The realities of Greek life, in real time!

It's the Sunday before the 11/12 Eurozone meeting that will vote or not to give Greece the next loan installment to avoid financial collapse -- all based upon a Memorandum of agreement to dozens more spending cuts, taxes, etc. which barely passed Parliament a few days ago during a 4-day General Strike.

The morning talk shows have reviewed today's headlines and are analyzing the measures that will take effect -- it's a tsunami of facts and figures making my head spin (especially when 3 people are all talking at the same time).

It seems, for example, that Greek families will be taxed per child about 200 Euros annually -- some of the same people whose salaries are being slashed and living in a country of vast unemployment/loss of health benefits. A woman member of Parliament and mother from Thessaloniki rose yesterday to ask which children families are supposed to get rid of. Good question!

And that's just the tip of the mushrooming iceburg of suffering that is setting real people way back under the guise of necessary economic reform. When and how will it end?

Mitropolis Church

(This is all very scary by any standards and I need to get up, go to church and light a candle -- seriously. Kiparissi has three sections, with a church in each that is functional every third week. On Saturday night, the bell rings from the church that will celebrate the Liturgy that week -- a rotating system that gives the elderly in each part of the village a chance to attend without having to walk too far. Didn't work out for me this week; I have to walk all the way across to Mitropolis.)

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