The Garden of Earthly Beauty: Two Islands in Greece

   
 

          If your luggage is too heavy to carry up to your room -- or pension, or house -- on the island of Hedra, the gem of the Saronic Gulf, you hire a donkey. You will not be able to take a taxi or even a motorcycle (or a tourist bus or even a minivan) because "all wheeled vehicles" are banned from Hedra. The resulting island ambience is a unique blend of beauty and pre-industrial silence.

            Many places in Greece are beautiful. Many are also peaceful. Set in the sunny blue water of the Aegean off of the ancient region known as the Peloponnese, Hedra is beautiful, peaceful and also quiet. It's a rare place, with enough international draw that people like Leonard Cohen keep a house there.

            To get there we took the ferry from the port of Tolo, a two and a half hour cruise through the Saronic Gulf with islands and mainland hillsides in view the whole way, passing the isle of Spetses (where we would also visit on the return trip). The cruise ship was comfortable and roomy, the sun-worshipers sat on the top deck. We sat on the main deck and tried to take pictures of the dolphins who lept and dove behind the ship on two occasions. Mostly I simply got the splash, though one effort (as you see in the second photo down) captured a bit of tail.

            The island features a photogenic port, white-walled houses with orange tiled roofs, rows of yachts and fishing boats, a steep geographic profile rising straight up from the shore, storefronts and houses built so close to the shoreline you have to assume there's hardly ever the fear of marine encroachment those of us who live by the Atlantic learn to call "storm surge."

            Despite the close-at-hand presence of all this ocean, the air is dry, the sunlight crystalline but soft, the insect life pleasingly absent, and the flowers bright and long-lasting. In this part of Greece, you always eat outdoors.

            Ship-building (according to the travel guides) in the 18th century led to the island's growth and development. Hedra was one the Greek Islands that played a significant role in the Greek independence struggle in the early 19th century, as did Spetses. Admiral Andreas Miaoulis commanded a Greek fleet when the island contributed 130 ships to a blockade effort during the war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, 1821-1829.

            The island of Spetses, while also very beautiful, is not so quiet. As if taking advantage of a pent-up demand for internal combustion engines caused by Hedra's proscription of motorized vehicles, the chief 'tourist" activity here appears to be riding motor cycles along the broad shoreline  road and threading them through the narrow twisting lanes, where the four of us traipsed both to escape from their noise and to admire the very white-walled villas with their walled-in gardens of fruitfiul trees and flowering trees, one of these packed with an almond, olive and orange tree all finding enough sunshine to go around.

            The great historical figure in Spetses is the 19th century sailor Laskarina Bouboulina, to whom both a museum and a substantial statue are dedicated. Her biography (recounted in online sources) was truly that of a swashbuckling heroine. She was born in a prison in Constantinople of a captive revolutionary father, built a fortune in maritime trade, raised a Greek flag she designed herself (on a ship she named, with a sure sense of nation pride, the Agamemnon), and joined forces with fleets from other islands in the revolt against the Turks.

            Here's a link to the full wikipedia account:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laskarina_Bouboulina

            Sailing to the Greek isles, these two at least, was a long but satisfying day. Odysseus, we know, had a full ten years of this stuff, with adventures for which the term "epic" was invented. We were happy to get back to our tourist apartment with time for a little nap before a superb dinner (prepared by somebody else).

The Garden of History: A Hundred Years Ago in America

            A century ago, 1916, Americans re-elected Woodrow Wilson, regarded as a progressive Democrat, for a second term as President. In his first term he pushed some significant legislation through Congress: a graduated income tax; the anti-monopolistic Federal Trade Commission; a law prohibiting child labor; and another law that established the 8-hour day for railroad workers.

            This last achievement had been a goal of the American labor movement for 40 years, an aim taken up on the American example by the international labor movement. Eight hours for railroad workers created an important precedent for establishing a standard for all fulltime workers that still applies in many American workplaces. The prohibition of child labor was a goal that social reformers had urged for a century.

            Wilson also followed Theodore Roosevelt's example in asserting the right and duty of American Presidents to act in the interests of the American people, even when no "strict interpretation" of the Constitution gave his office that power. But though he had pledged to keep American out of World War I, a year after election (1917) he asked Congress to declare war against Germany, following persistent attacks on American shipping.  

            But while Wilson's Progressive agenda would ultimately improve working conditions, American factory workers 100 years ago were finding it increasing hard to feed their families.

            1916 was the year that workers at the Plymouth Cordage Company, the world's leading ropemaker, went on strike for higher pay. At the time, according to the revered Boston historian Samuel Elliot Morison, Cordage male workers earned $9 a week (women earned less). Morrison also pointed out that "the Plymouth worker of 1894 to 1900 with $8.10 a week had much better real wages" than his counterpart in 1916. Real wages for American industrial workers had been declining for 15 years, a condition made much worse after 1914 as wartime demand in Europe for American goods inflated consumer prices, while wages failed to keep up.

            Bartolomeo Vanzetti, one of two defendants in the famous Sacco-Vanzetti case, and the central figure in my novel "Suosso's Lane," took part in 1916 Plymouth Cordage strike although he had stopped working for the company and worked instead as a "pick and shovel" laborer. After he had nearly died from working in a pastry factory in his teens, Vanzetti believed that outdoor work was healthier than working inside a factory.

            But the North Plymouth family he lived with, and the entire North Plymouth immigrant community he was a part of for five years, depended largely on the Plymouth Cordage Company for its sustenance. A committed anarchist who believed in both the abolition of the state and the capitalist economic system, Vanzetti envisioned strikes as necessary steps toward the recognition that workers should cooperatively own and run the factories and all other enterprises that depended upon their labor. So antagonistic was he to established authority structures that he and other anarchists of his stripe also opposed the creation of labor unions, seeing them as a new layer of "official" oppression.

            In an account of his life written while in jail, Vanzetti described his role in the Cordage strike:

            "This company is one of the great money powers of this nation. The town of Plymouth is its feudal tenure. Of all the local men took a prominent part in the strike, I was the only one who did not yield or betray the workers... [and] I was the only one who instead of being compensated was blacklisted by the company, and subjected to a long, vain, and useless police vigilance..."

            Not surprisingly Morrison, an establishment figure who wrote a book about the company in 1950 ("The Ropemakers of Plymouth"), has a different, more circumstantial view of the strike. Despite his own calculation of how poorly workers were being paid (about 16.6 cents an hour), Morrison writes that ownership had no idea that wage dissatisfaction would lead workers to take action: "Then suddenly, wihtout warning, a strike exploded in the Plymouth plant Jan. 17, 1916."

            Since there was no Cordage union and would be none for decades, the strike developed, he states, when "A self-constituted committee, the membership of which was never disclosed [including] some employees and some who were not .. went to workers homes during a general strike the next day and making threats."

            These are events that I dramatize in "Suosso's Lane." I'm not sure about the 'making threats' piece of the account by a historian who tended to get his information from ownership, but I tried to imagine how a group of increasingly hungry, winter-strained factory workers began to think about and then plan a general strike at a large industrial site.  

            Here's an excerpt from a scene in "Suosso's Lane" that leads toward the drastic decision to go on strike:  

             "In Italia," Benno said, his words simmering with passion, "in the North, there is a war with Austria for a mountain. A mountain of ice and snow! Two years now the mountain consumes the men. Thousands on thousands!"

             "Si," said Joe, ordinarily a harried-looking man, one of the fathers whom Vanzetti suspected of joining the gathering less for the pleasure of the talk and the heat than to get away for a while from the complaints of his younger children. Now his thin features twisted. "But no matter how many die, the armies keep taking more from their homes and families. It is the armies who are buying up flour and oil and beans and macaroni."

            Benno looked angrily about him. "And this means that we must pay twice as much for such needful things!”

            Others raised their voices in shared outrage. 

            Vanzetti lifted his head. When the outrage ran its course, he pounced.

            “If the food costs twice as much to buy, does it not follow that the factory must pay its workers twice as much?” he asked. He looked from face to face, holding the glance of any man who would return his own.

            “Can a man or a woman eat half as much and still do the same amount of work making the rope?”

            No one expected the factory to double their wages. Such a thing was unheard of. Still, it was important to reason correctly. They must see their complaint is just, he thought. It was a step. One must establish the true facts, before one bargained. Of course, he did not even believe in the bargain. Still, again, it was a step.

            “Do I not speak simple truth?”

            No one disagreed. Yet no one rushed in to support a calculation that might point in a direction not yet made clear.

            "It is the rich men who make the war. It is the war that raises the prices. Now we must pay the cost of the rich men's war. Can this be endured?"

            Enough, he told himself. You cannot drive people to a place where they do not wish to go.

            "No," someone said.

            He was not sure who. One of those standing by the stove, perhaps. But the single word raised the tension in the room, an air of half dread, half anticipation like the moment before the yanking off of a bandage or the pulling up of a scab. A good thing, he thought, a needed thing. Though surely painful.

            "Everyone knows Vanzetti," he said. "I do not have the wife, the children. I work with the pick and the shovel. I do not work in the factory like the other men in this room. But if the workers demand what they are entitled too, I will support them every day. Someone must go to the other cities, to tell the story of this place. To raise the donations for the strike fund."

            Benno returned his look. And the man Joe. Some of the others stared off. Some of these squatting against the wall in the same room looked up at him in confusion.

            "I promise this will be done." The averted faces held out against hope. "By me."

            "A strike?" someone said, after these words. "You urge the strike?"

 

I will be talking about "Suosso's Lane" and reading some excerpts from the book on Tuesday, June 14, at the Crane Library in Quincy.

The Garden of the Sacred: Climbing with Alexander

            We climbed the Sacred Way to the Oracle at Delphi. In Ancient Greece, Athenian generals asked the Delphic oracle how to defeat the invading Persians. "A wall of wood," they were told. They built a navy and defeated the invaders, keeping Greece free of control by the Persian Empire.

            King Oedipus sent messengers to ask the oracle for the cause of the plague devastating his kingdom and was told that the cause of the corruption was the king. From there, Oedipus's tragedy unfolds. Socrates asked the Oracle how to find wisdom, and was told "Know thyself." The Western philosophical tradition ensued.

            Alexander asked the Oracle whether he would achieve victory in a coming battle. When the priestess charged with interpreting the ravings (or babblings? drugged incoherence?) failed to produce a clear reply, he dragged her by her hair until she shouted, "You're relentless!" OK, Alexander (on the way to being 'Great') concluded, I've got my answer.

            We explored the remains of Delphi last week, viewing the site of the Temple of Apollo (top photo), the still viable theater in which the tragedies of Sophocles were performed, and then climbing up to the "stadium" where the athletic games were held. No Oracle or priestess takes questions at Delphi there any more. The rise of Christianity eventually put an end to the practice some time in the 5th century AD. Just as well; I wasn't sure what to ask.

            The Oracle at Delphi was in many ways the center of the ancient Greek world.

            Compared to the 'body' of monuments, sanctuaries, memorials, and 'gifts' erected at Delphi in its long-ago heyday, the remains are skeletal. Petitioners and visitors climbed to the site to query the Oracle, or spectate at the celebratory "Pythian Games," along a sometimes steep route called "The Sacred Way." Messengers sent by the powerful to make their inquiries -- almost any important decision of state was referred there at one time -- but also business opportunities, law suits, marriage decisions, and who to back in the 800-meter at next year's Olympics -- climbed the Sacred Way, along with the great names of the era we remember. Alexander. Socrates.

            Buildings and statues were erected along the way to honor, or placate, the God Apollo. In the cabinet of the gods, Delphi was in his department. Apollo had a large brief; he was the god of the sun, but also the god of music; and later was chosen to symbolize a cool, rational, orderly manner of thought. A tough man in a negotiation. His arrows put an end to frivolous suits.

            Of these ancient buildings only the stone footings remain along with various inscriptions valuable to scholars as 'authentic' texts of their period.  The Roman stoa (a roofed colonnade) was added in somewhat later times to serve as a convenient market place for trade. Shops sold what we would call 'souvenirs' -- votives and momentoes.  (Second image.)

            The home of the oracle was the Temple of Apollo, a huge rectangular structure the size of the Parthenon, of which only the columns on one of the shorter sides remain (fourth image, drawing).          

            The Oracle -- the name given to the prophetess who was given hallucinatory herbs in order to see the future and produce some words of guidance, however vague, ambiguous or merely nonsensical -- was housed in a 'sacred' chamber at the room's far end. Here words were interpreted by priests.

            The Oracle's site, regarded as the 'center of the world,' was concretely symbolized by an elliptically shaped stone called the 'omphalos' (third image down). This site of the world navel was supposedly determined by Zeus's release of two eagles from opposite ends of the earth. Where they met was the center. 
            The site also includes a stone theater in the round, where the plays of Sophocles were performed (last photo; not, however, Sophocles).

            A small temple-like structure, called the Treasury of the Athenians is regarded as the best preserved building. The history here is important, since this monumental building carried the gifts from 5th century Athens to commemorate either the fall of a tyrant and the establishment of Athenian democracy, or the victory over the Persians at the battle of Marathon that made the city's self-government possible. Either way, ground zero for Ancient Greece.

            Located about a two and a half hour drive from Athens, Delphi was the heart of the birthplace of the Western civilization. Prophecy is not central to modern, or monotheistic religions. But it is revealing that the civilization that birthed philosophy (the 'love of wisdom'), theater, naturalistic art, and natural science, and self-government among its gifts to a rational, humanistic way of life -- rather than superstition and tyranny -- sought to connect at its deepest levels with some power beyond the mind of man. To divinity. The gods. An oracle.

The Garden of the Holy Valley: The Monastery of St. Anthony

   

   I'm posting some photos of the recently restored monastery of St. Anthony of Quzhaya I took when Anne and I toured the Qadisha or “Holy Valley” in the north of Lebanon. The mountain side site is visibly dramatic and includes the use cave-like openings in mountain sides for religious spaces (seen in the third and fifth photos down). Partly built into a mountain, the monastery boasts spectacular forest and valley vistas.

          St. Anthony of Quzhaya is one of the oldest monasteries of the valley of Qadisha (located in the Mount Lebanon range in the northern part of the country), and several hermitages attached to it date back to the 12^th century AD. Today visitors can tour these places, including a library, hermitage cave, and a cave-like museum that houses, among other treasures, a 16^th century printing press that printed a Bible in the Syriac language to escape the notice of Ottoman authorities (second photo).  

         We encountered this ancient black-metal printing press and a sample of its work in a alphabet using diacritic marks I’ve never seen before – not Hebrew, not Greek, so quite possibly Syriac -- on our tour.   

        We also found huge urns of amphora design, with big handles on each side for carrying, that looked to me like something from 1000 BC when that design was common throughout the Mediterranean. The wall caption, however, stated they date only from the 18^th century AD. Some parts of the world change more slowly.

          According to Internet sources, St. Anthony Qozhaya owns large properties in the Qadisha Valley, in Ain-Baqra and in Jedaydeh, and is one of the richest monasteries of the Maronite monastic order.

          The Maronite Christian church remains an important force in Lebanon. In a sense it is the principal reason that Lebanon exists today as an independent country, separate from Syria, to which it was historically affixed by earlier rulers, including the Ottoman Empire and the Romans. When France acquired protection over this part of the Middle East following the defeat of Ottoman Turkey in World War I, it drew borders around the Maronite Christian population and created the state of Lebanon as a homeland for the Maronites. Coastal cities including Beirut were affixed to the new state to make it economically viable.