Summer Journal 2012, August 31

Kiss August Goodbye.  I think this is a rather hard spell for Stell.  He has sent emails to three individuals that were not easy to send and suggesting that if any of these folks want to speak with him before we leave, he is available.  One is a young man who he has assisted with a business start up for the past ten years.  He (Stell) has determined it is time to "cut the rope", and the young man must now deliver on his own.  This young man, both in the States and here, typically would phone twice a day for conversation and sometimes guidance.  The other was an email to two brothers of the family who has looked after the house and benefitted from the produce of olives and grapes on the property and some cultivation of wheat for almost thirty years.  Now Stell is turning the property over to another fellow, and unfortunately the older caregivers and this new man are not on good terms.  This was definitely hard for Stell to do, but it is his property and one day will be Paris', so he definitely has the right to make the decisions that he thinks are best for the management of the place.  Nonetheless, dissolving relationships is never easy.

The long view

 

I had my picture taken with the Captain today.  I think he is the most respected man at Sultana's.  Every day when he finishes his ouzo, a younger gentleman drives him home. 

 

 

Costis Mamoupolis phoned while we were at Miloz.  He is going to try and come tomorrow with Athena and Angelos.  This will be great.  Nic will like it if I have a chance to see him.  I think he was Nic's favorite friend here.  I know he has wanted to leave Greece - go to London or perhaps South Africa, where Athena was raised.  We've heard that England has put a stop on so much Greek immigration.  All of the bright, young people seem anxious to leave because of the "crisis."



Summer Journal 2012, August 30

Happy Name's Day to Alexander Asterios Kefalas.  Xronia Polla!

We will raise a glass to our grandson and all the other Alexanders and Alexandras here and in the U.S.

To Alexander!

 

To Alexander, holding our glass like Alexander holds his!

 

To our waiter, Alexander!

 

 

Chris, this is Maria's ice-cream shop near the sea

Summer Journal 2012, August 29

A week from today we should be in Athens, Greece, awaiting our flight to New York City then to Atlanta, Georgia.  Yesterday was particularly eventful, and I think I got some good photographs.  Today I'm planning to work just with my video camera.  I finished Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land. I'm planning when I get home to buy a copy for each of the guys in Nic's Triangle of Truth.  Now I've started the lengthy Secret Ingredients:  The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink edited by David Remnick.  Frank Bruni, who Addie has fortunately introduced me to earlier, says of this book, "You couldn't ask for a more diverse, dazzling collection of writers."

 

No  matter how many years I've come to Ierissos, I always find seeing the monks walking along the beach or around town very curious.  I liked the contrast of this monk next to the red bench against the blue sea. 

 

Last night our grand-niece Maria, who has just completed law school in Athens, came with her "serious" boyfriend, Timos, to our place for a drink followed by dinner at Christos.  The boyfriend who goes by the stage name of Leon, is a songwriter, and pop star in the country.  In late September they are moving to London, so he can produce a second album.  His family is quite wealthy as they had the Otis Elevator Franchise in Greece for many years.  If you've been in Athens and Thessaloniki you will understand the importance of elevators.  Anyhow we had a nice dinner with them.  I'm going to follow with their photograph and then an article from a June edition of the New York Times, where his work is cited:

 

Pop Star Leon with our niece, Maria





Paralysis in Athens

By RANDALL FULLER

Published: June 6, 2012

Athens

“WHAT are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?” asked the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy in 1904. “Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?”

Less than two weeks before Greece holds another round of national elections, Cavafy’s famous poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” has renewed force and urgency in Athens. The elections, scheduled for June 17, will decide Greece’s fate in the euro zone and perhaps even its long-term future as a viable state. But with an excruciating choice to be made between draconian austerity measures and a departure from Europe’s shared currency, the birthplace of democracy is paralyzed with indecision and poised to descend into chaos and economic catastrophe.

Evidence of a state tottering on the edge of complete dysfunction is apparent everywhere in Athens. Traffic signals work sporadically; a sign giving the shortened hours of one of the world’s great museums, the National Archaeological Museum, is haphazardly taped to the door; police officers in riot gear patrol the perimeters of the universities, where a growing population of anarchists, disaffected young people and drug addicts congregate in communal hopelessness.

“Greeks have worry beads up to here,” one Athenian told me in the shadow of the Acropolis, measuring to the top of her head. “We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

The most visible sign of these dire, uncertain times is the proliferation of graffiti over almost every vertical space in the city. Athens has long cherished a tradition of political commentary and street art, but the recent financial crisis has spurred the young to express their discontent with nihilistic intensity.

“Wake Up!” is a ubiquitous tag in the city. “Welcome to the Civilization of Fear” reads another. One airbrushed scene portrays an Athens bus — not long ago a symbol of Greece’s commitment to improving its civic infrastructure while reducing pollution — about to run off the road or crash into an oncoming vehicle.

If the young bear the harshest burden of the economic crisis — 48 percent of Greeks below age 24 are unemployed — they do so with a mix of denial, frantic exuberance and a debilitating sense of the absurd. A flash mob recently appeared in Syntagma Square, not to protest the lack of jobs or the political gridlock but to dance to ’N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye.” Nearby, another graffiti slogan seemed to capture the mood: “Dancing All the Time, Feeling All the Rage.”

Throughout Athens I asked people of all ages what it was like to live in Greece at the moment. “Hell,” one woman told me. “Terrible, terrible,” said a waiter at a tavern on the Plaka.

A Greek friend sighed and admitted that he would leave the country immediately if he could: “There is no good solution to the current crisis. Austerity will damage us for years to come, and so will the return of the drachma. Either way it will get much worse before it gets better.”

On a warm, lovely Saturday night two weeks before the election, the immensely appealing Greek pop star León was finishing a sound check at an outdoor space in the trendy Gazi neighborhood. Strumming a ukulele, León sang what could easily stand as an anthem for this perilous moment in Athens and the rest of Greece:

Tell me what to do when everything is changing,

Tell me what to do when you can’t step on the same river twice.

If Cavafy’s poem blamed national inaction and a too-easy fatalism on a long and tortuous history of invasion from without, León seemed intent on exploring ways to survive this period of gloom and impasse from within. “The master of the ship, the leader of your mind ... you don’t need them anymore,” he sang.

Then the tune, a folkish number titled “Someday (Somewhere, Maybe Somebody),” blossomed into an infectious chorus. León’s band, an eight-piece group of men and women playing electric guitars and the more traditional accordion, leaned in and sang together.

In this place where tragedy was invented, the song was joyful and sadly cathartic. The chorus had no words, but it nevertheless contained an invitation to join in the achingly beautiful melody. I still can’t get it out of my head.

Randall Fuller is a professor of English at the University of Tulsa.

Nic will be delighted to know that we also saw his friend Demetri with his wife Marianna.  Nic stayed with Demetri and did a radio program in Thessaloniki at his radio station many years ago.  They now have two little girls.  He asked to be remembered to Nic.  Hopefully if Nic and Apisata are here next summer they can have a reunion. 

 

Marianna and Demetri

 

Helena and Natalie

 

It seems that everyone was at Christo's last night.  Helena and Natalie sat at the table next to us.  Helena met Natalie several years ago in Panama.   Natalie is a Muscovite who currently lives in London and works in the television industry.  One of the shows her company carries is "Doc Martin."  Her mother works for the U.S. Army in Washington DC, and a sister works in film.  Her sister is in the process of moving to Malibu with her two children.  Unfotunately Natalie was only here for a few days and has already left for her return to London. 

 

We've heard from Petra that she and Kyros will come from Frankfurt on the the 3rd, so we have scheduled to have dinner with them, and our friend Takis (who one year served Adeline a lot of fish and trimmings) will cook for us on Tuesday afternoon.  I imagine that will be our last meal.  Stell says he is ready for me to fix ribs! 

 

Nothing dramatic planned for today - but the weather is fallish and still perfect for swimming, and I will take every swimming opportunity these last days afford.   

 



Summer Journal 2012, August 28

Today begins our last week in Greece.  Stell is doing some final touches on the Parent's Temple.  He's going to have the name inscribed in marble, and he has secured some stain glass discarded from the oldest church in the village to construct the window.  I will go to the lykee, although I am am not much of a shopper, but I need to purchase a couple of tablecloths as wedding gifts.  Tonight we are going to take Maria and her boyfriend, Timos, to dinner.  Maria is one of our niece's twin daughters.  The family seems to think this is a serious relationship and are quite proud because Timos comes from a wealthy Athens' family - so everyone seems to be doing their best to impress him.  All I know about him is that he has a brother who is a financial planner in Boston with Cambridge Associates, and he, Timos, is identified as a writer of folk songs.  My first impressions are that he's very nice, and I will learn more about him at dinner tonight.

I've finished Cully Clark's The Schoolhouse Door, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Civil Rights history.  It is an accounting of the activities and the struggles that led up to the integration of the University of Alabama.  Since I personally have strong connections to U of A, it was very meaningful to me.  Stell said this morning (he's reading The Warmth of Other Suns) that it is likely that no progress would have been made on racial integration or affirmative action if the federal government had not intervened.  I believe it.  I'd forgotten Kennedy's speech on the occasion of the integration of U of A.  It was magnificent.

Now I'm 50 pages shy of finishing Tony Judt's, "Ill Fares the Land."  It should be required reading for everyone who knows how to read.  I like this quote he includes citing Upton Sinclair:  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

Summer Journal 2012, August 26

It's poli zesty here in Ierissos (around 100 F) and we didn't get a chance to swim.  Carrie will take heart in knowing that Stell threw the bedroom trashcan at the cow outside our window in the wee hours of the morning.  He was pissed with the clanging of its bell.  Paris will be glad to know that today in addition to being his father's birthday represented avrio day for Jevilikis and Foras who came up in Demetri's truck to haul away all the materials and tools they had been using to work on the Parent's Temple.  Paris is not awed with the Greek appreciation of avrio (tomorrow) for doing just about anything.

We went to meet Christos and Nicos' 90 year old mother, Katina, at 12:30 p.m. with the hopes she could recall some details of Stell's father's life.  She did remember something things, but even if she had remembered nothing it was just fabulous to meet her.  She asked my name, repeated it, and then said that she hoped I would live a long life like her.  I said I would like that if I could have her lucidity and huge smile.  Here are some photos I made with her.  The last is with her son Nicos, who works for a social work agency in Athens.  He served us tsiparo, cheese, salami, fish, and tomatoes and olives before we departed for a huge lunch at the Karavasilis.

Well, here's Katina at ninety who gave us a tour of her home:

Katina with her devoted son, Nicos

(gavros in the pan prepared by Georgios the neighbor)

Xronia Polla, Agape-Mou

Stell''s 76th birthday started officially at Mitakos Restaurant.  We were having dinner with Kostas, Harolobus, Spiros, and Aggelos.  I went to make a phone call to Adeline, and Helena found us as she wanted to wish Stell a happy birthday. (Jaiden, little Anatasia was at the restaurant - she looks like a dark-haired Shirley Temple. She wanted to know "where is Jaiden?".  She was with her mother and grandmother):

 

Helena, Spiros, Birthday Boy

 

Aggelos wants in the picture

 

Celebrating in the Place of his Birth

 

Addie, and Gordhan and Jinx have sent messages already this morning.  Paris sent these photos:

 

Carrie and Stell- Putting Their Heads Together for an Oregano Business

 

Son and Father

 

Alexander and Papou

 

Papou, Jaiden and Alexander

 

I think this has been Stell's happiest birthday.  His Papou Genes went into full swing and not a day has passed that he doesn't talk about the days with Paris, Carrie, Alexander and Jaiden.  This was the greatest gift.    



Adeline S. Holt's 80th Birthday

Today, Saturday, August 25, 2012, is the 80th birthday of our sister Adeline Holt.  We love being in Greece, but we are truly sorry that we aren't with her on this marker day.  Of course, we will celebrate when we return.  I will include a few photos of Addie when she did visit us in Greece.  She was born in Cleveland, Ohio.  Nic tells people he was born in Cleveland, Ohio, because he says it sounds unfortunate to say he was born in Lima.

Addie with Stell at the Parthenon Museum

 

Addie is the matriarch of our family which includes Holts and Damn Holts.  This requires her to host innumerable birthdays, Christmas, and Easter events and watch football with Stell.  She also is his main companion to innumerable events at the Hodgson Cultural Center at the University of Georgia.

 

Addie taught me the joy of cooking.  I am said to credit her with things she never baked according to her children Rafe and Kate.  She is the best read woman East of the Mississippi (this includes all of Europe as far as the border of Turkey).  I don't have a clear sense of reading accomplishments beyond Greece.  She has an almost 100% record identifying my reading material. 

 

She has in the past been the recipient of the prestigious Kalosyne Award.  She has been a leader in the library book sales in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She has worked in Athens as a volunteer docent at the Museum of Art, at the gift shop in the Athens-Clarke Public Library, as a volunteer in the St. Mary's Thrift Shop, and as a volunteer in the University of Georgia's Student Health Center.  She's done all kinds of other volunteering but I haven't written it all down and I'm already accused too often of being a graduate of MSU (Making Stuff Up), so I'll stop here.

 

She has a huge cadre of friends, several lifelong friendships, people who call her daily (sometimes more than once daily) from places outside Georgia for her conversation and counsel.  She was a reliable and constant friend to her late neighbor, Hannah Harvey.  She is a Holt Woman and Highly Rated Friend of the Usual Suspects. 

 

Adeline is a voracious reader of an amazing spectra of literary genre, a viewer of documentaries and early film, thrillers, mysteries and television talk shows.  She has a crush on Charlie Rose. 

 

 

Margaret and Stell enjoy lunch with Addie in Athens, Greece

 

 

She is an admired mother, beloved aunt, esteemed mother-in-law, and is constantly visited by cousins real and adopted.  Stell thinks she "makes up" the number of cousins she cites and describes.  She is known for her sharp opinions and insights, and for sure, a well-developed sense of humor.  Once she conquered the Internet and especially the Google possibility, she became dangerous. 

 

 

Today is her 80th birthday, she has been a central figure in my life.  We all wish her a very Happy Birthday.  Especially me.

 

 

 

 

Love, Margaret

 

If you want to send her greetings her email is adeline.holt@gmail.com





Summer Journal 2012, August 25

My great college friend, Julie Bailey, often sends me a book of poems so Stell and I can read one each morning and evening while we are in Greece.  She has twice sent Garrison Keillor collections, this year Good Poems:  American Places.  On Saturday morning we read this one, and those of you who know me will understand why it resonates with me:

Bridal Shower

George Bilgere

 

Perhaps in a distant café,

Four or five people are talking

With the four or five people

Who are chatting on their cell phones this morning

In my favorite café.

 

And perhaps someone there,

Someone like me, is watching them as they frown,

Or smile, or shrug

At their invisible friends or lovers,

Jabbing the air for emphasis.

 

And, like me, he misses the old days,

When talking to yourself

Meant you were crazy,

Back when being crazy was a big deal,

Not just an acronym

Or something you could take a pill for.

 

I liked it

When people who were talking to themselves

Might actually have been talking to God

Or an angel.

You respected people like that.

 

You didn’t want to kill them

As I want to kill the woman at the next table

With the little blue light on her ear

Who has been telling the emptiness in front of her

About her daughter’s bridal shower

In astonishing detail

For the past thirty minutes.

 

O person like me,

Phoneless in your distant café,

I wish we could meet to discuss this,

And perhaps you would help me

Murder this woman on her cell phone,

 

After which we could have a cup of coffee,

Maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,

Face to face.

 

Summer Journal 2012, August 24

This message in an email from Paris today, "Jaiden went back to school to ask her teachers if they drank ouzo, ate karpouzi, or knew what epharisto meant. She was determined to ask her teachers about the ouzo and teach her friends some basic Greek."  I suggested to Paris that we should have sent Jaiden home with a bottle of ouzo for her teacher. 

Anna with Sakis at Sultana's

 

If you can imagine this, Kostas (of Sultana's) and his girlfriend named their new puppy, Margherita - so now I have a baby namesake, a vineyard, and a puppy bearing my name.  I'm a rising star.  Fortunately the puppy is a blonde.

 



Helena Galitsanos

 

Last night we had dinner at Galitsano's with Stellios and Katerina Foras.  Our waitress was Helena Galitsanos.  She's twenty-one now.  I have photos of her when she was five dancing with her father, Stellios.  She is now training as a commercial ship captain.  She's been all over the world.  In October she sets sail for 9 months at sea again going around the world.  When she's in town she helps her father at the restaurant.  She is one of the spunkiest young people I've ever met.  She's proud of her accomplishments and so am I.

 

 

Katerina and Stellios Foras

 

Stellios Galitsanos

 

I'm now into Cully Clark's book The Schoolhouse Door - the story of the integration of the University of Alabama.  I had coffee with him before coming to Greece (he's the Dean of Journalism at UGA and a civil rights historian).  The book is tremendous.  I will for sure arrange for another coffee with him when I'm back home.  I so admire people who write so well and really do such careful research. 

 

 





Summer Journal 2012, August 23

Hang on.  I have quite an elaborate story to tell.   I'll begin by saying we have had a brief email from Paris with the following photo from the Airport in Toronto letting us know they are home:

Kids can sleep anywhere

 

I'm sure they were exhausted, and I hope by the time they read this they are much more rested.

 

On Tuesday night we had dinner at Kolotsi's with Aggelos, his mother, and some of their family friends:

 

 

Today Stellios Foras came to paint the Parent's Temple.  He was singing and happy until he opened the paint.  He felt it was still the wrong color, but once he applied it, I thought it looked great, so I don't see any problem.  It is pretty close to the same color as the house.  So we all had to roll the roller for a photograph:

 

 

The trouble started when another white jeep (Stellios drives a white jeep) pulled into the driveway.  Two men got out and the moment I watched their stride up to the patio, I knew they were trouble.  They were too formal.  One Stell recognized (he's a topographer), the other was a big handsome but rather frightening looking fellow who stiffy shook hands than strolled around the house with Stell and the fellow he knew following and he proceeded to explain to Stell that the property with the Parent's Temple was his and he started shouting out Stellios Foras, "what are you doing on MY PROPERTY".

My Stell proceeded to go inside the house and pull out topographical maps that showed that the property was ours.  The topographer told the big angry dude, that he could do nothing because we indeed had the legal paperwork.  He strutted back to the jeep continuing to wave his hands in the air and shout.  This put Stell and Stellios in a bad mood, which I'm sure will only be cured with ouzo later.  My comment (I had stayed inside) was if this was the angry man's property, where has he been for the past twenty-five years?   His name by the way is Karavasilis, but don't get confused with the family we know.  They are probably distant relatives, and Karavasilis is something like "Smith" in Ierissos.  If Paris had been here he would have exploded, I'm sure. 

 

I finished Ali Wentworth's "Ali in Wonderland".  Very humorous to be sure.  Now I'm starting today "The School House Door:  Segregation's Last Stand at the University of Alabama" by E. Culpepper Clark.  Cully is the Dean of Journalism at UGA, a civil rights historian, and one of my new friends (a great find).  Cole Campbell, whose book I read earlier this summer, was a person he deeply admired, as did I. 

 

We have no great plans for today, but I MUST start on my project work for the folks in Florida.  If there are more "property" fireworks, I'll keep you in the loop in this blog.

 

Stell has located an old stained glass church window for the window in the Parent's Temple. 









Summer Journal 2012, August 21st

It's very quiet at Stavraqu.  We rode with Paris, Carrie, Jaiden and Alex to the Thessaloniki Airport early for their 8 a.m. flight to Munich.  From Munich they head to Toronto where they have a five hour layover before completing their last leg into Columbus.  Stell said he will never forget the feeling of Alexander clutching onto his leg in the airport.  I know the trip has been emotional for everyone (the best kind of emotions).  Paris loved being reunited with his old stomping grounds and spending time with friends and family.  Carrie rolled with it all - the new environment, so many people wanting to be with her - everyone commenting on her beauty and calm.  Jaiden had the capacity to be an instant-Greek, and often she left us with cousins and other new friends.  She especially liked the young women, Stella and Helena.  Alexander walked the grounds of Stavraqu as if the spirit of his great grandparents were guiding his steps (which did include innumerable elbow and knee scrapes).  He is tremendously coordinated, and we marveled at his capacity to do all the stairs, as well as his ability to handle cups and silverware.  Here is the family at the Airport in Thessaloniki just prior to boarding the plane at 8 a.m.:

After our bit of an ordeal (to described later) with the Alamo rental car where we returned Paris' car, we took a taxi to the bus terminal and a bus back to Ierissos.  I went to the Lykee and bought 1/2 kilo of my favorite olives, then met Stell at Sultana's for an ouzo with our cousin and nephew, Kyros and Aggelos.  Here they are, and we are meeting them for dinner at Colottsi's at 10 p.m. tonight:



Summer Journal 2012, August 20

It's about 8 p.m. here.  We had a goodbye dinner at Christos'.  A gypsy (aka Roma) band played for us and everyone got up and danced.  We will probably try to all go to bed in a couple of hours, because we are going to leave with Carrie, Paris and the kids at 5 a.m. for the Airport.  Their flight is to Munich at  8 a.m.  From Munich they fly to Toronto where they have a five hour layover, then into Columbus.  Paris has gone to the village to tell his Thea Anna goodbye.  We celebrated Stell's birthday with a nice caramel/chocolate cake.  Aggelos, Helena (from Germany) and Stell's sister Ireni were all present.

Today at Sultana's Christos and Stellios Foras modeled a new hat.  I thought you'd enjoy seeing it:

Also, I dove off the dock twice in an attempt to teach Jaiden to dive.  She can't dive yet, but she really has learned to swim quite well.

This was our goodbye ouzo at Milos with Paris, Thea Ireni, Aggelos, cousin Stellios Psemmas, Stell, moi, Carrie, and Alexander.  Of course Jaiden was in the sea.  I thought she might turn into a prune because she loved being in the water.

Carrie saying goodbye with her constant companion, Alexander

Alexander did leave Carrie occasionally to spend some time with Helena:

Alexander and his newest love, Helena

Carrie did all the packing this morning and with the great hope that no one's suitcase will be lost on the trip back to Galloway. 

I'm so very anxious to hear what Jaiden will say about her two weeks in Greece when she is back with her friends in Ohio.







Summer Journal 2012, August 19

Today we went swimming at Serapatomi.  Everyone went swimming but me.  I read my book under a cool little awning.  Although the seascape is absolutely beautiful, I don't care for the beach because it is sandy, and I'm so spoiled by the "tiny pebble" beach in Ierissos.  Stell's sister's, niece Mary, and nephew Aggelos Katsaggelos joined us.  They treated us to lunch in Nea Rhoda.  Again too much food.  The calamari was excellent, although Stell and I still believe Apisata's calamari is the best ever.

Tonight we will go to Aggelos' for a drink, then come back to babysit, so Carrie and Paris can have their last date night here.  Tomorrow they will begin packing, and I imagine we will leave a 5 in the morning on Tuesday for them to catch their 8 a.m. flight and so we can return their car to the rental place.  The days have gone so fast, but I do believe they've had a great holiday.  At the moment, however, Alexander is sobbing because his Mom has abandoned him to take a shower. 

Serapatomi Beach - Beautiful but Gritty

Aggelos Katsaggelos enjoying the end of the fish dinner

Jaiden after swimming in her third sea of the summer (Nea Rhoda beach)

She has really learned to swim and today she was diving off of Aggelos Katsaggelos shoulders.

Summer Journal 2012, August 19

Yesterday, August 18th, may have been Ireni Katsaggelos' 23rd birthday, but the day was truly Margaret's Day.  For starters, the weather is Sun Diego-perfect.  Carrie and I agree this fallish weather is our favorite climate.  Paris did the prime painting of the Parent's Temple, then he and Stell left the rest of us with Foras and headed to town.  At first I thought they were going for additional painting supplies, but when Foras let the cat out of the bag that they were going to pick up Aggelos, I guessed at the purpose.  Aggelos, for several years, has supposed to have made a sign to designate the Vineyard as Margaret's Vineyard.   When the three of them returned, Aggelos divided a bouquet of roses from his garden between Carrie and myself.  He was grinning like a Cheshire  cat.

I had to go inside the house to hide my eyes while he installed the new sign which he then wrapped in a white cloth and tied with ribbons.  Then, I was permitted to come outside for the unveiling:

We then had mezze and ouzo to celebrate, after which Foras led the dancing:

Paris and Carrie took the children to swim in the sea, and when Stell and I got to Milos, I had a chance to meet Katerina, a local woman recently elected to the Congress.  Stell says she is a forester and very qualified.

Margaret kai Katerina, new Greek Congresswoman

In the evening Foras and his wife, Katerina, came with a huge casserole of cod fish.  They dug onions out of our backyard, steamed them in a huge casserole and then cooked the fish.  Before the dinner we had octopus in a wine sauce, which Carrie and I ate "delicately", with the sound of Nic's words in our mind, "more tentacles, please."   Aggelos Katsaggelos and his mother joined us.  They all enjoyed the peaches from our tree (it's loaded this year) and halva, a moist cake like local dish made with something that has a cream of wheat or farina texture.  Georgia had brought it the night before.   Paris and I agree it is an "acquired" taste.  This morning Stell is washing lots of dishes.  Generally, he won't let anyone help, but a few times Carrie has snuck around him and washed a few.  He feels none of us wash dishes quite right.  Somewhat like his States-side perspective on loading a dishwasher.

Today we are supposed to go to Serapotami to swim and then to lunch in Ouranopouli with Mary and Anna.  I probably won't swim because I hate the rocky beach at Serapotami and also the infrequent presence of sea urchins.  It can't possibly be another Margaret's Day!  Nothing can top yesterday.