Brussels, 05 July 2015. The European Commission takes note of and respects the result of the referendum in Greece.
President Juncker is consulting tonight and tomorrow with the democratically elected leaders of the other 18 Eurozone members as well as with the Heads of the EU institutions. He will have a conference call among the 'Euro-Institutionals' (with the President of the Euro Summit, the President of the Euro Group and the President of the European Central Bank) on Monday morning. He intends to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Earlier today Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament warned of difficult future situations for Greeks following their choice on Sunday.
An urgent Eurogroup Working Group meeting will also take place tomorrow.
Referendum poll in Corfu; probably a greater 'No' majority than anywhere else in Greece....
Χθες το βράδυ, ο αύλειος χώρος του Αγίου Γεωργίου γέμισε από κόσμο, κυρίως παιδιά και το ζεστό, υγρό αεράκι της καλοκαιρινής νύχτας ανέμισε τις φωνητικές συγχορδίες από τη μια άκρη του χωριού στην άλλη. Οι εμφανίσεις των παιδιών (και των δασκάλων τους) των παιδικών Χορωδιών της Κέρκυρας και της Πάτρας στο χωριό μας ήταν μια άλλη πνοή, μια ένδειξη στο ότι η «ζωή (μπορεί να) είναι και αλλού», μακριά από την πλημμυρίδα των τρεχουσών «εξελίξεων» (το σημερινό δημοψήφισμα). Με το ίδιο το γεγονός της χορωδιακής σύμπραξης να προσδίδει ένα άλλο νόημα στην κοινή μας συμβίωση, όπως άλλωστε τόνισε ο Σπύρος Π. Σαββανής, αλλά και ο Δήμαρχος Κέρκυρας Κώστας Νικολούζος, που μαζί με τον Τάκη Μεταλληνό, το Δημήτρη Μεταλληνό, το Σταμάτη Απέργη, το Γιώργο Ρεδεστινό και τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο, παρακολούθησαν την ωραία εκδήλωση.
Διοργανωτές της εκδήλωσης ήταν οι Ενορίες Αγίου Γεωργίου και Αγίου Αθανασίου, η Φιλαρμονική Κορακιάνας και η Δημοτική Κοινότητα Κορακιάνας. **** **** **** ...and a strong 'NO', reported Monday, from Ano Korakiana. Of the village's 732 voters, 464 voted 'No'; 209 voted 'Yes'; with 59 invalid ballots.
Ισχυρό "ΟΧΙ"
Γράφει ο/η Κβκ
06.07.15
Σταυράκης Γ. Μεταλληνός, που παρακολούθησε υπομονετικά τη διαδικασία έξω από το καφέ - Crescendo
«Τι σου ζητάω;Μια ευκαιρία … στον παράδεισο να πάω!», αντιχούσε η μελωδία από το εκ Σωκρακίου μουσικό τρίο, στον κήπο του Μαστραντώνη, δίπλα από το Δημοτικό Σχολείο και επαναλάμβανε ρυθμικά το ακροατήριο κάτω από την καλοκαιρινή φεγγαράδα, λίγη ώρα μετά από την ανακοίνωση των αποτελεσμάτων του Δημοψηφίσματος της 5ης Ιουλίου 2015 (για την απόρριψη ή έγκριση του προταθέντος από την Ευρώπη προς την ελληνική κυβέρνηση σχεδίου συμφωνίας). "Μια ευκαιρία" για τη χώρα.Ίσως τελικά αυτό να ήταν και το πραγματικό μήνυμα της ψηφοφορίας για πολλούς, που πραγματοποιήθηκε σε μία σημαντική και κρίσιμη καμπή για τη χώρα.
Το αποτέλεσμα είχε γείρει σημαντικά υπέρ του «ΟΧΙ» (στο σύνολο της χώρας και ακόμη περισσότερο στην Κέρκυρα) και η κάλπη του χωριού έβγαλε το εξής αποτέλεσμα: Ψηφίσαντες 732 πολίτες (57% των εγγεγραμμένων), Άκυρα-Λευκά 59 (8%), «ΟΧΙ» 464 ( 69% έναντι 61% στη χώρα και 71% στην Κέρκυρα) και «ΝΑΙ» 209 (31%). Το αποτέλεσμα πιστοποίησε εξάλλου και ο μικρός Σταυράκης Γ. Μεταλληνός, που παρακολούθησε υπομονετικά τη διαδικασία έξω από το καφέ-“Crescendo»… *** *** *** ***
A few days ago Oliver and Hannah were staying with their other grandmother, Christine. She introduced them to kite flying...
Oliver and Hannah (Photo: Amy Hollier)
...while yesterday Lin and I were entertaining them.
Hannah sits in the high chair that was my mother's, mine, and our childrens'
This morning I walked with Oscar and Oliver to the allotment and worked through the morning with Winnie, watering and weeding...
Oscar and Oliver ~ the flag was described recently as 'an ode' to a famous photograph taken 45 years ago
...cropping more broad beans and a first batch of peas, shelling them at home...
A sage item from the minutes of a recent VJA committee:
Flags. –
Simon has a union jack flag on his allotment and it was questioned whether this
was appropriate as it has
negative connotations and could give the wrong impression of the allotment.The flag in
question is an ode to a photograph taken close to the allotments that has
cultural significance and is therefore an artistic and cultural expression.
Celebrating a rainy Diamond Jubilee on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments
Yesterday Amy brought Liz to the plot. She'd not seen it for two years.
"Wow!" she said "You've done good"
Liz can't walk anywhere for more than five minutes...complications with pregnancy means taking care moving about. Baby due in two months.
Yanis Varoufakis, Finance Minister of Greece "Democracy did not have a good day in yesterday’s Eurogroup meeting"
...a book about 'how economic power has emerged from the shadows of political and military might before gradually taking over human societies. The narrative combines history, literature, science fiction films and down-to-earth economic analysis to impress upon teenagers, and various beginners, that economics is an epic drama. Rather than a technical science, it is a battleground on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly and where concepts with a capacity to move mountains emerge; and all that in a war for our own allegiances which are being fought over by powerful interests usually at odds with ours...That, looked at through a piercing eye, behind every economic notion, every theory, there lurks a fascinating debate about human anxieties that only poets, dramatists and musicians have managed to address with any degree of efficiency.'
As it happened – Yanis Varoufakis’ intervention during the 27th June 2015 Eurogroup Meeting posted on 28th June 2015 The Eurogroup Meeting of 27th June 2015 will not go down as a proud moment in Europe’s history. Ministers turned down the Greek government’s request that the Greek people should be granted a single week during which to deliver a Yes or No answer to the institutions’ proposals – proposals crucial for Greece’s future in the Eurozone...
Greek Lawmakers Approve Decision to Hold Referendum by Stelios Bouras, Wall Street Journal June 27, 2015 Greek lawmakers gave the green light early Sunday to a proposal by the coalition government to hold a referendum on whether austerity measures demanded by lenders in exchange for further aid should be accepted by the crisis-hit nation...
Greece Will Close Banks to Stem Flood of Withdrawals by Landon Thomas Jr. and Niki Kitsantonis The New York Times 28 June 2015 ATHENS — Greece will keep its banks closed on Monday and place restrictions on the withdrawal and transfer of money, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address on Sunday night, as Athens tries to avert a financial collapse....
Travel to Greece: Advice for those travelling to Greece by Simon Calder, The Independent posted Tuesday 16 June, 2015 Many concerned prospective holidaymakers have got in touch this week as Greece’s financial crisis deepens. A worrying time for the Greeks – but should holidaymakers worry?...
by Viktoria Dendrinou & Gabriele Steinhauser Wall Street Journal June 27, 2015 The eurozone rejected a Greek request for a one-month extension to its bailout Saturday, plunging the country into a period of high uncertainty and raising concerns about wider financial fallout when markets open on Monday....
by Alex Barker Financial Times June 27, 2015 Greek banks are on the edge of failure. Deposit flight is accelerating and Greece’s funding options are running out. Every euro withdrawn from cash machines is backed by emergency funding from the European Central Bank. Without an extension to Greece’s bailout, these ECB emergency loans are in doubt. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has
Reuters June 27, 2015 Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a referendum on austerity demands from foreign creditors on Saturday, rejecting an "ultimatum" from lenders and putting a deal that could determine Greece's future in Europe to a risky popular vote...
Associated Press June 27, 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged undamaged from the global financial crisis, European bailouts, an astonishing U-turn on nuclear power and the crisis over Ukraine. Now, with the future of efforts to resolve Greece's fiscal woes up in the air, the long-serving leader looks well-placed to emerge strong even if they fail.
by Hugo Dixon Reuters June 27, 2015 Alexis Tsipras has taken a massive gamble on Greece’s future. By calling a referendum on whether to accept the creditors’ latest offer of cash in return for unpopular reforms, the Greek prime minister is offering the people a choice between the bad and the extremely bad. Meanwhile, the world may be about to face the biggest default in history...
by Peter Spiegel Financial Times June 26, 2015 Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has announced a national referendum on whether his country should agree to creditors’ demands that would release desperately-needed bailout aid to avoid national bankruptcy. In a televised address to the nation after a late-night meeting of his cabinet, Mr Tsipras announced that the plebiscite would be....
*** *** ***
'Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα ~ The European Union' 1980 by Aristeidis Metallinos
In the week before we last left Ano Korakiana, Linda, I and Angeliki Metallinos, completed a list of nearly all her grandfather's sculptures and marble reliefs. After three and half hours we had a re-numbered list based on the year of the carving, with dimensions, brief description, and whether in local stone or in marble from Kozani...
Aristeidis Metallinos (1908-1987) catalogue draft
...giving us the raw material for a catalogue which, talking to several gallery curators recently, I believe should be created as a website. I'm not dismissing a hard copy. I'm recognising that having information about Aristeidis Metallinos on the web is a better goal. From such a site, easy to edit, different catalogues with varying emphases can be made into temporary hard texts. The web option, avoiding colour or even half-tone printing is also a deal less costly. I am still exploring who should write about the laic sculptor. On 21st June, I was excited to receive a letter from the scholar - Dr. Eurydice Antzoulatou-Retsila, since 2009 professor at the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Peloponnese in Kalamata - who had first written about Metallinos in 1985, when he was still alive:
Dear Simon.
At last I can communicate with you, because I had terrible problems with my computer all this period, being afraid that I had lost all my archives, but finally all has been arranged well.
So, let me first thank you deeply for your interest in the work of Metallinos. I was feeling the same when in 1982 I had discovered him and I had faced all negative attitudes from all parts of communities in Corfu. But I insisted and I wrote my article then . My husband , now, says that nothing goes in vain and he is very glad with your initiative , because he, himself ( as artist, he is film director) had believed in this work.
Perhaps my interest those days was founded in my work as curator at the National Museum of Greek Folk Art (in Athens) and my interest in what is humble and simple. After all, this had been my first speciality (history archaeology, art focused on Greek folk art, my PhD dissertation was on the wedding crowns of modern Greece, those created in gold and silver and kept in local churches or in museums).
I will be very glad indeed to contribute in the volume you are preparing and actually I am planning to visit Corfu again in September to meet with my old friends there (I was professor of museum studies and cultural management at the Ionian University there from 1994 to 2009), to start a new research I am planning and of course I will enjoy seeing again the works of Metallinos.
This last period has been very hectic for me, because I am retiring end of August and lots of things in the administration must be arranged (I am dean since 2011…).
I am planning also my new career (my third one!!) in music this time (piano and singing as soprano) and I am really very excited. My first career was as curator at the museum (and also creating lots of museums all over Greece), my second as university professor and now as musician. Not bad for a variety in life !!!
So, dear Simon, thank you again for these wonderful ideas you have, I am sharing your interest and I will be glad to contribute. But the greatest pleasure for me is your interest in Greek things, expressed in this very sensitive way, especially this period, where this country and this society is really in a very bad situation.
Be well, take good care, greetings to Linda and let us try to meet soon
Best,
Eurydice
Plaque on the front of the Aristeidis Metallinos Museum in Ano Korakiana - the year the builder became the sculptor
**** **** ****
The amount of greenery to be salvaged from crops, from neighbouring fallow allotments just scythed - in weeds, pods, tops and hay...all for long term composting...
Windrows raked from the scythings of fallow allotments either side of plot 14
...while the bays by the fence may have produced some humus by this time next year...with one bay providing almost usable soil though full of annual weed seeds.
This bay includes much of the couch grass weeded out over the last year
I've realised my friend Ziggi's point that it's not good just growing stuff, however successfully. You must grow it to eat and ensure that you bring it for cooking by agreement with the cook. Don't just turn up like the 'hunter-gatherer' with a bag of veg and expect Lin to be grateful. Check what's needed. Scarf what's to be cropped into her plans for meals. Allow also for the extra time involved in preparation compared to veg off the supermarket shelf.
Lin didn't ask for these but I needed to do some thinning of the parsnip bed
Once cropped every one of these sweet little parsnips needs to be topped, tailed and scrubbed.
That took me half an hour at the sink, slightly less time than it took me yesterday to shell fresh peas for two, or today, for Lin to shell a saucepan full of broad beans. The same goes for the many small new potatoes that were 'ordered' for a Sunday family supper..
From Amy who brought the cakes to finish the meal: Thanks mummy for cooking dinner for all of us was very yummy and much needed. Liz says thank you too smile emoticon
Familiar dreams of inadequacy – unprepared notes just before a lecture, no papers to explain myself to an arresting authority, a journey started but vital luggage gone missing...They are born on wasted efforts to strengthen arguments that differ from common understanding, on giving up on something within my capacity, but requiring effort I’m too lazy to exercise, finding other things to do; displacement activity. The crisis in Greece. I’ve surrendered to common explanation; resigned myself to the given options. Greece must pay the debts she’s accrued or leave the Euro, pay in cash or kind.
‘And how is leaving the Euro going to make anything any better?’ asks Lin.
‘Well they don’t have to pay back all that debt.’
‘Yes and exports – tourism to Greece being her main export – will, in theory, get cheaper, attracting more visitors...’
‘...except tourists, even if they are not on all-in holidays where they've paid for their holidays and all extras outside Greece, don’t just need waiters and accommodation. They need food, fuel, perhaps healthcare. Since most of those involve imports they’ll cost even more in drachmas, especially when devalued against the Euro, the pound and the dollar’
‘What a mess!’
The pound of flesh is due. Shylock – ill done by - awaits in the north for the bloody payment. Sensible voters of northern Europe say ‘if you prick us do we not bleed?’
I see no Portia in the wings with clever pleas and saving arguments.
I am slightly ashamed; one of those faltering disciples for whom the apostles – especially Paul – wrote their encouraging and loving letters.
‘Hold fast’ ‘Be of good faith’.
Yannis Varoufakis, shortly before he became Greece's beleaguered Minister of Finance published a book in which he described economics to his daughter...
An inability to explain to a teenager the fundamental issues of economics reflects badly on one’s own grasp of them. And the failure to inspire youngsters to care about wealth, poverty, power (and their distribution in society), reveals the instructor’s, or author’s, own lack of appreciation of what makes our social world tick. This book strives to inspire teenagers (and other readers normally disassociated from economic narratives) to care about economic ideas and economic processes by revealing their power over our imagination, beliefs and passions. It does this by means of a narrative of how economic power has emerged from the shadows of political and military might before gradually taking over human societies. The narrative combines history, literature, science fiction films and down-to-earth economic analysis to impress upon teenagers, and various beginners, that economics is an epic drama. Rather than a technical science, it is a battleground on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly and where concepts with a capacity to move mountains emerge; and all that in a war for our own allegiances which are being fought over by powerful interests usually at odds with ours. In addition to its drammatic style and content, this book answers two fundamental questions: How was the modern world formed? And why are the economists’ theories part of the problems that this world is constantly producing, rather of the solutions. In the process, it poses and answers challenging questions, such as: • Why did British colonists invade Australia instead of the Aborigines invading England? • When and how did the primacy of profit come about? • Why could wealth never exist without debt? • From where do bankers derive their exorbitant power? • What is hiding behind economic crises? • Is there hope that humanity will stop functioning like a stupid virus killing the “organism” in which it resides? • What is money and why does it "need" democracy?
Varoufakis' introduction to the German edition of the book...
One of the enduring memories from my early childhood is the crackling sound of Deutsche Welle radio transmissions. Those were the bleak years of our dictatorship (1967-1974) when Deutsche Welle was the Greeks’ most precious ally against the crushing power of state propaganda. Mum and dad would huddle together next to the wireless, sometimes covered by a blanket to make sure that nosey neighbours would not get a chance to call the secret police. Night after night these ‘forbidden’ radio programs brought into our home a breath of fresh air from a country, Germany, that was standing firm on the side of Greek democrats. While I was too young to understand what the radio was telling my mesmerised parents, my child’s imagination identified Germany as a source of hope.
As I am writing this preface to the German edition of a book aimed at another child, my daughter, I feel the urgent need to recount that memory. To turn it into a small homage to the idea of Europe as a realm of shared democratic ideals. A small gesture of defiance against the recent tendency for European peoples, who were hitherto coming closer and closer together, to be set apart by a… common currency.
Our European Union began life under the presumption that to achieve political and social union we must first bind together our economic interests; that economics would lead the way to a united European polity. It was a good idea except that, as the years and the decades went by, a problem emerged: our collective understanding of ‘economics’ became increasingly crude. We slipped into a simplistic mindset according to which the sphere of the economy began decoupling, separating itself from that of politics, of philosophy, of culture. As it did so, the economic sphere acquired massive discursive and social power for itself, thus causing democracy, politics and culture to fade out, to become shadows of their former selves.
We economists were, I confess, responsible for this steady erosion of our collective understanding of the economic sphere. Before we knew it, markets were no longer means to be placed in the service of social ends but emerged surreptitiously as ends in themselves. Under the influence of, on the one hand, financialisation and, on the other, economic theory, we began to resemble Oscar Wilde’s definition of the cynic: one who knows everything about prices and nothing about values. Naturally, our European Union’s institutions also tended towards the conviction that the large decisions should be taken by technocratic committees that constitute ‘politics-free zones’. In an ironic twist the language of economists helped usher in a mindset that jettisoned from the corridors of power and the halls of decision making not only politics and culture but also …economics.
But enough of this now! This book is not intended as a diatribe on Europe, on Germany, on Greece or indeed on anything that would bore… my daughter. It was written in order to test the author’s ability to convince a recalcitrant teenager that economics is too important to be left to the economists. That it can also be too much fun to be ignored by those interested in things other than money and finance. That, looked at through a piercing eye, behind every economic notion, every theory, there lurks a fascinating debate about human anxieties that only poets, dramatists and musicians have managed to address with any degree of efficiency.
Did I truly write this book for my daughter’s sake? Not really. I wrote it mainly to test the limits of my own understanding. For if I failed to explain to a teenager the fundamental issues of economics, my failure would reflect badly on my own grasp of them. Indeed, the failure to inspire youngsters to care about the nature of wealth, poverty, of economic power (and its distribution in society), reveals one’s own lack of appreciation of what makes our social world tick. As for my daughter, it is true to say that she played a major role. Being my worst critic, every time I completed a section or chapter I wondered whether she would look at me with disgust upon reading it. Nothing motivates an author better than such terror!....
Terror. Yes. That's the core of it. I'm not sure how, other than in appearance, clothing and panache, Euclid Tsakalotos, differs in theory and explanations of the world from the man he is replacing as negotiator with the EU.
*** *** ***
On Saturday morning we tried to catch the bus from the village. We waited at the bus stop below our house for half-an-hour. No bus came.
‘Shall we walk to the Sidari Road for another there? Two kilometers’
We set out. Dawdling to enjoy the views, chatting. Two familiar big old dogs attached themselves to us and stayed with us a kilometre, sniffing the verges and stopping to scratch.
Road from the village. Our companion dogs finally head home
At the Ano Korakiana T-junction we waited twenty minutes by the bus stop. Mark drove by heading into the village.
‘Is there a strike?’
‘No I’ve seen public buses on the road to Acharavi’
Reassured we waited as cars and trucks charged by. There at last came our bus. We hailed it, pointing south; the driver grumbling that we’d not waited on the right side of the road, where the southward stop without kerb stood in brambles swayed by passing traffic.
‘To Gouvia’ Lin paid our fares ‘I scratched my hand on brambles getting aboard’ she said rubbing her arm.
Catching a bus after lots of waits is such a pleasure. At last we’re on our way; tucked in seats with other passengers, hurrying down the main road’s long hill, past Sgombou and Emeral, past the Tzavros junction where the road flattens and becomes a dual carriageway. There was none of the chat that goes up and down the aisle on the Korakiana bus.
‘Gouvia’ said the driver slowing near Technomart.
‘One more stop’ said Lin
We were dropped within yards of The Lighthouse where we could go to the Saturday tabletop sale, and, upstairs, enjoy a coffee, greet Pastor Miltiades, and use the WiFi, skyping Amy who we glimpsed via the camera opposite her bed sleepily speechless tending Hannah and Oliver bouncing exhaustingly to and fro across the picture, ignoring us.
‘Bye-bye! Bye bye Oliver. Bye bye Hannah’ we cried ignored, switching them off with a distinctive Skype ‘cloomf’’
‘Amy needs a drop-in child-minder to take Oliver off her hands now and then’ I muttered ‘The energy! Ollie’s like a two year old colt. He should carry weight.’
We strolled a few hundred metres up to AB supermarket and with our shopping crossed the road to a Green Bus stop, buying ice creams to eat while awaiting the Sidari bus, which dropped us at the Ano Korakiana turn. We walked up to the village carrying our shopping, resting now and then in occasional shade.
All along the Easter-strimmed verge flowers had grown since, swaying in the slight breeze. A day earlier we’d walked a circle from Democracy Street, down towards the main road, turning west on a grassy track between smallholdings and vineyards which wound back towards the village before dissolving in meadows.
We followed where someone had walked already, slightly disturbing the uncropped grass, wild thyme, daisies, thistle, vetch and Honesty, until, beyond a ruined apothiki, past a well cultivated smallholding...
...we were following the familiar back road into Mougades and the rest of the village.
Ειδικά της κοκυκιάς που σε κάθε κήπο, σε κάθε φράχτη κάνει την εμφάνισή της! Walking below Ano Korakiana on St George's Day
*** *** ***
Angeliki phoned on Monday to approve my musings on her grandfather, and tell me the news that her father is now ready to write about his memories of his father.
‘It will take time’ she said
‘Of course. But that’s wonderful’
I prepared an email to Dr Alexandra Moschovi, Senior Lecturer in Photographic Theory, University of Sunderland:
Dear Alexandra
I hope you’ve not given up on me and that you are well and that you will receive this email.
I am afraid my pace on our shared Aristeidis Metallinos project is slower than yours might be, were you in my shoes.
Nonetheless we do proceed! I attune to the family’s pace - and perhaps my own. The tortoise rather than the hare.
I am as enthusiastic as ever. Linda and I have now, with Angeliki, made a list of every item in the museum as well as a few weathered pieces on the roof.
In the week after Easter we created a temporary numbering of each item; whether it’s stone or marble; its metric dimensions. In about two weeks we will add to this information the inscriptions by the artist - his signature and date and where he’s written something - his words. We will then use our own words to describe those pieces where there’s little or no information from the artist. These notes will be in Greek and English (other languages could be added). We will then renumber the collection - chronologically (by year as there’s no way of finding a month unless Andreas who sometimes remembers his father’s work can date them more precisely).
I have ideas for the form of a published catalogue. Covers can have perhaps the sketch I had done by a Birmingham artist - Jan Bowman - which she made from Andreas' black and white photo of the sculptor at work.
I have also started with the help of a friend - Rob Groove - to get some high quality photos. He has already made a couple, one of which will be featured in a book by the scholar Richard Pine who’s next book will be about Greece from an Irish perspective - to be published this October.
We would pick - say - about twenty representative works to illustrate the catalogue.
I would like then to have three brief articles at the start of the catalogue
- One by Angeliki, Andreas and I describing Aristeidis - enlarging the Wikipedia piece I did last year, or if we are fortunate, one by Andreas alone remembering his father.
- One by you (if you’d be prepared) discussing the imagery from your perspective as a Greek scholar and referring to a timeline of events accompanying the sculptor’s works, your sense of his subversive risk taking etc.
- One by Prof Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila expanding on the piece she published in 1985 (I’ve now heard from her and she is interested in a second sight, from her base at Kalamata, University of the Peloponnese
These would be in Greek and English.
These are tentative ideas. There is of course no money but I see it as unnecessary at this point (if at all) to spend money. Time! Yes. My son is skilled at self-publishing and graphics so he could mock up a model catalogue. Rob Groove is interested in establishing a reputation as a professional photographer and for the moment speaks of leaving out being paid in favour of the pleasure of taking part in an interesting project. It is one of his photos that will be credited in Richard Pine’s book. There are no problems with copyright as the family of the sculptor - in particular Angeliki and Andreas are involved and enthusiastic about seeing Aristeidis Metallinos better known.
My judgement is that a draft but publishable catalogue is a logical next step, essential for any wider recognition. About twenty pages, it could be presented in any initiative that might be taken to promote the laic sculpture in Greece and elsewhere.
In case you wonder why I would most especially like you to write something…your standing as a scholar is significant of course. More so your part in this project. You replied to me last year when I wrote to you about the laic sculptor. All original art has to be discovered; discovered by the individual who strives to see the artist's work directly, unmediated by reference, comparison or repute. I could see from the moment we sat down over coffee in Newcastle that day of my visit last August that you’d been ‘discovering’ Aristeidis. You’d read the papers I attached, looked at pictures, made notes. You had not awaited my arrival with questions, but had prepared thoughts of your own – especially about the timeline of contemporary events in Greece that offer context to this jumbled collection. I believe that few people have yet discovered the laic sculptor. Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila did in 1935. Yianni M Mari in 1978. I discovered him too as has Linda, through the kindness of the artist’s family and after five year’s wait. You have. So has Richard Pine and the writers Jim Potts and Maria Strani-Potts, to whom I sent all the photos. Aristeidis’ son is the most complex and ambiguous of these discoverers – the one who’s lived longest with the artist. This is why I’m pleased that Angeliki has just told me he’s come round to the idea of writing (or speaking) an account of his memories of his father. There must have been others - some of whom found the work boring, possibly ugly and second-rate, who were rather shocked by some of the pieces. Their reactions are also a discovery. I feel disturbed, even repelled by some art, as the artist may have expected and even intended.
My sense is that we can do our best to intervene in a process of discovery; by mediation and presentation enable more people to see and imagine Aristeidis Metallinos at work, to be able to place what they see and touch in a context and gain a sense of the range of his work - work he began in his 70s (but for the stone shoe he carved in 1927), through the last decade of his life, after most of a lifetime as an artisan, stone-mason and builder - a worker from Ano Korakiana becoming a self-taught sculptor of Kozani marble and unforgiving local stone.
I hope you are well and will forgive me the long interval between communications. We are back from Corfu in early June. It would be good to meet up again. Best wishes, Simon
In Ano Korakiana, and every village across the land, edges of roads and steps and paths are being whitewashed, verges tidied, surfaces swept as Easter comes closer. Fortis and his son Lefteris set to with bucket and brushes this morning, doing edges by our home as well as theirs. From the 12.15 city to village bus I glimpsed his back – an older man in a wide hat walking near the centre of the road below the village. The driver used his horn. The figure moved a pace to the left without turning; absorbed. Andreas Metallinos on one of his regular walks – βόλτες του – a slight stoop and a walking stick, coming from his daughter’s home – which he built - just outside the village. Angeliki, grand-daughter of Aristeidis Metallinos, has set aside an hour a day from Tuesday to Saturday in the week after Easter to create a catalogue of the laic sculptor’s works. I couldn’t be more pleased at this step toward making the village sculptor better known. She suggested this over coffee at Crescendo - next door to the sculptor’s museum; told her I’m responding to a request for a picture of one of the artist's works as an illustration in Richard Pine’s latest book – this one about Greece from an Irish perspective. Tassos took photos of all 250 pieces in the museum but the one which Richard’s suggested to his publisher isn’t clear enough. With the family’s permission I arranged for Rob Groove, a professional and a friend, to visit the museum.
He uses a far better camera than mine. Publishing even one picture fits the hope Angeliki and I share of another increment to her grandfather’s public presence – in this case his craft and his gift for ribald illustration of human frailty. Richard said “It’ll go down a treat in Catholic Ireland”
Anna, holding Stavros her little nephew, welcomed us again into their home, turned on the lighting in the familiar rooms where the stone and marble works sit on packed shelves. Rob set up lights and tripod and took pictures; used his laptop to check results.
“I’ll work on these tonight. If you could link to robgroove.com I’d be happy”
“Send your best choice straight to Richard. Copy to me”
Richard’s email re ‘The naughty bishop” – a scandal of the mid-1970s.
‘Yes, it's better - much clearer contrast. Many thanks for organising it.
You didn't say whether you'd prefer Chrysomalis or Nino's - where we were (the 3 of us) before. Please let me know. The bus I will be taking is the 4pm to Acharavi - it goes straight on from Tzavros, not turning right to go through Ipsos. Not sure if it stops anywhere from where you could get to Ano K.
SB: We’ll see you at Chrysomalis. Your bus can drop us at the turn to Ano Korakiana off the Sidari Road. Only 2 kilometres to the village.
Once at lunch – the usual disappointment starting with tourist guff about this being Lawrence Durrell’s favourite place (he did have a favoured table by the window and told someone seeking a signature to ‘f’ off’. That was half a century ago and more.) Lin’s chicken was reheated; my giant beans straight from the tin; the chips pre-cut. But at least we got a receipt.
“I’m long used to being offered with and without receipt prices” I said “and I still get them from the baker in the village, but in the last week I’ve had more avoidance receipts than ever, with excuses about broken tills, a lengthy request for tax number and other personal details to enter in the computer until I give up, and at a garage when I followed up the now familiar avoidance – despite the valuable word ‘ λοιπόν’ to allow a pause and rethink – I said “I’m supposed to get in touch about this with Mr Varoufakis”
“Ah yes well when you speak with Mr Varoufakis please ask him to drop in and mend our cash-machine”
Richard, over his tepid plate of wrinkled greasy rice stuffed tomatoes, said “You know, I know, and everyone in Brussels knows that despite the lip service absolutely nothing is being done to try and extract tax owed by the very rich. I suspect it’s impossible. Maynard Keynes at the time of the Treaty of Versailles wrote a policy paper to the Allies saying there were two choices ‘Enable Germany to rebuild her economy despite all animosities, or bring her low, gutting what’s left' "
To the bruised and vengeful allies the generous option would have been politically impossible, even morally feeble. No Marshall plan in 1919.
“The consequences for Europe and the world we all know. The troika with Merkel’s support intend to maintain the pressures that over the long term will reduce Greece to the economic condition of a third world nation” (Richard's latest article in the Irish Times)
The pace of real disaster seems snail paced against the fireworks of TV entertainment we enjoy over evening meals. Striving to stand back far enough to get a perspective on an unfolding catastrophe I wonder how in the midst of this national crisis with its wider corollaries anyone would want to watch something as invented and artificial as Black Sails, House of Cards or Game of Thrones.
Tsipras is playing a weak hand but playing it as well as anyone whose promised not to be as obedient to Brussels as his predecessor Samaras. I emailed John Martin the other day. He and Annie went to a conference at Birmingham University last week. He’d asked for my impressions:
Dear John. Sorry you seem to have missed Richard in Birmingham.
I’d like to know if the accomm at the Bull was quaint and interesting or unmentionable.
With your customary generous manners I can see you not grumbling to me as I recommended. But I’m hoping so much it was OK and you didn’t have to move out to Holiday Inn or equivalent.
Hope Cats was good. Happy Birthday to Annie.
In Corfu everyone speaks of endless rain but we’ve hit a lucky set of blue sunny days with the wood stove needed only at night to keep us cosy in the house.
General view of the ‘situation’ here is that the SYRIZA government needs its first 100 days and that Greece is playing the toughest of games despite a lousy hand. The cards? Card 1: Austerity doesn’t work. Card 2: Don’t drive us into the hands of Golden Dawn. Card 3: Russia and/or China. Card 4: German WW2 reparations - cut us some debt-forgiveness like Germany got war forgiveness via the Marshall Plan. Card 5: We really will do something about corruption and tax collection.
Systems of tax collection have closed down here pending the new government’s resolutions on what will be stopped, modified and renewed. So even if we want to pay our taxes we can’t. All is on hold.
There is a feeling of resigned waiting, but it still feels slightly better than under the previous government.
Varoufakis seems to be lying low at the moment. His initial coverage led to vexation and some envy of ‘bandstanding’ in his own party; SYRIZA already being a loose partnership of several left wing parties.
How does it look from your perch?
Our children stepped in to look after Lin’s mum. It’s so good they enabled her to get away, but Lin’s mum Dot has an alarm button that rings with Amy, Richard and us if pressed. Dot’s been mistaking it for the normal call button. I think that’s sorted now. Love to all, S
*** *** ***
It wouldn’t need a theologian to argue that hefting a plastic bag of just born kittens out of a wheelie bin is no act of charity. We were walking down National Opposition Street in the dusk, further than we’d planned. Distressing cries came from within.
“There’s a cat trapped in there” said Lin lifting the lid “Oh no it’s kittens in a bag” There were four of them soaked fur matted in condensation, one dead already, umbilical still attached.
Next day chatting to Katerina she gestured with a heave of her arm the obvious sense of chucking them back where we’d found them. There are feral cats in scores across the village. By then our rescued kits – two tabby, one ginger - were in a cardboard box, wrapped in a towel on top of a hot water bottle being fed Lactol solution from a syringe dropper bought at the pet food shop in Dassia.
“Lick them with a sponge in warm water” said the woman there “as the mum cat would to keep them clean”
“So what do we do with them?”
One friend advised “Take a fetching photo. Float them on local Facebook. Say if no-one claims them by the end of May – if they last as long – they’re off to the vet”
“I’d like to let them loose to take their chances with the other village cats” I said
“They’ll be eaten alive. They’re going to be domesticated by you tending them. They’re domesticating by the hour”
“Great. Why don’t I just clobber them with a spade now? Dig them into the wisteria roots like the butcher’s fresh rabbit skin”
They have all died now, increasingly enfeebled, they've faded away. Without the attention of a true dam our ministrations were futile.
*** *** ***
It rained. “We’ve had so much rain” everyone repeated. Down at the Sunday table-top sale at Sally’s Bar we skyped Amy, outside to get away from the piped sound indoors, but Lin protecting the screen from stray drops of rain. Something about a shower screen bought on ebay but sent without the bar that attaches it to the wall. Amy - in bed with our grand-daughter crawling vigorously back and forth while Oliver naked bounces in and out of vision grinning at us across the ether - checks the ebay description and seller’s details on her phone.
On the Ipsos esplanade, almost deserted, the unsightly palms bent to a wind from the south.
*** *** ***
I’ve been engrossed in a South African police procedural. Heart of Darkness stuff, in the publisher’s words ‘World Noir’, translated from French in 2008 Brian Epkeen, South African Police officer reflects on his boss’s inabiity to proceed with a politically charged case
‘Faced with competition from world markets, sovereign states could do very little to withstand the pressures of finance and globalised trade, unless they wanted to alienate investors and threaten their own gross national product. The role of states was now limited to maintaining order and security in the midst of a new world disorder controlled by centrifugal, supranational and elusive forces. No-one genuinely believed in progress anymore, the world had become an uncertain, precarious place, but most decision makers were happy to let the pirates of this phantom system continue with their plunder and to take advantage of it themselves while hoping it would all blow over. The excluded were pushed farther out onto the periphery of huge cities reserved for the winners of a cannibalistic game in which, with no prospect of collective action, people’s widespread frustration was channeled into television, sports and celebrity culture.’ Caryl Férey Zulu (2010) pp.379-380
The plot is relentless. Good for the Christian week of despair. ‘No-one genuinely believed in progress anymore’. Is that my elderly mood or a national spirit in the few more weeks before our uncertain General Election? Re the panem et circenses comment, I enjoy some television. Watching sport and following celebrities rate with glue-sniffing. With my stepfather I'm probably living in the cracks between ever spreading concrete. In my dreams I’d like to see myself as a clerk of small works, alert to my position and the opportunity to garden, pick up litter and do the occasional small-orbit good turn, and meet good people. I’ve not got much time for public anger. Private vexation is another thing.
'Above all remember; allotment gardening is fun, it's healthy and it's a great way to meet people. So the most important thing is to enjoy your allotment.'
Advice from the Allotments Section at Birmingham City Council suggests it takes 3 years to get a new allotment in order, but that's if you are already skilled and organised.
I and Lin and now my waged help, Winnie, have been digging over and over, weeding, weeding, weeding (dragging out those sinuous creeping white couch grass rhizomes especially)....
Winnie and Simon on Plot 14 (photo: Sue Hall, Winnie's mum)
....laying permanent paths, cutting out and pegging down porous weed control fabric, making temporary paths by moving around stacks of the industrial-grade carpet tiles I picked up for free during a garden clearance for Handsworth Helping Hands. Making separate beds accessible. The plot is just over 200 square meters, but with the shed and paths only half of that area is now working soil.
Potatoes planted in a bed dug over and over, weeded; new topsoil and compost raked in; all easily worked from surrounding paths
I love it. I do. I really do. But this is not a 'working man's' allotment from which i can proudly feed my family - the ideal of small holdings - urban green spaces whose legislative protection grows weaker by the year. Mine is a hobby plot - a word I dislike; a fact I accept, as a man seven generations from the land. My family have been townspeople, even when enjoying life in the country, since my ancestor Samuel Lees in Oldham became an iron master, then cotton mill owner, in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. True my stepfather could work the ground, handle stock, and grow vegetables in large numbers while my grandmother, Bar, abandoned metropolitan life to start the dairy farm where I was born in March 1942 and spent a lot of my childhood - an idyllic place I first heard described, when I was in my teens, as 'a hobby farm - by my stepfather.
Mill End: Simon on Gypsy, Bar on the haywain
I can't say I'd rather my allotment wasn't just a hobby. That's silly. I don't quite know what I was thinking. I suppose I think of it more as an experiment; a test even.
January 2007 - a picture in The Birmingham Evening Mail "When will the company who bought this green space in Birmingham and built on a third of it lay out the allotments that were part of planning gain deal agreed with Birmingham City Council?"
A hobby is 'a regular activity done for pleasure during one's leisure time'. Campaigning ten years to stop the Victoria Jubilee Allotments from being built over and, after that busy time - lobbying, writing, filming, speaking - getting the opportunity to work this plot, has hardly been a leisured activity. I've never been that keen about dividing activities into ones that are leisure, and one's that aren't. I've a distaste for how that distinction defines 'work'.
Starting on Plot 14 in 2010
I want Plot 14 - one Lin and I chose when the Victoria Jubilee Allotments opened in June 2010 - to prosper. I want it fecund, thriving - a source of pride and good food, I want to agree with the advice that an allotment should be enjoyable.
I've invested money on help, on topsoil, on compost, striving to get the ground closer to how I think it needs to be, and all the time I'm learning, with help from other plot-holders far better than me at growing their own - especially my friends Ziggi with her plot in north London and Vanley with his on the Victoria Jubilee, just a few yards away.
Winter sown broad beans with a sprinkle of potash to rake in
I'm going to make this work. But I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's remark "Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss" or Winston Churchill saying 'success involves persevering from one failure to the next', The gardening guide books I read aren't helpful. They begin at a point I'm still striving to reach. They hardly mention soil filled with rubbish, as well as stones, nor do they seem to give much attention to the emotions aroused by the depredations of slugs, onion fly, pigeons, snails (with their exquisite shells I find impossible to crush), and human pilferers - the ones that stole my garlic last year! How I do not envy new plot holders as inexperienced as I, trying to get vegetables to grow on adjoining plots that are like mine was four and half years ago, perhaps worse.
Stones continue to come out of the soil at every dig....
....but they never appear in the books
...and this worthy tutor teaches me more or less nothing about how to dig my plot
Dear Clive. Happy New Year 2015. I hope you're well. I've a favour to ask.
Since 2010 I have struggled to get my allotment working. You’d not expect less when I’ve invested so much in getting it in the first place.
My favour is also a question. We have by all accounts rather uneven topsoil on the VJA. I know that allotments officers on the council were hesitant about accepting the new plots from Persimmon under the S106A of 2004 because the land was not adequately prepared by the developer. Those of us pressing to get the allotments up and running pressed the council to let people start gardening. A minority of plot holders are doing pretty well but all I’ve spoken to admit they’ve had to do a lot of work getting the soil manageable and productive. It is full of stones, bricks, and other debris, as well as chunks of clay with - in some places - ground heavily compressed by building plant machinery. A lot of us have invested in manure, compost and extra topsoil.
I would - now that I am beginning to feel more in control - be so grateful for someone coming to look at the soil on my plot to give me an assessment and tell me the best way to continue improving it. All the guide books speak of adding nutrients and getting a balance between acid and alkali, but I’m in the dark as to the starting point on soil composition. It would be great if someone with much more experience and knowledge than I could drop over and give my plot soil an assessment and diagnosis with suggestions as to the what would now be the best treatment to get healthy crops.
Would this be possible?
Best wishes
Simon
Simon. An experienced allotment holder visited your site and had a good look round, concentrating on the soil structure. Some plots were thriving, some were struggling and some were vacant and overgrown - the overgrown plots obviously were able to support plant life!
You can test the acidity of soil [test kits available at DIY/ Nursery] - often the only balance used is lime for the brassicas.
The answer to improving the plot - clear rough debris - stones etc [stones can be buried to provide drainage]
Clay - working in compost - leaf mould is one of best ways - over wintering will help here.
Adding as much rotted compost/manure is great. Leave on surface for a while then dig in [note some crops do not like fresh manure!] You could import topsoil but beware it could include weeds etc even Japanese knot weed!
Perseverance is needed.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes, Clive
So really there's almost nothing in that I don't know, except for the hint about brassicas and the use of stones for drainage. Yet I'm grateful for the confirmation. The depth of my ignorance shared with Lin had me putting my seed potatoes under our bed to chit.
"They need the dark" Lin insisted, so under our bed they went.
I checked this up in books and on the internet
"No Linda! They need light not dark!"
Since the only chitting spuds we'd ever seen were the ones that start sprouting in the veg cupboard in the kitchen we'd assumed that darkness was needed. Out came the spuds from under the bed. Now I have them laid out in the conservatory.
A potato from the kitchen cupboard
Seven months ago the plot looked lovely - the greenery of mid-summer covering a multitude of sins. How will it look this summer? Much depends on what i do in the next few weeks.
June 2014
***** ***** *****
That other plot...
"We didn't reach an agreement. It was never on the cards that we would"
Yanis Varoufakis meets Wolfgang Schäuble in Berlin. The first 10 minutes of the clip has journalists and camera-folk preparing to see and hear statements. Then 'the curtain rises'. There they are, by god! Varoufakis has earned a concession before the conversation began. Greece is talking through Varoufakis to the Finance Minister of Germany - not to the Troika who Tsipras told his voters would not be the new Greek government's first port of call after the election. At 23.25 the German turns with courtesy to the Greek who with the journalists has been listening to the most sober and grave re-iteration from Schäuble for the European Project, an address not really to beloved and beleaguered Greece but to a far wider and more fragmented and unreliable audience across our continent.
Aristeidis Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's laic sculptor, depicts the EEC (EOK) as a broody chimaera
In my head there plays as background to this press statement I hear music - the 'Song for the Unification of Europe' composed by Zbigniew Preisner, sung in Greek by Elżbieta Towarnicka - an abridged version of 1 Corinthians:13, from the soundtrack of Krzysztof Kieślowski film 'Bleu'. Varoufakis is also in government but he speaks eloquently, poetically, to the people of Germany; pleads to them for their support in fighting the threat of fascism in Greece. I feel I am watching two statesmen at work; two men who know their trade.
I had an exchange with Richard Pine a few days ago. He wrote in The Irish Times
Tsipras appears to be naively idealistic, innocent, ingenuous and transparent, but he needs to be secretive, cunning and dishonest to succeed in the minefield he has created. As Maurice Manning once said of Garret FitzGerald, it is difficult to trust someone who pours a glass of wine without reading the label on the bottle. Tsipras wants to do the impossible, but if he is to succeed as a political leader he must learn the art of the possible and acquire the killer instinct.
So Richard suggests Tsipras must imitate the Greek hero Odysseus - famous for escaping terrible dangers more through cunning than face-to-face combat. My email:
Richard. I recall writing this in a paper published in the 90s about political skill in civil servants and politicians.....The constant negotiation of this moral minefield is part of life and certainly part of government. An additional layer of complexity is added to these circumstances by the fact that in families, as indeed in government, many people recognise the presence of these dynamics and may actually impart “in confidence”, something intended to be passed on. A process of negotiation is occurring where one person appears to be trusting another to risk being untrustworthy. The novelist Iain McEwan describes public figures who move around in this moral maze by navigating the complicated channels that run between truth and lying: 'with sure instincts while retaining a large measure of dignity. Only occasionally, as a consequence of tactical error, was it necessary to lie significantly, or tell an important truth. Mostly it was sure-footed scampering between the two extremes. Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’ (McEwan 1988:182)....McEwan captures the moral nimbleness that accompanies grown-up behaviour - public and private - where corruption and probity are proximate rather than polar and, where rules are at best casuitical; maintaining integrity requires wit. What I struck me about Iain McEwan’s words is that self-query 'Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’ My tolerance of politicians about whom you are much more judgemental (I think) is that politics - certainly the politics of government - is that it’s so like my internal life and I suggest I’m not alone in that. Best, Simon
Richard: You mean you lie to yourself and let not your right hand know....?
Simon: That’s what Iain McEwan is suggesting. I care about the environment and do many things that harm it. I shop at supermarkets while praising the survival of small shops. I think lascivious thoughts about other women. The list of my moral inconsistencies is endless and I don’t let them worry me or lessen my expressions of concern about the sins of my fellows.
My interior life is a parliament of debate with every now and then a rare internal argument from which the whips are withdrawn and I have a vote in which I must truly interrogate my conscience - but most of the time I’m bladerunning ‘the complicated channels that run between truth and lying”.
I think you have so hit the spot when saying how Tspiras must be. The killer instinct etc. Do you think he has it? Could he grow into it? Is his partner going to help? Peristera Batziaka. ‘Tough cookie”? This is riveting. S
R: I don't have that problem/advantage. I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep. Thanks for the Batziaka article - interesting that "peristera" means "pigeon" or "turtle-dove". R
S: 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.' Matt 10:16 "I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep”. People will make pilgrimages to seek your advice - the sage of Perithia. You make me think of that other writer Nikos Kazantzakis “I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realise of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.” S
Draw me a picture....
In other words just 10.6% of the €254 billion funds 'state operating needs'
