Dukakis At Eleni's Memorial, Lia Greece

Michael Dukakis, who ran for the presidency of the United States in 1988 and was the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history, arrived in the small northern Greek village of Lia last week on Aug. 24, causing great excitement throughout the country, and especially in Lia, where the village had been spruced up, pot holes filled, foliage pruned, and a heliport repaved to receive Dukakis' entourage, (although the man himself chose to drive up the vertiginous mountain roads so he could see the countryside on the way.)

Dukakis' maternal grandparents came from Vrisohori, another small and, until recently, isolated village not far from Lia. Although Mike and Kitty have visited Greece many times, they had never visited Northern Greece and his grandparents' village. The couple, along with Kitty's sister Ginnie and Ginnie's husband, Al, used the Grand Serai Hotel in Ioannnina as a base. After a lavish dinner hosted by the Mayor of Ioannina, they left the next day to see Vrisohori where Sen. Dukakis, with tears in his eyes, lauded the village which had produced his mother Euterpe, who became one of the the first Greek-American women to earn a college degree. (The small village also produced the father of film director John Cassavetes.)

The next day, Monday, Aug. 24, the Dukakis group arrived in Lia to attend a memorial service for Eleni Gatzoyiannis, my mother-in-law and the mother of my husband Nicholas Gage

Eleni Gatzoyiannis was executed by a firing squad of Communist guerrillas in Aug. 1948-- her body left in a ravine along with 12 other murdered civilians. Before that day, she was imprisoned, crowded along with 31 other prisoners into the tiny basement of her own house--which had been taken over as guerrilla headquarters.

When the guerrillas, who occupied the village in the last months of the Greek Civil War, started collecting children to take them behind the Iron Curtain, Eleni began to plan a nighttime escape for her own children. (In the end 28,000 children were kidnapped in the pedomasoma.) The escape succeeded after two abortive tries--but on the third try, she was forced to stay behind, to provide two women from her household to harvest wheat for the guerrillas. She chose herself and her 15-year-old daughter Glykeria, and said goodbye to her nine-year-old son, Nicholas and three older daughters. After her children disappeared, Eleni was questioned, tortured,imprisoned and ultimately executed on Aug. 28, 1948.

Nick's book about his mother, «Eleni», has told her story around the world in 34 languages. It was followed by the film Eleni. Her sacrifice to gain freedom for her children was cited on national television by President Ronald Reagan.

Last week, 61 years after Eleni’s execution, Michael and Kitty Dukakis attended a memorial service in her honor in Aghios Demetrios Church, where she worshipped, and where her remains were placed in the ossuary after her body was recovered from the ravine where she fell.

Also at the church last week were survivors and descendents of the 12 other civilians who died that day. After the service, mourners were given the traditional kollyva to eat--a sweet combination of boiled wheat, pomegranate seeds, almonds, sugar and raisins-- to symbolize the resurrection and immortality of the soul.

From the church, Mike and Kitty Dukakis came up the mountain to see Eleni's house as it is now--rebuilt from ruins in 2002 by our daughter and Eleni's granddaughter, author Eleni Gage. (She spent a year in the village restoring the house and writing a travel memoir "North of Ithaka" about the experience.) The house has been decorated to look just as it did before the Civil War. On the mantle is a photograph of Eleni Gatzoyiannis and her husband Christos--who was working as a produce seller in Worcester when war broke out in 1939, preventing him from returniing to Greece for the next decade.

Nick then showed the Dukakises his grandfather's house, lower on the mountain, and the path that the children took when they escaped down through the minefields at night, until they reached the Nationalist soldiers on the other side. They were sent to a refugee camp where they lived until their father was able to bring them to the United States a year later.

Finally, the villagers of Lia gathered with Mike and Kitty Dukakis in the village Inn for a celebratory meal, including the traditional local pita pies. There were tears as well as smiles as Mike and Kitty greeted and hugged the villagers, old and young, who had lost loved ones and grandparents on that day in 1948.

Nick welcomed the visitors, saying in part «I’m very moved that Mike and Kitty Dukakis have come here to remember the fate of Eleni and to recall how she suffered and from whom.»

In turn Gov. Dukakis, also speaking in Greek, said «Having read several times the powerful work of Nicholas Gage about his mother, we are are very moved to come to Lia and see the places of her martyrdom.»

This celebration of her legacy--the legacy of a simple Greek peasant woman who died to save her children--was something that Eleni Gatzoyiannis, murdered at 41, could never have imagined happening 61 years after her death. Hundreds gathered in her village as she was honored by the only Greek-American to run for the presidency of the United States--the country she longed to see, but never did. (After Nick's father Christos died in 1985, Nick brought his mother's bones to Worcester, MA to be buried next to her husband, in Hope Cemetery)

It was an honor that Eleni Gatzoyiannis could not have imagined when she was alive --but the spirit of Eleni has often been felt in the village over the years since her death, as people from around the world have made the pilgrimage to see where she lived and died.

I think she knew.

ALI PASHA & THE BLOODY HISTORY of IOANNINA

(Please click on photos to enlarge)

On our first evening back in Greece, last week, a stroll down the main street of Ioannina took us past reminders of the cataclysms that have racked this area for the past 200 years. The entire population of the city seemed to be outside, enjoying the perfect weather. Ioannina (also spelled Yannina) is the provincial capital of Epiros and the stepping-off place for my husband Nick’s village—about an hour’s drive farther north on a mountain just below the Albanian border.

I often remind myself, when I’m in Greece, that any Greek my age—old enough to remember World War II—is a survivor of the Italian and Nazi occupations, the terrible starvation that followed, and the bloody Civil War that rent the country after that. The Civil War still splits the populace along political lines when you bring up stories like that of my mother-in-law Eleni Gatzoyiannis, who was imprisoned, tortured and killed in 1948 for engineering her children’s’ escape from their occupied village. She began planning the escape when the Communist guerrillas started collecting children to send to re-education camps behind the Iron Curtain. (This was called the pedomasoma, and while many claim it never happened—like Holocaust deniers— in fact 28,000 children were taken from their parents and reared in communist countries.)

In Ioannina, as elsewhere, Greeks traditionally take an evening stroll—the peripato-- families walking together, pushing baby strollers, the youth checking each other’s fashion statements. Everyone eventually sits at an outdoor cafe to enjoy an iced coffee or a glass of wine or ouzo and watch the passing parade. (Dinner doesn’t start until ten p.m.). The peripato is especially popular in towns on the sea or on a lakeside harbor like Ioannina.

Tourists have not yet discovered this city, which is little changed from the days when Lord Byron visited the notorious tyrant Ali Pasha in the walled Turkish Kastro which still stands—its walls intact, its minarets and palaces now turned into museums.

In Ioannina we stayed in the new Grand Serai hotel, ornately decorated with marble, crystal chandeliers and copies of paintings showing Lord Byron and Ali Pasha—the Albanian vizier who tried to seize control of the area from the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople.

Ali Pasha had 300 women in his harem and 300 boys in his seraglio, so they say in Ioannina. Most of them were kidnapped from the neighboring Greek villages—pretty girls for the harem, promising boys to be trained as soldiers in the Janissary corps. Turkish rule ended in Northern Greece in 1913, but even after that, village women like Nick’s mother Eleni, warned their daughters to cover their faces with their kerchiefs to avoid being kidnapped for their beauty. Nick’s father, who was born in 1891, wasn’t sure of his exact birth date because his mother, like everyone else, lied about the age of the boys, making them younger so they wouldn’t be taken as Turkish soldiers.

Ali Pasha had a habit of drowning individuals who displeased him by sealing them in sacks weighted with stones and dropping them into the bottomless Lake Pamvotis below the walls of the Turkish Kastro. They say that in the morning mists over the lake you can see the ghosts of the women who died there, including Kyria Efrosini, the lover of one of Ali Pasha’s sons, who tried to sell her expensive ring in the marketplace. A famous painting portrays her and her maids, who were drowned with her, being rowed to their death by grinning evil Turks.

Today the lakefront is the scene of excellent restaurants and nightclubs which are filled to overflowing with the youth of the city, partying late into the night. Even at midnight, families are out, dining al fresco as children enjoy a Lunar Park of carnival rides and outdoor shows of traditional Greek shadow puppets. There are the gypsies, selling everything from mixed nuts to cheap Chinese electronics, and the little ferryboats, chugging to and from the island in the middle of the lake. Day or night the lakeside is a happening scene,

Ali Pasha was assassinated in 1822 in his summer home on the large island in the middle of the lake (which has many tavernas featuring freshwater fish like trout, plus eels and frogs legs.)

Ali’s wife was Kyria Vassiliki, who was kidnapped (if I remember correctly) from her village of Plessio at the age of 15. The old man trusted the lovely Vassiliki, but she learned of his plan to torch Greek villages and she abetted assassins sent by the Sultan in Constantinople—giving a signal which allowed the killers entrance to Ali Pasha’s island home, where they shot him from the floor below.

The Turks cut off Ali Pasha’s head and carted it to the Sultan in Constantinople, along with Vassilki as a witness—to prove that the tyrant was dead. His headless body was buried under an elaborate wrought- iron cage in Ioannina, still standing near the mosque that is now a museum.

In gratitude for saving her fellow Greeks, Kyria Vassiliki was returned to her village and became the first Greek woman to receive social security.

As we walked down the main street--Averoff— toward the lake front, we passed the entrance to the Turkish Kastro, and a shrine to two local Greek warriors who were hanged by the Turks from a nearby plane tree. They are now saints.

Then we passed a monument to the Jews of Ioannina, who lived mostly within the Kastro—near the ancient synagogue which still survives (although there are rarely enough men to make a minion.) A sign says in both Greek and English, “In memory of our 1,850 Jewish cohabitants who were arrested on March 25th, 1944, and executed in the Nazi concentration camps”. That is another story in Ioannina’s bloody history and one that is still being written about.

As we approached the lake, we passed a warren of shops featuring wares of hammered copper and brass as well as silver filigree: traditional handicrafts of Ioannina. Some of the objects are made from mortar shells left from the war.

Then we reached the lakeside, where the music was blaring and the populace was eating and drinking and admiring the view. Aside from some lakeside statues of veiled women, representing the victims of Ali Pasha, there was no sign of the city’s tragic history, only merriment and music on a balmy summer night.

I Know I'm on Vacation When.....

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The other day, while driving from the harbor of Igoumenitsa to the ferryboat that would take us from Lefkada to Cephalonia, Eleni started making a verbal list:

“I know I’m on vacation when I ….
--eat bacon for breakfast
--drink wine at lunch
--wear my bathing suit all day instead of underwear.
--read books by Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie then leave them at the hotel and pick up others from the left-books shelf.”

I added a few of my own.
“I know I’m on vacation when I:
--do the NYTimes crossword puzzle on weekdays as well as weekends (in the International Herald Tribune)
--take lots of photos of cats and windows and bicycles and the food I’m eating
--don’t check my e-mail every day (because I can’t find wifi or an internet café)
--can’t remember what day it is.”

When traveling in Greece, my perfect day includes eating outdoors overlooking a body of water. (Ideally the meal includes fish and a Greek salad with tomatoes, feta cheese and olive oil and there is a cat under the table begging for scraps.)

Eleni’s perfect day includes watching the sun set into a large body of water while drinking rosé wine.

We’ve been having a lot of perfect travel days lately and eating outdoors with stunning views and lots of sunsets and rosé wine and cats -- everywhere from Athens to Mykonos to Ioannina to Corfu to Lefkada to Cephalonia, where we are now. Eleni is researching a magazine article about “Secret Hotels of the Ionian Islands” so we change to a different (budget) hotel nearly every day. We were supposed to leave this afternoon for Zakinthos on the ferry but the wind and waves were too high so we are staying overnight at our friend Vicky’s house in the town of Kourkourmelata and leaving early tomorrow morning (we hope). And if we can’t get off Cephalonia, we’ll watch the sunset from here.

Here are some photos of our perfect sunsets and seaside meals. The top row are all about watching the sunset in Mykonos with a view of Little Venice and the famous windmills.

The next row shows us in Corfu Town—we always go to the roof garden at the top of the Cavalieri Hotel to enjoy the view of the Venetian fort below as the swallows go crazy right at sunset, swooping low over our heads chasing bugs. One night in Corfu we ate at the waterside in the Sailing Club restaurant hidden deep in the fortress where the sail boats are tied up.

The next row shows the terrace of our Corfu cousins’ house where we are always treated to a magnificent meal including vegetables from their garden. Another day we went to the west side of Corfu to watch the sunset at a bar called Petra.

The photos below show other views of Corfu, including a taverna called Le Grand Balcon. Sometimes the best view is from the balcony of our own hotel room.

The next row of photos shows where we ate last night and at breakfast this morning on the terrace of our villa in Lourdas, Cephalonia, including apricots right off the tree. Finally, photos of the tavernas in Lefkada (two days ago) and Argostoli, Cephalonia (today at noon) where we picked out the fish we wanted for lunch.

Next—Greek cats—the sequel.

Tinos' Miraculous Madonna, Corfu's St. Spyridon

Please click on the photos to enlarge them


Mykonos is famous as a party island where anything goes (especially in August!) When we left Mykonos, we stopped on the nearby island of Tinos, which—in contrast-- is one of the holiest spots in Greece (after Mt. Athos, filled with monasteries, where no woman has ever set foot.)

Tinos is a place of pilgrimage especially for pilgrims who need a miracle to heal them, so in many ways it’s like Lourdes. The most pious and most needy pilgrims crawl on their knees from the harbor where they disembark, all the way up to the church, which holds the miraculous icon of the Virgin. In my photos you can see two women crawling up the special carpet which stretches from the harbor to the church. It’s a really long way, especially in the hot sun. Near the top of the climb is a statue of a faceless female pilgrim crawling and stretching her hand toward the church.

We walked instead of crawling to the church but made sure we were modestly dressed. We bought and lit candles to the icon of the Virgin that was so covered with jewelry and diamond offerings that you couldn’t see any part of the icon. Hanging from the church ceiling were hundreds of tamatas—votive offerings---often ships in full sail made of silver and gold. Also hanging there are silver houses, people, horses, autos, even a bicycle. In the harbor you can buy for a Euro a tiny flat silver image of whatever you want a miracle for (wedding crowns, a leg, an eye, a baby, etc.) and slip the tama into the slot of a box near the icon. You can also write your plea or prayer or the boon you seek on a piece of paper and slip it into another box (with an offering of coins.)

After visiting the interior of the Virgin’s church, we went into the underground basement? crypt? where everyone gathered holy water flowing from a spring under the church, filling little plastic bottles solo everywhere for this purpose.

On August 15th, the Virgin’s holiday (which is preceded by two weeks of fasting by many pious Greeks) you can hardly step from the ferryboat onto the harbor-- so crowded is Tinos with invalids and pilgrims seeking help. And on a day in September, the route to the church is filled with gypsies, who celebrate their own holiday of the Virgin Mary and often sleep in the vast church courtyard the night before the celebrations.

Our visit to Tinos was on June 1st . Yesterday, since we are now staying on Corfu, we stopped by the Church of St. Spyridon to visit the miracle-working saint—an old friend, since everyone visiting Corfu must stop by to pay him homage during their stay.

The tower of Spyridon’s church dominates the rooftops of Corfu—a wonderful old, Venetian-style city with narrow winding streets and balconies so close together that neighbors can reach across.

St. Spyridon’s blackened and wizened body is displayed in the church lying under glass. The line of pilgrims who come by to see him and ask for a miracle are expected to kiss the embroidered slippers on his feet. (Actually it’s been a matter of kissing the glass above them every time I’ve gone there.) Gerald Durrell in his delightful book “My Family and Other Animals” describes how his mother warned her children not to actually kiss the slippers for fear of germs—just as I did with mine many years ago.

St, Spyridon in his glass casket is brought out of the church and carried in a parade around town on four occasions during the year. One is Holy Saturday. (Of all the places in Greece, Easter is most dramatically celebrated in Corfu with music and funeral marches and fireworks and marching orchestras and a famous moment on Holy Saturday at noon --the first Resurrection-- when everyone throws clay pots filled with water—the bigger the pot the better—off their balconies, tossing away the sins of the past year until every street is Corfu town is littered with shards.)

The other excursions of the saint around town mark dates when he saved the islanders once again from plague, starvation or invaders. (Corfu has been invaded and occupied by nearly everyone, most notably the Italians and English—which is why the island has such an international flavor.) The Corfiotes believe that the saint secretly walks around every night doing miracles, which is why his corpse wears out a pair of slippers every years, which have to be replaced.

Photographs are not allowed in either of these churches but I took photos outside St. Spyridon, showing the two entrances and the sellers of candles and icons and the place where you can light a candle to the saint. I also photographed an old crone who was begging near the church. I did leave a contribution in her tin after taking her photo---although she never noticed. I was fascinated by the contrast between the old hag and the young woman in the ad above her head.

Corfu is probably my favorite island because of its mixture of cultures and the constant reminder of people and times gone by. One of my dreams is to own a home here some day.

Maggie's Mykonos Wedding

Right now we’re in Ioannina in Northern Greece, about to drive up the mountain to Nick’s village of Lia on the Albanian border, but I’m hoping to post about the fabulous wedding we enjoyed in Mykonos last Saturday. (Along with Santorini, Mykonos is the hottest – and most expensive – of the Greek islands favored by the jetset— or whatever they’re called these days.)

Maggie’s grandparents are from Mykonos and the family still have the traditional patriarchal home there. The groom, Paolo—is from Italy and the bride and groom met in Boston where they now live and Paolo has a restaurant.

Maggie wanted a traditional wedding on Mykonos and we Gages were thrilled to be invited. On the day of the wedding, Maggie’s dress hung over the antique bed in her late grandmother’s bedroom. As relatives gathered in the courtyard outside the house, and two musicians entertained them with accordion music, drinks and sweets and traditional wedding songs, Maggie dressed with the help of her friends. Then she emerged from the door of the house followed by her parents and her brother, Tony, and everyone danced in the courtyard as the musicians played and a relative shot a barrage of rifle bullets into the sky.

A parade of cars took the bride and her entourage to the ancient (1786) church where Paolo waited with his family. As the bride walked through the village’s central plaza, escorted by her father, the patrons at several tavernas applauded her and both groups shouted the traditional wedding wish for the single people: “and to your (wedding)! “

Paolo, the groom, greeted Maggie at the church door with a kiss and the bridal bouquet, Then everyone went inside for the wedding ceremony which climaxed in the “Dance of Isaiah” as the couple, wearing their wedding crowns and flanked by the two koumbari (sponsors), were led by the priest around the altar three times while they were showered with rice and rose petals.

After the ceremony the newlywed couple emerged from the church and received the wishes of all their guests , who were each given the boubonieres—little white satin boxes of Jordan almonds beautifully tied with a ribbon holding a sterling silver cross or heart pendent. We Gage women have been wearing our favors ever since, because they’re so beautiful.)

Afterwards there was impromptu dancing in the village platea outside the church until a cavalcade of cars carried everyone to the Royal Mykonian hotel for a champagne cocktail hour on a terrace high above the ocean. After sunset, everyone moved to a still higher floor in the hotel—also open to the ocean view-- for a lavish buffet. The dancing, singing and toasts went on until three in the morning but for me the best part was watching Maggie and her family dancing and saluting the bride in the courtyard outside the family home.

Why I Love Thanksgiving (and Shortcuts)

I love Thanksgiving because you don’t have to buy and wrap gifts and it’s non-denominational – any religion can play. Even vegetarians like our son can find plenty to eat at Thanksgiving.

I used to make vegetarian gravy to go with our traditional stuffing – just take Pepperidge Farms Cornbread stuffing , and prepare as directed with water and butter but first throw in sautéed mushrooms, a little sautéed celery – you get the idea. (Trader Joe’s even sells a Tofurky roast made from tofu with gravy , although we go the free-range fresh turkey route.) Put a cut-up orange and/or onion inside the turkey’s cavity. If you put the stuffing inside, the turkey takes forever to cook and the stuffing comes out soggy.

My doctored-up corn bread stuffing always wows the Greek relatives who have spent days making stuffing involving sausage, pine nuts, chestnuts, etc. My stuffing takes five minutes. Theirs takes three days and must have a thousand calories per spoonful. Don’t tell them that, and also don’t tell them that, after years of failing at gravy-making I just jazz up canned turkey gravy with some chopped cooked gizzards and a little of the maple/bourbon glaze that I brush on the turkey near the end of the cooking time to keep it moist and a nice color

When I was a newlywed in 1970 I made Duck a l’Orange for our first Thanksgiving. The next year there was a baby at the table – smaller than the turkey -- and then two and three, and for 38 years we’ve celebrated the full catastrophe, often inviting foreign college students who have no place to go.

We still do it the traditional way, from cranberry/orange relish and wild rice (which comes from my native state of Minnesota) to apple and pumpkin pie (which is wicked easy to make, but now I make a pumpkin roll — like a jelly roll with cream cheese in the middle. You can freeze it and serve it centuries later, just defrost and slice and sprinkle with powdered sugar.) Somehow Chocolate Kahlua Pie has also become a family “tradition.”

I used to keep the kids busy making place cards for the table… for instance turkeys out of popcorn balls wrapped in red cellophane with heads made of lady fingers or Greek kourlourakia. The turkeys stand on three toothpick legs stuck into some large flat cookie with a person’s name on it.

Over the years I developed more and more shortcuts because cooking is just not my thing. Decorating is. By now I’ve now got it so streamlined that I’m going to write a book next year about "Holiday Shortcuts". Trust me, you can do a Thanksgiving and Christmas worthy of Martha Stewart and be cheating every step of the way. That’s the thesis of my upcoming book, which has the working title "Acing the Holidays". Stay tuned.

This year I’m plugging my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”

which costs only $10 and is perfect for the cat people or going-to-Greece people on your list. I’ll sign it and wrap it in cat-themed paper for free if you order it off my web site: www.GreekCats.com .

I’m also going to be selling it at Border’s, 476 Boston Turnpike, Shrewsbury on the day after Thanksgiving and on Sunday, December 7 at “Start at the Station” – Worcester’s Union Station — from noon to five p.m. along with 80 other artists and craftspeople.

Last night, youngest child Marina came back home from LA. On Wednesday night Eleni’s coming home from New York. As soon as Marina got here, her cousin Efro came over and the two girls sat at the kitchen table looking at photos on Marina’s computer of her new life full of beaches and sunsets and new housemates. The girls were laughing so loud you could hardly hear the phone ringing. “You see,” said the Big Eleni, who is Efro’s mother, “The minute children come home, the house is filled with joy.”

That’s what I love about Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great Turkey Day! The photo above is last year’s feast with Nick about to carve the turkey.