"I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more"

In a dramatic reversal, the House today approved by a comfortable margin a $700 billion financial rescue package that will bring the greatest intervention of the federal government into the private marketplace since the Great Depression, attempting to prevent the economy from sliding into a deep recession. Washington Post 3 Oct

How the worm has turned since the heyday of triumphal ideological enthusiasm for the genius, intelligence and efficiency of free market forces opposed to the stultifying bureaucratic incompetence of government. The sheriff has ridden down Wall Street with a sackful of welfare cheques donated by taxpayers to rescue the turbo-capitalist speculators on whose gambling we've depended for too long. Greedy men - like old apparatchniks escaping with illgotten bankrolls through a fallen Wall - now speak of the value of a strong state. [But see The Non-Ethics of the Financial Bailout by Dr. Annabel Beerel] [Back to the future 07/01/2009: See the assessment of 'broken government' at the US Center for Public Integrity] Unlike Roosevelt who led responses to the Great Depression with the words - "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself" - this US president, as is his wont, can only play the fear card. Yesterday's House vote feels, to many commentators, (and - back to the future - it's UK equivalent) like a tipping point - but I suspect a larger wave in a rising storm. I anticipate some reverse equivalent of the old Harry Enfield symbol of the Thatcher years proclaiming "loadsagovernment!" ... or perhaps not. The Paulson-Bernanke bailout bill is so bizarre, so contradictory - a flimsy wedge hurled in desperation under a roller coaster with broken brakes. "Perhaps" as Jack wrote twenty years ago in 'Crescendo', the last Chapter (pp.128-134) of his last book The Old Country, "man is just a blind horse with the bit between his teeth who can’t be stopped until he hits a hay-barn." Certainly people and nations must strive to substitute deferred gratification for deferred debt; governments will roam the world offering equity jabs, but the issue of how we live on and use the land that supports our teaming species must come to permeate our thoughts and actions. An ascetic future or none. A friend sent me this image - as a measure of the times, the changes needed and the distance to go. I just got an e-mail from Harry Tsoukalas 'I tell my wife and to the Corfiots that at least when my son asks me in the years to come what I have done about our huge problems in this paradise I could look at him straight in the eye and answer. How many people can say the same? It's all has to do with the future generation I think, it's too late for us. Thanks again for the great support.' * * * [Back to the future ~ a piece in Athens News of 10 October by Thrasy Petropoulos on reactions to Tsoukalas and like-minded Corfiots. The difference is that our English Civil War was 350 years ago. Sealed Knot re-enacts sanitized versions of its battles to entertain themselves and Bank Holiday tourists. 'Roundheads' and 'Cavaliers' enjoy beer together afterwards. Imagine colourful festivals celebrating the Eμφύλιος πόλεμος - re-enacting fratricide, the street fighting of Dekemvriana, the attack on the gendarmerie at Lithoro, andartes and monarchists slaughtering one another on the slopes of Grammos, to the sweet sad joyful sounds of Vassilis Tsitsanis. The butcher's bill is still being paid - in liminal grief, resentment and fear. It's still too close. See the recent comments after the Greek National Archive extract, if they've not already been disabled by YouTube. If I feel my eye's smarting at the sadness of it, imagine how it must be for Greeks, who, from Corfu, can see over towards Grammos every day.] * * *

Lots in the media about Peter Mandelson, Oleg Deripaska, George Osborne at a taverna at Agni and on a yacht called Queen K - events that happened around the third week of August. Corfucius collates with wry detach. I pretend to be above it all, but the British do political scandal so well. What other news is interred behind this chatter? "It is now a very good day to..."

Our old boat at Agni

Flying home

Sat in the cramped space of our plane from Rome to Zurich – buying pace for discomfort. Whether more speed also buys time is debatable given the things you can do in the space of a ship or train, and clouds, though beautiful, are hardly an exchange for the surroundings enjoyed when going slower. Boarding a plane is also complicated, entailing boarding the right bus or train to the airport, identifying the correct terminal, finding your check-in desk, locating departure gates, while negotiating concourses, corridors, escalators, lifts, moving walkways and serial queues, while submitting to luggage x-ray, random body search, baggage restriction, showing of papers at successive checkpoints, check-in, security, immigration and departure gate and, all for good security reasons, and having to start the process hours before take off. It’s not that good a deal – but for the moment flying is often the only choice and costs less than other ways of getting around – until we start paying more for carbon. At Rome we had a text message giving us a SWIFT code for the builders’ account and the news “ALL MATERIALS PURCHASED TODAY EXCEPT MARBLE. WILL LEAVE LATE TO AVOID ACCIDENTS.” Then another at Zurich “ROOF DONE. START WALLS MONDAY. MATERIALS ARRIVE TUE. KALOS TAXHIDI.” I’ve just finished Nicholas Gage’s account of the life, and death in 1948, of his mother Eleni Gatzoyiannis from the village of Lia in the Grammos Mountains, whose peaks can be seen from 208 Democracy Street.

Stephan Jaskulowski's brilliant map

Stephan's map of Corfu
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

The more we roam Corfu - by cycle, car or on foot - the more I come to see the scale of the achievement of Stephan Jaskulowski in making this map of the island in 1996. Stephan was a working resident of Corfu in the 90s, found published maps of Corfu inadequate and in places hazardously innaccurate. Being a border state the authorities discouraged surveys. Over 3 years Stephan travelled over the island on foot, cycle, scooter and car with compass, altimeter and hand-held GPS checking roads, footpaths and tracks. This detailed map rich in additional information and inset plans of the city of Corfu is a unique labour of love. I wish Stephan would make a revised version that would pick up changes since he completed this project, but imagining the sheer scale of his original achievement I don't blame him hesitating. I still prefer this map to any other for exploring - and I don't want to know everything anyway and I can always ask for directions - though I'ver found that a gesture to take a right turn often means take a left and vice versa. The mainland stretched north to south in a tableau of varying greys in the damp air this morning. The shores are distinct and darker but beyond are the lighter and more distant peaks of the Grammos in Epirus - site of campaigns that 58 years ago concluded a catastrophe so terrible that even now it starts a lump in my throat to think of such happenings in a land we English have found so kind to us and of whose civility we hold such confident illusions. The vista is framed by the foreground of Vido Island and, even closer, Ipsos' breakwater and its cluster of masts including 'Summer Song's'. I caught the Korakiana bus into town to do some WiFi work and will catch it back to AK in an hour. Stephan e-mailed me on 8 May "Thank you very much once again for your very kind words and endorsement of the map." To get the map while supporting Agni Animal Welfare Fund visit www.agni-animal-welfare-fund.com/Maps.asp

Democracy Street, Corfu, Greece

Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana Originally uploaded by Sibad.

DEMOCRACY STREET - the one we know - is in a village on Kerkyra or Corfu (Κέρκυρα), an island in the Ionian, close to the coast of Epirus, which includes Albania and the Greek mainland. The main town, which feels like a city, is also called Corfu. Ano (Upper) Korakiana - Ανω Κορακιανα - [Κόρακας means raven or crow] is in the widest part of the island on the slopes of the Troumpetta range - an hour's cycle ride, for me, from the port. Democracy Street runs through Ano Korakiana past the church of the Archangel Michael, past the Arestides Metallinos Museum, the school, a kafenion with views towards the mainland, the bandstand and the cluster of houses known as 'Little Venice' (for its architecture), turning north up a sinuous road past the small church of St.Isadoras, to Sokraki and over the mountains to the north coast. Westward, Democracy Street passes three general stores and surgery to a hairpin bend that leads to choices - one road running eastward again, almost parallel to Democracy Street (linked to it via steep footpaths between tightly clustered houses) to Ayios Markos and the sea at Pyrgi and Ipsos joining a north-south road along the east coast, another southwards via Kato (lower) Korakiana to the capital, and another westward to the sea via Skripero to Paleokastritsa on the west coast or Sidari in the north west. * * * Small facts gleaned from the web - which keep reappearing and need checking: Ano Korakiana - Άνω Κορακιάνα - is 18 kilometers from Corfu Town, about 3 from Ayios Markos. Its population in 1991 (last census) was a little more than in 1981 at 1400 - which is not the village trend. It has an orchestra founded in 1958 and a musical tradition going back to 1623 with the foundation of the Mantolinatas of the Pope (for which I will need an explanation). Ano Korakiana has 37 churches - the most interesting, to Byzantine scholars, are Saint Nicholas, the Archangel Michael (next to 208) and Saint Athanasios. The local school, a few metres east of 208, contains a small folklore collection. We heard from our friends in AK it was at risk of closing and being replaced by a psychiatric unit (What's new?). It's the birth village of the Greek actress Rena Vlahopoulou who died in 2004 at 81. She is quoted saying "I catch the boat from Patras and as I board I say to myself, now I’m at peace. I’m on my way home to Korakiana, I’m going to see my things, those who are close to me. I feel that Corfu embraces me every time I arrive." How true and I'm not even Greek, let alone Corfiot. Villages are being transformed all over the world. AK is probably no exception when it comes to a sustained communal core amid the foreign settlers and semi-settlers. It's not a 'tourist' village yet. The kafenion is open only at exclusive times. There's no restaurant or shop selling things other than provisions for residents. Notices are in Greek. Music practice can be heard at various times and chat in various registers - from outbursts of maternal invective, steady conversations, greetings, laughter, TV soap dialogue, monotonous sports commentary and chirruping domestic banter interspersed with the clinking of hardware in sinks, the acoustic of gossip shifting, as it comes outside, for washing to be hung or garden worked.