Electricity

From our mountain we have a pretty good vantage point for watching storms as they approach from the sea and surround the city. Here is an example of a spectacular show we had the other night.



Zeus was certainly in full regalia for this one. This photo from the storm is probably my favorite - from the angry swells of clouds, to the lightening strike illuminating the sea.

Lamb fight

One of the best things about living in such a bucolic setting is the spring, when the herds are always full of little ones. Lambs are the cutest things, especially when they start to play. We caught these two while filming the flock the other day.

Christos Anesti

Spring???

This was how I enjoyed the first full day of Spring. The temperature was on the verge of freezing, so the icy precipitation made a mess of our power lines, breaking one and causing a 16 hour power outage. Thank goodness for book lights and cats, which kept me entertained while my husband was away at a conference. Life in the mountainous areas of Greece can be...interesting.

Garment

How many stories have been woven into the threads of this dress? The frock will never tell, a life of love, pain, happiness, regret - washed clean and left to fly away in the bitter March wind.

The view from above

DSC00252
Originally uploaded by melusinagr

Our sunset view, makes life seem not so bad sometimes.

Hope for a battered planet

From today's Kathimerini

Saving grace

I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, at least since the beginning of the year, perhaps a bit longer. Certainly I have a tendency to loathe January – the beginning of the year, while traditionally beckoning a fresh start, seems to leave me melancholy and clamoring for the past. But that isn’t really the source of my depression. I seem to have a bit of problem with the news, mostly the fact that the world happenings of late seem to be rather atrocious. As a society we are constantly bombarded with a 24-hour news cycle of nothing but death, destruction, and pain – and recent events seem to be rolling into an avalanche that will certainly lead to the end of the world. Well, in my hyperbolic, depressed state, anyway. From the attack on Gaza to the Greek riots to the Russia/Ukraine gas dispute and people all over the world starving, unemployed, and losing their homes, it gets to the point where my heart is breaking so much that I start to feel numb.

Then on Thursday I hear that a plane has crashed. Another 100 or more people possibly dead. Another tragedy. It is a straw about to break this camel’s back. My mind is a swirl of anger – isn’t it enough that the world is going through what it is, without this? Did we really need a catastrophic plane crash right now??? I reluctantly switch to CNN, dreading more bad news, but hoping for something, anything that can save me, save us, from everything being bad all the time.

And there was something.

All 155 people on the plane survived. A plane ditched in the river in one of the most perfect plane crashes of all time. A pilot and co-pilot who know what they are doing, passengers who act without panicking, police and ferries and first responders all there ready, saving people, getting them out of the freezing water. At first you have to think of miracles, of a divine hand working some magic, and then you realize if there is a divine hand involved, it is simply showing us that this, THIS is what human beings are capable of. Not all tragedy. Not all pain. Not all bad.

Sure, this doesn’t solve the conflict in the Middle East. It doesn’t help Darfur. It doesn’t feed or clothe people, or provide running water. But it is 155 people who, for a few agonizing minutes on Thursday afternoon may not have thought they would still be alive today. What might have been a disaster became something good. If that doesn’t give us hope, nothing can.

Poor old goat

Looks like the Gavle goat didn't make it this year. I've heard grilled goat makes for a tasty Christmas dinner.

OTE can suck it

For the past 4 or 5 months, we've notice that our 1 mb connection has dropped down to about 200 kb/s in the afternoons/evenings, which makes doing most anything beyond loading text unbearable. We were tirelessly slamming our ISP, Forthnet, for these issues, until we found out today that because OTE controls our line (Forthnet, unfortunately, does not have their own lines in our area), OTE controls our lack of bandwidth. It seems that the node we are on is overcrowded, and OTE doesn't give a shit since the people that are complaining are not their subscribers.

Since the point of having other ISPs on OTE lines was necessary to avoid a monopoly and allow users a choice, it would seem that these practices would not be acceptable, at least, I doubt any company would get away with such a thing in America. But of course this is Greece, the top of the line in "I don't give a damn" countries. Still, you would hope that since OTE has some German blood in them now they would improve things a bit. Forthnet has sent orders to OTE three times on our behalf in the past few months, and nothing has changed. Here's hoping it does soon, but maybe not before we switch our phone service to another provider. I'm not inclined to pay OTE any more money for their corrupt business practices. For now, I guess we are forced to suffer with an adsl connection that isn't much better than ISDN, unless, of course, we ally ourselves with the evil empire and get our internet service from OTE. Not a chance.

High class

You know you live in a classy city when you park downtown and find a brochure from a "by the hour" hotel on your windshield. Ironically, the couple pictured on the cover of the pamphlet was sleeping. Because sometimes you just need a place where you can sleep for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.

Xenophobia

Whenever a person moves to a new place there is always a period of adjustment. The length of time it will take is indeterminate – it depends on many factors, and can take weeks, months, or even years. Obviously, moving to a different country ups the adjustment factor quite a bit, as we learn how to deal with new cultures, new social customs, and sometimes, new languages.

When I moved to Greece six years ago, I did not expect it to be easy. I am one of those people who stubbornly defies change of any kind, even change I long for, so I knew learning how to live in a new country was going to be an enormous task for me. The welcoming attitude of my in-laws made things much less difficult (as some of us know, some Greek in-laws can be a bit harsh with foreign spouses), but the blooming war in Iraq and general anti-American sentiment made me feel quite isolated and unwanted here. Living in Athens didn’t help matters much, because while it is a booming metropolis with lots of activity, it is hard to find your “place” there. Of course, we were only going to be there a year, so I looked forward to moving on.

We moved three times in four years, so it was nearly impossible to really feel like I was “home” here. In smaller villages I was more of an attraction because of my foreign status, and people were much friendlier. Even though I was starting to feel a greater sense of belonging, I had difficulty learning the Greek language, and that separated me from everyone else. We moved to a village I really loved on the side of Mt. Olympus, and that was when Greece started feeling more like home. Another move to my husband’s home town of Thessaloniki made things even better, and by the time we moved into our own house, I finally felt settled at last.

That is, until the riots started. To be fair, this sort of violence isn’t uncommon in Greece, whenever there is a protest or march of some kind, rioters wreak some kind of havoc. But the scale of the latest riots was enormous, the damage overwhelming, and the hatred palpable. We have had riots in America, but things don’t spill over into violence quite so often. Europe is so protective over an individual’s right to protest that it has a hard time dealing with rioting, which I can respect, but the destruction and injury (and sometimes death) caused by soccer hooliganism and protest violence seems unnecessary and avoidable. The general attitude that it is ok to throw rocks and bottles and bombs at people (especially police) is hard for me to grasp. I’ve had my share of anti-government attitudes in my life, but I’ve never felt the need to throw something at another human being, no matter how much I despised them (yes, I know, we can all appreciate the humor in Bush’s bobbing and weaving at the shoes thrown at him, but honestly, I do not think it is ok to do that, as much as I dislike Bush).

I cannot pretend to know what it is like to grow up in Greece today, or what my attitude about things would be if I was a Greek youth. But I’m not, and these riots have left me feeling alienated and unsettled, and once again searching for home.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second violent incident on what is historically one of the year's busiest shopping days, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.

Honestly, are we humans, or are we monsters?

World Philosophy Day

In honor of World Philosophy Day, I ask you to mull this question, first posed by Friederich Nietzsche:

If you knew you had to live your life over again, exactly as it has been - no changes, no derivations from the path you have been on - would cry in agony or dance in jubilation?

Heavy lifting

From Kathimerini:

Phoenix Lander, I hardly knew ya...

Wired Magazine is having an epitaph contest for the Mars Phoenix Lander, which is slowly dying on the red planet as the sun filled "days" are decreasing and unable to charge its solar cells. Phoenix was, thankfully, an incredibly successful mission that gave scientists plenty of information about Mars.

Some of the epitaphs are touching, some are funny. Here's to the lander and the NASA/JPL crew behind it - and to many more successful missions in the future.

It's worth it just to see the Fonz...

...even though he's 30 years older. I admit, I had a shameless crush on Fonzie when I was a kid, a girl just can't resist the leather.

WARNING: This is a celebrity endorsement for Obama, so if you have McCain tendencies but loved the Fonz, I just want you to be warned.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Time travel suspended in Cyclades Islands

From Kathimerini:

The islands of the Cyclades will be left without the ferry service that usually connects them from tomorrow as the vessel plying that route has been deemed unseaworthy.

I don't know about you, but I'd hate to lose my connection to or from tomorrow.

School spirit

All eyes are on my hometown and my alma mater tonight as the second U.S. Presidential debate is being held at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. I don’t think there is a “redder” state than Tennessee, so Obama will have his work cut out for him (even Al Gore, a Tennessee boy, didn’t win his hometown state), but things don’t seem to be going too well for McCain at the moment so maybe we’ll see the state turn a nice shade of purple. Not that I am a die hard Obama girl, but I call myself a Democrat, so I better vote like one.

Politics aside, this will the first presidential debate that will undoubtedly make me homesick, as I see photos of the University campus I loved so much (and hardly recognize anymore, what with all the new buildings). The Belmont I left wasn’t even close to having the capacity to hold such a thing as a Presidential debate, so I can’t help but feel a tinge of pride at how far my school has come (in your face, David Lipscomb!*).

In the meantime, my absentee ballot arrived in the mail last week, so it is good to know that Davidson County Election Commission has their ducks in a row. As usual, there are a slew of unknown Independent candidates (including Nader, but I miss seeing good ol’ Lyndon LaRouche on the ballot). I’ll be sure to get my ballot off in plenty of time, I just wish it would count for something, since absentee ballots are apparently only counted in the case of a run-off election (if someone has some updated information on how absentee ballots are counted, please let me know).

Shine brightly, Nashville. I hope you have plenty of gas.

*This has meaning only if you attended Belmont or Lipscomb

My kingdom for a number

Our area of the village is fairly unpopulated, one of the most recently developed areas of the municipality. There are a handful of houses up here, and the trek to the village proper is at least a mile (perhaps more, I’ve never done an odometer check to be certain). So our street is relatively new, in fact, it may have just been a dirt/stone road when I first moved to Greece and came up to visit our house while it was still in progress. Despite having nomenclature, our road has not been officially numbered, either by the municipality or the post office, so we are without an official address. This is slightly annoying for a variety of reasons, given that the post office (and our P.O. box) is well out of our way (we end up getting our mail about once a month). Although it would be mighty nice to have mail delivered to our house, it would be nicer if, god forbid, we ever had to call police/fire/ambulance, we could actually give them a freakin’ address.

It doesn’t help matters much that our neighbor, in true Greek fashion, has apparently arbitrarily decided upon a street number for his house. How exactly he came up with this number is beyond me, but it has been made even more complicated by the fact that someone closer to the beginning of the road has decided their street number is 8 (higher than our neighbor’s 5), and posted it proudly. This would mean that our street numbers are ass backwards from the rest of the world, since there is no way there are seven properties between the beginning of the road and the illustrious number 8, and with our neighbor’s chosen number, this means that the numbers would have to start at the end of the street instead of the beginning (and since the end of our street is a dead end, obviously that isn’t the beginning of the street, is it?). If we can just pick our own street number, I think we should come up with something like 6242 and really throw people off, which is the kind of thing I am inclined to do but I don’t think my in-laws would go for it.

Here’s hoping that some day we actually do get this sorted out, so when I’m 90 years old and having a stroke, someone can actually give the EMT an address. That gives them about 50 years to figure it out.