Greece at Tipping Point?

Here I am in Thessaloniki trying to mind my own business, but how can I?  Just when it seems that things can't get worse, they do -- bringing Greece to a veritable "tipping point." 

Greek farmers have called off the 68 highway blockades that have pretty much paralyzed this country for over a month, having accepted Prime Minister Tsipras' offer of legislation that does not come down so hard on the agricultural sector (assuming that "The Creditors" don't squawk). Said farmers were asked to share the multiple burdens facing their beleaguered country and are now in wait-and-see mode...That's the good news.

TV coverage is now focused on a refugee problem which has suddenly exploded way out-of-control. Today alone about 1500 more people arrived in Piraeus. Austria --an EU member! -- independently called a meeting with the Balkan countries but without Greece, resulting in border closures. Meanwhile, refugees continue to walk 550 kilometers (330 miles) from Athens to the Greek border, creating emergency conditions and stress all along the way.  Thousands who have reached the border are living in tents or on  the street, begging to cross over.

Forecasts for solving this double-edged humanitarian crisis are beyond gloomy: "In all likelihood,..Greece will be converted into a huge 'open-air' refugee camp with unforeseen political and social consequences." 50-70,000 people will soon be stranded in Greece if Europe doesn't get it's act together. "Hotspots" are indeed popping up like crazy -- and the Greek people are beginning to be torn between continuing to help their fellow human beings and resisting a situation that seriously threatens their survival.

How can anyone blame them? To add insult to injury, waves of hotel cancellations are hitting the super-important tourist trade. Chios (-60%), Kos (-36%) and Samos (-40%) are already feeling the pain. The tiny island of Kastelorizo -- 250 permanent inhabitants and one mile from Turkey -- last week absorbed 1000 people in 72 hours, adding to tensions with a neighbor whose provocations by land and by sea have brought NATO boats into the picture. Greeks are now actually asking the question: Could there be a war with Turkey?

It should be noted that the 3 top political factions (Siriza-Anel, Nea Democratia, and PASOK) seem to actually agree on refugee issues -- but a certain opposition leader keeps talking about how his party would win new elections. Who needs that right now?

"Tipping point" just might be putting it mildly.


(Published in The Greek American Herald, March 2016)

From Germany, with love -- and back at her!

For those of you who might be getting tired of my stories about "Girls School" (GS) graduates, buckle up!

In few days I will depart for Greece to continue my mission to connect all 205 GS graduates from 1966-1978 -- from the year the American Farm School took over the GS from the founding Quakers, until they closed it forever in 1978. To refresh your memories, I was at the School 1968 -78, which is why I have such a close relationship with those students and their families. During that period I visited the village home of every Girls School student at least once.

I visited Rosa Detsika (nee Kitti '69) in Koupa, Eidhomeni, a mountainous area very near the border w/"Macedonia" town now bearing so many refugee problems. To do so, you had to leave the asphalted main road. I was a master at navigating those one-lane cart/cow tracks, but on one occasion had a bit of a mishap. It had rained a lot, and the "road" was muddy and becoming rather treacherous. There wasn't really room to turn around either. Onward we went until my trusty VW slipped, leaving us suspended more than a little over the edge of a ravine. My colleague Carolina was close to hysterical, while I got out (carefully) and waved/shouted "Rosa" at the top of my lungs -- attracting the attention of the whole village across the way. Her father came post haste with his tractor to pull my car out of harm's way...and I was most grateful!

Photo op w/rabbit!

On another occasion -- this was a favorite village of mine! -- I went with my aunt Libby for a very pleasant visit. As we were leaving, Rosa's family presented us with a live hare (rabbit) squirming in a burlap sack. Fortunately for me (but perhaps not the rabbit), I convinced them that I was not going directly back to the School and simply could not take the rabbit. They kept it...

Last fall, I wrote to Rosa via her family in Axioupolis and received an answer some weeks later from Altena, Germany -- where I knew she had gone to work in 1970 like many Greeks. Unknown to me, she had stayed all this time. She has two children, a daughter (who now also lives in Germany, but not close by) and a son (who is a policeman in Athens.) There are now also 3 grandchildren in the mix. She was especially thrilled to get a contact list of her classmates, with whom she had lost touch!

Rosa's son became a godfather, too! (2014)

Rosa is looking forward to retiring in 2 years and returning to Greece...but will she under the present hellish economic circumstances? Time will tell, but meanwhile I have her German phone numbers and will talking with her very soon...from Greece, with love!

First picture of Skopos (Turkey) Xanthopoulos Family Home!

Latest holiday missive from Serres, Greece, brought yet another coveted gift from my new-found Aunt Eleni Xanthopoulou. Seems as if trips to family villages outside of Greece -- formerly part of the Ottoman Empire -- are now more the norm than rare...and I hope I can get on one of those excursions out of Neos Skopos sooner rather than later.

Eleni and her husband did make such a trip to Skopos (in Turkey, and now called Uskup) awhile back. So I asked her if she had any pictures to share. And voila! This is a picture of the only remaining Xanthopoulos Family home in Skopos:

To be continued -- as in a few weeks I will be visiting Kolindros (Imathias) where Papou Xanthoulis Xanthopoulos had a restaurant/hotel type of establishment at the time he married Yiayia Pauline in nearby Naousa (1916). Opa!

The past is ever-present, and right in my own backyard!

I celebrated the first day of the New Year 2016 by revisiting my past -- in, Naples, Florida, where I visited with the family of Sofia Papanicolaou Vardoulias, who graduated from the AFS Girls' School in 1970. ‎ Up until recently when she came to Miami to visit me, we had not seen each for 43 years. This time I got to meet the whole family (minus one daughter who has moved back to Bridgeport, CT)...a real holiday treat!

Sofia and her father (1970)

My continuing efforts to locate all the 205 graduates of that 1967-78 program -- and I'm well over the 50 percent mark so far! -- made me wonder where is Sofia who came to the US in 1972? There are at least 5 grads living in the USA and Canada as far as I know, and I have been contact w/3 of them for many years. Thanks to Google and Facebook, I was able to find Sofia (daughter of  a Greek Orthodox priest and a lovely man), who was a sharp, industrious Student Body President at school...BUT totally horrified to learn that she has lived about 2 hours from me for 19 years!

Takis, Sofia, Polixeni, & Dimitri 

‎Living mostly in CT at first, the Vardouliases decided to invest in a home in Florida, which they visited seasonally. 18 years ago, they came for good -- getting involved in a pizza place that eventually became their Zorba's, a really nice restaurant in Bonita Springs which seats about 170 people inside and out. We had a super New Year's Eve dinner there with family, friends and awesome lamb chops...topped off by going home to watch the ball drop in Times Square, just like most of you did.

Lamb Fricassee Lesson

New Year's Day morning was spent cutting the Vasilopita and reminiscing in depth...Sofia has saved her Girl's School notebooks, including one with yearbook-like inscriptions from her classmates. She did not know that her younger classmate Zoi Mihalidhou '71 had ended up working for Greek Prime Minister/President Konstantinos Karamanlis for many years until his death -- another Girls School success story, matched by Sofia and many other graduates who also have amazing life stories to share.

A highlight of my visit -- even more than the orgy of Greek TV watching (Dalaras lives, and sounds/looks pretty darn good!) -- was a cooking lesson. Sofia had already planned to make lamb fricassee, my all-time favorite dish. After watching carefully (and getting over my avgo-lemono-making phobia), I can now add it to my lamb shank repertoire. 

Sofia and her husband Takis made me feel very much at home, and we are planning for a return engagement and/or a rendezvous in Greece where they visit annually (she from Elatohori, Katerinis, and he from Mistra, Spartis).  Sofia is now all-in for finding the rest of her classmates and having a reunion. We even called one of them now living in Thessaloniki to say Happy New Year!

Bottom line right now? My Girls School Family just got a whole lot bigger...Opa!


(Published in The Greek American Herald, February 2016)

Building (and Circulating) Family Trees...

Packaging genealogical research is a literary project in many ways. Family Trees may be about facts, but which facts? What did you find?  How is it organized? What do you include? What do you hide? By what name is each branch called. How do you spell it? Will relatives agree? Aman!

Obsessed with details, I have spent hours recently adding more dates and fine-tuning names, knowing that there is still more work to be done.  What are my relatives actual/correct Greek names? Is your name Vasiliki -- or Bessie or Betty or Bella? I'd like to get my hands on whoever turned the name Kostantinos into Gus! (That names were changed on Ellis Island is pure myth. The staff of many languages did their best to preserve the original names listed on ship manifests. Many names were changed and obscured later by the need to blend in.)

Finishing up organizing what I have so far for the main branches of our Family Tree‎ (Skopos, Naousa, Kyparissi, and Koroni) and wanting publish it somehow. Not on the Internet, someone warned -- even though that's how families find each other on Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com.  But publish them I will, primarily in hard copies...because this information should be circulated, savored, and then saved right along with other important family documents. 

There is no end actually, but I am hitting the pause button for now -- at least until I go back to Greece in February to continue unraveling the story of my Papou Xanthoulis Xanthopoulos. ‎Will I ever know when exactly he left Eastern Macedonia (then Ottoman Empire/now Turkey) and with whom, just before his town of Skopos got caught up in the "Armenian Genocide" circa 1915 that spared no Christians? 

Yiayia Pauline's cousin Elisavoudha Lala Milona
and her daughter Kostanza ("Dina")

I know a lot more now than I did 3 years ago before 2 trips to Greece and several more to Stockton...Yes, I was thrilled to be found by Eleni Xanthopoulou and receive a rare picture of my great-grandmother Kokony. But I have also been thrilled to recently meet many more relatives in Naousa -- as only one branch of that side of our family (3 Koutsoukis siblings: Antonios "Tony Gust" Koutsoukis, my Yiayia Pauline Xanttopulos, and Eleni Huntalas) actually immigrated to the USA/Stockton. Their father Kostantinos died in a Thessaloniki Ottoman prison around 1904 for aiding freedom fighters. Their sister Maria Koutsouki stayed in Naousa and her husband, Nikos Theofilos, was the mayor assassinated during the Civil War as reported in Time magazine (1-31-49). Maria relocated with her children to Athens. Her daughter Soula -- who lived in the USA for 8 years -- is my original Naousa Connection!

My mission/responsibility now is to make sure that all family members have their section of the Family Tree, and, if so inclined, they can help me fill in any gaps -- to help ensure that the info is passed on to future generations, so they don't have to start from Square One like I did. And some of us won't be here to answer the many questions. 

Family Trees will soon be arriving in designated mailboxes, maybe yours. Kali Hronia!


(Published in The Greek American Herald, December 2015)