The wind vane on Brin Croft

James, Isobel’s son-in-law, roofer, got astride the ridge of Brin Croft and tugged at the iron wind-vane, already loose in its bracket, until it pulled free. He lowered it to me on a washing line.
“Do you want the bracket as well?”
We’d tried – Colin, with a good socket wrench, and I with a mole grip – to loosen the bolts on the bracket; treated them several times and weeks ago with WD40.
“No, just leave it, James. Those bolts are too well rusted”
“It’d come off with an angle grinder”
“Too many sparks next a wooden house”
I’d thought of a blow lamp. Hot and cold, Hot and cold; brought one up from Birmingham.
“No way!” Lin had said
“So take a photo of the bracket with lens on zoom. I’ll have another made.”
We wondered where to put it; this vane with the sheet metal initials E, W, N, S on the fixed plane and above it, to turn with the wind, a Jack Russell called Sukie and a whippet called Jenny – dogs we had as children when a Newbury smithy made this up for the roof at Bagnor.
“Where shall we put it up again? In Handsworth, in Lydbrook, in Greece?”
“Where?”
“How about a bracketed metal pole that reaches 8 feet above the seaward balcony to mark, where we can see it easily, the changing winds that blow across the village.”
“Can you get a wind vane all that way? How do you pack it?”
Clearing Brin Croft. Lin’s already done a good job, staying up most of Thursday night wrapping and boxing and packing, protecting the sharp edges of the vane with envelopes of cardboard; doing the same with a pair of antlers for removal by Dunne's to Birmingham, but all the way to far Greece and fair Corfu, up the Sidari road turn left to Ano Korakiana a mile beyond Doctor’s Bridge, wind down past the chickens and guinea fowl on the left and the goat-sheep grazings on the right, then up the hill to Democracy Street where other drivers will civilly wait in the narrow space between houses while our van’s unloaded.
“With the chests of drawers too - drawers full of other useful stuff”
This disassembly and dispersion is another part of the ritual of mourning and remembrance. It’s perhaps why after a death, offence can seem so trivially taken among survivors who surprise even themselves, not, as often surmised, through cupidity or covetousness, but through differences over something sacramental, umbrage over observance; matters of faith; worse - theology. Isn’t religious strife the most obdurate cause of war? Mum’s chattels become her diaspora – though some are made anonymous by sale and auction, memorialised in ordinary use by friends and relatives. The market doesn’t figure. It’s their association. Lin has packed a semi-opaque plastic tooth mug that Amy remembered “when I was brushing my teeth at Mains”.
Other things formally priced for probate have gone to auction at Dingwall – two full vanloads - and Roger from Auldearn Antiques packed his blue transit with things he values more than any of us.

One aside in chat with Roger...he'd advertised some prints on ebay, and been refused permission to show Da Vinci's Virgin and Child because of concerns not to depict infants unclothed. Hm? Context?

Lin with Roger Milton

Two most pleasant blokes – one of them older than me, drove up from Scarborough in a yellow transit – and filled it with mum’s disability gear...

Dave and Colin 

...paying just over a thousand pounds for things that cost mum new nearer ten thousand. It had taken Lin weeks on Gumtree to find anyone prepared to pay anything for these – a mobility scooter, mechanical bed, mechanical riser and recliner with remote control, a lightweight folding wheel chair, all terrain walker, ordinary walkers, a commode, a bath lift, a Pilates leg exerciser, numerous gadgets for twisting and lifting. Isobel at Inverarnie Stores has pointed customers up to the house, one to buy a freezer – the driver of the Strathnairn bus for the elderly who had a ready lift to keep the machine upright.

Oliver, Amy, John and Guy loading mum's freezer on the Strathnairn Community bus

Others have come and bought from the inventory. No large objects remain. Lin and I eat on a couple of old garden chairs and an ugly little MDF table rejected at auction. We sleep comfortably on a remaining mattress.

Two friends - nurses - one with a talent for cartoons and caricatures, stayed at the cottage attached to Mains of Failie in the late 1970s, when the wind vane I've removed from Brin Croft, stood on the roof of mum and Angus' shippen, a victim of mischievous spaniels.

Grazings behind Brin Croft

*** *** ***
Richard Pine sent out a link to his latest Letter from Greece - from Corfu - published in The Irish Times, Monday 15 July

Antonis Samaras

In a recent opinion column (‘Greece in crisis needs a public broadcaster’) I made the mistake of saying that ERT, the Greek public service broadcaster equivalent to RTÉ, which had been shut down by the government, was back on the air. I wrote this in good faith. Faith that the Greek supreme court, which had ordered the reinstatement of ERT, would be obeyed by the prime minister, Antonis Samaras. However, I had not allowed for the fact that Samaras had engineered the closure of ERT for many reasons, one of which was to test the water of what he could or could not do in respect of closing or radically changing a number of public bodies, for which ERT has provided the test case. Ordered by the supreme court to reopen the broadcaster, pending a review of its activities and a likely reduction in both its staff numbers and its budget, Samaras has chosen to behave as if there had been no such order, just as he has proceeded with the suspension of ERT as if he had a single-party government, rather than a fragile coalition. Not only this, which has dismayed the Greeks, who are hard to impress these days with arrogance of this magnitude, but Samaras has also defied international opinion.....(continued)

From the Ano Korakiana website:

Για την ΕΡT26.07.13 Θέλω μόνο να υπενθυμίσω ότι η ΕΡΤ είναι ακόμα εκεί και λειτουργεί.Εκπέμπει 24ωρο τηλεοπτικό πρόγραμμα, μέρος του οποίου ζωντανά, μέσω του European Broadcasting Union.Επίσης εκπέμπει 24ωρο ραδιοφωνικό πρόγραμμα που στην Αθήνα λαμβάνει κανείς στα μεσαία κύματα (ΑΜ), στα 729 μέτρα. Με δελτία ειδήσεων ανά ώρα και το αγαπημένο ιστορικό σήμα της Ελληνικής ραδιοφωνίας (τσοπανάκος)!Θα πρέπει λογικά να ακούγεται από αναμεταδότες και στην υπόλοιπη Ελλάδα. Ακόμη όλα αυτά μεταδίδονται και από το Internet.Οι εργαζόμενοι της ΕΡΤ είναι πραγματικά αξιοθαύμαστοι που σχεδόν 2 μήνες μετά το "μαύρο" και παρά τα προβλήματα επιβίωσης που αντιμετωπίζουν πολλοί από αυτούς, καταφέρνουν να διατηρούν ένα υψηλού επιπέδου ραδιοτηλεοπτικό πρόγραμμα. Το μόνο που χρειάζονται είναι μία συμπαράσταση. Στον κήπο του ραδιομεγάρου στην Αγία Παρασκευή (από όπου και η φωτογραφία) συμβαίνουν καθημερινά πολύ ενδιαφέροντα πράγματα, όπως καλλιτεχνικές εκδηλώσεις και συζητήσεις. Πολλά από αυτά μεταδίδονται ζωντανά. Κάνοντας κανείς μία βόλτα και περνώντας ευχάριστα λίγη ώρα εκεί, εκδηλώνει ταυτόχρονα και έμπρακτα την τόσο πολύτιμη συμπαράσταση. Για να μη σιγήσει για πάντα η φωνή της Ελλάδας. Για να μην χαθεί για πάντα από τον αέρα το σήμα που όλοι έχουμε στ' αυτιά μας από τότε που γεννηθήκαμε. Για να σωθεί η μοναδική νησίδα πολιτισμού και ιστορίας στα ερτζιανά. Για να μην γίνουν τα σκύβαλα των ιδιωτικών καναλιών ο απόλυτος κυρίαρχος του ραδιοτηλεοπτικού τοπίου. Γιώργος Σαββανής

**** **** 

From Jan D: 

...Something to ponder. You know I have been 'predicting' that LAs are heading for insolvency. £14.4 billion in the red. Add to that anything between £30-50 billion shortfall in NHS by 2021. I think it is time to take stock. Today Detroit City in USA have filed for bankruptcy. This was the centre of the American Motor industry in the richest country on earth. If it can happen there it can happen anywhere. Time for LAs to wake up and smell the coffee. Sadly they are far from doing this. This was a comment made by observers of the recent LGA conference re local councils: 'The magnitude of the cuts themselves provoked very little reaction and local government was very much business as usual – which is sadly why it will always be burden with such a large share of the responsibility to reduce public spending' - LGC 11 July. Hoisted by their own competence and compliance on the flagpole of political naivety and ostrich attitudes. This was after being harangued by Pickles to the effect that there was not a hope in hell’s chance that the recommendations in in the LGA Rewiring Public Services report would be accepted. He called LAs 'Luddites' creating 'Groundhog Days'. I need a holiday! Enjoy the summer. See you in the autumn.

Rain

We are surrounded by mist, thunder, and the pleasant sound – for us who trust our roof – of rain pattering, occasionally drumming, on the tiles, flecking the windows, drops dribbling at random down the pane, water streaming from the gutters down the paths to the drains. I get up with a light heart to do easy routines – restarting the stove until it roars merrily, wearing my long raincoat to rescue a lineful of washing from the garden, spinning it and hanging it to dry on a frame by the stove, bringing in wood kept covered and dry and feeding the fire that is no longer smoking, cleaning a pan that had soaked overnight in the kitchen, making myself porridge topped with dark sugar and cream, and calling Lin to wake for a mug of coffee. There’s a Bal Masque for in the Agricultural Co-op tonight on the lower road. We’d seen chairs being delivered. Natasha showed us her costume as we chatted over the fence yesterday. Then on 14 February there will be Carnivali in the village.

Yesterday Lin and I started work filling in the staircase in preparation for closing it altogether from the room through which it passes which we are making into a bedroom. The room next to the kitchen is to be a downstairs dining room, conveniently next to the kitchen and cooler in hot weather.

* * *

Lee Southall at Handsworth Park has circulated a nice poster advertising one of my history tours of the Park on Sunday 21 March. I fear he and his colleagues are under terrific pressure to make and take big cuts in their budgets, and their own jobs. I've written to local councillors across Handsworth and Perry Barr:

Dear Councillors and friends

Handsworth Park under threat from new

proposals for re-organising Ranger Services

These proposed changes to the management of Birmingham’s treasured parks – in particular Handsworth Park - are very troubling, especially as they include reduction in the Ranger Services.

As someone involved in writing the history of Handsworth Park and, with many others, campaigning for its restoration since the 1980s, I learned a lot about the contribution of parks to city life – especially their indirect contribution to health and education and the resulting contribution to community safety. It did not take long for my researches to catch up with something that the public has long known, that you cannot realise the public good of parks without park keepers – now the Ranger Service. Crime, like fire, prevented is very difficult to measure, thus the peacekeeping role of the Rangers in all our parks cannot, in a time of desperate purse tightening, be accurately assessed against the cost to the city of their wages. That failure in accounting practice will bear very directly on all who have come to enjoy what for the last 10 years has seen a renaissance in public parks.

As an almost daily visitor to Handsworth park before and after the Rangers arrived about ten years ago I, and others in my position, can attest to the 1001 incidents that might have gone from petty to serious which have been nipped in the bud merely by the presence of a ranger patrolling, let alone their many direct interventions that have prevented crimes in the park. In addition, our Rangers, in liaison with teachers, local police and community support officers, have participated in a whole range of actions with schools designed to catch potential problems long before they become those that once allowed our public parks to deteriorate into spaces from which the larger public – young and old - were barred by crime and anti-social behaviour.

We hope very much that local councillors and our MPs will be able to come together to press for damage limitation, especially as it was understood as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the restoration of Handsworth Park that revenue for its continued maintenance and staffing was guaranteed for at least 10 years from the time of the grant. There are still still a few years to run, By cutting back on services especially the ranger service in Handsworth Park the Council may be acting contrary to its agreement with the Heritage Lottery Fund. Can councillors please make urgent enquiries this and make appropriate representations?

I would also appreciate knowing whether we must anticipate any collateral impact on the opening and managing of the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments next to Handsworth Park. Best wishes, Simon

* * *

My talk at the Durrell School about relations between the British and the Ionians in the 19th century went well mainly because an indulgent audience of friends put up with me struggling to cover more information than needed for a 20 minute talk about Lord High Commissioners and the British Protectorate. I managed to cover all but Gladstone, whose role was well filled in during questions by Richard Pine who'd invited me to do the talk. Despite my detours we had a good hour of discussion about character and motives of quite a few of the participants in that 48 year episode in which the Ionians hoped they'd got a Protectorate while the British, with notable exceptions (Nugent, Seaton, Gladstone) assumed they had a colonial possession, getting down to why the British were here in the first place and whether the British, when they left in 1864, were pushed or chose to jump, and the shrewd politics of the Ionian Radicals about whom I’ve learned so much from Eleni Calligas’ work

Slides for my talk - pause the film to read the small writing; click on the image to get full screen on YouTube

Paul came with Lula. There were at least two other Greeks in the audience, which was good, as well as Irish. I felt I’d traversed some mined ground unscathed with kind remarks from a full house on a chilly winter’s evening. The thing is the honour of being invited to give such a talk after being here only a few years. The subject gets richer as I learn more about it. On the way back to our car in the Spaniada we heard a Scops owl hooting right over our head in one of the trees that line the esplanade. Lin, to my relief, said “That wasn’t too bad. I could've kicked you when you went off on one of your diversions.”

Afterwards Richard took us for a meal. “Nothing special. Just basic” “Suits us” Lin sat in a corner by a shuttered window onto Theotoki Street. “That's where Lawrence Durrell used to sit” said Richard. A French tourist had once thrust a copy of Prospero's Cell through this window and asked the author to sign it. We had beef and potatoes, chicken and chips and the local red. “So what of the economy?” I asked.

“Papandreou, having consulted with Samaras, spoke to the country on TV last night. ‘We are in for very tough times. We must all work together otherwise – the abyss.’” We realized the biggest cuts must be in the Hellenic public sector. “KKE won’t buy this. They have significant seats in parliament.” “So?” With a left unwilling to back a one nation response to the problems of the economy there'll be demonstrations. The EU watches; the Greek diaspora too. I mentioned my concern at the news that Birmingham City Council is to make big cuts in its Park Ranger Service. “Well they’ve done that in California...and without rangers the state might close Yosemite National Park”.

* * *

DEMOCRACY STREET AS SHARED SPACE

On main roads people drive fast, tailgate, overtake on bends and hoot to hurry up dawdlers, yet when Lin stops the car on Democracy Street, in a spot even narrower than the rest of the road through the village , above the steps down to our house so we can unload before she goes on to a parking space, other drivers who happen to come along – in either direction - will invariably wait politely. All along Democracy Street, as it winds through the village, drivers have learned just where to give way (wider spots we now know), wave another car on or proceed themselves, making judgements about width, sometimes folding in their mirrors to clear a wall, yet very seldom inconveniencing those on foot. Democracy Street, along with the narrow sinuous main streets of other villages is a shared space – an idea about roads being laboriously recovered in settings where for decades politicians and professionals have favoured the view that roads are for cars and sidewalks or pavements for those on foot – building in traffic lights and occasional crossing spaces to allow pedestrians to enter, at least briefly, a space separated off for people in cars. Thus it is on Corfu’s main roads and indeed on their pavements where despite prohibitions drivers, who would noisily resent a similar encroachment by walkers on their space, will often park their cars. In the middle of many villages here there are often no pavements. Network of narrow streets are often plaka’d to remind visitors that the space between houses are to be shared by everyone on foot, cycle, scooter, car, truck and bus; that indeed walkers are also ‘traffic’ - a word that in the years of the combustion engine has defaulted to exclude cyclists, horses, donkeys and people on foot, moving, sitting or leaning on walls. Everyone can own the street and it generally works, with opportunities for regular acts of civility as people negotiate their way through. Civility that is the essence of this process is largely abandoned on main roads. The human-to-human negotiation of Democracy Street is replaced by automatic regulation of the highway. It was long ago discovered that you can’t use eyes to engage politely with another human once both of you are likely to be passing each other above a certain speed – about 15mph maximum. Thus is the shared space of the village abandoned to the individualised space of the open road. Human eye and the repertoire of non-verbal language that lubricated social interaction was replaced by traffic lights, warning signs, designated crossings, barriers and remote surveillance by camera. What was worse, though it hasn’t happened in many villages here, is that the so-called ‘open road’ instead of just running between communities, was often forced through them, and motorised traffic was encouraged to speed through newly widened and straightened roads between demolished homes, getting their drivers more swiftly from A to B but blighting those settlements that lie between (see: community severance and shared space). * * * * Lin, unable to sleep in the early hours, rose and watched the dawn. That very bright light on the Albanian shore had been out for several days but is there again now.

A missing commentary - the debate between sea and olives

Dora Bakoyannis, Greece's impressive Foreign Minister, and ex-Mayor of Athens, was doing things in London this week - like talking with David Miliband about Greek-Turkish relations and the FYROM issue. She brought a signed copy of Alexander the Great's birth certificate issued well south of the Slav upstart state claiming his history. No seriously, that's a squabble that has to be talked out by diplomacy - so it never gets fought out.

[Back to the future - 17 Dec '09: At the end of November 09, DB lost a fight with Antonis Samaras for the Leadership of New Democracy, in opposition since PASOK won a General Election in October '09. Op-Ed from Kathimerini]

DB is a politician who tends not to put a foot wrong. (Future PM?) Bakoyannis, in the Mercouri tradition, met the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles. She thanked them for their campaigning, stressing that Athens' goal (diplomatic metonymy) was to "reunite" the Marbles being held at the British Museum in London with those in Greece - a shrewdly used word; a change of name.

'They do not only belong to Greece but the world has a right to see them united at the new Acropolis Museum'

Consider the blank space on the west pediment above our heads in this snap taken by another couple who we'd just snapped for their album. Whether you have the place to yourself - which can happen - or whether it teems with visitors, its genius loci is undeniable, yet in this world of 'signage' designed to teach visitors and remind locals about their history - the most finely crafted commentary on the Acropolis is missing. Blast away its roof and scar its pillars, it is the story told in marble on the pediments and friezes of the Parthenon that is as important to its integrity as Genesis is to the Bible or the statue of Romulus and Remus suckling a wolf is to Rome.

The theme of the western pediment is the rivalry between Athena and her uncle, Poseidon, as to who should be patron of their favourite city. Witnessed by Cecrops, the Goddess offers an olive branch; the God, a saltwater spring. What's that about? Ponder pethia! Think visitors! Or head to northern climes and check it while I have a skirto.

Olives are good food, good wood and their oil fuelled lamps. Both could be traded. Poseidon's gift was about sea power - important for defence and trading. Which is the best gift? What qualifies Cecrops to judge? Poseidon and Athena occupy the central, high point of the west pediment's triangle - or should. Also up there - or should be were he not in the British Museum - is Cecrops, half man and half serpent, born from the soil, ancestor of the Greeks, who, by preferring Athena's gift, founded Athens teaching her citizens to bury the dead, honour the contract of marriage, to read and write. A civiliser. The Parthenon was named Cecropia in his honour. It became home to Phidias' building-high ivory and gold statue of Athena. Can you see the problem here - a tension between peace and war; between the practicality of the olive, not to mention its beauty, and the fact of Piraeus and the security of the broad blue highway from whence came the trading economy of the Aegean basin and littorals beyond? Some lesson! Did the neat little recording gadget tell you that while you were gazing in wonder at the remains of the marble narrative - chipped and bowdlerised by ill advised cleaning - in the British Museum? [one of my students stands before the east pediment marbles a few weeks ago] Erichthonius, also on the west pediment, was the second king of Athens. I am confused about him. There seems to be speculation about his history and identity. He wasn't Athena's son but she brought him up. He taught his subjects to work silver, put horses to chariots, and to pull the plough. I don't think Poseidon liked him. I need to learn more. Then there are more water divinities - Iris and Hermes among them - joining in a debate which, for the moment, remains muted and remote since the chamber above our heads is sadly empty. When I was last there, I was looking at the miniature reconstructions of the pediments in the museum on the Acropolis. I got into conversation with a Greek visitor from Thessalonika. I said I'd very much like to see the marbles returned, since their absence made me ignorant, stopping me shifting my gaze in a helpful way from pediments to frieze - a four-fold lesson there - to the larger structure, to the city below and towards the sea to the south. He said 'Yes they must come back, but we are not ready for them. Because of the air pollution in Athens they will have to go from your museum to our museum.' Having first seen the incomparable Parthenon in the late 1950s I was indeed struck by the pollution damage since then; more harm in 30 years than in many previous decades. I saw his point. More pragmatic than moral. Athens' pollution problems are not helped by her magnificent topography. The great city is located in a basin surrounded by high mountains and the dear dark faced sea that has served her so well. Air dispersion despite the etesian winds of summer is minimal. It is the only city where I - a traveller - have suffered as much from the humid heat of August and which makes cooler suburbs like Kifissia so seductive. The main sources of air pollution - motorised traffic, industry, domestic heating and air-conditioning - is increased by solar radiation during spring and summer. Athenians know 'the nefos'. The fires on Parnitha and closer in Kifissia amplify the problem - driven by ill-chance and yearning for land. Traffic congestion seems as bad as ever. [19/01/08 Problem continues: Stavros Dimas to Parliament on CO2 emissions measurement “This issue can create a problem for the entire EU – imagine the ridicule for our country" ] In 1977 the pollution of Athens was so bad, that, according to then Greek Minister of Culture, Constantine Trypanis, the caryatids of the Erechtheum had seriously degenerated, while the face of the horseman still on the Parthenon's west side was all but obliterated. Strict measures during the 1990s improved air quality. Five of the caryatids were replaced with replicas - the orginals placed in the Acropolis Museum. Elgin had the sixth. [He's got a receipt. 'Hold on it was in my pocket just now. Wait. it's somewhere here, I promise.']. The nefos is rarer, but summer 2007 saw great palls of smoke blanketing the city. All the same, more Athenians are on bicycles. Many more rely on the superb rapid transit system that came with the Olympics. But people are people. They love their cars. They covet, they yearn and sometimes they burn. The National Law 1650/86 contains the main legal framework for the protection of the environment. Air is monitored in a highly detailed scientific way, but...so much depends on human beings, corporate responsibility and confident government. ['The pilfering lords have gone, but the hungry clouds of pollution do damage in Athens nearly as bad.' Richard Stoneman (ed) Land of Lost Gods: The Search for Classical Greece, London: Hutchinson, 1987, p.300] If the Parthenon marbles return to their pediments - not just to a superb air-conditioned humidity-controlled museum nearby (politically correct as that would be) - Greece will have achieved more than a just restoration, she will have tackled one of the great urban problems of the world. The statue of Romulus and Remus is in the Musei Capitolini not in the open on the Capitoline Hill, needing similar protection from air pollution. If the Parthenon marbles do not return to their original place, then can you reproach those with the means who also retreat to 'superb' air-conditioned humidity-controlled environments separated from their fellows, shielded from the effects of their way of life? The message on the west pediment - the debate between Poseidon and Athena, between sea and olives should be renewed and resolved. They may argue. They may quarrel. But if they cannot share the same space then nor can we. The next time I enjoy an olive from Kalamata or Halkidiki I will be more aware of its salty taste.

[Back to the future: For another juxtaposition of sea and tree or rather 'boat vs. tree' see this blog entry on how toy-sized boats are being replacing by trees in Greek Christmas celebrations. Christmas trees came to Greece rather as they came to Britain - in King Otto's Bavarian baggage to Greece and in Prince Albert's German baggage to Victorian England] [Who owns the Codex Sinaiticus, until the 19thC in the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai - probably the earliest copy of the Holy Bible in Greek?]

* * *

What British things have been taken to another place? I can't think of any that are a bone of contention. US universities have bought quite a few original manuscripts, and now and again we hear of British Museums trying to save certain works 'for the nation' in competition with overseas private collectors. I'm failing to imagine what it must feel like to want the Parthenon Marbles back - because they are 'ours'. Cargo cults are driven by a shared feeling in a subject population that a powerful tribe has run off with their forefathers' wealth and magic powers, their technology and art. I wonder if growing Greek self-confidence will lessen demands for the return of the marbles so that when they come back, as I think they should and eventually will as part of the integrity of Pericles' Acropolis, the party will be ill-attended. Had Elgin not completed his mission for which he suffered famous abuse from Byron*, illness, impoverishment and gross disfigurement, the world might not have the marbles that now exist.

*Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,

Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they lov'd ;

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

Thy walls defac'd, thy mouldering shrines remov'd

By British hands, which it had best behov'd

To guard those relics ne'er to be restor'd.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they rov'd,

And once again thy hopeless bosom gor'd,

And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr'd.

Childe Harold: Canto 2 (15) 1812

[see note on bad building on Corfu]

[Back to the future: 5 Aug 2009 - Since writing this I've learned of a sturdy intellectual thread in Modern Hellenic culture that has mixed feelings about widely venerated emblems of Classical Greece such as the Parthenon, including growing political sophistication about the way regimes exploit the supposedly objective work of archaeologists - preserving, rebuilding and destroying resonant symbols. As a discipline it's referred to as 'socio' - or 'social archaeology'. See for instance Liana Giannakopoulou 'Perceptions of the Parthenon in Modern Greek Poetry' Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 20 (2) Oct 2002, pp. 241-272

The Parthenon is not a popular source of inspiration for modern Greek poets. Only a few poems are devoted to it, expressing either the poet's grief for bygone ages of glory or his praise of the immortal Greek spirit. Against this background, three poets can be distinguished for being different and original. For Palamas, who fights for the cause of Demoticism, the attitudes of his contemporaries towards the Parthenon encapsulate what he takes to be a sterile veneration of the ancestors. He thus opposes the idea of the restoration of the Parthenon, promoting the Modern Greek language instead. For Sikelianos, the Parthenon is only one monument among many. This weighty symbol of ancient Greek tradition is not a source of awe or embarrassment, but the yardstick that indicates the importance of the modern poet's achievement. For Calas, finally, the Parthenon is associated with the declining values of a doomed bourgeoisie and should therefore be blown up and replaced by new standards in life and art.

And see also Yannis Hamilakis 'The Other "Parthenon": Antiquity and National Memory at Makronisos' Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol 20 (2) Oct 2002, pp. 307-338

Makronisos, the small, uninhabited island off the Attica coast, was the location of the most notorious concentration camp set up by the Greek government during the Civil War (1946-1949). It was a place of brutality, torture, and death, but its distinctive feature was its role as an indoctrination centre for many thousands of political dissidents (mostly left-wing soldiers and citizens, but also ethnic and religious minorities) who, after they were "re-educated" in the national dogmas, were sent to fight against their ex-comrades. Classical antiquity was one of the main ideological foundations of this "experiment," the audience for which was the whole of Greece and the international community. In the island, still known as "The New Parthenon," the "redeemed" inmates were encouraged to build replicas of classical monuments, and the regime's discourse emphasized the perceived incompatibility of the inmates' "destiny" (as descendants of ancient Greeks) with left-wing ideologies....]

[Back to the future: a 21 August 2009 op-ed on the debate about the ownership of antiquities]

[Back to the future - 19 Dec 2009: 'The Parthenon frieze can now be digitally observed, piece by piece' - a website in Greek analysing the frieze with superb images...also see p.14 of 11 Dec 09 Athens Plus in which there's a piece about modern marble craftsmen working on the Acropolis]