In Stockholm next month

Tony Lakides in the early 1970s

For those readers passing through Stockholm on April 26, Zoe and Anna-Carin have scheduled a memorial/ceremony at 2pm. Where? In Stockholm. We suspect that those in that fair city know the details. Zoe and Anna-Carin hope to do something similar in Skopelos in June or July. Our thoughts are with them both.

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Oops! It’s March 25th!

We almost missed Greek Independence Day. A national holiday, nothing will be open ‘cept restaurants and maybe some little food markets around town.

This is the traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821. The date of 25 March was chosen in the early years of the Greek state so that it would fall on the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strengthening the ties between the Greek Orthodox Church and the newly founded state.

Basically the revolt against the Ottomans was planned by “outside agitators”, a group of Ethnic Greeks living mostly in Russia known as the Filiki Eteria.

The first revolt of the Greek War of Independence occured in the “Danubean Principalities” in what is Romanian today (!). This was an area of minor fiefdoms controlled for centuries, under the Ottomans, by Phanariot Greeks of Constantinople. Although that revolt was put down, it was enough to motivate ethnic Greeks in the Peloponnese to launch their independent revolts.

Though opposed by the Great Powers (England, France, Russia, Austria), the revolution gained traction and the admiration of the general public. Volunteers from Europe and North America came to “Greece” to help out in some way.

The Great Powers liked the status quo as autocracies naturally frowned on revolts let alone revolutions. See this story in The Greek Reporter newspaper. To make our short story even shorter, in 1832 an agreement called the “London Protocols” was signed recognizing the new Greek Republic, the area of which included the Peloponnesos, central Greece almost to Volos (which remained under Ottoman control until 1880), and included the Northern Sporades.

Being an impoverished new nation, the government naturally had to look outside of Greece for financial aid. The rest is history.

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The (freaking) oat report March ’15

24 March 2015

Fellow gazers and geezers, sorry about the delay with this month’s report. We were waiting, waiting, waiting for a sunny day or at least a sunny interlude at a convenient time. Didn’t happen. No matter. As you can see the field has a nice blend of young oat plants and what appear to be lugumes (field peas and vetch) plus some calendula (under a cloudy sky).

[pun checker turned off]

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