Celebrations

Now a roadside planted in oleander, cypress, and citrus trees

150 meter stone wall--inch by inch, rock by rock

Back to harvest our olives in November? 

loft stairs

rudimentary kitchen--a work in progress

What? Can't I  help you?

Brush fire near our house

Every Day Is a Celebration

The days count down and soon Jonathan will head back to Maine—via Munich and Boston, and then an eight-hour drive Downeast. Not counting the drive to Athens on Monday, the journey will take upwards of thirty hours.

This is an exciting (or nerve-wracking) time for Greece. Here in Finikounda it’s a special weekend. The church is the repository of a very special icon, a long-ago gift from the monastic community of Mount Athos, in far northern Greece. The icon of the Virgin Mary is said to have miraculous qualities, and this is the weekend that it is celebrated. People were bussed in from all over Greece; there are ecclesiastical, political, and military representatives in residence for the weekend celebration; and the community band of nearby Pylos lead the procession—after the church service—through the village on Saturday morning.

If divine intervention doesn't protect the icon, a phalanx of men and women toting M-16s will do the trick.

The celebrations continue tonight with the annual dance festival, which is held in the village amphitheater, located near the fishing harbor. Photos to come.

At 10 a.m. Jonathan arrived in the village center with his camera, ready to document the morning procession. He was waylayed by Petros, the Albanian stonemason (who has done work on the house) and promptly seated for a treat of spit-roasted port and local wine--a local breakfast treat. While the women and the devout crowded the suffocatingly hot church, the men sat outside, eating port and drinking wine. But when the icon procession begins, they all stand reverently, cross themselves, and follow the procession through the village.

The Final (Final) Deadline

Greece’s existential dance with its creditors draws toward a conclusion of some sort or other—no one is really sure what that might be. Will it be Catastrophe 2.2 or Resolution 1.1? Like all things Greek, it will only be known with certainty at the eleventh hour. In the meantime, bring on the roast pork, finish last year’s wine, and get ready to dance! Did we mention swim...and swim again? and again?

Both domestically and internationally, the Greek default negotiations (for no better phrase as this point) is entirely perilous for all concerned. As an aside, Puerto Rico has defaulted on it’s debt (at $70 billion, just a quarter of Greece’s), mighty China is stumbling, the weaker eurozone nations—Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy—remain highly attuned to the situation, as their fate is also questionable. There is a rising chorus of voices, both inside Europe and beyond, urging Chancellor Merkel and her utterly joyless finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, to lighten. Each some pork, drink some wine--take your clothes off Angie, and go for a swim--like most of your countryfolk here in Messinia. It would be a sight to behold.

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And yet life goes on—to use a tired phrase for which there is no better. The festivals, the music, the song and dance: Isn't this what really matters? After all, it is summer in Greece. There is time enough to worry for tomorrow--maybe tomorrow?--but today is a day of celebration.

It is perhaps apt that Jonathan arrived at the apex of the crisis and will leave at the conclusion of the crisis. Or during a deeper crisis. Either there will accommodation (and relief) or no accommodation--and a bonafide Greek tragedy will ensue, the likes of this country has not seen since the (first) German occupation.