Saturday, November 30, 2013

Thanksgiving in Greece: Gratitude, Frustrations, and the Rebirth of a Cretan Autumn



Thanksgiving is not, of course, a holiday in Greece. The Greeks who have heard of it refer to it with the Greek for "Day of Thanks" when I remind them. It's hard to find turkey, which Greeks tend to eat only at Christmas or New Year's, and I've never seen fresh cranberries here at all. Last year, I found a frozen turkey at one supermarket. Another year, we just had chicken. This year, we tracked down turkey breast fillets and large drumsticks still attached to the thighs--which worked out fine once I figured out how long to bake them. I also made an apple pie with olive oil crust. In any case, Thanksgiving in Greece feels nothing like the big holiday of my American childhood, with family and almost-family gathered for our traditional meal, complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes, fresh cranberry sauce, fruit pies, and either Frisbee football games or ice skating, depending on how the weather was in southeastern Pennsylvania at the time. (Or maybe the skating was at Christmas.) My nostalgia is stronger than ever this year, perhaps because I can't even talk with my mother. And the run-up to the Greek holiday season, with its profusion of common (Orthodox saints') name days (Maria, Katerina, Stelios, Nikos, Anna, etc.) all the way up to Christmas and beyond leaves me dissatisfied, on the fringes of this culture's celebrations rather than embraced by the comforts of my own quirky family traditions. My attempts to introduce those in my home here are hampered by time constraints, kids' demands, travel plans, and sometimes a lack of energy born of homesickness and grief.


I am thankful, though, that we don't live in Athens, but in the tourist country of Crete, where the recession has led to only a 14% reduction in business income, as opposed to the average 29% reduction in Greece as a whole, according to local economists, and the effects of the economic crisis are also milder than in many parts of Greece. The increase in crimes of hate and desperation, in impoverishment and despair, in hunger and suicide, are not as obvious here, although they certainly exist. (So the Roma family who set up a supper camp in a city parking lot, cooking a pot of food on a makeshift stove while the mother combed the daughter's hair, was not asked to give up their parking spaces, at least while I was nearby.) I am thankful that we don't live in any of the five towns in northern Greece where schools were closed last week due to the cold, since there was no money to pay for heating oil for them until the Interior Ministry decreed that emergency funding be provided. (We have not yet turned on our heat this year; I am thankful that we can wait even longer than many Cretans, since the apartment above us insulates our home.) I am thankful that our teachers, professors, and administrative staff have left most of the schools open most of the time this fall, unlike those in many parts of Greece (including some major universities, where the fall semester still has not started--and may or may not be starting next week). I am thankful that I'm not stuck in the middle of, or struggling to escape, the Syrian civil war or the post-typhoon destruction in the Philippines, that I'm not floundering in Mediterranean waters after smugglers took all I had in exchange for a sardine's spot on a small, overloaded boat of refugees who may or not make it to the promised land of Europe. I am thankful that my husband, children, and I are healthy enough that we don't generally need to spend hundreds of euros on doctor visits and medications no longer covered by our insurance, and that we don't have to struggle with public transport, pharmacy, and (right now) doctors' strikes as often as my mother in law in Athens. I am thankful that cloudy days often produce truly awe-inspiring skies, and that I have friends and family who care about me in many parts of the world--even if so many of them are way over on the other side of the ocean.



I am thankful that we haven't suffered the months of administrative staff strikes in Chania that have prevented thousands of university students elsewhere from starting their school year (and delayed doctoral candidates' defenses by two months) due to protests against the Troika's insistence on transferring and firing thousands of civil servants. Chania has not even seen as many grade school strikes as Athens. But I wish my kids had more school. School closes for teachers' meetings and minor holidays, and it often lasts only two hours on the day before the minor holidays! Why can't I remember that most holidays are preceded by holidays like that? It always takes me by surprise, how little school these kids have…. For a month or two each fall, there is an average of only four school days each week.




My son's teacher was absent the other day, so as usual he and his classmates were farmed out to other teachers, randomly divided among the grades at his school to draw or whisper during other students' lessons for five hours. It's far too much to ask for a substitute teacher if the regular teacher will be absent for only a day or two or three. One woman whose grandson was crying about the situation thought she'd better take him back home with her, but the principal said no. I asked the principal if the kids couldn't at least have English, computer, and art classes with the teachers who were there to teach them, but that turned out to be too much to ask, as well--something to do with the fact that our school doesn't have enough teachers, and the ones we have are doing unpaid overtime work from which they need to be relieved (by English, computer, and art teachers who'd normally be teaching my son, apparently). We haven't had a regular substitute teacher since kindergarten, so that's normal for us, but I thought we might manage a few lessons now that there are teachers for them.



I'm not surprised that we still (at the end of November) don't have all the teachers required to stretch the school day all the way to 2:00 on Thursdays and Fridays (though  we have enough for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). The principal thinks we may get them within a few weeks, though--maybe before Christmas! Yesterday, an English teacher from way up at the farthest edge of Greece, on the NE border with Turkey, called the principal to say she'd just been assigned to our school but had no place to stay all the way down here! Our principal begged her to come immediately. Another gym teacher is probably on the way as well; I hope this one will teach the girls instead of just letting them do what they want while the boys, my daughter, and one other girl play soccer. Although we didn't have an English teacher at our school last year until November (and the principal refused my offer to help, since I'm not officially certified to teach Greek elementary children), the mess is even worse than usual this year, probably thanks to the Troika's pressure. The principal says part of the problem is that the Ministry of the Economy only sends funding to the Education Ministry every two months. Some teachers from northern Greece were assigned to teach way down in Crete back in September, but they refused, since a beginning teacher's salary of about 600 euros a month does not cover the cost of the move, the uprooting, and the rental of a home away from home if the teacher is a parent with children. With that refusal, those teachers risked the loss of work for at least a year, and maybe more. Yet no one else was assigned to our school, since there wouldn't be money to pay them for two months! Now, we finally hear of new assignments. And teachers who are not parents are now accepting them, however far they must go, however fast they must decide (in one day!), because they fear that they'll be fired outright if they refuse (in spite of a need for teachers!), thanks to the Troika's pressure. They feel that they must accept this highly inconvenient teaching assignment, which may well require them to drive between several schools. We will have four English teachers who drive around, rather than two who stay put and don't waste time, energy, and gas, some of them from the far ends of Greece! There is no logic here.


Being more logical that the Greek sociopolitical system, I generally take my daily walks in and around our neighborhood to avoid wasting time and gas. Swerving between the goat droppings and dog dirt, the deep ruts in dirt roads, and the irregular rocks jutting out of them, I can't always gaze at the sea or the olive trees, even on the paved roads; there are very few places I can walk without encountering stray or unleashed dogs, as well as dozens of stray cats. The cats only bother me if they make too much noise at night or spray our screens and windows; I assume they keep the rodent population down, and the kids and I love to see the kittens. On the other hand, some of the dogs have become a problem, and there are more of them around here all the time. I spotted an unleashed pit bull earlier in the fall, and three neighbors have been bitten in the last year. I assume the growing number of dogs is partly explained by a growing fear of crime, since dogs are used as cheap, neglected security systems tied up to bark outside, or left to roam around at will. (Where I used to see two dogs tied up in an olive grove just outside our neighborhood--to guard the olives? Or maybe a few chickens there?--I recently saw five large, wildly barking dogs. I wonder how often they are given food and water, let alone any attention.) Perhaps since our neighborhood is on the edge of an undeveloped area, with various empty lots between houses, thoughtless (and perhaps impoverished) people drop off puppies and adult dogs here, adding to our growing population of fertile strays. A darling little puppy followed me home the other month, yipping softly when it started to fall behind; trying to return it to its owner (back where I first saw it), I learned that it had been abandoned, along with a sibling and its mother, the day before. A soft-hearted neighbor set up the dog family in the fenced-in playground, right behind the "dogs are forbidden" sign, which seemed all right to the kids who loved to play with the cute, friendly puppies, and to me as well until my son came home all flea-bitten. Fortunately, some neighbors have adopted at least two of the dogs; the third is rumored to have been hit by a car, which is not surprising, since it joined many dogs in habitually lying in the middle of the road.



In mid November we finally brought down the area rugs we'd stored away for the summer and started to wear long-sleeved shirts on cooler days. After just a few earlier showers, our first sustained period of rainy weather since last spring came in the middle of the month. Now the summer drought is firmly behind us, and our humid, rainy season has begun, bringing out inch-long black beetles that scurry across the road as cats search for dry hiding places. One recent radiant morning, the sun was shining on the olive trees that swayed in the wind, and the blue sky was decorated with picturesquely puffy gray and white clouds. Another day, scattered clouds produced the illusion of dimensions in the vastness of a sky that practically surrounds me on a wild Greek hillside as it never could in the forested or heavily inhabited eastern U. S. I am invigorated by such glorious days between the drab and rainy ones. November brings to mind rebirth in Crete even more than springtime does, as migratory birds flit between bushes, startled by the sound of my feet as I walk by, or rise in unified flocks to shift in formation, and the wild hills just beyond our neighborhood begin to lose their summer brown and turn green and lavender. Both the delicate grass of a manicured American spring lawn and a tougher, coarser wild grass are sprouting up after the rains, between strange plants that I've only seen in Crete, some with flower-like, slightly pulpy leaves appearing among dry brown stalks. Skeletons of sharply pointed brown thistle plants poke me as I examine a sprouting perennial on a dirt road; some wild bushes still retain gray-brown, thorny stems, while others sport new green leaves of various shapes and textures or clusters of tiny, round lavender blossoms. 


Walking past separated parts of what might be a dog's jaw bones on a rocky, rutted, dead end dirt path leading to thorny wild shrubs, a tall, rusting fence on one side and a stinky boneyard (from hunters' kills?) on the other, I was reminded of Greece and its present and future, with the government evicting public broadcasting staff who tried to carry on after being fired, neo-fascist Golden Dawn continuing to be the third most popular political party even after some of its members were charged with crimes, including murder. Pushed to excel against illogical odds, Greek scholars and athletes win international honors; Greek antiquities, seascapes, and clear waters attract millions of tourists each year. The talent, drive, beauty, and capability are here, but will Greek politicians and world leaders open a clear road to a logical, bearable future, or keep Greeks fenced in and injured by the dead-end policies that lead to increasing prices, outrageous bureaucracy, and excessive taxation in the face of decreasing benefits, salaries, hope, and opportunity? Near the little boneyard, bare patches of dirt and rock are gradually ceding the way to new grass and delicate white flowers barely larger than my thumbnail. Moss is beginning to coat the hardest packed mud on the road. Can such delicate organisms survive in the face of strong winter rains and winds? The Greek political, social, and economic climate is milder than that of many a war-torn, poverty-ridden nation, and Greeks have proven themselves hardy survivors, so I'll try to let myself feel encouraged by nature's autumn rebirth, even though there's no sign of political improvement, and rumors of economic betterment have not yet touched most ordinary Greeks' lives.
 

 


Saturday, October 12, 2013

Life Disrupted: American Excursions, Greek Diversions, and the Challenges of Education in Greece


A Long Intermission, With an Interval of Grief

My world changed this past winter: my mother died suddenly. For nearly a year, this blog has been deferring to life and death: to course revision and preparation, family, home, holidays, teaching, travel--and most notably, my mother's completely unexpected death. Even after I overcame the months of disabling depression that followed my sudden trip to the U. S. last winter to share the love and sadness of family and friends, so much has reminded me of my mother and my loss: hairspray, my kids' clothes, tall trees, cooking, scenic views, makeup, flowers, fudge cake…. Our summer trip to the U. S. came too late for my children and me to play miniature golf with their grandma; relax and play with her at the playground, amusement park, and beach; relive my childhood walks on the boardwalk together; or show her their drawings and discoveries. It came too late for me to spend time close to my mother during the relaxed vacation days that bear little resemblance to her annual fall visit to us in Greece, when school hours, homework, and (this time) preparations for the last birthday party she'd share with us distracted me, yet again, from the importance of our relationship. I thought we had at least ten more years to share.

An American Interlude

Our summer in the U. S.--my longest stay there since 2000--did include a number of enjoyable reunions, as well as enabling more accurate comparisons between the two countries I know best. I was most struck by differences in size, space, and convenience: even in the smallest state of Rhode Island, everything from paper towel packs and milk cartons to appliances, parking lots, and highways tends to be big. Not only the excessively extravagant Gilded Age mansions of Newport, but even the smallest middle-class houses on our street in a Providence suburb, were roomier than typical middle-class homes in Greece. And so much is ultra-convenient: "drive-thru" pharmacies, pre-cut and peeled carrots, cash back with debit cards at supermarkets, smart phones, little electronic boxes to entertain kids. Of course, it all comes with a high price in both dollars and health; I was surprised by how much healthy, real, and especially organic food costs in comparison to the omnipresent junk food, how often I saw kids interacting with electronic devices instead of with each other, and how much health care and medicine can cost for the uninsured. Expenses did vary; gas was cheaper than in Greece even in the Northeast, as were many of the clothes and shoes at Delaware outlets, but groceries, rent, and services were more expensive. My friends and I talked about corruption in the government and the legal system, injustice and poverty, crime and danger--in general, about the imperfections of the American system as well as the Greek one. But mostly, this past summer, I savored time with my family and friends and appreciated the good side of American life: helpful new neighbors; polite strangers; clean yards, sidewalks, roads, and parks; vast extents of green grass and trees; plentiful space inside and out; mint chocolate chip ice cream; sweet corn; blueberries; and being surrounded by completely comprehensible English.

As fortunate Americans who could afford to explore, we were impressed by the monumental bridges we crossed on our way up and down the Eastern U. S., and even  landscapes that bored me in childhood inspired a lazy, peaceful fascination, an attraction of the old and familiar: smooth, wide, endless highways between lush green cornfields and roadside forests, marshes, rivers, and ponds contrasted with the rugged dryness of much of Greece; neatly paved roads through neighborhoods of carefully manicured lawns with flowerbeds and well-kept single-family homes contrasted with the large, boxy concrete structures and compact, largely utilitarian fruit, vegetable, and flower gardens of our neighborhood in Crete. We also passed through areas of the industrial ugliness, monotonous strip malls, crowded and unkempt lower-income housing, and littered yards of smaller rural homes that are additional hallmarks of America, but most of our trips took us through the more prosperous areas that fit the positive stereotypes of the USA. Driving through New England with Prairie Home Companion and Garrison Keillor's caricature of Minnesotans as "God's chosen winter people," the highway a ribbon snaking along between tall deciduous trees toward New York City and its Spanish and Greek radio stations, I was often amused. But a nostalgic sadness and fondness hit me as the Pennsylvania Turnpike's smooth roads wandered across rolling hills of farmland and forest in the green and gray of light summer rain. The grazing horses and cows between the cornfields, tall silos, capacious barns, and rambling old farmhouses and outbuildings were as welcome to me as if I'd never seen a farm, as if I were a tourist on a first visit to Amish country, and as if I'd grown up there--as I had. 


It was often a summer of nostalgic memories, visits, and re-creations of childhood pleasures, but it was also a summer of discovery in Rhode Island, where I hadn't spent much time before. I wandered among colonial era houses near Brown University; we joined the street-fair-type excitement of Waterfire's bonfires on the river; and I joyfully breathed in the smell of thousands of real paper books in libraries peopled by real readers, such as Edgar Allan Poe's hangout, the Athenaeum. My children and I delighted in the extensive lawns and forests of Roger Williams Park, with its carousel, swan boats, gardens, ballfields, playgrounds, and zoo, the latter boasting far more shade, space, and water, not to mention air conditioning and misting stations, than the zoo outside Athens. We enjoyed visiting the strangely lumpy camels, seeking out the elusive snow leopard, adoring the furry red panda, and hunting for the monkeys in their large rainforest-like building. But on the hottest, most humid days of a record-setting July, we sought refuge in the cool reading room of our local public library, which offered so much more than the children's library in Chania. In addition to checking out hundreds of English-language books, we appreciated free internet access; free performances by a storyteller and a magician; free or reduced tickets at the Providence Children's Museum and the RISDE Art Museum; and the incentives of the children's reading club, which (after the discovery of Nate the Great) finally interested my son in reading by offering crafts, prizes, fast food meals, and passes to such extravagant mansions as Blithewold in Bristol and The Breakers in Newport. (Talk about conspicuous consumption--as Mark Twain and Edith Wharton did!) That's America, with all its contradictions: more (offerings, solutions, problems), bigger (spaces, places, income gaps), richer (communities, organizations, elites). In spite of Greece's glorious beaches, clear waters, and breathtaking scenery, as well as the generosity, hospitality, openness, and friendship of Greeks, I wasn't ready to leave the USA.

Back to School Blues and the Modern Greek Tragedy

But we did leave. Welcome back to Greece, I thought, as we rode in a taxi amidst the suffocating fumes of uncontrolled vehicle exhaust at the end of the summer. Welcome back to Greece, I thought, as I struggled to re-acclimate to the intensely burning sun, the frequent barking of dogs tied up to act as alarm systems, and the intermittent strikes that  interrupt garbage pickup and close public services such as post offices, hospitals, and schools. Welcome back to the "Utter Confusion" a Greek journalist associated with Greece, and to its illogical public education system.

Now, the kids are more or less back in school. I think most of the high school teachers in our area ended their week or so of strikes a few weeks ago, although one local junior high school started full-time classes only in October (instead of mid September). Some Greek universities remain closed because their presidents (called rectors here) claim they don't have enough administrative staff to function now that the Greek government has allowed the Troika's insistence on transferring and firing civil servants to hit their campuses. By American standards, D's university is and was understaffed (if over-creatively designed, architecturally speaking), but some of the public universities in Greece boasted far more staff members, some of them unproductive and illegally hired by political patrons at taxpayer expense. I can see why such past mistakes need to be remedied, but it's not clear that the remedy, hurriedly applied to please the Troika, avoids disrupting necessary administrative functions performed by diligent staff members.

And I can't figure out why the Troika would insist on firing grade school teachers. This packs many elementary school kids into classes with 34 other children and reduces secondary school students' already dim hope of learning enough at crowded public schools to pass the demanding Panhellenic exams, an extremely stressful ordeal of six two to three hour exams taken over a two-week period that determines whether or not they attend a public university in Greece. I can't see why the Troika would increase the need for public school students to attend private "frontistiria" (costly after-school schools) or hire tutors to properly teach them the foreign languages, science, composition, and math they'll be expected to master. Since the government needs to save money, why don't they fire the civil servants who sit around smoking, drinking coffee, or chatting while lines lengthen in the post office or at City Hall, or those who receive a paycheck for a job they don't do, rather than the people who teach the youths of Greece? And why on earth don't they ask students to refrain from writing in their school books, so next year's students can use the same texts, they way we did in the U. S.? It's not like Greece has extra trees, extra paper, and extra money to spend on new books each year! Yes, Greece certainly needs to cut its budget, combat tax evasion and corruption, and reform its civil service system, but what bewilders many people here is that the government hurries so fast to give in to the Troika's demands that many of its "cost-saving" "reform" measures are illogical and ultimately costly because they disrupt society and destroy health and lives.

One Troika official claimed that they are "not blind," that they know that about 60% of Greek youths are unemployed. What are they, then, deaf to pleas to allow proper education of these young people? I realize they want to reduce public spending and strengthen banks and the economy, but the public education system was faulty enough without firing teachers and increasing class size. And what is the basis of a nation's economy, if not its people, who need a good, affordable education? I repeatedly demand of hapless middle-class parents why they continue to pay the thousands of euros required each year--even during this economic crisis--so they can drive their children to extra lessons to do extra work at extra schools, staying up late studying instead of enjoying the sports, dance, or music lessons most have to give up by high school, if not earlier. Families may give up expensive food and drink, new clothes and shoes, but many continue to pay frontistirio fees even now! I've asked so many times why Greek parents do not demand that the public schools do their job of educating the country's sons and daughters, rather than simply accepting the fact that they don't expect their children to learn enough in them. Greeks strike, occupy, and protest hundreds of times more often than Americans (or so it seems to me!), and teachers, students, and parents do call for better funding of better free education, but their protests, organized by political parties such as SYRIZA to shame the government, seem to me to most often highlight anger at particular changes in the laws, rather than emphasizing a serious demand to overhaul an unnecessarily ineffective, costly, wasteful public/private education system. Of course, under the reign of the Troika, they face an uphill battle against even one new law, so I suppose it's unreasonable to expect them to fight for more, but I’m bewildered by the acceptance implied by the ever so common phrase "ti na kanoume," what can we do? The answer is most often merely "ipomoni," patience.

I'm discussing the middle class here, whose parents expect their children to attend university and pay dearly to ensure that they do, but I wonder just how many intelligent lower-income students are shut out of Greece's public university system because their parents cannot afford frontistiria or tutoring for them. (Yes, there's universal free public primary and secondary education in Greece, but not enough to ensure the ability to continue into the free public universities, for which there is stiff competition!) Wealthier families often send their children to expensive private schools which offer better preparation for university entrance exams--or for studying abroad--and then supplement that schooling with private tutoring. But for the middle class, according to one Greek mother, frontistiria are in style, enabling families to keep up with the Joneses (or Yannis  and Maria's children), since one child must know as much English (math, science, composition) as the next child rather than being embarrassed or disadvantaged by falling behind. This Greek mother also believes nearly everyone in Greece, or her brother (sister, aunt, father), works for a frontistirio or tutors children, so that dismantling the current system would damage the national economy too seriously to be acceptable. It's true that Greece could hardly absorb another large group of unemployed individuals right now; nor is there money to employ these teachers in the public school system. An annoyed British mother here recommends closing the public schools, since kids don't learn there anyhow. Since no one expects students to learn much, many teachers apparently don't try too hard to teach. Other teachers--even very good, dedicated instructors--work with the justifiable expectation that most students are also learning part of each lesson at their frontistirio, so that the entire subject need not be covered in public school. In fact, in the last month before the Panhellenic exams, masses of students suddenly become too "sick" to attend their public schools, spending all their time studying for the more useful frontistirio lessons. There are too few vocational or technical schools below university level, so even many middle-class students who don't do especially well in school are pushed to struggle their way into universities.

I think many of the youths who spend at least their last year of high school studying intensely for long hours become too sick of this educational struggle to care to attend their university classes. Urged to excel in music, dance, or sports on ultra-competitive teams or with high-level exams or recitals in elementary and junior high school, and then to focus on intense study to learn an impressive amount at a very advanced level by the end of high school, middle- and upper-class Greek children are pushed to be highly educated, but they don't have much chance to be children who enjoy childhood. By the time they reach their university years, many tend to merely take the exams that are the sole requirement in most courses--and they may take them as many times as necessary to pass, as long as they finish in seven years (for a degree that should take five). Finally released from parental and social pressure to perform, university students begin to relax and enjoy themselves, partying, lounging at cafes, and driving drunk just as they should become serious about preparing for life and a career. I realize that this happens elsewhere, too, but it strikes me as a more widespread problem here, with a more obvious, ironic, and perhaps avoidable cause.

There are some encouraging signs that the situation may be starting to change, however, as more students attend classes during this economic crisis, especially following the recent reform that requires students to finish their studies within seven years. That reform led to great fury and many occupations of universities by a radical minority of students offended by the idea that they couldn't attend university indefinitely at taxpayers' expense. While it may be hard for some students who are earning enough for their room and board to finish on time, most are supported by their families, and many seem to simply feel entitled to fail exams as many times as they wish, without bothering to attend classes. As I understand it, a minority of students, some of them belligerent and violent in the face of disapproval of their disruptive protests, generally manages to control student meetings and votes on whether to occupy the university to protest any proposed changes, closing D's campus (for example) several times per year so professors can't teach and the students who wish to can't learn. In 2012, classes continued an extra month or so into the summer here to make up for time lost during occupations, scrambling summer plans for internships, research, or travel.

My children learn quite a lot at their public elementary school--for now, since their classmates attend frontistiria only for foreign languages so far, and their parents still expect public school teachers to teach the rest of the classes adequately. There are many excellent, hard-working teachers and professors as well as serious, talented, smart students at Greek schools and universities, and many students do manage to learn enough to excel in prestigious foreign graduate programs, so Greek public education works for some. But so much more is possible. Students, unite! Not to further curtail your education with more occupations and strikes--to expand your education with sensible demands and plans for a logically organized, truly free, well staffed, wisely utilized, efficient public education system that could realize the full potential of Greece's intelligent, talented population without the excessive financial and psychological demands on students and parents during secondary school years that reduce the quality of many a university education. Of course, I am well aware that sensible demands tend to lead to little action now, with deep divisions between political parties and few non-ideological efforts at logical compromise--so widely known an American problem these days that my kids' school principal asserts that I'm better off here in Greece, even if she can't tell me when Christmas vacation starts or when we'll have the additional teachers we need, even if there are no substitute teachers after kindergarten, so students simply miss their lessons if teachers are ill (on strike, at a meeting, etc.). It is always hard to agree about what is "sensible" or "logical." A common Greek response is to take to the streets in desperate attempts to attract the government's attention--or change the government--and no solution is in sight.

Here in Crete, we aren't as seriously affected by strikes and demonstrations as Athenians are. We have our share, but this term D's university stayed open except for a two-day occupation, and our children's elementary school teachers kept teaching all along, although some in the area went on strike for a day or two. In fact, once I'd given up on my son's school days lasting more than a meager 4 ¼ hours (that's through 2nd grade), our principal astonished me with an announcement on the first day of school, September 11: school days would be extended to last from 8:10 to 2:00, thanks to the EU program the Greeks call ESPA! I am less surprised that this hasn't happened yet, even in October; but the missing art, music, and theater teachers materialized last week, so school ended at 2:00 three out of five days this week. There's still no sign of the additional English and gym teachers needed to staff the extra classes, and they're still trying to finish the computer room this week, but we have had a computer teacher for a week or so, along with 10 or 12 computers that will eventually be shared during lessons. Every year, there's uncertainty about who will teach each elementary school class until the first day of school. Last year, there were many missing school books, and no English teacher at our school until November, with our usual, wonderful English teacher on maternity leave and some difficulty providing for all the far-flung islands of Greece. (And what an English teacher we ended up with! He could barely understand or respond when I slowly and clearly introduced myself!) But this year the Ministry of Education seems to be shuffling teachers in even more belated, wild confusion than usual as it tries to decide whom to fire. So we've had a gradual lengthening of our school day, which ended first at 12:25, then 1:15, playing havoc with working parents' schedules. We're luckier than some students in Chania, though, where school ended at 11:30 at least through late September because a building was not finished.

The most recent strikes and protests are understandable, if no more constructive than usual; the Troika demands more and more firings of public sector employees, and there are no jobs, social services, or insurance plans to help all the people who'll be sacked, or already have been. There is no money to replace their salaries, to pay their rent and bills, to buy their groceries, to pay for their medical care, to pay the higher and higher taxes demanded by the Troika and accepted by the Greek government. But the Troika isn't blind. They're just deaf to reason. Fire the civil servants, they say, fire them, and cut off their health insurance; reduce the salaries and pensions of the rest. They don't seem to hear that this means children go malnourished and undereducated, that the sick go without medicine. For the Troika, it seems that anything goes, as long as Greece can repay its creditors and strengthen its banks. The Troika is not blind, not to the numbers that look slightly better in terms of Greece's ability to repay its debt, even as the numbers of unemployed skyrocket beyond the latest statistic of 27.6 %, which counts part-timers as "employed" and drops the hopeless from the counts as the numbers of suicides climb. This helps to explain the increasing popularity, during the years of the economic crisis, of not only the relatively new opposition (SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left), but also the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which entered parliament for the first time last year. Only the recent murder of a Greek man by a Golden Dawn member--not the hundreds of acts of intimidation, the many beatings, or the murders of immigrants allegedly carried out by people affiliated with this group--has finally led to a serious investigation of this political party as a possibly criminal organization, as well as belated arrests of prominent party members. (For more on this, see, for example, this brief overview of Golden's Dawn's role in Greek politics and society by a conservative/centrist Greek editor. Leftists criticize the government's delayed response to violence against immigrants in much stronger terms.) Increasing numbers of Greeks seem to agree with a slogan of KEERFA, the Movement United Against Racism and the Fascist Threat: "Each vote for Golden Dawn is a knife in Nazi hands." The Troika seems to be deaf to pleas to help desperate Greeks in order to stop them from turning to neo-fascists for the answers. We can only hope the government's crackdown on Golden Dawn opens people's eyes to the dangers of fascism, rather than creating a backlash of fascist sympathizers who believe Golden Dawn's hypocritical claims that they are being persecuted, rather than being the persecutors.

Natural Uplift: Awe-Inspiring Agios Pavlos

When we first returned to Greece at the end of August, jetlagged and kidlagged after a summer full of family time, D and I needed a vacation, a brief escape from the utter confusion of Greece's modern tragedy. Unlike many, we were fortunate enough to manage a few days in our favorite part of southern Crete, the Plakias area south of Rethymno. (See my October 25, 2012 blog for some photos from last year's trip there.) We enjoyed visiting favorite beaches and restaurants, plus one that was 1 hour and 20 minutes' drive farther east of where we stayed, taking the "good" roads vs. the treacherous, rutty gravel ones we got lost on last year. We'd made it to the top of the Agios Pavlos cliffs and sand dunes last year, but just at sunset, too late to descend to the beaches. We found closer parking this year, right above the dunes, instead of next to a café above another beach from which we needed to ascend many steps, traverse a wide open area, and climb up before heading down. This time, it was just a matter of carefully slide-walking down dunes several stories high--with a much harder climb up afterwards, obviously. Initially, it wasn't clear to me that last year's vantage point from on high didn't provide as spectacular a sunset view as one could find, with the sea extending out to the west and layers of hills and promontories fading off into the distance in varying tones of purple or orange and gray (as in my last two photos from last October's blog section, Exploring to the East: Toward Agios Pavlos on a Blustery Day). Down on the beach at sea level, the perspective looking inland to that hill of dunes rising close behind us was rather unsettling. But once I began exploring to the north, where boulders and cliffs hide caves accessible by wading or swimming around the rocks, I became enchanted. I love the cool, dark spaces of caves freshened by little waves washing up onto their minibeaches, rustling the tiny pebbles against each other. I love the frames provided by the black outlines of cave openings looking out toward spectacular views of the Libyan Sea at sunset. Cave walls, boulders, distant hills, sea, and sunset--what more could we ask for? Crystal-clear waters for viewing fish and the sea bottom, with or without masks--and we enjoyed that, too. Of course, we didn't manage to tear ourselves away from all that before dark, but fortunately D had come prepared with a strong flashlight and a head lamp for the challenging ascent. Life in Greece is no vacation, but vacation in Greece reminds me that there's hope for Greeks' life. Along with neighborly, sociable, kind, clever people, Greece has its glorious scenery and sea, and so do the people who live here--as I do. By no means will it feed or heal everyone, but it can both offer peace and attract the more tangible economic benefits of tourism, which continues to thrive into a warm October this year.