Kiefer Sutherland's Grandfather

There was a good segment on The World on NPR this afternoon. They talked with Roy Romanow, a former premier of Saskatchewan, about the fierce battle fought for universal healthcare in Saskatchewan in 1962. I guess history really doesn't teach us anything, because the rhetoric then and now hasn't changed much. I was ten years old at the time, and the thing I remember most is that our family doctor, Dr. Franz, closed his practice and moved to Alberta. When doctors across the province went on strike, the government brought in doctors from the UK to provide basic services. (That part I don't remember.) Somehow, we survived it all.

The premier of Saskatchewan at that time was T.C. (Tommy) Douglas. He had the balls and the vision to push through the first government run universal health care plan in North America. Oddly enough, the world did not come to an end, and four years later, Medicare (as it's known in Canada) was brought in across the entire country. A few years ago, the CBC commissioned a poll to find out who was the greatest Canadian. I don't know if it was of all time or the 20th century or exactly what, but the winner was T.C. Douglas.

Today, if you talk to any Canadians about health care, they might bitch and moan a little, but I've never talked to anyone who wants to end Medicare. It's a big part of the national identity, and most Canadians are very proud of it, especially when they engage in conversations bashing their ignorant neighbors to the south.

Here's an interesting side note - If any Americans have ever heard of T.C. Douglas, I'd be surprised. Probably the only ones who have are rabid fans of Kiefer Sutherland, aka Jack Bauer, of 24 fame. T.C. Douglas is his grandfather on his father's side! T.C. Douglas' daughter Shirley became actor Donald Sutherland's second wife. Kiefer was one of the progeny of that marriage.

Drumbeats of war again?

The American military industrial establishment and its willing allies in the media are beating the war drums once again. This time against Iran. The US has already invaded and occupied its neighbors to the east (Afghanistan) and west (Iraq). There is no doubt that Iran's leaders are anti-Semitic whack-jobs, but how irrational is it for them to want to defend themselves given the situation they're in?

Glenn Greenwald is one of my favorite commentators, but he doesn't get much time on the TV talking-head shows. I wish he did, because he brings a rational voice to the all too often irrational arguments that pass for political debate in the US.

Weird Religious Ritual?

Kapparos is one of the weirder religious rituals I had never heard of until now. I thought blood sacrifice in the Jewish tradition went out with the fall of the Temple, but once more, I was wrong. The tradition among some orthodox Jewish sects involves reciting a prayer while swinging a live chicken (more progressive Jews use money) around your head three times before slaughtering it. The chicken is then eaten or the money is given to the poor. This is done between Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) with the chicken dying for the sins of the swinger. The prayer goes something like this:

This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This chicken will go to its death (or, if using money, "this money will go to charity") while I will enter and proceed to a good long life, and peace.

There seems to be an interesting parallel between this ancient Jewish practice and the Christian tradition. In the Jewish tradition, the chicken dies for your sins and is then eaten.

In the Christian tradition Jesus dies for our sins, and then is eaten (through communion).

Kudos to Whole Foods

I never thought I'd say this about Whole Foods, an otherwise over-priced and yuppified purveyor of "organic" foods. I personally much prefer my neighborhood PCC, a crunchy-granola, refugee-from-the-sixties type of store. That said, I went to Whole Foods today to buy some star anise, a favorite spice of mine that's not available at PCC or the more pedestrian spam-stocking QFC. I picked up a $6 bottle of the stuff and would have willingly paid the price, but the cashier asked if I'd looked at the star anise available in the bulk spices aisle. Star anise is hard enough to find pre-packaged, let alone in bulk, so I'd never even looked.

Well, Glory Be! I bought a bottle's worth of bulk star anise for $1.67!!

A Few More Thoughts on the Greek Adventure

There was lots to like in Greece. The weather (except for the Meltemi winds when trying to sail) was consistently good, with highs in the 80's and bright blue skies. We didn't spend a whole lot of time on the beaches, but they're great, and the water temperature was perfect. Greece is a gorgeous country with mountains and coastline and plains. There are ruins and history everywhere - from the ruins at the Acropolis to the more recent (and still functioning) monasteries at Meteora, and it's hard not to be gobsmacked by it all at times.

Unlike some other countries I've visited (Croatia and the BVI come to mind) people are open and friendly and genuinely helpful (unless they're behind the wheel of a car), and don't seem to mind having their countries invaded by hordes of sometimes ignorant and boorish tourists. Take Angelo, our host in Meteora, for example. He spends the tourist season in Meteora, and then closes up his hotel so he can spend the other half of the year in Australia. He was a jovial host, speaking a barely intelligible, heavily Greek-accented version of Australian English. When we left, he gave me something I'd never had before - a big hug with a kiss on each cheek.

Dimitri and Isabella hosted us at hurricane haven in Naxos. They didn't speak a word of English between them, and yet they managed to look after our needs for a day and a half. As well as having a decent meal of barbequed lamb, I bought a liter of his home-brewed wine and a half pound of his homemade goat cheese. I enjoyed it all. Isabella is a raven-haired beauty with a lovely smile (why don't I have any pictures of her?)

Mike was our host in Paros. We stayed at his place when we got to Paros, and when we stayed there again after returning the boat, he greeted us like a favorite uncle, and gave us a big studio room with a balcony. If we're ever in Paros again, we'll certainly stay with him.

As well as lots to like about Greece, there were certainly annoyances as well. Athens and Pireaus are dirty grimy industrial cities without much charm. Graffiti is everywhere, and there doesn't appear to be any effort to clean it up. Particularly annoying were the defaced road signs. It can be tough enough to figure where you're going in a strange country without having to strain to read behind the spray paint. We had a rented car for several days, and generally speaking the roads were decent and in spite of the graffiti, we didn't have too much trouble navigating. What annoyed me most were the tailgating Greeks. Even when trying to pass a string of trucks with our under-powered Hyundai, the locals wouldn't give me a break. They'd stay about a foot off our bumper until we managed to get back into the slower lane. They did the same thing on winding mountain roads. I pulled over literally dozens of times to let the tailgaters pass on by. I thought that doing it Greek-style referred to a certain sexual practice, but I can see that it also refers to a driving style prevalent in the country.

Another thing that annoyed me was the fact that everywhere we went, you couldn't flush the toilet paper down the bowl. Greece is supposed to be a cradle of civilization, but there is something uncivilized about putting a piece of soiled toilet paper in the waste basket.

And in spite of the fact that food appears to be a huge part of Greek life, the food (at least in the tavernas) really sucked. Every menu seemed to be the same with souvlaki, moussaka, a pasta dish or two, and some octopus or calamari. They are all good dishes in their own right, but somehow they seemed stale and lifeless in the typical taverna. I did consistently like the Greek salads. The tomatoes seemed redder and juicier and more luscious than anything I've had here in a long time. I also liked a lot of the local cheeses.

As is usual on a trip like this, with all the downtime in airports and airplanes (and don't forget the day and a half in hurricane haven), I managed to read four books. I read a great one, a terrible one, and two so-so ones. The great one is River of Doubt, by Candice Milliard. This is the harrowing story of a trip that Teddy Roosevelt made in 1913 down a previously uncharted river in the Amazon basin after his failed bid for a third presidential term in 1912. It's a great adventure story about a fascinating man.

The two so-so books are 13 Things That Don't Make Sense, by Michael Brooks, and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. 13 Things is one of those geeky science books I normally like about unexplained scientific mysteries like dark matter and energy, but he gets off the rails when he includes free will and homeopathy on his list. Confessions could be an OK book, but the author is way too self-absorbed about his guilt and role in the excesses of globalization and American imperialism. He addresses some very real issues, but he made it sound as if it was all about him.

The absolutely execrable book is Red Herring, by Clyde Ford. I bought this book as a favor to the author at a bookstore in Bellingham. Just as I'm a sucker for panhandlers who are playing an instrument on the street, I was a sucker for a local writer trying to peddle his book. I think this guy bought the book-writing equivalent of a paint-by-number kit for writing mystery novels. I thought I'd like it because it's set in the northwest with a boating theme, but the literary bits and pieces don't come together any more coherently than the little blobs of paint on the numbered spaces. The only reason I finished it was bored desperation until Megan finished River of Doubt.

35% of New Jersey Conservatives think Obama is or might be the Anti-Christ

It appears that the American political scene haven't improved much in my absence. Check out this story. The original poll is here.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Sometimes I wonder if Republicans are really smart people putting us on, or if they are imbeciles who really believe it."

Greece Recap

As usual, it's a pain to post a bunch of pictures on the blog in a coherent order that looks good, but here goes. I can only hope that the captions are somewhere near the pictures they're describing.

We went to a Greek Orthodox church service on the first Sunday we were in Athens. It's part of our ongoing religious tourism tour which has already included a synagogue in Budapest and a mass in a 300 year old church in Tucson. This was an interesting service with all the ritual and all the singing. One thing that struck me was that the priest mixed the wine with the bread and spooned a chunk of the sodden mass in the mouth each of the participants. (Hey, maybe that's why mass is called mass!)

Athens had an interesting way of encouraging people to recycle. Here's a recycling booth where people would put in their bottles or cans or whatever, and get cash back! A reverse vending machine.

Here we are on the peak of some monolith in Meteora. Fortunately we were able to drive to most of the monasteries. Only a couple of them required a somewhat strenuous climb.

These monks did some fabulous stone and brick work. I'm assuming they did most of the work themselves, but whoever did it had some talent.

I loved these patterns in the brick. Maybe it will inspire Hal with the arched grottos he has under construction at the GaragemaHal.

It was a long way to haul up food and supplies. Here's the winch system they used in one of them.

It looks like they stuck timbers in the base of the winch and walked around in circles for a while.

The insides of the chapels in the monasteries were quite ornate. I don't know if the monks were artists as well. In any case a lot of time and effort and manpower went into these structures. In the little bit of reading I did about Meteora, it wasn't clear who paid for or supported their construction. I think the original monks were like hermits living in caves, but I don't know how the transition to the much more ornate structures was done.

A figure of Jesus was at the peak of the interior of all the domes.

These monks were true cliff-dwellers. Today they have a cable car to get up there, but back in the day, they had a hell of a climb.

Enough of Meteora for a while. Here we are at the end of the road to Mount Olympus. They've got quite a trail and hut system up there. You can treck from hut to hut or you can go all the way to the top. Apparently the 2,917m peak is relatively easy to climb with the only tough part being the final scramble to the top.

This is the view from our balcony at the town nearest the base of the mountain.

But we weren't only in the mountains. We did have some beach time to work on our tans. Megan looks pretty relaxed, doesn't she?

We spent most of the second week on the water. On Saturday afternoon we were checked out on the boat, and since there were still several hours of daylight left, we left the marina and motored (there was no wind) for a couple of hours to an anchorage at the north end of Paros. The next day, we sailed in moderate winds to a bay on the southeast corner of Schinhousa. The wind was rising all day, but we had a pretty good anchorage that protected us from the waves, even though we were exposed to the wind. The next day we were going to Ios, but the winds were in excess of 20 knots, and I wasn't comfortable with the two of us sailing in those conditions. So we motored, but soon we weren't comfortable motoring either. Not because of any danger, but because the wind kept building, it was really uncomfortable! Every minute or two the spray coming across the bow would drench me from head to toe. I could not have been any wetter if I had been swimming alongside the boat. The one thing that surprised me was how cold I got. Even in 80 degree temperatures with 70 degree water, the constant wind had me shivering pretty badly by the time we got to the refuge of the brand-new, but unused marina at the south end of Naxos.
The marina was gorgeous and well-equipped, but not quite finished. The light standards were up, and all the power and water outlets were installed, but in spite of the fact that the lights worked, there was no power or water available at the dock. Speculation among the Brits we met there who were also hiding out from the wind, was that the EU put up 75% of the money to build the marina, with the Greeks putting up 25%. But they never put in their share, so the marina was never quite finished. There only "business" there was Dimitri's cantina. He could supply water to the boats and beer and home-brewed wine to the passengers. For a fee, he'd go to the nearest town, 22km away and buy groceries or whatever else you ordered. And at night, he and his lovely wife would feed you lamb or pork or whatever they had on hand. The first night we were there, we ate a lamb that had arrived live in the back of his pickup around noon that day. As far as I was concerned, it was the best meal I'd had at a restaurant in Greece. But that's not actually as much praise as it appears to be. We had some really crappy meals in various tavernas around the country.
Here's six of us that evening. Dave and Pat and Rob and Pat and Megan and me. Rob's the photographer.

For two days we had consistent winds over 30 knots, with gusts well over 40. I was glad we were tied up at a dock and not hoping our anchor would hold in some bay.

The Brits were pretty good folk. Forty years after they met in college, three friend got together and built the catamaran you see here. It took them four years to build the boat, which they then sailed to the Mediterranean. So every summer, two or three of them and their wives sail for a month or two. Next year, they are planning on taking the boat back to England.

This picture gives you a bit of an idea of how much rocking and rolling was going on, even in the shelter of the marina.

When the winds finally died down below 20 knots, we headed up to the northern end of Naxos. We anchored in the bay and took the dinghy to shore for explorations during the day. It's quite a lovely island, with lots of mountains, marble quarries, and interesting small towns. And they had lots of marble. The breakwater was built from marble boulders!

Further inland, we stopped at a marble cutting shop. We even got a tour from the very friendly East Indian workers. Who would have thought that Greeks would import people to cut marble!?

Actually, the best meal I had in Greece was at this cafe in a town in the interior of Naxos. The fresh-made sausages from a shop down the street were excellent!

We stopped at a small chapel on a mountain top during out island tour. Even the smallest chapel had at least a token image of blood and gore. Here's John the Baptist's head being presented to Salome. Note the bloody body at the bottom of the picture.

When we left Naxos, we had our best day sailing. The winds were 12-15 knots on our beam. Perfect! We headed back to our home port of Paros, spending the night there before heading back to the mainland on Sunday.

Somehow it appears that the construction and engineering skills of the ancient Greeks did not survive to the present day.

By the time we got back to Pireaus, we were about ready to head home. We'd had a great time, but Pireaus is a dirty, gritty, and pretty ugly city. But rather than heading back to Athens, we decided we may as well head to the airport directly from Pireaus. Our hotel was nice enough, but as you can see, the view from our window was less than inspiring.

All in all, we had a good trip and a great time. We saw a lot of the country and the usual tourist sites, but we also saw stuff that most tourists don't see. Neither Megan nor I had ever heard of Meteora before going there. Other than a couple of days of high wind, we had good weather. We had good sailing for the half of the time that we could sail. Even waiting out the Meltemi winds in an odd little marina wasn't so bad.

I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

We're off the boat

We turned in the boat this morning after a good sail in 12-14 knot winds from Naxos yesterday. The heat has dissipated with the winds. Right now, it's cool and cloudy with a chance of rain. We had hoped to touch up our tans here on Paros, but it doesn't look too promising.

We'll be heading to Athens tomorrow, and then back to Seattle on Monday. I'll go through my pictures and post a bunch when I get back.

We're back in touch

After a couple of days of anchoring out in remote bays, and two days holed up in "hurricane haven" at a brand-new, but apparently unknown marina, we're in Naxos, more or less in civilization. Our first day out was a relatively short trip motoring (no wind) to a bay at the north end of Paros. From there, we sailed and motored a bit to an anchorage on the island of Schonousa (sp?). We wanted to go to Ios the next day, but the infamous meltemi winds came up, and after a very rough ride we found refuge at "hurricane haven" at the southend of Naxos. We spent two days hunkered down there with winds consistently over 30 knots. I saw winds over 40 several times. In spite of the fact that this is a brand new beautiful marina, there are no services there, and only one small cantina serving home-cooked meals with beer and home-made wine. One day there would have been enough; two days was a bit much. Today we sailed and motored up to the north end of Naxos to the town of Naxos. We're anchored in the harbor, but we've got some shelter if the winds come up again. Greece is a beautiful place, but I'm not sure about the sailing here. Either you get 30 knots+ or nothing.

So we'll probably spend a night or two here before heading back to Paros on Friday. I'll try and do a better post tomorrow with some photos, but this wll have to do for now.

Meteora

Coming from the south, before you get to Meteora, you travel for many miles on a flat featureless plain. Except for the mountains in the distance, it could be southern Saskatchewan. Then out of nowhere these incredible monoliths rise from the plains. No foothills, no warning, all of a sudden you're expecting to see the Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

I like to think the Greeks call this the Valley of the Dildos.

But the most amazing part is that there are more than a half-dozen Orthodox monasteries and one nunnery (their word, not mine) built on the tops of these things. These were built mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries, but at least one dates back to the 13th. I'd expect to see stuff like this in Tibet, but in Greece?? It just goes to show how little I know about this big old world we live in.

The monasteries have been restored and updated and are quite the tourist attractions, but most are functioning monasteries nonetheless.

The chapels, in fact all the Orthodox chapels I've been in, are quite small. They probably only seat 20 people. They all have a similar layout with a "front chapel" before you actually enter the sanctuary. The walls of this front room (it probably has a name, but I don't know what it is) are covered with murals depicting the deaths of martyrs in grisly detail. There are innumerable beheadings, stonings, disembowelments, skinnings, double mastectomies (I kid you not!), and even more modern torture devices like full-body screw-presses. Then, to really put the fear in them, there are murals depicting the final judgement day, with sinners being thrown into lakes of fire or devoured by prehistoric beasts. I'm sure Dick Cheney would love it, but I suspect there are a lot of Orthodox folk in therapy trying to get rid of the nightmares induced by these grisly images. The main chapel has more conventional images of saints and halos in beautific poses.

Tomorrow we're headed to Mount Olympus, and then on Thursday back to Athens/Pireaus to catch a ferry to Paros on Friday.