ethic and a fire in the belly to succeed. He works in an industry which unlike the state apparatus that it supports, is one of the pillars propping up the Greek economy. My sons adore "Nono" (Godfather) who can do no wrong and as far as they are concerned he is infallible and all knowing, unlike their Dad.

This year my kids have been honing there goat milking skills. They are getting to be quite good at it. Our next door neighbors have two sheep, 5 goats , assorted chickens and rabbits and a wonderful vegetable garden. No one has the heart to tell the little kids in the neighborhood, that little Peter Rabbit will soon be a wonderful stew surrounded by onions and potatoes. What a nice way to reacquaint ourselves with our agrarian past. I must say that waking up to a crowing rooster at the crack of dawn gets very old, very quickly.

Life in Greece during the summer is spent outside. My in-Law's veranda or porch, call it what you will, has more square footage than the inside of their small cottage. Eating is always outside whether you eat at home or go out. The closer you are to the water the better. I've eaten sitting at a table with the sea practically lapping at my feet. If you eat out in Greece prepare to have an audience of stray cats and dogs staring at you with forlorn eyes. It takes a very hard hearted person not to throw them an occasional tidbit. Greeks love to share each other's food and they always order a long list of appetizers which everyone attacks with relish. By the time the main course arrives there is precious little room left. If you like dessert you'll have to wait to take a stroll and visit one of the many outdoor cafes. Many serve up delicious desserts and pastries. The latest rage in Greece is a waffle buried in a mountain of ice cream, syrups and nuts. It's a meal in itself. The Greeks, who read there language precisely as it is written pronounce the word waffles as "waf -less." When informed of the correct pronunciation they just shake their head in disbelief.

Greeks don't eat much of a breakfast. Most of them wake up bleary eyed because they've been out late. The standard Greek breakfast consists of a cigarette and a demitasse cup of thick Greek coffee, which I assure you could awaken even Lazarus from the dead. By the time the lunch hour rolls around at 2, they are quite famished and eat a huge lunch followed by a "siesta." Now please don't get the impression that all Greeks follow this schedule, however, since I am a traditionalist, when in Greece, I love my siesta. Even waking up is fun, because invariably a cup of coffee is waiting for me, followed by a refreshing walk and dip in the sea. The coast around Loutsa is rocky with occasional sandy beaches. There is one spot where you can jump in right off a rocky ledge into the blue Aegean. That's our favorite.

When in Greece don't do anything crazy like going out to dinner at 6 pm. That's when Greeks do their shopping. Should you attempt such a violation of etiquette, you will be sent packing and they will be shaking their heads behind your back. Come back at 11 when civilized people eat. It is not unusual to see folks eating dinner at midnight with their kids running around having fun. This is a far cry from my own hometown in Maine where we roll up the streets around 8 pm.

Life in Greece is certainly different, if you don't do well with change, Greece is definitely not your destination of choice. So what draws people, year after year? The natural beauty that God has packed into this small country, the size of the state of Maryland, is truly astounding. Despite millenia of habitation, it is still wild, untamed, and starkly beautiful. Another endearing thing about Greece, when you finally get out of Athens and visit the surrounding rural areas and islands, is the way that small villages and houses blend in and compliment their surroundings. The number of places where we can slow down and smell the roses are fast disappearing in our modern world. What I enjoy about Greece is that you can still find serene spots that make you feel at one with the world. As if you are occupying your rightful place in God's creation.

Technorati : Evzones, Greece, Greek Life, Greeks, Loutsa, Occupation

The Burden of Greek History: The Catastrophe of 1922 Part III

 

On September 15, 1922, the fires of a raging holocaust began finally to burn themselves out. The once beautiful city had gone up in flames. Future estimations would set the death toll as high as 100,000. For two days while the fires raged, and for some two weeks after, the citizens of this once-lovely and essentially Hellenic city experienced brutality and neglect on a massive scale. The fate of the Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna is instructive. Many begged him to leave Smyrna before the Turkish Army arrived. He is quoted as saying: "The tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church and the duty of the priest is to stay with his congregation." Crowds were rushing into the cathedral for shelter when Metropolitan Chrysostomos, pale from fasting and prayer, conducted his last divine liturgy. He was arrested and led away to General Nouredin Pasha was spat in his face and turned him over to the mob. After gouging his eyes out he was dragged through the streets by his beard. He was beaten and kicked while he prayed. Occasionally he would raise his hand to bless his persecutors who eventually cut it off with a sword. He was then hacked to pieces and thrown to the dogs.

The next day, the fire subsided and thousands were massed on the quays, Mustafa Kemal issued a proclamation that all Greek and Armenian men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were to be considered prisoners of war, thus paving the way for further roundups and death marches. The Turks informed their captives of this decision by dropping leaflets onto the crammed waterfront from airplanes. While the city burned, a handful of refugees made their way onto the Allied ships. No systematic removal was undertaken prior to September 24th, when the first Greek ships entered the harbor.

During the interval, tens of thousands of victims crowded on the waterfront in extreme fear and appalling conditions. All the while Allied naval ships remained at anchor several hundred meters from the quay, their crews under orders not to intervene. The Allies feared provoking an incident with the Turks, a stance that incited bitter reproaches by witnesses and survivors later. George Horton, whose impassioned book on Smyrna is unreservedly pro-Christian, nevertheless reflects a thirty-year diplomatic experience of the region. He wrote: "Though the stench of burned flesh that hovered over the harbor was impossible to ignore, the international spectators labored to turn a blind eye to the results of their nation's political designs. Confined to their ships, sailors resorted to the feeble measure of searchlight sweeps in an effort to discourage Turkish predation. In between times they played records at full volume in an effort to drown out the nocturnal outcry. Caruso was heard singing Pagliacci as men drowned or were shot while trying to swim out to the ships. On the Iron Duke , the Royal Navy flagship, the band played night-long concerts."

A new treaty to supplant Sevres was drawn up at Lausanne. Great Power diplomacy staged its second act, beginning in November 1922 and ending with the signing of the treaty in July the following year. Allied power brokers had to acknowledge that (1) Greece was defeated in Thrace and Asia Minor, and (2) the Nationalist Turks now held power within Turkey. Modern Turkey had become a recognized sovereign nation. A separate treaty between Greece and Turkey formalized an exchange of population's, a scheme headed by the Norwegian explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen. Greeks living in Asia Minor or Eastern Thrace were required to return to the Greek homeland, while Turkish nationals living in Greek territory were compelled to return to Turkish homelands. Greeks living in Constantinople were exempted from these provisions, as were Muslims living in Western Thrace.

Estimates vary, but approximately 375,000 Turks and 1.25 million Greeks were thus uprooted, with the Greek exodus well underway long before the exchange program was formally enacted. Ernest Hemingway witnessed the misery of those retreating through Thrace after the Greek collapse and recorded it in reportage and fiction alike: "The enormity of the refugee problem for Greece can scarcely be exaggerated. A poor country with a population of around 4 million was faced with an influx of roughly one-third of its population. Housing and lands abandoned by Muslims did not begin to approach the level necessary to accommodate the new arrivals, whose culture, in any case, was more in line with Constantinople than Athens. Indeed, some fifty years after their transplantation, the anthropologist Renee Hirschon found the Asia Minor refugees and their descendants still maintaining a separate sense of identity from the people they called 'locals', 'Old Greeks' or simply 'Greeks'.

The Treaty of Lausanne represented the final step in the Allied abandonment of Greece. Britain in particular had consistently encouraged Greece, only to step aside as she faltered and then drop her in her utter defeat. No Allied help was forthcoming as Greece crumbled in 1922, there was no military aid, no significant diplomatic pressure, and, apart from a belated Italian relief ship, not even humanitarian support in response to the Smyrna debacle. The Greek army was gradually forced to abandon Asia Minor, leading to the uprooting of the Greek populations of all parts of Turkey, who were "exchanged" for much of the Turkish populace of Greece, in perhaps the largest internationally-sanctioned "ethnic cleansing" in modern history. The ensuing economic and sociological catastrophe devastated Greece, reducing the country to virtually a Third World status from which it did not emerge for generations, and cast a pall over its politics through the late 20th century. It has also left the Greeks with a profound sense of betrayal by the Great Powers, yet it should be acknowledged that Greece had played a significant role in her own failure. As the human flotsam of the war floated back to Greece, assigning blame became the order of the day. Someone had to pay and the military was chosen to assign blame and mete out punishment. The seeds were sown for future disasters.

    Technorati : Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna, Population Exchange, Smyrna, Treaty of Lausanne

Living the Good Life on the Island of Syros

I'm writing this post from an Internet cafe on the island of Syros. We arrived yesterday on one of the new "fast" ferries that leave the port of Lavrio. Our trip was comfortable, quick (one hour and forty-five minutes) and we left and arrived on time.  This is my first trip to Syros and I am impressed with the beautiful architecture and vitality of the capital, Ermoupoli. We are staying at a small hotel on the coast near Azolimnos Bay.  Life is good and as it should be. The good company of friends, great food and the warm sunny weather cooled by an off-shore breeze.  We left the cares of the world behind us and hope to keep things that way for another few days.  Greece has made gigantic strides in the last fifty years and it is evident in the dramatic improvements in infrastructure, highways, mass transit, bridges, etc.  Some things however are not as easy to change and they include the inability of the state apparatus to harness the true Greek spirit in a meaningful way.  More on that later. Nevertheless, the rhythms of life continue here on Syros much as the have for thousands of years.  Despite the intrusions of our hectic, consumer driven way of life, the truly important things that matter still survive in places like Syros. I'm hoping all of you have a great summer with your families and friends.  Hope to post again in the near future. 

The Burden of Greek History: The Catastrophe of 1922 Part I

 

The legacy of Greek history is a heavy one. It has shaped Greeks like the powerful blows of a blacksmith's hammer on red hot iron. During the twentieth century Greeks suffered multiple traumatic events that have left their indelible mark on succeeding generations. I am often asked by non-Greek friends why Greeks and Turks can't get along. There is no easy answer. To understand the present predicament one has to understand the shared history. Modern Greece and Turkey are two countries founded by wars of independence in which the opposing side suffered catastrophes that changed each in fundamental ways for better and worse. The Greco-Turkish War of 1920-1922 and the resulting destruction of Smyrna, a city with a Greek population greater than Athens at the time, was a defining moment equal to the Fall of Constantinople in Greek history and its ramifications are still reverberating today. Today this piece of history is forgotten except for the two countries involved. It created over two million refugees, the largest mass exodus of its kind prior to World War II.

When Greece won its independence in 1821, only a small portion of Greeks lived within its borders. The nation that emerged from the crucible of the Greek War of Independence was one ridden by factionalism. The one unifying concept that fired the imagination of all Greeks regardless of political persuasion was the "Megali Idea (Great Idea)." This concept of manifest destiny, the dream of uniting Greeks scattered over the entire eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea would become a major source of friction with the neighbors of this emerging state, especially the Ottoman Empire. It would cause Greece, despite its limited financial assets and natural resources, to fight a series of wars that greatly enlarged her borders and shaped the country we now recognize. Unfortunately it cost the lives of countless Greeks and ended in a major national catastrophe that set the stage for future cataclysms. The Greeks knew that the only way they could achieve their foreign policy objectives was through the help of one of the "Great Powers." This idea of a resurrected "Greater Greece" was appealing as well to many European Philhellenes, particularly in Britain. .

The architect who did more than any other Greek to realize the dream of the Megali Idea was Eleftherios Venizelos. In 1910, Venizelos became Prime Minister and lead his country through two Balkan Wars in which Greece gained enough territory to double in size. Venizelos could see the writing on the wall and wanted Greece to join the Allied cause in World War I. When King Constantine, who was married to the Kaiser's sister, refused to allow Greek support for the Dardanelles campaign, Venizelos resigned. He was reelected by a landslide in 1915, and immediately ordered the mobilization of the Greek Army and invited Allied Forces into Thessaloniki. He was subsequently dismissed by the King and retired to Crete where he formed a revolutionary republican government. Through his efforts the King was forced to abdicate and Greece entered World War I on the Allied side. A deep chasm was created between monarchists and republican Venizelists. It would prove to be costly, long lived and a portent of other deep seated divisions in Greek society. Venizelos' astute reading of the outcome of World War I and recognition of the potential for Greek foreign policy to reap substantial benefits was rewarded at the Versailles Conference. Greece gained important territory belonging to Bulgaria and Turkey including Imbros, Tenedos, and Eastern Thrace.

Part II will be published on July 14.

    Technorati : Eleftherios Venizelos, Greco-Turkish War 1920-1922, King Constantine I, Megali Idea, Modern Greek History, Smyrna

The Mantra of Anti-Americanism

Loving America is not very fashionable these days. Sometimes I cringe at the things that Americans and their government are accused of. Let's just say that Americans aren't very popular. Everyone was supposedly on our side after 9/11 and we squandered their sympathy with our unilateralism. At least that's the popular thinking. Unfortunately anti-Americanism was well entrenched in the psyche of a great many people well before the fall of the Twin Towers.

Anti-Americanism has become a particular fact of life in Greece, where it has developed into a central tenet of the Greek worldview. This animosity surfaced after the fall of the military junta and the invasion and occupation of Cyprus, both events seen by the great majority of Greeks as the handiwork of the US. The sins of the US are vast according to many of my Greek friends. America shows favoritism to Turkey, refuses to support Greek demands regarding FYROM, bombed innocent Serbs, has a penchant for invading peace loving countries for dubious reasons, etc, etc, etc.

Anti-Americanism serves an important purpose for many segments of Greek society and it cuts across the political spectrum. The Communists, the Church, the Greek mainstream media, the intelligentsia, the Left and increasingly, even the Right. Have I left anyone out? By scapegoating America, these elements deflect Greeks from focusing on the failures of their own institutions. The failure to craft a realistic and credible foreign policy, the failure to weed out corruption and nepotism, the failure to reverse the decline of the fertility rate, the failure to Christianize young Greeks, the failure to re-energize the Church, the failure to free the dormant economic vitality of the average Greek, the failure to stand up to Turkish aggression and provocations, the failure to Hellenize Europe (instead Europeanizing Hellas), the failure to provide opportunity, the failure to build a world class system of higher education that is accessible, the failure to decrease the role of government, the failure to reach out to or support the Greek diaspora and the failure to provide a balanced public discourse.

Blind anti-Americanism is nothing more than an excuse for Greeks to continue playing the "victim" card. It is an excuse for Greeks to disengage from the world, to feel surrounded, to feel impotent and to become more politically isolationist. By scapegoating others for our own faults we create an environment in which it is impossible to take responsibility and thereby begin the first step of emerging into the light. Hellenism and Orthodoxy need to engage the rest of the world, not withdraw from it. The Ancient Greeks were not afraid to sail out and meet the world, they were travelers and they reveled in and sought out new ideas. They were not frightened by the "Varvari (barbarians)" nor their ideas. The Greeks, were in fact, the agents of change and modernity. Today, modernity is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories.

The rot is deep. Kathimerini is a conservative Greek newspaper, considered by many to be the "paper of record." One of its frequent and respected columnists, a professor emeritus at Panteion University in Athens, Christos Yiannaras, recently wrote: "the European Union appears (with dramatic consequences) infected with a syndrome of inferiority in the face of the new/rich primitive culture, economic might, and military superiority of the United States. The E.U. wants to bring the traditionally state controlled universities under the politically uncontrollable demands of the economy, creating institutions of a society that seek to teach its leading cadres itself, and not to entrust them to the so-called "free market."

"The American model that seems to have enchanted the E.U.," he said, "is a society of emigrants, a racial hodgepodge of uprooted people for the sake of survival, with tragically antisocial differences in their way of thinking and in their cultures. They are 'united' by their blind devotion to 'money,' a devotion they inherited from the early emigrants, 'money' being the measure of evaluating every person. Their idea of life is the search for "opportunity," the stubborn effort to show off their riches and their power to the lands of their origin-their childish admiration for their machines and for the size and glitter of their products.

"The overwhelming majority of the American people are in a state of undifferentiated masses, buried deep in their lack of education, with dizzying percentages of illiterate people. An aesthetic barbarism, ridiculous clothing, a torpid state of overweight, with idiotic gullibility and easy submission to any kind of power (even the power of crazy religious preachers). This is the model, the E.U. wants to imitate and sacrifice for its sake the social conquests and its cultural refinements which should have been upheld as its cause of pride."

The part about showing off riches and wealth in the country of their origin will no doubt particularly endear him to Greek Americans. How do you argue with such a distorted view of Americans. The simple answer is: you don't. If some people want to engage in this type of rhetoric so they can absolve themselves of their own sins, there is not much to be done about it.

Faoud Ajami is a professor at John Hopkins University, an immigrant like myself and part of that "racial hodgepodge" known as America. In an article entitled "The Falseness of Anti-Americanism" he writes the following: "Today, the United States carries the disturbance of the modern to older places? to the east and to the intermediate zones in Europe. There is energy in the United States, and there is force. And there is resistance and resentment and emulation, in older places affixed on the delicate balancing act of a younger United States not yet content to make its peace with traditional pains and limitations and tyrannies. That sensitive French interpreter of his country, Dominique Moïsi, recently told of a simple countryman of his who was wistful when Saddam Hussein's statue fell on April 9 in Baghdad's Firdos Square. France opposed this war, but this Frenchman expressed a sense of diminishment that his country had sat out this stirring story of political liberation. A society like France with a revolutionary history should have had a hand in toppling the tyranny in Baghdad, but it didn't. Instead, a cable attached to a U.S. tank had pulled down the statue, to the delirium of the crowd. The new history being made was a distinctly American (and British) creation. It was soldiers from Burlington, Vermont, and Linden, New Jersey, and Bon Aqua, Tennessee ( I single out those towns because they are the hometowns of three soldiers who were killed in the Iraq war) who raced through the desert making this new history and paying for it. " Read the whole article.

Technorati : Anti-Americanism, Christos Yiannaras.Greece, Faoud Ajami, Greek-Americans

The Greek Kristallnacht

In 1955, Turkey took a page out of the playbook of the Nazi Movement in pre-war Germany and conducted a pogrom similar in every respect to the one known as "Kristallnacht (The Night of Glass)".  The victims this time were not Jews but the Greeks of Constantinople (Istanbul), the last vestige of a community that had lived there for over two thousand years. Although this brutal episode occurred over fifty years ago it still rankles in Greek memory and has done much to poison the well of Greek-Turkish relations. The pogrom took place with the backdrop of the emerging crisis in Cyprus at the time. Britain poised to lose her colony on the island of Cyprus decided to play the "Turkish card" and initiated a tripartite conference designed to draw Turkey into the process as a counter-balance to the growing movement toward "enosis" or union with Greece. In the midst of negotiations Turkey decided to send a calculated message on September 6, 1955. The following account is from an article by John Phillips that appeared in Harper's Magazine in June, 1956: "Squads of marauders were driven to the shopping area in trucks and taxis, waving picks and crowbars, consulting lists of addresses, as the police stood by smiling. Greek priests were reported circumcised, scalped and burned alive; Greek women raped. The Greek Consulate was destroyed in Izmir, Just nine out of eighty Greek churches were left undesecrated, twenty nine were demolished. Ghouls invaded the huge cemetery where the Patriarchs of Constantinople are buried, opened mausoleums, dug up graves, and flung bones into the streets; corpses waiting burial with knives. There had been no comparable destruction of Greek sanctuaries since the fall of Constantinople."

The riots were allegedly sparked by a rumor that the birthplace of Kemal Ataturk, the Father of Modern Turkey, which was located in Thessaloniki, had been bombed. This rumor was given legs by the Turkish media and did much to incite the anti-Greek frenzy. Dr Spiros Vryonis in his landmark 700 page work: The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955 details the intent of the Turkish government. to destroy the Greek community of Istanbul and to serve the domestic and foreign policies of the Adnan Menderes government. The pogrom was well planned and the carnage skillfully executed. It was not a spontaneous burst of anger but a methodical and coordinated operation. As the police stood passively on the sidelines, riots began emanating from the center of the city at Taksim Square and moved out to its suburbs The government imported thousands of illiterate Anatolian Turks armed them with crowbars, clubs, spades, pickaxes, dynamite and gasoline. Approximately 100,000 Turks participated. The attack came in three waves; the first broke down doors and windows in order to gain entrance to buildings, the second fell on the contents of those buildings and the third finished the destruction of the building after it was thoroughly looted. One thousand homes were destroyed, 2500 partially destroyed, 4500 stores were looted , damaged or destroyed. Thirty Greek men were killed and 200 Greek women were raped. Nothing Greek was spared, not even cemeteries. It would mark the beginning of the end of the historic Greek community in Istanbul that was supposedly protected under the Treaty of Lausanne.

Turkey imposed a press blackout immediately and the incident received minimal press coverage. Damages were estimated to be $500,000,000. A mildly worded note from the British government was dispatched to the Turkish Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes by his British counterpart, Harold Macmillan.  Although an embarrassment the incident had uses that the British did not fail to grasp. The Americans on the other hand, sent a strongly worded note to both sides from President Eisenhower deploring the antagonism between the two nations and calling for calm despite the fact that Greek government reacted with exemplary coolness during the crisis. The note had the effect equating perpetrator with victim. This seminal event started the downward slide of Greek-American relations that has over time become a rising tide of anti-Americanism.

The Turkish military initially acquiesced to the actions of the Menderes government and the Chief of Staff, General Cemal Gursel promised protection. Five years later, he overthrew Menderes in a bloodless coup and hung him and two of his cabinet ministers. The military intervention tightened the government's grip over its minorities, and intensified the suppression of rights of other ethnic minorities in Turkey as well as the Turlish people themselves.  Ethnic cleansing in Turkey and Cyprus has continued unabated by the Turkish government including the destruction of Kurdish villages of southeast Anatolia which is being slowly reduced to a desolate wasteland. Despite the passage of time, the effects of the Pogrom of 1955 are still reverberating today. For Turks it solidified the notion that they could continue their policy of ethnic cleansing and human rights violations unhampered by the West. For Greeks the event reinforced the futility of relying on the West for support in issues involving Turkey and highlighted their sense of being an aggrieved party, victimized once again. Both outcomes bode ill for the future.

 

    Technorati : Constantinople, Cyprus, Enosis, Greek minority in Istanbul, Greek-American Relations, Greek-Turkish Relations, Pogrom, Spiros Vryonis, Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey

Living With 17 November

Back in the 1985, I was a career Marine waiting for my next assignment. I'm not sure I ever heard of the 17 November terrorist group before I got that fateful phone call from Washington. The guy on the other end was the dreaded, "monitor." He was the bureaucrat at Headquarters Marine Corps who decided your next duty assignment. This was one person that you didn't want to upset. "I hope you want to go to Greece, because I'm cutting you a set of orders as we speak. Stay away from the Ouzo, I hear it's murder," then he hung up abruptly. To say I was ecstatic at that moment is an understatement. I was the prodigal son returning to the homeland that my parents had talked about my entire life.Within a few short months I was to find myself in the middle of Athens, embroiled in a war I thought had ended thirty five years previously. I was assigned to a unit known as JUSMAGG, Joint US Military Aid Group, Greece. It consisted of twelve Americans. Two of them had been shot in the last 6 months. Nick the Greek might have thought the odds were good, I wasn't so sure.

JUSMAGG was a descendant of the staff that Lieutenant General James A.Van Fleet had put together to help the Greek government fight the civil war after the British pulled out. Van Fleet struggled to turn the Greek Army into an effective fighting force, overseeing its training, organization and operations. On his recommendation, incompetent officers were sacked, more maneuver battalions created and aggressive offensive actions taken. The defeat of the Communist insurgency can be attributed to many things. Without the substantial military aid managed by Van Fleet's staff one thing is certain, Greece would have been pulled behind the iron curtain. Duty at the MAGG was good through its heyday, the 50s and 60s. It started to turn ugly when Turkey invaded Cyprus. Most Greeks blamed the US.

17 November, named after the date of the fabled student uprising against the Military Junta, was a terrorist group who's first known attack came in December, 1975, when the CIA's station chief in Athens was shot and killed with a .45-caliber automatic pistol, November 17's favorite weapon. Since then, the group has claimed responsibility for twenty-one murders. During the 1980s the group expanded its repertoire to include bombings of people and property. Its targets have included foreign business and European Union facilities. On the sunny morning of November 15, Navy Captain George Tsantes, the son of Greek immigrants from the island of Ikaria, left for work in a vehicle driven by Nick Veloutsos. While stuck in traffic on his way to work at JUSMAGG, two men on a motorcycle pulled up beside the sedan. The passenger behind the driver, shot Veloutsos with a .45 caliber automatic and then shot Capt. Tsantes in the back seat. Then they drove off and disappeared into the morning traffic. A few months later another American member of the MAGG, Army Master Sargent Michael Judd, was headed to Hellenikon Air Base. While stopped at a red light he noticed a motorcycle with two passengers approaching. He stepped on the gas, but was shot and wounded in the shoulder. He managed to drive through the main gate at the base and became one of the few survivors of a 17 November hit.

So this was my introduction to life in Greece. Living with 17 November was to be a constant element of my life for the next two years. How ironic, I was a Greek American with a big target on my chest, chased by fellow Greeks with an ax to grind. Two sides in a war that had supposedly ended. The next two years was a sequence of watch your back, changing routes, being unpredictable, checking the car, the apartment and the street. Living with terrorism isn't always pleasant but it is doable. I wasn't going to hunker down and I wasn't about to let these guys spoil my chance to enjoy life in Greece. A few months after I left Greece, the US Naval Attache, Capt William Nordeen was killed by a car bomb. He was not their last victim.

In 2003, the authorities descended on the sleepy island of Lipsi and arrested Alexandros Giotopoulos, ending the twenty eight year reign of terror of 17 November. Giotopoulos was the supposed mastermind behind the group. His father, Dimitris, was a leader of the Archive Marxists, a Trotskyite group that was considered a grave threat by the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) and its members were hunted down by the OPLA, the party's secret service, Their executioners took particular delight in slicing throats with the lids of tin cans, and executed at least six hundred Archive Marxists.

There have been no further attacks since Giotopoulos and his accomplices were arrested. Maybe the civil war is finally over.

Technorati : 17 November Terrorist Group, Anti-Americanism, Capt. George Tsantes, Capt. William Nordeen, Greek Americans, Greek Civil War, Greek History, LtGen James Van Fleet, MSgt Michael Judd, Terrorism

Is Hellenism Compatible With Christianity?

I was reading blogs for awhile before I ever thought I had anything to say. I stumbled onto Phylax a few months ago and I discovered within Phylax, a community of people who were actually thinking and debating about things I considered important. For the first time, I started writing comments and eventually I decided to start a blog of my own. Phylax Blog is the brainchild of Ted Laskaris. Ted helped me take my first baby steps as a blogger, and for this I will be ever grateful. Recently two commenters on Phylax (and occasionally on Greek Odyssey), Hermes and Anestis have engaged me in a very interesting discussion that made me think long and hard about the relationship between Hellenism and Orthodoxy.

The dictionary defines Hellenism as the civilization and culture of ancient Greece. Although the contribution of the Ancients is unparalleled, my definition of Hellenism is more expansive. I define Hellenism as the sum total contributions of Greek civilization. This includes Greek contributions during the Byzantine, medieval and modern era. In my opinion Christianity has played a decisive role within Hellenism and has helped it survive. A growing number of Greeks however, are rejecting Orthodox Christianity and looking at Hellenism in a new way; in a religious context. So we must ask are Christianity and Hellenism compatible?

For many Greeks, membership in the Greek Orthodox Church is a determinant of one's Greekness. Others will argue that the determinant of Greekness is not religion, but education and language. How do we distinguish the Greeks from the rest of the herd? Hellenism for me is like Christianity, inclusive. It does not seek to shut out ideas or people that do not fit into some preconceived notion of who or what Hellenism constitutes. Hellenism is a way of thinking and acting based on the sum total Hellenic experience, which is rich and varied. There are values and traits that I consider genuinely Greek, however, they are not the sole property of a particular ethnic group. They belong to us all. Christianity is also universal in nature and available to all who will partake. Hellenism is a legacy of thought and ideas. Orthodox Christianity has become in my mind an integral part of Hellenism. You don't have to "join the club" in order to partake of the rich legacy that each offers.

The spread of Christianity (made possible by Hellenism) is nothing short of miraculous. How was it able to do this? Perhaps it espoused a unique view of man's relationship with God that men and women felt deep in their hearts and psyche. This was especially so of the Greek World which embraced Christianity and has never let go. Some will argue that Greeks did not willingly and fervently take up the Cross and that only a small segment of the Greek population was Christianized during the first 300 years of Christianity. Nevertheless it was Greeks and Hellenized missionaries, in Europe and Asia who played a leading role in the history of Christianity. Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, Smyrna, Phillippi, Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth, Nikopolis, the islands of Cyprus and Crete were only a few of the many Greek cities that heard the Gospel of Christ. As early as the second century there were flourishing churches in each of these cities as well as in Greek towns and islands such as Megara, Sparta, Patras, Larissa, Milos, Tinos, Paros, Thera and Chios. All the important churches of the first three centuries were Greek or Greek speaking. Many of these Greek cities produced many martyrs and profound thinkers. The Emperor Julian who succeeded Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, tried his best to stamp out the new religion. He died on his death bed uttering "You have won Galilean."

Father Demetrios Constantelos in an essay entitled The Historical Development of Greek Orthodoxy writes the following: "Orthodox and non-Orthodox theologians and scholars believe that the Judaization of Christianity would have been fatal, while its Hellenization determined its universal appeal and its catholic character. Greek Orthodox Christianity is Christocentric and biblical, but at the same time it bears all the characteristics of the Greek genius. Christianity's religious schemes and theological categories reveal the influence of the ancient Greek mind. There is unity, but a unity in diversity. There is canon law, but it is not always enforced. The concept of the Roman "autocritas" has found little fertile ground in the Greek East. The Greek emphasis on inquiry and the continuous quest for personal understanding and interpretation constitute the background of the development of "heresies"or "choices" outside the mainstream of Orthodoxy. Christianity is Greek not only in form but to a great degree in content as well. Greek religious and philosophical thought has penetrated into the mind and thought of later Judaism and Greek thought thoroughly imbued the whole Roman Empire. The fusion of Greek classical and religious material was present not only in theological and philosophical writing but also in mystical and spiritual. Christian thinkers were in constant dialogue with ancient and Greek thought and religious experience. Hellenization affected every aspect of early Christianity including worship."

By arguing that Christianity is not inherently an inalienable part of what we call Hellenism is to ignore and thereby exclude the accomplishments of a huge historical segment of Hellenism, Orthodox Christians. Let's exclude the accomplishments of Byzantium, let's also exclude the accomplishments of millions of Greeks in the last thousand years who managed to preserve their Greekness intact because of two key pillars: Orthodox Christianity and the Greek Language. During the darkest era of Greek history, the Turkokratia, there were diasporan Greeks, Phanariots, and even Westerners who kept the legacy of the ancients alive. The great mass of illiterate peasants scattered throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas however, were not reading Aristotle or Homer. They were trying to survive and maintain their identity. Religion was a key "determinant" of the Hellenic identity then even if it is not now for some Greeks.

With the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire (324-1453), many Christians of the Greek Orthodox Church came under Ottoman Turkish rule. Islam was the dominant religion of the state and Christians were second-class citizens to say the least. From the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century numerous non-Muslims were converted to Islam. Many were either induced or forced, while many more made the change voluntarily. From Father Constantelos in his study entitled: Altruistic suicide or Altruistic Martyrdom? Christian Greek Neomartyrs: "Extensive testimony not only of the contemporary Christian writers, both Eastern and Western, but also of Turkish, corroborates the fact that a considerable number of Christians preferred death.Writing in the middle of the seventeenth century about the state of the Greek and Armenian Churches under Ottoman rule, Paul Ricaut, the British consul in Smyrna, who traveled widely within the Ottoman Empire and became an astute observer of its religious and social scene, made several important observations which can be summarized as follows: first, the Turks expelled Christians from many of their churches, converting them to mosques; second, the "Mysteries of the Altar" were concealed in secret and dark places, vaults, and sepulchers, having their roofs almost leveled with the surface of the ground; third, many Christians turned "Mohametans" and many "flocked daily to the profession of Turkism"; and fourth, Christian priests, in the Eastern parts of Asia Minor especially, were forced to live with caution and officiate in obscurity and privacy, fearing the temper of the Turks. Ricaut adds that considering the oppression and contempt for the Greek Church, as well as the allurements, worldly pleasures, and privileges that Christians would enjoy by becoming Muslims, the stable perseverance of the Greek Church is a confirmation of God's presence "no less convincing than the miracles and power which attended the beginnings of the early church" According to several accounts, from the conquest of Constantinople to the last phase of the Greek War of Independence, the Ottoman Turks condemned to death 11 Ecumenical Patriarchs of Constantinople, nearly 100 bishops, and several thousands of priests, deacons and monks.

Some see our Orthodox faith as making us weak. The ramblings of an itinerant Jewish carpenter. I see it as a source of strength. Hellenism and Christianity have been mutually beneficial to each other. Being an Orthodox Christian requires hard work, it is a lifelong work in progress. The Hellenic heritage can help us along the way. I see my Orthodox faith as a legacy passed on by my ancestors who clung to it tenaciously, very often at personal risk. It is based on the revealed word of God and it strengthens those that accept its grace. Many of us Christians fall short of those God given standards we should be living by, however that doesn't mean we need to stop trying to achieve them. By chucking our Christian beliefs aside we weaken the Hellenism we want to preserve. We are falling into the same trap that many in the West have fallen into. Eschewing Christianity for secularism, consumerism, paganism or whatever the flavor the month happens to be. In so doing they have have sown the seeds of their destruction. Let's not do likewise and follow them headlong into the abyss.

The Electronic Kafenion

 

The kafenion (coffee shop) was a major congregating point in the life of a Greek village. It was usually located at the village square. Men often retreated to this male sanctuary to socialize and most importantly to talk. Greeks love to talk, discuss, and argue. Sometimes it is hard for outsiders to figure out whether Greeks are having a discussion or getting ready to come to blows. I remember inviting a Marine buddy from Tennessee to join me at a family gathering in New York City. This guy grew up on a farm and he was a little overwhelmed by the noise and vastness of the city. When we arrived home, my mother and aunts were laying out a vast smorgasbord of Greek delicacies and my Dad and Uncles were in the midst of a debate on some aspect of the always turbulent Greek political scene. Children were running around and it was quite noisy. My friend was visibly uncomfortable and turned to me and whispered: "What are they all fighting about?" I told him not to worry unless everything went completely dead silent.

The early Greek immigrants to America, who were mostly young men, did not have a lot of free time for recreation. The little time they did have was spent in a little piece of home known as the kafenion. Yes, they even brought them to America. A few tables and chairs, a Greek flag and a picture of Venizelos or King Constantine on the wall. They drank the dark, thick Turkish coffee in the little demitasse cups, ate confections known as loukoumia ("Turkish delight") or mezzedakia (appetizers) like tomato slices, meatballs, feta cheese, olives, played backgammon or cards, gossiped and argued endlessly about how to fix the world. Put five Greeks together in a room and you'll invariably end up with six different opinions.

The kafenion was traditionally males only, no self respecting Greek woman would be found in such a place. Now women are just as likely to be there as men. Things are certainly changing; the kafenion is giving way to trendy coffee bars, cyber cafes and patisseries. Lately I've been thinking about the birth of the new "kafenion" on the internet. The internet is a modern marvel, capable of generating both evil and good things. One of the good things it has done, in my humble opinion, is it has become an "electronic kafenion." Now I'm not suggesting that we fore sake human contact with others and communicate soley through electronic means. My point is that the kafenion was a place where Greeks congregated with others in their horio (village) and now the electronic kafenion is a place that Greeks from all walks of life, male, female and all over the world can come together and exchange ideas. They can even carry on "Socratic dialogues." For further explanation, go to: http://www.sfcp.org.uk/socratic_dialogue.htm. Now if we can only figure out how to serve mezze with our discussions.

Personally speaking I have learned a great deal from the exchanges I have had with people on this blog and on Phylax Blog.  If they're not careful, Greeks can easily find themselves in an echo chamber. They need to be exposed to different points of view and they need to get their point of view across to others. They need to think critically and challenge there preconceived ideas. The electronic kafenion is a way to do this. I am always pleasantly shocked when I go to "Site Meter" on my blog and find out how many different countries my readers hail from.  We are just scratching the surface. I truly have come to believe that this is a powerful tool for bringing Greeks and those that aspire to be  "Greek"  together. I do not say that in a strictly ethnically oriented sense. As I have said before, being Greek  as the philosopher Isocrates understood it, was partaking of Greek paidea (education) and thinking and acting in the classically Greek manner. Some of our brothers and sisters in Greece and elsewhere fall short of the mark, whilst some "xeni" (foreigners) aspire to reach it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Ted Laskaris of Phylax Blog and Epithesis Now for leading the way. For bringing Greeks together and for introducing me to blogging. Bravo Ted and to all who take the time to comment and listen. Hope we will continue to have many kavgathes (arguments) in the future and continue to Hellenize the world.   Semper Fi, Stavros

Saving the Jews of Greece

 

When I was a kid growing up on East 91st Street in Manhattan in the 50s and 60s, the summers were sweltering and living in a tenement building before the days of air conditioning was to say the least, unpleasant. Turning on a fire hydrant was always an option, although frowned upon by the fire department. One summer, my parents decided they had had enough and that we would rent a room for the summer at Rockaway Beach. I have never forgotten those summers; swimming at the beach, playing outside with the other kids and going home only to grab a bite or when your mother started threatening bodily harm unless you came right home. Rockaway Beach back then was an area that was heavily populated by Jews. Many were refugees from the terrible holocaust in Europe, some were survivors of the death camps. I remember one Jewish lady in particular who liked to knit while sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the boarding house we stayed at. She had been born and raised in Athens. When she found out I was Greek, she broke out into her impeccable Greek and hugged me like I was a long lost relative. Her name was Miriam, I called her "Kiria" (madam). She always seemed sad, sitting there like a permanent fixture, but would invariably smile when she would catch a glimpse of me and would often give me a quarter to buy candy at the corner grocery. I could never figure out why she had those blue numbers on her arm. When I asked my Baba (Dad) what it all meant, he got very serious, sat down and explained it as best he could, warning me never to discuss it in her presence. He gave me the look, "It is too painful" he said in Greek. I was still confused, yet shook my head.

It wasn't until many years later that I began to piece it all together. I learned what happened to the Jews of Greece and to Kiria. The thriving and very old Jewish community in Greece before World War II consisted of 75,000 Greek Jews. Sixty-five thousand were deported and sent to the killing factories of the Third Reich. The remarkable fact that this number is not higher is a testament to the resistance of the Greek people against Nazi Occupation. That fact unfortunately, has been obscured by time and by the rocky road of Greek relations with the State of Israel. Just recently Mikis Theodorakis, a veritable icon in Greece, made comments many Jews consider ant-semitic. Europeans have often been accused of anti-Semitism, much of it virulent, historic but also related to the strong dislike that many, especially of the Left, have for Israeli policies in Palestine. The level of anti-Semitism in Greece is palpably lower. Unfortunately, it does exist to some degree, as it does in every country, including the US. What is personally disappointing to me is how the proud history of Greek help to the Jews has been swept under the rug, largely ignored, and replaced by charges of anti-Semitism, against the backdrop of international politics.

In contrast to many Catholic and Protestant leaders at the time, who ignored or countenanced Nazi atrocities, Archbishop Damaskinos, as well as a number of other prelates of the Greek Orthodox Church, risked immediate execution to save Greek Jews. In March of 1943, the Nazis began deporting the city of Thessaloniki's Jews to Poland. Within 6 months almost the entire community had been liquidated at Auschwitz and Birkineau. After learning of the deportation of Jews in Thessaloniki, Archbishop Damaskinos sent a formal letter of protest which was also signed by many prominent Greeks. Read the whole thing. When the SS General commanding the Athens area read the letter he threatened to shoot the Archbishop, who calmly informed him: "According to the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church, our prelates are hung and not shot, please respect our traditions." After the Italian surrender, the Germans moved quickly to gather up the Jews living in the Italian Occupation zone. Two things hindered the effort, the Greek Resistance movement in the mountains and ordinary Greek citizens. At that point,Archbishop Damaskinos decided to violate Church Canon Law and issue false baptismal certificates and he instructed the Athens Police Chief, Angelos Evert, to issue false identification cards.

On the island of Zakynthos, the Mayor, Loukas Carrer and Bishop Chrysostomos were instructed to provide a list of all Jews on the island. They turned in a list with two names on it, their own. Not one Jew was given up. The Rabbi and Bishop of Volos, a city in central Greece, worked together and managed to save 900 out of over 1000 of that city's Jews. Many Greek individuals and families throughout Greece, including a member of the Greek Royal family, Princess Irene, not only hid Jews at great personal peril, they shared their meager rations in the famine that swept Greece during the Occupation. Five thousand Greek Jews were saved, protected in hiding by friends and generous strangers. I daresay that some Greeks who collaborated, committed shameful acts that were not in keeping with the Herculean efforts of their compatriots. Greeks, however, can rightfully be proud of their splendid record during World War II in saving their fellow countrymen of the Jewish faith. It should also be noted here that Greek Jews fought heroically in the Albanian campaign of 1940 and in the Resistance. One of the first Greek officers to die in the war was Colonel Mordechai Frezis, a Jew from Chalkis, who helped stem the initial Italian thrust into Greek territory. Their contributions as patriotic Greeks should never be forgotten. International politics aside, maybe it's time we are all reminded of our common history.

 

    Technorati : Archbishop Damaskinos, Greek Jews, Greek-Israeli Relations, Holocaust, World War II

Defending the Greeks

Professor Bruce S. Thornton, is a professor of Classics at the University of California at Fresno. He has written a sequel to Edith Hamilton's landmark book "The Greek Way." Thornton's book is entitled "Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization." It is a must read. According to Professor Thornton, the wisdom of the Greeks which is under daily assault from the Multiculturalists in the West, is needed more than ever today, because "the road that the Greeks have cleared is likeliest to be the only one that can lead to the greatest degree of satisfaction for humanity."

Although others label him a conservative, Professor Thornton describes himself thus: " I question everything, I seek the truth, and let the political chips fall where they may." He sees   Multiculturalism as one of the main threats to the survival of the West and its civilization. In an interview in 2001, he amplified his view that Multiculturalism is "the ideological heir of the romantic nationalism which was so prominent in the 19th century, and whose monstrous descendant includes modern-day fascism. The idea that human beings are to be defined and acquire worth based on the chance happenstance of their birth into an ethnic category -- which is ostensibly possessed of mysterious and unique attributes -- is totally irreconcilable with the ideals of a free and democratic society. Multiculturalism, therefore, by its nature, enhances and increases the "politics of identity," the effort to insure preferences, rights, etc., for whole categories of people. Ultimately these categories, in the U.S., have come to rely upon their former unjust "persecution" as an instrument of power. They deserve to be officially validated, they say, as victims of persecution and exclusion. As a result, multiculturalism actually legitimizes categories as being inferior, by virtue of their being victims incapable of standing up to their victimizers."

Thus, the multiculturalists teach that the West is dysfunctional, and is inherently criminal; and since the Greeks constituted the main inspiration and source of Western Civilization, it therefore follows that they are responsible. Thornton contends that the American educational system is developing a population that is for the most part, incapable of telling the difference between what is false and what is true. The mainstream media aggravates this problem by projecting a steady stream of often deceptive, superficial, and skewed information that appeals in large part only to the emotions. Such a daily bombardment by images is not conducive to critical analysis. His solution: "Bring back the Greeks and study their dazzling literature, because they were the ones who developed the critical thinking with which they defined the principle problems of humanity; the very same problems we are confronting today."

In a speech given last year at California State University for a dinner hosted by the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Foundation for California State Senator Nicholas Petris, Professor Thornton defended the legacy of the Ancient Greeks. "The legacy of the Greeks under assault today deserves defense and celebration for the simple reason that much of what we are is the result of that brilliant examination of human life first begun by the Greeks: as Jacob Burckhardt says, "We see with the eyes of the Greeks and use their phrases when we speak." We must listen to the Greeks not because they will give us answers, but because they first identified the questions and problems, and they knew too where the answers must come from: the minds of free human beings who have control over their own lives. And this, finally, is the greatest good we have received from the Greeks: the gift of freedom." Read the whole thing at: http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/thornton031005.html.

BTW, Professor Bruce Thornton is a frequent contributor to a web site that I admire very much called VDH Private Papers by Professor Victor David Hanson, a classicist, military historian, political commentator and prolific writer. Two of his works, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War are superb reads.

 

    Technorati : Ancient Greeks, Multi-Culturalism, Professor Bruce S. Thornton, Westren Civilization

The Elusive Ghost of Greek Unity

This post appears on Phylax Blog

Greek unity has always been elusive. When Greeks are united in a common cause, they work miracles. When they are arguing unceasingly and at loggerheads, disaster is not far behind. This phenomenon is as old as Greek history. To understand what divides us we have to see our divisions through the prism of our common historical experience.

Ancient Greece was a collection of city states that often competed or warred against each other. The two strongest city states Athens and Sparta, diametrically different in orientation, fought a series of conflicts known as the Peloponnesian Wars. The outcome brought both to ruin. The duality of the Greek spirit, that is, unity and disunity, is illustrated by the fact that these feuding Greeks saw "Hellenism" as a universal idea, not necessarily predicated on a racial or ethnic concept. Isocrates, for example, saw the polis spreading to non-Greeks. Internecine squabbles could also be set aside when Greeks were threaten by an external threat.

In 481 B.C., the Persian Emperor Xerxes sent ambassadors demanding earth and water, a sign of submission, from the Greek city states as his vast army marched toward Greece. The Spartans called a conference in Corinth which was attended by the Greek city states thinking of resisting, including Athens. Athens conceded leadership of the effort to Sparta and they made the following resolutions: to end all wars among themselves and to declare war on Persia. A small force under a Spartan King named Leonidas was sent to a strategic pass to block the advance of the Persian Army and buy valuable time. The sacrifice of the Spartans and other Greeks at Thermopylae allowed the Athenian fleet to eventually defeat the numerically superior Persian fleet in the narrow straits off the island of Salamis. Greece and the West was saved. Victor David Hanson, a professor of classics, writes: "Nothing provides a better or more clear illustration of this than Herodotus's description of Thermopylae, where [soldiers] in the royal army of Xerxes were being whipped to fight, whereas Leonidas and the Spartans said they were there because they were following the law that they themselves had created. What kind of army, ancient or modern, would name their triremes "Free Speech" or "Freedom" like the Athenians did at Salamis, or have a play by Aeschylus that says, "We rowed into battle saying 'freedom, freedom, freedom.'" It is very strange in comparison to what motivated other armies of the era."

Greek Byzantium was the bulwark again against the advance of eastern invaders for over a thousand years. Unfortunately, the empire was often wracked by internal dissension and infighting, which weakened it, along with the destruction wrought by the Crusaders, who sacked Constantinople. In the seventh and eighth centuries, in particular, first the Persians and then the Arabs launched major offensives into the region. Yet these invaders ultimately failed to establish themselves on Byzantine territory. However, a period of civil war in the late eleventh century enabled the Turks to make huge inroads into Byzantine territory. In many places, usurpers used mercenary Turkish troops to occupy strategic towns, only for those mercenaries to take the towns for themselves when the usurpers had departed. By 1095, virtually the whole of Asia Minor, comprising about 70% of the Byzantine Empire, had been lost.

The substantial efforts of Greeks in the Greek War of Independence to throw off the yoke of the Ottoman Empire was also marred by a surprising inability at critical junctures to establish a united front, both during the war and after independence. Internal rivalries, however, prevented the Greeks from extending their control and from firmly consolidating their position in the Peloponnese. In 1823, civil war broke out between the guerrilla leader Theodoros Kolokotronis and Georgios Kountouriotis, who was head of the government that had been formed in January 1822 but that was forced to flee to the island of Hydra in December, 1822. After a second civil war, Kountouriotis was firmly established as leader, but his government and the entire revolution were gravely threatened by the arrival of Egyptian forces, led by Ibrahim Pasha, which had been sent to aid the Turks. With the support of Egyptian sea power, the Ottoman forces successfully invaded the Peloponnese; they furthermore captured Messolonghi, the town of Athens, and the Athenian acropolis. The Greek cause, however, was saved by the intervention of the European Powers.

The Greek state that emerged in 1830 was dominated by the factionalism left over the Ottoman period. In addition, there was a sudden influx of diasporan Greeks and this created much suspicion among the insular residents of the small Greek state. Political factions were not organized along party lines but around one's support to one of the Great Powers. The "Great Idea," a doctrine of manifest destiny to bring all unredeemed Greeks together into one state was a unifying and non-partisan theme which developed after independence. This theme, the driving force behind Greek foreign policy of the era, drove Greece into two Balkan Wars and finally the debacle of 1922. It was the stunning Greek defeat in Asia Minor by Kemal Attaturk, aided and abetted by some of the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union, which brought Greek irredentist dreams to a halt. The broad divide between monarchists supporting the Greek King and republicans who supported Eleftherios Venizelos, the prime minister who had engineered Greek Occupation of Asia Minor under the Treaty of Versailles, was in large part responsible for that defeat. In October 1920, the Greek army advanced further east into Anatolia, with the encouragement of Lloyd George, the British prime minister, who intended to increase the pressure on the Turkish and Ottoman governments to sign the Treaty of Sevres. This advance began under the Liberal government of Venizelos, but soon after the it started, Venizelos fell from power and was replaced by Dimitrios Gounaris, who appointed inexperienced monarchist officers to senior commands. The result was a military and human disaster.

In the wake of 1922, Greece was saddled with enormous debt, over a million refugees and along with the Depression, this created a situation in Greece that eventually lead to the rise of a disaffected portion of the Greek population, easily organized by the Communists. The 30s were plagued by constant coups, military governments and the systematic purge of communists from the body politic. The Italian Invasion of Greece swept all of that aside, at least temporarily. It brought Greeks together as few other events in their history, and it pitted them against a common foe instead of each other. Patriotism and martial spirit swept Greece as the Greek Army repelled the invader and advanced into Albanian territory. Defeated subsequently by Germany and suffering under a cruel occupation Greeks were to revert to business as usual, fighting among themselves almost as often as they did against the enemy. The internecine warfare that followed liberation between monarchists and communists culminated in one the worst bloodbaths of Greek history known as the Greek Civil War. The Right emerged victorious and consolidated its hold on Greece under the military dictatorship of the Colonels. After the fall of the military junta, Greece has gone back and forth between two main political parties that increasingly have divided Greeks along parochial personal interests and are finding it more difficult to differentiate themselves from each other ideologically.

Greeks have a tendency to find all kinds of things to argue about and break ranks with their fellow Greeks. Greek immigrants in America even brought their homegrown political disputes to America. These rifts stunted the development of the growing Greek American community and did irreparable harm to its efforts to establish itself. Then there is the divide that has always existed between "Hellenistic Greeks," those that live outside of Greece, and "Helladic Greeks," those that live in Greece. The cosmopolitan views of the Hellenists rarely coincided with the more insular views of their Helladic cousins. Hellenistic Greeks live in the real world, buffeted by the current storms of globalization, assimilation, and dechristianization. Often they have an idealized version of Greece. Helladic Greeks live in a completely different world with problems of their own. Often they have a distorted view of their overseas brethren. Greece is the center of their world and rightly so. The Hellenistic Greek on the other hand has to straddle two very different worlds.

Then there is the notion of "Greekness" and who or who does not fit our preconceived notions of who is Greek. Greeks throughout the world are dealing with change and upheaval. Some Greek reactions are dysfunctional. Xenophobia, fear of the foreigner and his ideas versus Xenolatria, the penchant for idolizing all that is foreign. There is an element of self hate at work here. Some reject Greekness because they find some Greeks fall far short of an idealized version of it. They want to excise that part of them that is Greek and replace it with anything else. In so doing they throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water. Others are afraid of everything that is not Greek, of being exposed to new ideas. Perhaps they are too comfortable in their own skin.

Unity does not necessarily mean that Greeks agree on everything. Divisions in societies or groups are normal and usually healthy. The problem arises when Greeks become too entrenched in their thinking and approach to the world or each other. When they fail to heed their own history and forget the rich legacy passed down to them. The question is can Greeks bridge the divides, and come together long enough to learn from each other in the face of serious threats to their cultural and national survival or will they revert to past practices?

Technorati : Balkan, Communism, Constantinople, Germany, Greece, Greek Aegean, Greek History, Greek heritage, Messolonghi, Pasok, Thermopolyae

Greeks versus Turks above the Aegean

On Tuesday, May 23 two Turkish F-16 fighters escorting a F-4 reconaissance aircraft and flying over Greek airspacewere intercepted by Hellenic Air Force F16s. The Turks were flying in formation, straight and deep towards Crete to photograph anti-aircraft sites in a sovereign country. Hardly the actions of a friendly neighbor. A mid-air collisionensued between one of the Turkish fighter aircraft and a Greek fighter. Both crashed. The Greek pilot is missing and presumed dead. His name was Group Captain Konstantinos Iliakis, married with two children. The Turkish pilot was rescued by a passing Panamanian ship. So why is this important to anyone but the parties involved? What's wrong with those Greeks and Turks, why can't they just get along?

Just a few short years ago, there was hope that Greece and Turkey would put aside their differences and engage in rapprochement. There are still many in both countries that yearn for good relations and mutual respect. Unfortunately, there is a fly in the ointment. Turkey is a country that is in deep trouble. It is a country that cannot decide whether it is secular or Islamic. It is a country ruled by civilians, but run by the military. It is a country fighting its own indigenous people, its Kurdish minority. It is a country that takes pride in throwing its substantial weight around like it did during the Ottoman heyday. It is a country in which successive governments have shamelessly encouraged and enshrined anti-Greek sentiment in order to lull its people into complacency regarding their sad plight and to deflect attention from its own failures. It is a country which wants to be Western and an EU member but can't seem to act like one. It is a country where human rights are trampled on daily. It is a country that has lost its way.

The problems between Greeks and Turks could be solved tomorrow. In order to do so however, you need Turkish leaders who are willing to negotiate in good faith, make concessions in order to get concessions and who ultimately must give up their reliance on the Greek bogeyman. No such leaders exist. Greeks on the other hand, need leaders that are willing to shape a realistic and effective foreign policy that cuts across political parties and that they are willing to enforce with diplomatic, economic and if needed, military muscle. No such leaders exist.

The problem as I see it is not Greeks and Turks; the two fighter pilots were each doing their duty, when things went horribly wrong. The problem, is the people who sent these two young men up there, to do what they were doing. The problem (and the solution) is with their leaders.

Technorati : Greek Airspace, Greek Current Affairs, Greek Turkish Relations, Hellenic Air Force, Mid-Air Collision, Turkish Air Force

A Lesson in Greek Democracy

Theancient Athenians had a law that excluded citizens from voting on decisions of war, if they owned property outside the city's walls. The basis for this exclusion,on such a weighty matter, was the recognition that the standard practice of an invading army was always to destroy the lands outside the walls first. These Greeks understood the influence exercised by special interests on issues that concerned the general welfare of the entire "demos" or state. What a contrast to our current state of affairs in the United States, where special interests take precedence over the common good. The Founding Fathersof our country, who were great admirers, not to mention emulators of the ancient Greeks, would be saddened to see the lobbyists and special interests wheeling and dealing in the corridors of power in Washington.

Another characteristic of Athenian democracy which I genuinely admire is the utter contempt that Athenians had for the "idiotis", a private person and forerunner of the modern word idiot. These people were generally despised for shirking their duty as citizens to actively participate in the political process. In the assembly, those chosen by lot had to participate unless they had a very good reason for not doing so and when they shirked their responsibilities the Athenians would send a constable to smear red paint on the offender.

I often hear my fellow citizens wax eloquent about all that is wrong with American politics, the government and their disdain for do nothing politicians. When they finally get someone to take aggressive action to solve problems, they scream bloody murder. You get what you ask for: politicians afraid to lead and propose solutions to vexing problems in order to get reelected. When things don't go our way, people often drop out of the process and throw up their hands in disgust or they threaten to stay home to punish their political party. How counter-productive.

Here in Maine we have a tradition of participatory democracy called the Town Hall meeting that is slowly dying, except for the occasional controversial issue that gets folks riled up. Unfortunately, when more mundane, yet more critical issues are discussed, voters are home watching American Idol. The lesson here is that we all have to get out and get involved in our communities and in the political process on every level. It's too important to leave to the opportunists and politicians alone. Maybe those old Greeks knew a thing or two about how a real democracy works after all and we can still learn from them.

Technorati : American politics, Ancient Greeks, Athenian democracy, Athenians, Loobyists

Mexicans and Greeks

Illegal immigration is a hot button topic these days in the US and elsewhere. America has always been known as a nation of immigrants, built and sustained by them. As an immigrant myself, I have mixed feelings about the current situation. Although I can certainly sympathize and understand the desire millions of people who live in failed states to come to the Promised Land, I also think they need to abide by our laws in doing so. Perhaps it would be instructive to compare the migration of present day Mexicans to that of Greeks at the turn of the century.

Greeks, like Mexicans, wanted to come to America primarily to partake of the economic opportunities unavailable to them in their home countries. Most of them were young men who left communities that had to survive with the help of the old people and women left behind. These communities subsisted in many respects on the cash receipts sent home from America.
America has always relied on the cheap labor of immigrants to fuel its economic growth and the relationship between worker and business has been mutually beneficial if not always fair or equitable. Greek immigrants, unlike other European immigrant workers, had not been radicalized before coming to America and were often used as strikebreakers by management. This in turn created much animosity with other ethnic groups. The nativist Anglo-Saxon majority was less than welcoming in the early twentieth century and considered Greeks "less than white." As an interesting aside, Greeks and Japanese immigrantsdeveloped an early bond because they were similarly ostracized. I highly recommend the writings of Helen Papanikolas (See the Exiled Greeks link) for a much more thorough treatment of their travails. Mexicans nowadays, although they are often the target of a softer racism are still the beneficiaries of taxpayer largess in the form of free education for their children, free medical care in Emergency rooms, and other forms of handouts that would have been the envy of the first Greeks in America. These Greeks also had to enter America legally through Ellis Island, undergoing strict regulation and screening, at least for that era.

I can't get too mad at Mexicans, after all they remind me too much of Greeks. They are family oriented, love life, cling to their religious faith and are extremely proud. I think illegals in the US are most often law abiding and hard working folks who are trying to improve their lot in life. Many probably come here thinking that some day they can return home with money in their pockets, to enjoy the fruits of their labors. In the old days many Greeks carried an amulet of their native soil so that the priest could sprinkle it over their grave if they died before they could return. Life in America was bittersweet, many would never return or see parents and siblings again. This was before the days of air travel and telephonic communications. Their only connection to their past life was via the mail, the Church and Greek language newspapers. These early Greeks eventually had to assimilate to survive, that meant learning the English language, ensuring that their children got a good education, starting businesses, and becoming Americans. For many Mexican illegals, these are not things that they aspire to. Certainly the Mexican communityis not monolithic and generalizations can be dangerously misleading. One should note for example the numerous number of Hispanic names on the list of Iraqi War dead. Certainly as a community they have proven their love of America. What rankles many Americans however, is the sense of entitlement of many of the recent demonstrators in the protests that swept American cities. No one owes them anything and more importantly claiming that the American southwest is Mexican territory and waving Mexican instead of American flags is a recipe for disaster.

Americans rightly expect that their government move quickly and immediately to control our borders and STOP the flow of illegals. Legal immigration, the lifeblood of this country should continue to offer a path to citizenship and the American dream to everyone, not just next door neighbors. For those illegals already here, no promises, just a shot at really earning the right to stay. As for assimilation, immigrants must learn English and abide by our laws and consider themselves "Americans." That said, they do not need to discard their heritage at the door.

Technorati : Assimilation, Ellis Island, Greek Americans, Greeks, Illegal immigration, Mexicans

May Their Memories Be Eternal

Memorial Day in the United States is coming up on the 29th of this month. On Tuesday, my sons and I will drive to the Greek Orthodox cemetery in our town and plant American flags near the gravestones of our community's war veterans. This labor of love is a token of rememberance for those young men that sacrificed their lives for us. Now that I can post on my very own blog I wanted to share the stories of three of them who were Greeks.

John W. Markoglu was a major in the US Marines who was killed tragically in Beirut in 1983 when the building housing the battalion headquarters where he worked was blown up by a suicide bomber. He died along with over two hundred other Marines and sailors. I met John when we were junior officers stationed in Okinawa, years earlier. Although we were in different units I saw his name on a roster and realized immediately that his Greek family hailed from Asia Minor. We hit it off right away. We were two Greeks far from home, sharing stories, food packages, and Greek music tapes. We would make jokes nobody could understand, teach our buddies choice Greek vocabulary words, and introduced them to the medicinal effects of ouzo. We were definitely a civilizing influence. Months later I went to sea with my unit and he transferred home. We lost touch with each other until I saw his name on a casualty list almost ten years later. John left a wife and three children behind.

Sgt. John Parastratidis was a Greek soldier who fell to his death in a parachute drop in Megara, Greece in 1986. Although I didn't know him well, our paths crossed that fateful day. At the time, I was attending the Greek Army Airborne School and making my first jump. I was the only American on the Hellenic Air Force C130 Hercules aircraft. John was the assistant jump master. Since I was the senior man that day I had the dubious honor of being the first one out. Our twenty man stick jumped uneventfully. Sgt Parastratidis was pulling in our static lines when the cable they were attached to snapped suddenly, causing him to fall out of the doorway of the aircraft. His main chute became entangled and although he tried deploying his reserve, that too got twisted up with the static lines and he fell 1000 feet to his death. John had grown up in Germany. He returned to Greece to serve his military commitment and volunteered for the Greek Army Special Forces. He had only a few days remaining before his discharge.

Lance Corporal Dimitrios Gavriel joined the Marine Corps after 9/11. The son of Greek immigrants, a champion high school wrestler and Brown University graduate, he walked away from a lucrative career on Wall Street to avenge friends killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Dimitrios volunteered to serve as an enlisted man, turning down a commission as an officer. He also volunteered to be a "grunt", an infantryman. He was wounded during the vicious fighting in the Battle of Fallujah. Undeterred by his wounds he returned to his unit and was subsequently killed in an explosion a few days later. In the words of his father: "he put his life on the line when most of us would have run away. We lost a great kid."

May their memories be eternal.

Technorati : Beirut, Fallujah, Greece, Greek Americans, Greek Special Forces, Greel Immigrants, Iraq, US Marines

A Tale of Two Communities

Gulbeyaz KaraHasan is a 27 year old lawyer and mother who is running for Parliament as a nominee of George Papandreou's socialist PASOK party. If elected she will be the second Muslim parliamentarian representing the Turkish minority in Greece which numbers approximately 120,000. Her candidacy has become a bit of a political football in Greece, with politicians from PASOK and New Democracy trading barbs and tripping over themselves to assure everyone that minorities share the same rights as Greeks. Perhaps they need a history lesson regarding two communities, a Turkish one in Greece and a Greek one in Turkey.

The Muslim minority in Thrace which constitutes about 1.3% of the population, was protected under the Treaty of Lausanne signed by Greece and Turkey. It's counterpart inTurkey were the Greek communities of Constantinople and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. Greece is often taken to task for its suppposed ill treatment of its citizens of Turkish origin by the EU, Helinski Watch and the US State Department. Turks in Greece have numerous mosques, two state run Islamic centers, a Mufti with judicial powers is appointed based on recommendations of a committee of religious authorities, Muslim scholars, and community leaders. They are allowed to teach the Turkish language and own property. Their numbers have increased significantly from what they were in 1922.

On the other hand, the Greeks of Istanbul, Imbros and Tenedos are almost extinct except for a few scared old people. Those that weren't terrorized into leaving by the anti-Greek riots of 1955, were gradually pushed out through ruses such as the Varlek Vergisi or wealth tax. Inability to pay this exorbitant tax often resulted in the confiscation of Greek owned property and occasionally prison sentences at hard labor. The Patriarch of Constantinople, who represents millions of Orthodox Christians and who is part of an unbroken line of religious leaders that dates back over a thousand years and I might add before the arrival of the Turks themselves in the lands they presently occupy, is under constant pressure to leave Turkey. The same country that is now chomping at the bit to take its "rightful" place as a member of the EU and to be considered "Western", recently denied the Pope permission to visit the Patriarch of Constantinople. Patriarch Bartholomew's position is increasingly untenable, he is constantly the object of demonstrations by right wing Turks, not to mention the target of violent acts. The position of Patriarch can only be filled by a Turkish citizen. The Turkish government closed the Theological Seminary at Halki in 1971. It remains closed supposedly because the Patriarchate had the temerity to refuse incorporation of the Seminary under a secular Turkish University. In so doing, the Turks are denying Orthodox Christians the ability to replace the aging bishops from which the Patriarch must be chosen.

Ms. KaraHasan is a lucky woman, after all imagine if she had been a Greek woman born in Turkey.

Technorati : Greece, Greek Current Affairs, Greek Politics, Greek-Turkish Relations, Muslim Minority in Greek Thrace, PASOK

The Future of Hellenism and Orthodoxy in America

Americans of Greek descent are not always looked upon very favorably by our brothers and sisters in the Patrida (ancestral homeland). We are often viewed as too rich, naive, brainwashed, unable to speak Greek properly, out of touch with our Greek heritage and basically unable to rein in our out of control government. Many have a bleak view of the future of Hellenism in America. Greek immigration to the United States which started in earnest around the beginning of the twentieth century, is a complicated story. Many of the immigrants who came in the early years were young men who came to escape the grinding poverty of their rural villages. Sons in Greek families were not allowed to marry until their sisters were properly married off and that could only happen with an appropriate dowry. The lure of America back then is hard to imagine. An account in 1909 describes it thus: "In every village the farmer deserts his plow, the shepherd sells his sheep, the artisan throws away his tools, and all set aside the passage money so that they can take the first possible ship to America and gather up dollars on the street before they are all gone." These early immigrants suffered discrimination, violence and onerous working conditions similar to that experienced by other immigrant groups. As often happened with immigrants however, although their sojurn was always considered temporary, many ended up staying in America and later importing brides from home, in order to raise families in the New World.

Public education in the United States was built around the "melting pot" concept. Many immigrants sought to Americanize their names and blend in to the larger predominantly Anglo-Saxon society. If they were second class citizens in the Patrida because they were poor, they were determined to do whatever it took to succeed in their new home.

In many respects Greeks in America began to over emphasize a shallow view of their ethnicity that was built around Greek festivals, folk dancing, parades, and Greek food. Lost in all of this was the ability of immigrants to pass on many of the important aspects of their culture and heritage. Despite the efforts of many in the community, with each passing generation, more and more of the language, history, literature and the connection to Greece is being lost.

The unifying element in maintaining a sense of Greekness, even a substitute for it, was the Greek Orthodox Church in America. It is central to the community and a very important part of their lives, much more than it is for modern Greeks in the Patrida. In fact, the Church is as vital to the survival of Greek Americans as it was to Greeks that lived under Ottoman domination. Greek immigrants helped establish Orthodoxy in America and they clung fast to their faith and passed it down to succeeding generations. Despite its huge importance, it is currently undergoing a subtle transformation towards a more Americanized version due to the influx of other ethnicity's to Orthodoxy through intermarriage and conversion from other faiths. The Orthodox Church in America is poised to expand exponentially with more and more Evangelicals, Catholics and Episcopalians discovering the rich traditions of Hellenized Christianity. The more the Church reaches out the more it ensures its mission and the survival of some form of Greek ethnicity.

For Hellenism to survive in America and help America itself, it must feed the spiritually hungry and expose them to Greek Christian values. The other side of the coin is that Americans of Greek descent must rediscover their Hellenic heritage in order to help other Americans experience the benefits of Greek paidea as practiced by our Ancient Greek fore bearers. Many Americans do not realize that our country was founded on the principles of Greek democracy and the founding fathers were philhellenes. They were the beneficiaries of and proponents of Greek Paidea. Paidea means education. It was an important Hellenic concept embraced by the Ancients. It embodies all the processes involved in creating a citizen that is able to think, dialog with others, and inquire constantly. More than technology today, we need highly civilized human beings. As the moral philosopher,Isocrates said "Anyone is a Hellene who partakes of our education." In order to do so we first have to find and understand our common Greek roots, no matter who we are. After all, if we study Greek history over the millenia, we invariably come to the conclusion that anyone who feels, thinks and considers himself Greek is Greek. Diasporan Greeks can spearhead a return to the fundamental Western values that were forged by the Ancient Greeks by reacquainting themselves with those values and ideas through paidea. In so doing, Diasporan Greeks may even help their kin in the Patrida reinvigorate not only Greek Orthodoxy in Greece but also the very things that constitute our common Greekness.

Technorati : Greek Americans, Greek Diaspora, Greek Heritage, Greek History, Greek Immigrants, Hellenism, Orthodox Christianity

The Greek Woman

Greek society is patriarchal. That said, please don't get the impression that Greek womenare relegated to insignificant roles or that they occupy subservient positions vis a vis their husbands. Greek women occupy an exalted position in Greek life because they are the mothers of our children. They are also the ones traditionally doing the heavy lifting when it comes to imparting religious faith to the young. If you thought Greek women spent all their time baking baklava and doing embroidery, think again. Greek history for centuries is replete with frequent upheavals, violence and suffering. It is responsible for forging women who were independent, able to adapt and persevere and most importantly able to rein in their fear in order to protect those they loved. If you haven't read "Eleni" by Nicholas Gage, I highly recommend it as an introduction to the subject of the Greek woman and what makes her tick. All Greek men have examples in their own life of the influence of a mother or grandmother, and they always speak of them in reverential terms.

Evdoxia was my maternal grandmother. She came to live with us when I was born. I was her first grandchild and our bond was strong and remained strong throughout her long life. My family lived in Constantinople (Istanbul to all non-Greeks), part of a "protected" Greek minority that numbered over 100,000 at that time. On September 6, 1955, my grandmother, mother and I were spending the last weekend of the summer outside of the city. We were staying in an old house that was owned by my great uncle. The house was built like a bank, bars on the windows and a heavy wooden door with a heavy crossbar. My Dad had to work that weekend and was unable to join us that fateful day. Although I was only five years old at the time, the events of that day are indelibly etched in my mind. I remember playing with a toy car on the floor that night. Then we heard the sound of Church bells.

My grandmother was immediately alerted, something was wrong but she had no idea what it was.

Little did she realize that anti-Greek riots had erupted on signal from the Turkish government. In the midst of turmoil in Cyprus with the Greeks there pushing for enosis (union) with Greece, Turkey decided to send a message. As the police stood passively on the sidelines, riots began emanating from the center of the city at Taksim Square and moved out to its suburbs. The destruction was systematic, thorough and would have made a barbarian horde proud. Nothing Greek was spared, not even cemeteries. It would mark the beginning of the end of the historic Greek community in Istanbul. At that moment, those two Greek women had no idea what was in store for them.

Yiayia immediately barred the door and told my mother and I to go upstairs. I still remember hearing shouting and the sound of breaking glass. My grandmother rushed upstairs and ordered my mother to hide herself and me in a closet. My mother balked at the idea of leaving yiayia to face her fate alone and grabbed me, shoved me under a bed and told me not to move or make a sound. An angry crowd of Turks was loitering outside, shouting epithets and throwing the occasional cobblestone up towards the windows. Years later yiayia described it as the sound of a pack of wolves. Loud banging at that door began in earnest but the mob was unable to dislodge the wrought iron crossbar or crack the heavy oak door. I can only imagine what must of been going through the minds of those two lonely women at the time. It was yiayia who decided to sew. They grabbed the heavy wool red blanket on the bed and began sewing a white star and crescent on it. In what must have seemed an eternity to them they hung the makeshift Turkish flag out of the window. The effect was dramatic, the angry milling crowd soon dispersed into the night. We had survived a pogrom. The next day my mother warily left the house to fetch water from a local fountain. A young teenage boy strutted up to her and spoke in Turkish: " Yesterday you were lucky, but soon we will cut your throats, giaour (infidel)." A year later my family immigrated to America and never looked back.

Technorati : Greek Americans, Greek Diaspora, Greek History, Greek Life, Greek Minority in Istanbul, Greek-Turkish Relations, Turkey

The Promised Land

I never met my paternal grandfather. He was born and lived most of his life in a small Greek village in what is now southern Albania (Northern Epirus). He was a simple man who made his living as a cobbler. His wife died in her thirties leaving him with four children to raise. He managed to scrape enough together to get his son a high school education, no small feat in a destitute country like Albania in the decade before World War II. My father was chosen to attend the Patriarchal Theological Seminary on the island of Halki, located in the Bosporus and spent the next seven years there as a seminarian. It was thus that my grandfather was able to save his son before the Iron Curtain descended on his homeland. He died without ever meeting me, his namesake or seeing his son again.

Papou (Greek word for Grandfather) was an ardent Venizelist. A follower of Eleftherios Venizelos, the man who engineered Greek entry on the Allied side in World War I and almost succeeded in realizing the expansion of the borders of the Greek state to include millions of ethnic Greeks. Papou fought in the Balkan War of 1912, but he and other Greeks like him who lived in the region known as Northern Epirus, were never reunited with their Greek brothers. The happiest day of Papou's life came twenty eight years later and was proclaimed in a dogeared, tear stained letter my Dad kept. It starts out: "My dear Nikolaki, I kiss you eyes. I'm writing to you today from Greek soil that has been swept clean of Italians. The brave soldiers of Greece have chased them north like frightened sheep. May God bless Greece." This letter, a family heirloom and one of the few physical objects related to my grandfather, was sent in 1940 from his Greek occupied village after the Greek Army had routed the Italian Fascists who had only a few weeks earlier launched an invasion of Greece from Albania. This brief freedom as a Greek living on a piece of redeemed Greek territory was followed by German occupation and Communist tyranny for the rest of his life.

For years as I was growing up I subsisted on a few pictures and the stories my Dad would tell about his father and the village he grew up in. He told me about my grandfather working in America for three years as a young man, working in the mills in Maine during the turn of the century. For me it was always a collection of shadows until I found www.ellisisland.org . Searching through the records I found a copy of a ship's manifest with my grandfather's name on it. As my finger traced the outline of his personal information written on the manifest, I felt closer than I ever felt to a man who I had never met, but lived inside of me.

Papou arrived at Ellis Island in 1907 with 25 dollars in his pocket, he was 5' 9", and had brown hair and eyes. As required of all new immigrants, he had given the address of his final destination It was a street and house number in the Maine town where I currently work. Everyday I travel past this location on the way to work, and everyday I wave and say hello to Papou. Papou came to America as a guest worker at a time when America needed labor to fuel its economic expansion. He made a small fortune (for his world), returned to his home and family with dreams of returning permanently to America with his wife and children. Yiayia (Greek word for Grandmother) would have none of it and the idea died until fate intervened again decades later. It's funny how little things change everything. Thanks Yiayia, I owe my very existence to you and thanks Papou for leading the way to the Promised Land.

Technorati : Greek Americans, Greek Diaspora, Greek Education, Greek History

The Forgotten Greeks

I grew up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan during the 50s and 60s. We lived in a neighborhood that was predominately Irish Catholic and German, with a smattering of Hungarians. My parents never missed a chance to tell us constantly that as Greeks living in a sea of xeni (foreigners), we were obligated to remind them that Greeks had created everything really worthwhile. Unfortunately, a kid named Joey didn't quite see it that way and delighted in calling me "greaseball." Given the fact that this particular barbarian was twice my size, I decided that there would be some guys who our civilizing influence would not reach, besides he was a helluva stick ball player.

My parents were not about to deny me the educational trappings of a truly educated Greek just because our local public school, PS 151, was remiss in offering regular doses of Greek history, literature, language and religion. They're solution was simple: add a few extra hours of Greek school and the obligatory homework it entailed, to my already full day. So I would come home, pack my trash and trek the fifteen blocks to Spanish Harlem, where the local Greek Orthodox Church was located. Thank God I looked Puerto Rican. My Greek school teacher, was a middle aged widow and thus dressed in the obligatory basic black. She popped Aspirin like candy because she had terrible toothaches from a mouth full of rotting teeth. She couldn't afford to go to the Dentist because she was putting her only son through med school. Red was her favorite color and since she couldn't wear it, she scribbled it liberally on all your homework. As far as she was concerned, all the boys needed to learn Greek so we could become doctors and correctly pronounce all those Greek medical terms. The girls needed to learn Greek so they could find a good Greek husband. On important holidays like Greek Independence Day she made us memorize entire Homeric epic poems to regale the little yiayias (grandmothers) and papous (grandfathers) about the glory of Greece. If that wasn't enough of an imposition on our time, we even had to go to Sunday School. Luckily for me I quickly figured out that if you were an altar boy, you got turned loose early from Sunday school. Playing with lighted candles was also an added benefit.

My parents had many friends and relatives. Most were Greek immigrants like themselves. On weekends, when you weren't in school or church you were going from one Greek home to another eating like there was no tomorrow. Funny, back then nobody ever got fat unless you were a yiayia and you had to do a lot of taste testing. Yiayias were old ladies, usually widows who wore black dresses, even if their husbands had died thirty years ago.The highlight of all these gatherings was getting kissed on both cheeks by scores of relatives you never realized you had. Ever get kissed by a papou with a stubby beard with ouzo breath? Spirited, not to mention loud, political arguments were standard fare at these gatherings punctuated only by dancing, music and more eating. Occasionally, my Dad and his countrymen would sing off key songs from the horio (village), that was really painful.

So there you have it, its my parents fault, and I don't even need a psychotherapist to tell me who to blame. It's their fault that I have an obsession with everything Greek. Of course, they had some help from my Greek School teacher, the parish priest, the Sunday School teacher and all the other Greek adults in my life. The interesting thing is that my parents and their parents and grandparents never lived in Greece. They were the forgotten Greeks, the unredeemed Greeks, scattered in places like Albania, the Black Sea coast, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Egypt. The Greek State and most Greek leaders failed them miserably in costly attempts to bring them back into the fold. Despite this, over the centuries, three things preserved their Greekness: their Orthodox faith, their language and their love of their Greek past. Suffering is as Greek as Feta on your salad, and boy did these Greeks suffer. They suffered the depravities of Turks, Albanian Communists, Bulgarians, and occasionally, their fellow Greeks, but in the end, they always preserved their Greekness. Many joined the great Greek Diaspora which included even the forgotten Greeks from Greece itself, the rural peasants. They immigrated to places like America, Canada , and Australia. Places where they could put their substantial work ethic to good use; where they could free their creative spirit and where most of all, where they could live without worrying about the next depravity the barbarians would inflict on them. Those that are still alive now live in comfort, their children and grandchildren prosper, yet the things that sustained them in captivity, are slowly disappearing. They are disintegrating under an onslaught of cultures that rarely value the really important things that these immigrants contributed to multi-ethnic society. Greeks bring more than Gyros and bouzouki music to the table, they bring the richness of their religious faith and their Hellenic legacy. The children of those forgotten Greeks consider themselves Americans, Canadians and Australians, they have arrived, they have assimilated. They have become integral parts of the new societies that they live in. In the deep recesses of their souls, however, a few still recognize the truth of actor Michael Constantine's famous words: "There are two types of people in this world, Greeks and those that wish they was."

    Technorati : Greek Americans, Greek Diaspora, Greek History, Greek Life, Greek School