It was that purveyor of saccharine verse Joyce Kilmer who thought he would never see a poem lovely as a tree. But Odgen Nash’s parody of it proves that Athens’ central optical experience today was well-known in America half a century ago.
Hospitality to strangers has been a characteristic of Greek life for so long that its divine protector, Zeus Xenios, was enshrined in the pantheon of immortals long before anyone can remember.
Statements made by President Karamanlis are usually referred to as ‘cryptic’. Given the large powers which Andreas Papandreou stripped from the presidency in 1985, it’s a wonder he can be deciphered at all. But being simply himself, the Ethnarch, his few but potent words are carefully recorded, spread around and mulled over.
Every so often the Issue of the King breaks out into Greek political life. Like malaria, it’s a latent condition which is most likely to recur when the body politic gets run down from something else, thus becoming susceptible to otherwise dormant forces.
Athenians call their drinking water by the lovely word oulen. Is it not the most beautiful of ancient Greek words? Does not its sound instantly conjure up the image of babbling Arcadian brooks? Did not the great Pindar with the very first words of his first Olympic Ode sing, “Best of all things is oulen?”
All Skopje and no play makes Yiannakis a dull boy. For over a year the Macedonian Issue has dominated the attention of the country to the exclusion of nearly everything else. It is beginning to dawn now on a growing number of people that there are other things to do and think about without being accused of sedition.
On December 12 the European Community (which is so adept at putting things off) decided not to decide on what the future name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia should be.
Last spring this newspaper called its readers’ attention to a privately sponsored organization called “Plant Your Roots in Greece” which was collecting funds for national afforestation.
One of the more picturesque sights in downtown Athens last month came to view when bus drivers of the disfranchised Urban Transport Company (EAS) were set upon as ‘scabs’ by striking, erstwhile colleagues when lined up to apply for new licenses. They were assaulted, beaten, stripped and turned into the street as naked as the day their mothers brought them into this cruel world.
The Macedonia hot potato was gingerly passed around by a lot of old hands at the EC meeting in Birmingham last month, and then placed on the Specialties de la Maison list being compiled for the Edinburgh Summit menu in December by which time, most hope, it will have cooled off though one wonders how.
