Cat Book Christmas Plug

Since there are only about 15 shopping days left until Christmas, I thought I’d post a shameless plug for my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”—the perfect ten-dollar (plus postage)  gift for all the cat fans or Grecophiles on your list.

Featuring eighteen separate stories about a flock of felines whom I photographed in various parts of Greece, it’s much more than just another book of cat photos.  It’s also an introduction to the country of Greece and its heroes, myths, traditions, cuisine and holidays—told through the perspective of the country’s clever cats like Michaela the Monastery Cat, Bijou the Easter Cat and Antigone the Wedding Cat.

“The Secret Life of Greek Cats” isn’t just for children.  People seem to buy it as often for their adult friends, who love the humor in the cats’ tales, as for their children who may be studying Greek myths and culture.

Below I’m introducing two of my favorite felines from “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”: Vasili, who longs to be a sailor and knows exactly what to say to a mermaid, and Dionysos, the barstool cat from Paros who  is exhausted from all the music and dancing every night  but is proud to be named for the Greek god of wine.

If you would like to buy a copy of “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”,  you can find it on Amazon or just click on the book cover at right to preview it and order a copy from my web site (www.GreekCats.com.)  If you’re interested in multiple copies—say for a Greek church festival or a carload of cat lovers—contact me at JoanPGage@yahoo.com to learn about multiple copy discounts.

                                                                     VASILI THE SAILOR

Vasili is a tawny tabby cat who longs for the day he’ll hop on a boat and sail away to see the world beyond the harbor of Hydra. Daily he watches them come and go: huge cruise ships with crowds of tourists, ferryboats chugging from island to island, streamlined yachts and tiny fishing boats that sail out before dawn.

More than anything, Vasili would like to become a ship’s cat aboard a vessel with high masts and billowing sails.  He would climb up the rigging to sit just above the blue-and-white Greek flag.  From there he would be the first to see dolphins, flying fish, whales, sea monsters, even mermaids.  If he sees the giant mermaid called the Gorgona, Vasili knows exactly what to say.

According to legend, the Greek king Alexander the Great (who conquered most of the ancient world by the time he died in 323 BC)  wanted to live forever, so he killed the dragon who guarded the water of immortality.  Exhausted, Alexander brought the magic water home and fell asleep.  His sister saw the water and took a swallow.  Then she poured the rest on the plants! When Alexander the Great woke up, he got so mad at his sister that he cursed her, turning her into Gorgona, a giant mermaid with a double tail who can lift a ship in one hand.

Whenever Gorgona sees a passing ship, she calls out “What news of Alexander the Great?”  If a foolish sailor tells her the truth—Alexander’s  long dead--the mermaid becomes so angry that she stirs up towering waves to wreck the ship and drown the crew. So every Greek sailor knows to tell the Gorgona: “Alexander the Great lives and reigns!”  

Hearing that, the giant mermaid will smile and perfumed winds fill the sails, speeding Vasili’s ship on to exotic places far beyond the horizon. 

                                    DIONYSOS,  THE BAR STOOL CAT

If Dionysos looks tired, it’s because he was up late last night partying with the college students who like to stay at the inexpensive hotel on Paros where he lives.  It’s not that he drinks wine, or ouzo, or raki or tsipouro (those last two are moonshine made from the leftover grape skins.)  Cats are much too sensible to do that.  But Dionysos likes to join in with the fun and dancing and the music of the clarinet and the bouzouki when the kefi (high spirits) begins to rise.

He likes to watch the dancers, all holding hands in a line, dance the tsamiko or “handkerchief dance” as the leader, holding tight to the handkerchief, leaps and bounds and even does flips.  (Dionysos is careful to stay on top of his bar stool, to avoid any unfortunate accident to his tail.) The zeibekiko or eagle dance is performed by two people, face to face, circling and moving as if in a trance.  Sometimes a dancer will even pick up a table in his teeth to show how strong he is!  

If the dancers and the music are outstanding, the onlookers express their admiration and kefi by shouting “Opa!”  Or hissing.  They may throw money for the musicians on the floor.  In the old days, people would sometimes show their kefi by smashing plates on the floor.  Dionysos is glad that it’s now illegal, because the noise was very hard on his nerves.

Dionysos knows that he’s named for the ancient Greek god of wine, and that, since the very earliest times, this god was celebrated with dancing, music and drinking.  Dionysos the cat would never take part in the misbehavior he has seen from his barstool in the wee hours of the night, but he does like to think of himself as a party animal.

Older Women and Long Hair—In the Olden Days.

On October 21, The New York Times ran an essay called “Why Can’t Middle-Aged Women Have Long Hair? by Dominique Browning,  originally written for her blog  “SlowLoveLife.”

The subject clearly hit a nerve. The Times received 1200 comments, overwhelming its editors until they finally ordered an end to the discussion. 

Dominique Browning cited the way her own long hair disturbed people, including her mother, because she was well over 40 (In fact she’s 55).  She asked why long flowing locks were considered inappropriate for older women. “Why do people judge middle-aged long hair so harshly?” 

Passionate opinions were submitted on both sides of the argument.

Because I’m an avid collector of antique pre-1900 photographs, I wondered if some of the acrimony about long hair may have been coming from our national subconscious.   Did we inherit the attitudes of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation—that long hair was too sexy to be seen in public—and do we even today feel that sexy hair is not appropriate for women of a certain age?

In my grandmother’s day (she was married—to a Presbyterian minister—in 1896) a girl was expected to pile her locks on top of her head on the day she became a woman and entered society.  She was supposed to bind her tresses into a prim bun with hairpins, and then never let any man see her with her hair down except for her husband.

In fact the older women portrayed in my earliest daguerreotypes often wear lace mob caps—like Martha Washington—to cover their hair INSIDE THE HOUSE. (Their outdoor bonnets would be put on top of these caps.)

You don’t need to be an anthropologist to draw a parallel from the mob caps of America’s founding mothers to the hijabs of Muslim countries today.

Before 1900, no reputable woman would wear cosmetics or dye her hair.   (I once owned a Ladies Home Journal magazine from the  early 20^th century that solemnly warned:  women who dye their hair will go mad.)

Today’s erogenous zones—bosom, legs, butt, thighs—were never seen in the early days of photography.  (The first photographs were  daguerreotypes, beginning in 1839 .)

In the dags in my collection from the 1840’s and 1850’s, women’s breasts were tightly bound and a flat piece of wood or whalebone, called a busk, was inserted into the corset, so that it was physically impossible to slouch.

Here’ s a definition I found on the internet:

Originally, a busk was a piece of carved wood or bone that was set into a pocket in a corset front to make the front completely straight and ridged. Busks were nearly always used in Tudor and Elizabethan corsets, and in certain styles of the 17th and 18th, and the early 19th century.

Elaborately carved busks were a common gift from a young man to his sweetheart. Sailors carved bones with Scrimshaw designs as gifts for the girls back home

So for our grandmothers, the sexiest thing they had going for them was long, beautiful hair.  Victorian advertisements  for hair-growing lotions were a sort of soft-core porn,  often featuring voluptuous women naked except for their astonishingly full and long hair.  (Like Lady Godiva.  And then there’s Rapunzel—the subject of the animated film “Tangled” which is currently a huge success.  I think long hair is definitely having a moment right now.)

Then there came a moment—in the 1920’s—when cutting one’s hair into a short, flapper’s bob was considered scandalous, daring, a statement of female rebellion against society’s mores—like smoking a cigarette in public. 

For the best description of just how daring short hair was in the twenties, check out F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” from 1922.  (You can find it on line.)  A sophisticated, popular “mean girl” tricks her unpopular country cousin into bobbing her hair in hopes of winning popularity. When it backfires, the country cousin takes revenge in kind.

Today the tables have turned again—the rebel is not the woman who bobs her hair—she’s the women of middle age or beyond (even crone-hood!) who dares to wear her gray-streaked or white hair long, even though she’s far past girlhood.  I can think of a handful of well-aged women who flaunt their flowing locks—Cher, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton.  Among personal friends, I immediately think of a very chic Manhattan beauty, Marina, whose cascade of white hair has become her trademark and earned her a place in a New York Times feature about people who have their own unique style.

Personally I’ve never worn my hair long—except for the period in the  late sixties when I rocked a beehive.  I’ve always taken the easy way out, with short hair, but for those middle-aged women like Dominique Browning, and even past-middle-aged beauties courageous enough to flaunt their crowning glory, I think there should be a medal of honor, say a Croix de Cheveux.

Last word on the Wedding—The Nuptial Bed

     Thanksgiving pie-baking chores sidetracked me, but now I have to share the last word (I promise) on Eleni and Emilio’s 10-10-10 wedding in Corfu Greece. 

     Because Eleni majored in folklore and mythology, she loves every tradition and honored the Greek pre-wedding ritual of having the ladies prepare the wedding bed two days before the ceremony.  This happened on Friday in a suite at the Corfu Palace Hotel where the women (especially the single ladies) gathered in one room to sing, drink and prepare the connubial bed, while in the other room and on the balcony, champagne and cocktails were enjoyed by those who aren’t into bed-making (although by tradition the first single lady who gets a pillowcase on the bed with be the next to marry).

Emilio threw himself into the groom’s role of storming into the room three times and tearing the bed apart, saying the preparations were unsatisfactory.

Then, satisfied with the fourth effort, he approved.

Next came the bouncing of children on the bed—if a boy is desired first, toss on a boy baby…you get the idea…but in Eleni’s case it was five children, both boys and girls, who happily bounced.

The ladies began throwing flower petals, rice, Jordan almonds (because they are both sweet and bitter, like life) and money, including some gold sovereigns from the bride’s family  (part of her dowry) onto the prepared bed.  Here’s Emilio’s mother, Carmen, throwing rice.

  

Finally Eleni and Emilio posed on the bed among their newly acquired wealth as everyone snapped photos.The bed remained decorated until their wedding night when they managed to spill everything onto the floor (not the money)  leaving the hotel maids a big mess to clean up.

The next night, Saturday, was the most “Mama Mia” moment, when Emilio and his family hosted a Welcome Dinner for everyone on the tiny island of Vidos, just a ten-minute boat ride from Corfu Town’s old harbor.

Everyone  boarded the couple’s  “Love Boat” which scuttled back and forth throughout the night, piloted by Captain Onoufrios.

Vidos Island was once  an army base for 200,000 Serbian soldiers, then a juvenile reform facility and is now a government-owned camping grounds which includes lovely beaches, one uninhabited mansion and a seaside  taverna named for its eccentric owner, Mr. Menios.

     One of the surreal things about the island is that rabbits and pheasants have proliferated  until they come by the hundreds to welcome visitors, because Menios feeds them at sunset every night.

 Three-year-old Sophia was entranced with feeding the rabbits. 

All of us loved the Greek musicians and singers supplied by Menios. 

After plenty of Menios's Pastitsada and Sofrito and homemade wine, dancing broke out of the taverna and extended down to the seashore until the group of 100 re-boarded the Love Boat and sailed back to the mainland to prepare for the big day: Sunday—and the two wedding ceremonies (Catholic and Greek Orthodox) to be followed by the reception at the Corfu Sailing Club.

A THANKSGIVING MIRACLE--(How NOT to mail that Christmas gift.)

My first mistake was that I was so eager to have Eleni and Emilio see the two wedding gifts I carried back from Greece for them that I decided to mail them to Miami from our home in North Grafton, MA.

They were two silver trays that I carried in my hand luggage.  One, about nine inches in diameter, was a sterling silver replica of a dish in the Benaki Museum in Athens, with medallions incised around the rim representing the twelve apostles. (The original was made in the mid 17^th century in Transylvania.)

The other tray was ten inches square and had been engraved with  “E & E” (for Eleni and Emilio) and the date of their wedding—10.10.10.  It also had an inlaid  blue and white “mati” as protection against the Evil Eye   

So I found a box just the right size.  I wrapped the trays in bubble wrap and added a square cloth from Mexico embroidered with angels and the Virgin that I thought would look nice in their South Beach home.

But the box I found was a Tiffany box, so I wrapped it in brown paper so the name wouldn’t show.  That was my second mistake.

I went to our neighborhood post office where the employees are eager to help with packing, taping, sending—sort of the opposite of any Manhattan post office, where you get shunted from one line to another and generally feel you’re under suspicion.

I asked the postal clerk to put priority mail tape all around the box so it wouldn’t open, and I insured the package for $500.  That was mistake number three.

I had written Eleni and Emilio’s address on one of my husband’s adhesive package labels, which was printed with his return address.  That was the worst mistake of all.

So far I’ve sent about a zillion priority mail envelopes and packages to Miami and they inevitably get there within two days.  I mailed the box of trays on Saturday Oct. 23. Expected delivery date printed on the receipt  was  Monday, Oct. 25.  At the same time, I sent a priority envelope full of mail and clippings.

You guessed it—the envelope of clippings got there on Monday.  The package insured for $500 did not. 

I tried to track the mailing receipt number on line and failed, but my post master learned that the package had reached Nashua, New Hampshire, where all the priority mail goes to be flown out by FedEx planes.  Then it disappeared.

There ensued daily visits to the post office (mine and Eleni’s) to speculate about where it went. You have to wait for 14 days beyond expected delivery to fill out all the necessary forms and send them to the USPS Domestic Claims Center in St. Louis Mo.

I filled out and mailed forms (so did our postmaster Joe) and searched on line for a photo of the Apostles dish.  My heart sank when I learned that it costs 520 Euros.  That’s $700!  I had only insured the box for $500.  And this was the smaller of the two trays.

Eleni in South Beach and I in North Grafton pestered our post offices.  I learned that I should NEVER wrap a package in brown paper, because it can be ripped off by a machine.  All mail without an address ends up in a very large warehouse in Atlanta, GA., and no, you can’t get their phone number or e-mail address.  You have to go through channels.

Eleni got the phone number of a helpful Consumer Affairs representative named  Donna,  who quizzed me about the  trays and how they were wrapped.

Then there was nothing we could do but wait and hope.  (If an unaddressed package in Atlanta is not identified in three months, it’s disposed of.) We couldn’t nag Atlanta, so Eleni baked a cake for Saint Fanourios, who helps you find things. 

She had written the recipe for the cake in her 2006 travel memoir “North of Ithaka”, but in the book she called it a  “Get-Me-A-Man Cake.”  Now she had her man, but wanted her silver trays.

She had to say a prayer as she baked and then get 12 people to eat a piece of it.  Emilio took it to work with him. Everybody liked the cake.

Then, on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, there was a call from Atlanta.  The trays had been found!   Should they send them to Miami?

No, we said, because the newlyweds were flying to Grafton for the holiday. And today, the day after Thanksgiving, the box came, with all sort of official stamps  and insurance labels. Under their brown paper was my original brown paper (from a Trader Joe’s bag).  The address label had come off.  It had arrived in Miami “w/o address”.

It left our house on October 23 and one month and three days later, thanks to Saint Fanourios  (and the USPS folks in Atlanta), the trays found their way back.  It was a Thanksgiving miracle!

Just so you won’t make the same mistakes I did, I’m spelling out what I learned about mailing valuables.

1.    1. Insure for the right amount.  Do research to find out.

2.   2. DO NOT wrap anything in brown paper.  Put the address directly on the box.

3.    3. If it’s an address label—put clear tape over it, so it can’t be torn off or obscured by  snow.

4.    4. ALWAYS put a copy of the address information—sender and recipient’s address—INSIDE the box.

5.    5. Make sure the flaps on the box cannot possibly come open.

6.    6. And whatever you do, don’t lose your postage receipts.

7.    7. Priority mail only gets scanned when it’s sent and when it’s delivered—if that.  Maybe you want to send it registered?

Which Christmas Song Do You Hate Most?

Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving—also known as Black Friday –is the day when Christmas songs overwhelm the airwaves and blast through the P.A. system in every store, reminding the beleaguered customers that they have only 00 days to finished their Christmas shopping, which more efficient people completed during last January’s White Sales.

This year, it seems that Halloween was the starting pistol for Christmas songs—most of which make me grit my teeth and lunge for the radio dial in the car or search earnestly for an exit if I’m in, say, a Walmart.

Any song featuring chestnuts roasting, chipmunks singing, snowmen melting, reindeer glowing, Mommy kissing Santa Claus or Bing Crosby wearing a Santa hat bring out this flight-or-fight reaction in me.

I just looked up on Google the “100  Greatest Christmas Songs of All Time” compiled by WCBS FM.  The first eight, not surprisingly, all send my blood pressure soaring:

Here they are:

1.   White Christmas

2.   The Chipmunk Song

3.   Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

4.   I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

5.   Jingle Bell Rock

6.   The Christmas Song (“Chestnuts roasting….”

7.   Snoopy’s Christmas (actually I’ve never heard this one—thankfully)

8.   Here Comes Santa Claus

Number nine—Little Drummer Boy—I actually don’t mind.  I think that’s because it’s reggae?  My favorite commercial Christmas song is also reggae: “Mary’s Boy Child  Jesus Christ.”

This brings me to an aside—Have you seen the You Tube video of the cranky little boy baby who is fussing as his dad straps him into a car seat but is immediately calmed into a grinning, grooving, happy child by the first notes of Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier?” If you haven't seen it, look it up—it’s strange but funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9SSL6IydpM

I’ve noticed that reggae music has the same effect on me—I can almost feel it lower my blood pressure.  Maybe there’s some scientific basis to how the reggae beat calms one down.  Maybe science should investigate.

While I really hate the commercial Christmas songs that seem to multiply ever year  (how about “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” and “Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer”?), I really love the traditional religious Christmas carols and am happy that the Greek Orthodox church we attend (Saint Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester) features English-language carols at the holidays, especially in the Christmas Eve children’s pageant,  which is a must-see in our family.  (We’re always betting on whether or not some of the smallest children, dressed as sheep, will bolt from the manger, abandoning the shepherds and heading for home and Mommy.)

I’m sad that most schools are not allowed to use religious carols during holiday programs any more.  Back in the day, when I was in school, we sang carols during our holiday program and even learned them in our foreign language classes. I can still sing “Angels We have Heard on High” in French and “Jingle Bells” in Latin. (“Tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus’)  In fact ,our Latin teacher, the late, lamented Richard Scanlan,  translated all sorts of things for us, creating games and projects that made his Latin classes the most popular at  Edina Morningside High School.)

I wish there were some way we could bring religious Christmas Carols back into the schools—maybe by teaching the kids  songs to celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanza in various languages at the same time?  And I wish we could somehow outlaw commercial Christmas  songs in the stores, especially those featuring chipmunks, reindeer and Bing Crosby, until Black Friday at the earliest.

Poll: What Christmas song do you hate the most?  Which is your favorite?

Child Beggars in India

(I wrote this post in January of 2009 when I was just back from an unforgettable trip to India and my blog  "A Rolling Crone" was just beginning.  It proved to be the most widely read of my posts ever and also rather controversial, as I will explain in a note at the end.  As President Obama returns from his trip to India and Indonesia, I am republishing it here to up-date it.)

Everyone who has not yet seen the film “Slumdog Millionaire” should do so at once. It’s an unrealistic fairy tale with an unlikely feel-good ending, but it graphically illustrates the lives of the countless millions of India’s children who live on the street with only one concern: “How will I manage to find enough to eat today so that I’ll be alive tomorrow?”

Everywhere you go in India you will find beggars. This is particularly true in the large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of 18 MILLION people and HALF of those people are homeless. That means that they live on the streets or in shacks made of tin or cardboard. A night-time drive from the airport in Delhi to Agra gave insights into these hovels and the families who consider home to be a piece of the median strip of the highway. It took an hour just to drive out of the city on a road that was jammed with rickshaws, camels, sacred cows and many, many beggars.

Frommer’s Guide to India in the “Mumbai” section deals with the problem of beggars: ”Families of beggars will twist and weave their way around the cars at traffic lights, hopping and even crawling to your window with displays of open wounds, diseased sores, crushed limbs, and starving babies, their hollow eyes imploring you for a few life-saving rupees…. In the worst of these tales of horror, children are maimed to up the ante by making them appear more pathetic. The choice is stark: Either lower the window and risk having a sea of unwelcome faces descend on you, or stare ahead and ignore them. To salve your conscience tip generously those who have made it onto the first rung of employment”

In India you quickly steel yourself to the crowds of children who are grabbing your arm, knocking on the window of your car, thrusting flowers into your pockets, repeating endlessly the only words of English they know: “Hello Madame, food, hungry, money, please, eat…”

If you give any of them money or even move toward your pocket or purse, their number suddenly increases tenfold and you cannot move for all the hands clutching at you.

In Mumbai, just outside our hotel, when we walked onto the shopping street of Colava Causeway, lined with stores on the right and street sellers’ booths on the left, all shouting their wares, there were two families of children who were particularly aggressive, following us for blocks, especially a girl of about 11 who kept thrusting flowers onto me anywhere they would stick, and her little brother who seemed to have no adult watching him as he skittered in front of us. I was so annoyed by them constantly clutching at me, but then one night, returning home about 11:30, I saw the family sound asleep on the sidewalk, the children curled into the prone body of their mother, and I felt guilt-stricken. The next day, before I left, I managed to give the girl a hundred rupees without anyone else noticing, and instead of unleashing a crowd on me, she grabbed it, grinned and ran. (It was worth only about $2.00 but that was probably a good day’s income to her.)

The beautiful and sad little girl from Jodhpur in the photo above, who was dressed and painted to look like a Hindu goddess, has a good gimmick, because the Hindu religion emphasizes giving money and food to holy persons as well as to sacred cows. On every street you can see poor Indians putting necklaces of flowers on the ubiquitous cows and feeding them. They also share their food with the bearded sadhus (holy men) dressed only in saffron loin cloths. These holy men live entirely on charity, renouncing all their worldly goods. Feeding them, like feeding the cows, is good karma for the Indians.

The little girls along the Ganges who sell small candles nestled in leaf-bowls are not strictly beggars – they’re actually young entrepreneurs, because everyone who comes to the Ganges wants to sail these candles into the river as an offering (as we did.) At night the boys in their rowboats row the pilgrims and tourists into large log-jams of boats gathered to watch the priests do their twilight fire worshipping on shore and the children selling floral chains, candles and pots of tea scramble agilely from one boat to another.

The children in India who manage to learn decent English are miles ahead of the ones who don’t—because they can move themselves and their families out of poverty and a life on the streets. All the tourists we saw – Japanese, Russian, Italian, Australian – use English as the lingua franca.

We hired Mark, a young man about 18—when we encountered him in Varanasi in a craft store that caters to tourists. His business card said he drove a rowboat and because his English was good, we booked him (at the usual rate of 150 rupees per person per hour) for a dawn trip down the Ganges the next morning.

As Mark paddled through the fog and darkness while the river woke up and the faithful began to bathe themselves and their cattle and their laundry, I asked him if the little girls who sold the candles went to school. He said all but one of them did – her parents couldn’t afford the 300 rupees ($6.00) per month that school cost. He also said that he personally was paying for one child to go to school. I learned that Mark was supporting his entire family of two parents and seven children with his three jobs (rowboat guide, craft store salesman and factory worker.) His father, formerly a carpenter, had TB. His mother had to stay home and care for his six younger siblings.

The biggest surprise was that Mark told us he, himself, despite his impressive business cards, could not read or write. “But how did you learn such good English?” we asked.

“From tourists in the store” he replied. If Mark had the leisure to go to school and become literate, he would probably become the Donald Trump of Varanasi.

I would like to find a philanthropy through which I could sponsor one or two children in India at six dollars a month to attend school rather than begging in the streets. (I already sponsor children through Plan but that goes to the community in Nepal not to the children themselves.) I’ve been googling, trying to find such a philanthropy with access to Indian children, but without any luck so far, so if you have any suggestions, write me at joanpgage@yahoo.com.

It’s really appalling that a country like India, which is now enjoying a huge boom in industry and technical know-how; a country that has a very wealthy class evident in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, cannot manage to provide free schooling for the millions of Indian children who live on the streets.


(Nearly two years later I still would appreciate suggestions for a philanthropy that can help me  directly support schooling for children in India.  In many cases it's difficult to be sure the money donated actually goes to the children.


 One reader of the original blog post has repeatedly posted the same criticism of my article, that says in part: "england simply sucked on indias blood no literacy nothing all other factors are repurcussions to the first add to it politics and corruption and u get child beggary whatever this might be.  one very morally inhumane thing is tourist taking pictures of indian beggars to make a mockery . if u can help .help ...if u cant atleast dont spread hopelessness".  


In my defense, I'd like to tell him --(somehow I suspect it's a "him")-- that last year, when two friends of mine went to Varanasi, I sent with them multiple copies of the "Ganges girls" photos above to give to the girls along with money, because I suspected the girls owned no photos of themselves.  Whenever I'm photographing children in poor countries, I don't do it to mock them, I do it to celebrate their spunk and beauty--and I try to make sure that they receive copies of the photos. In every case, as with the Ganges girls, the photographs were received with great joy.)

The Wedding Prequel Part 1. Ali Pasha and Pomegranates

(Please click on the photos to make them larger.)

Daughter Eleni studied folklore and mythology in college and she has always loved ritual, tradition and folklore, so she inevitably included them in her plans for her wedding to Emilio on October 10. (After all, it was an Indian astrologer who led her to the decision—before she even met Emilio—that she would be married on 10/10/10.)

Last month I wrote in detail about the wedding day itself, with its two wedding ceremonies (Catholic and Greek Orthodox) and such traditional details as the throwing of the wedding bread, the singing of wedding songs as the bride dresses, parading through Corfu town accompanied by musicians and dancers in local costume.

But the wedding traditions and rituals began long before October 10. On October third, 14 of us—family and friends who were immediately dubbed “Team Odyssey”-—met in Athens, toured the city and then flew on the fifth to Ioannina, the provincial capital of Epiros—my husband Nick’s native province.


Ioannina, a beautifully unspoiled city on the shore of an enormous lake, still has its walled Turkish city, little changed since the days when Lord Byron visited the local tyrant Ali Pasha, who housed his harem of 300 women and his vast army of Janissary soldiers inside the city walls. (If a woman in his harem displeased him, he would have her tied in a bag weighted with stones and thrown into the deep lake. It’s said that the mists rising from the lake in the morning are the ghosts of the drowned maidens.)

The plan was to drive the next day up the mountains on the winding road to Nick’s village of Lia where we would have a pre-wedding party in the Village Inn (The Xenona).

Eleni spent ten months of 2002 living in the village by herself, rebuilding the family house which lay in ruins ever since the murder of her grandmother by a firing squad of Communist guerrillas during the Greek civil war. She used that year of research and building for her travel memoir “North of Ithaka”, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2005. By the time she left, she had become so beloved by the villagers --most of whom are now elderly-- that she wanted to introduce Emilio and his family to the village and share the celebration with them all.

In Ioannina it rained, poured and thundered non-stop but we went anyway to visit the mosques in the Turkish city—now turned into museums since the Turkish occupiers were driven out in 1913. The wrought-iron cage you see above is the tomb where Ali Pasha’s headless body is buried. He was assassinated by men sent by the Sultan because the despot was getting too powerful and rebellious. His head --and his (Greek) favorite wife, who connived to let the assassins in-- were sent to the Sultan in Constantinople as proof that the tyrant was really dead.

We got ready to drive up the mountain to the village of Lia when we learned that the heavy rains had made the road impassable, but after some hours of waiting, bulldozers cleared the way and we began the twisty, vertiginous journey.


The Innkeeper, Elias Daflos, and his wife, Litsa, had prepared a feast for 85 people—everyone in the village plus Team Odyssey. Local musicians played the wailing Epirotic melodies and the foreigners among us got their first intensive lesson in Greek dancing. Above you see Team Odyssey at the table, and the dancing led by the village priest, Father Prokopi.

The next day, the weather had improved and we led a tour of the village landmarks, including the house of Eleni’s grandmother (Eleni Gatzoyiannis), which had been rebuilt and furnished to look exactly as it did when her grandmother lived there. Below are some of our group, sitting in the more modern Haidis house, which was originally built by Nick's grandfather, Kitso Haidis—and then rebuilt after the Germans burned it in 1944. On the wall over daughter Marina’s head are some of the Karagiosis shadow puppets—another ancient Greek tradition.


After our tour, we set about harvesting pomegranates from the trees of a generous villager, Lefteris Bollis and his wife Ourania—and in the process we all got soaked by the rain-laden branches. Eleni wanted to use pomegranates-- a traditional symbol of good luck and prosperity—as part of the table decorations at the wedding, and we had promised the florist in Corfu that we would bring more than a hundred fresh-picked pomegranates with us when we arrived.


Even though it was still morning, Lefteris and his wife insisted that we all come into their home to toast the wedding with their home-brewed tsipouro—the local moonshine with a staggering alcohol content.


Loading our cars with the pomegranates, we bid goodbye to the villagers and set out for the harbor of Igoumenitsa and the ferryboat that would carry us to the island of Corfu, where we would celebrate the approaching nuptials with more traditions and rituals, including the preparation of the wedding bed. But I’ll tell you about that in my next blog post.

(I put that photo of me and Eleni, just before the wedding, at the beginning of this post because so many friends asked for it.)