A Fascist By Any Other Name

They Say It’s Your Birthday

Today is my lovely daughter Lucia’s twenty-second birthday. Χρόνια πολλά, Λουκία μου! With some luck, we will speak via the Internet this afternoon, the marvels of the digital age keeping us close even though were are thousands and thousands of miles apart.

Photos of the Olive Harvest Next Door

The pruning is complete. These trees have been cut hard, the nets have gathered the olives, and the farmers are off to the press.

My favorite tree, right on the line. She could tell a few hundred years of story

Our best trees--absolutely loaded with olives--will be harvested soon

The Old Fascist

The heading of this section is not a reflection of our current president. And that's the truth. But it could be.

A day doesn’t pass without someone in the village approaching me with a Trump joke or comment. My father, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, told me years ago that when traveling or living overseas, never criticize your government, a bit of advice I followed often against my better judgment.

I love my country—America the beautiful—and the institutions of our Republic. I am especially proud of the military service of my father and his five brothers during the Second World War: five combat Marines in the South Pacific (Okinawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and mainland China) and one brother attached to General Patton’s mechanized forces in Europe. According to a former commandant of the US Marine Corps--speaking to my Uncle Artie, a Marine infantry man on Iwo Jima at the tender age of 17, the combat service of my father and his four Marine brothers represents an unsurpassed Marine Corps distinction shared by no other family in the past 200 years. Whether this is true or not, I may never know—but my assumption is that it is indeed true. And ours was an immigrant family. And no one was locking up their children in cages on the border while allowing ISIS captives to go free.

Oops, there I go again, violating this blog's apolitical principle.

The sense of service runs deeply through my family. I am so proud of my brother, Gregory, who serves as civilian board member for a US Medal of Honor committee; and my recently departed sister, Dyan, who directed the University of Virginia Teen Health Center for 25+ years and spent a lifetime in the trenches fighting for women’s reproductive health--which is now threatened by old white men in Congress. And in my small way (very small), serving as a firefighter and first responder in my own small community in Maine. A life of service is a life well lived. My parents and grandparents taught us this by example. Whenever you can help, offer your hand.

But the current holder of our nation’s highest office is not my government—rather he is some freak of nature, a rogue abberation that afflicts the body politic. Number forty-five (sometimes speaking his name causes indigestion) is such a pitiful creature, a worthy recipient of Greece’s universal adjective (μαλάκα / malaka = wanker).

To be clear, the rest of the world—duly represented in southern Messenia—thinks this man is utterly unhinged, the very worst manifestation of the one-man freak show. Certainly there is more pity than ridicule; that is, pity directed at our long-suffering population back home.

With his usual wry sense of humor, an English friend asked me a question last night.

"Do you know why Trump has placed severe trade sanctions on Germany?" I scratched my head.

"Because they didn't help us on D-Day." I laughed but of course it isn't funny. The reference was to Trump's comment that we can now abandon the Kurds because "they didn't help us in World War II." In a blow to America's integrity, issued by Tweet, he stabbed our allies, our brother's in arms, squarely in the back. An unforgivable betrayal. A total disgrace by a man who dodged the Vietnam draft because of "heel spurs."

So General Mattis, a reticent and cautious man, a genuine war hero, made a dig of his own yesterday: "I got my heel spurs on the battlefield, not on the golf course."

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But no, the fascist of whom I speak is my near neighbor, Leonidas. He wears his name—the famous Spartan king of antiquity—with no particular honor. This according to the villagers who tell me that he once served the military junta (1967-1974) as a henchman and an enforcer. But what goes around come around, as they say.

This particular fascist has a garden plot a few hundred meters down the road, which is fed by an illegal water line that has bisected our property long before our acquistion of it in 2013. Like most things in Greece, getting something for nothing—and not paying taxes—is a kind of national sport.

His line has been severed twice during our tenure, first by a hired tractor and then by the power auger that we are using to drill holes for the perimeter fence. No one really knows where the line is, so each we hit it as if we are striking the Lotto number. A bulls-eye. The odds against it are enormous.

His stern request that I submit (yet another) application to the water district to move the line to edge—to the right of way—has been adamant. The villagers tell me in no uncertain terms, “it’s his problem, not yours. Ignore that old fascist malaka.” But as the outsider, the foreigner, one cognizant of the necessity of water in this parched country, I sought to comply. To a certain point.

He returns on a daily basis and fulminates, telling me what I must and must not do. I have always been compliant with my elders—alas, I am the son of a Marine Corps colonel—to a certain degree, but a few days ago he pushed my button once too many times (see previous posts).

Nevertheless, yesterday I drove over the mountain to the lovely coastal town of Koroni, with its imposing medieval castle and wealthy German second-home owners, on an unrelated mission. I happened to park my buggy outside the δημαρχειο / dimarchio or mayor’s office, the place where such issues are addressed. So I popped and had a few words with Niko, the kindly man who I recalled from having done the same in 2015—apply for the line to be moved. I also spoke with my friend Dimitri, the newly elected vice mayor (not in charge of vice, but as an assistant to the mayor) and he offered to do his part to expedite the request.

Dimitri, a dear friend, a poet-butcher-farmer, offered the following to Niko:

“This is my friend Yianni. He’s not a foreigner, he’s every bit as Greek as the two of us, an heir to his Cretan heritage, a real Greek with an incredible family story and, I might add, very fast running legs. He is a marathoner of some repute.”

I blushed and left for my mountain village.

Streets of Koroni

A lovely place to stroll under the Venetian castle

Bottoms up. Another use for hull

The mayor's office, in a medieval Venetian building

View of the larger town of Koroni

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The Battle of Navarino

By 1829, Greece had suffered more than 300 years of brutal occupation by the Ottoman Turks, who had overrun most of the Balkans by the year 1500, all the way to the gates of Vienna. Ruthless and pitiless overlords, “tax farmers” who had burtalized the local Christian and Jewish populations, by 1829 the walls were collapsing and the call for revolution—Ελευθερία η Θάνατος, Freedom or Death!—was announced from every church, mountain top, and arid plain.

Countless European mercenaries, including Lord Byron who died in the Battle of Messolonghi, sought to free Greece from the Turkish yoke. A viscious and brutal guerilla war had ensued since 1821 against the “sick man of Europe.”

The decisive battle that won freedom for much of mainland Greece—but not the north or the eastern islands, and especially not Crete until the 1890s—occurred nearby in Pylos, about 20 kilometers to the west.

The Battle of Navarino, a very famous naval engagment (part of the first-year curriculum at the Annapolis Naval Academy), happened on Navarino Bay, a large enclosed body of sea near the town of Pylos.

Surrounded by a combined fleet of Greek, British, French, and Russian warships, the pride of the Ottoman fleet—more than 200 galleons—were obliterated. And Greece was freed—to fight future battles and regain more territory in the 75 years to come.

My own Cretan grandfather, Andoni, living in Manhattan in 1912 (having immigrated from Crete in 1908), returned to Greece with another 100 Cretan mercenaries to fight the Ottomans in the Battle of Ioannina, an epic conflict which was part of the First Balkan War (1912).

Charging into battle on the plains of Ioannina, his twin brother by his side, they fought the Turks in close combat with long swords against the emblematic Turkish scimitars (the curved sword that appears on today’s Turkish flag). His brother Kosta was decapitated in front of his twin brother’s eyes. It is a story that all of us grandchild heard repeatedly while growing up. The evil and viscious Turks. Long after my grandfather died, my father continued the tradition, speaking about Turkish brutality. A brutality that continues to this day against the Kurds of Syria.

The great Battle of Navarino is re-enacted each year and for the first time I am here to witness an event that draws more than 15,000 spectators (in a town of 2000 souls). The celebration includes representatives of Britain, France, and Russia—each contributing warships and personnel—and a massive showing by the Greek Navy. Full-size replicas of Ottoman galleons are set adrift offshore and then obliterated by the Greek Navy’s fusilade. There are fireworks, vendors, gypsies selling their wares. It will be a hoot.

I have been invited to this year’s celebration by a group of resident English friends. Photos to come.

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The other night I joined a group of friend for souvlaki at the Albanian shop on the waterfront in Finikounda. These can be trying times for a non-drinker of alcohol in Greece, where everyone buys everyone pitchers of wine and cold beers. They sure look enticing, but I’m a happier soul without this indulgence. But sometimes denial requires more explanation than I desire.

So I ordered a non-alcoholic (that is, zero percent alcohol) beer just to look “normal.”

In front of a crowded table, he water brought all the drinks in one large try.

“And for you, my friend, here is a drink for children.” He set the bottle in front of me and winked disapprovingly.

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Run to the Venetian Tower

On the hillside below our house there is an old Venetian watch tower dating to the early Middle Ages, which is accessible from Loutsa beach on a narrow trail that runs along a cliff edge. There is an incredible, isolated sandy beach there, where the threatened loggerhead turtles lay their eggs---and where people in know can swim and sun in relative peace.

Running through a wild landscape to the Venetian tower

Big beach in Finikounda--Loutsa beach on the distant shore, near our house

Today I accessed it from above, winding through the olive groves and into a thicket of brambles and thorns—as evidenced by my bloody legs, later washed clean in the ocean.

In the period of Venetian occupation (1200 to around 1600) a series of these towers existed along the coast and were manned by small groups of soldiers, who looked out to sea watching for incoming pirates or Turkish raiders. When such vessels were sighted, fires were lit in the towers, and then in the next tower down the coast, until the advance warning was received in the massive castle in Methoni. The residents (more than forty thousand at its height) would entry the single gate over the moat, close the doors and wait it out, hurling every manner of debris, arrows, and cannons on the besieging Turks.

The Venetian castle in Methoni, with with Lion Gate (an emblem of Saint Mark of Venice), was besieged for many years prior to its fall to the advancing Turkish forces. When the castle finally fell, in the late 1600s, all of its 10,000+ defenders were decapitated, the women were sold into sexual slavery--sent to the harems of Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire, which was siezed from the Byzantine Greeks in 1452. The hundreds of children were taken back to Turkey, the boys “made” into eunuchs, the girls given as booty to the Turkish overlords.

The evil and vicious Turks. Papou (grandpa) wasn’t joking.

My grandparents were born on the island of Crete, which still occupied by the Ottomans until a final revolution in 1905, and hence were subjects of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It is no wonder that my grandfather welcomed the opportunity to leave New York City, with 100 other Cretans, just a few years after he had arrived, to fight the Turks in northern Greece in 1912. It was time for justice and he wasted no time. His sword was sharpened and he was ready to take some heads. But sadly, his twin brother lost his own head in battle.

So, running along the cliff’s edge, this sweep of history raced through my mind with every step. After passing by the old Venetian tower, I took a track down toward the sea in a wild, overgrown landscape. At one point I lept over an alarmingly large snake. When I arrivd at Loutsa beach, I literally tumbled down an embankment on onto the sand.

I landed unceremoniously a few feet from a Swedish family—momma, pappa, and three teenage daughters—all in their beautifully tanned birthday suits. After recovering from our mutual shock, we all laughed about it, said hello, and I was on my way down the beach to do a bit of my own sunbathing/swimming.

Nudity in Greece is hardly a phenomenon that needs much in the way of explanation. By and large, foreigners and Greeks are respectful of local sensibilities--this is a socially conservative nation--and remain discrete.

But it just is, especially for the Germans, who introduced co-ed nude swimming in their own country in the nineteenth-century. It was, in fact, considered by doctors to be a healthy and necessary tonic for a life well lived, and it was and is encouraged.