I returned from Greece to New York late Monday night and
left yesterday for San Francisco to attend my nephew’s nearly weeklong wedding
celebration (Congratulations Steven and Kelsey:)). A different sort of celebration will be held September
7th at 7PM at Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Readers Salon in Berkeley when I appear
along with some guy named Hallinan. I
sure hope he’s funny because it takes me quite awhile to get over that east to
west jet lag thing.
And, yes, there is that bit of an emotional down that comes
into play each time I think about spending September on book tour instead of
free diving in the Aegean (for a more detailed self-pitying rant, please see
last Saturday’s blog). But I perk up at
the thought of bringing along my spear gun to fend off all those “rogue authors”
sharking about these days. Yes, I made
up “sharking.” So what? If writers can make up reviews why can’t I
make up one itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy little word?
Oh well, while my mind is still on (and in) Mykonos, let me share
a thought or two with you. But first, a
little history:
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| Neglected Mykonos on far right |
Mykonos wasn’t always a tourist paradise, though it’s said
that during the hot summers of 250 BCE or so, when the neighboring holy island
of Delos’ was in its heyday as the commercial trading center for the ancient
world, Delosians would send their wives and children to Mykonos. Not so much to holiday, as many wealthy
Athenian husbands send them today, but to save them from the advances of
thousands of anonymous sailors and traders passing through the island looking
for ways to spend their time. (I doubt
Mykonos would qualify as a sanctuary for virtue these days, but perhaps you
might want to check that out for yourself––on Trip Advisor, of course).
The history of Mykonos, as with everything in Greece, is
wrapped up in the gods. Some say the island’s name comes from Apollo’s
grandson, Mykons, though others claim it just meant “a pile of rocks” in
keeping with the myth that Heracles fought the Giants in aid of Zeus and after
defeating them threw the Giants into the sea where they turned to rock that is
now Mykonos.
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| Hercules/Heracles battling the Giants |
The first evidence of inhabitants on Mykonos dates back to
4000 BCE, but for most of the following six-thousand years its proximity to the
more commercially developed islands of Delos, Syros, and Tinos, as well as the
foreign dominator then in control––Carians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Minoans,
Ionians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Venetians, Turks, Russians, and others
all dominated at some point––determined whether the island prospered or not.
Two other significant elements played a part in Mykonos’
development: piracy and plague. The
island was haunted by pirates virtually from antiquity, so much so that it
became home to many and legend for its able-bodied seamen willing to sail to
wherever there was commerce or battle.
But sea travel brought with it many perils, including
plague. As recently as the mid-19th
Century (1854 according to the Mykonos historical society) plague so badly
ravished the population that those who survived and did not flee to other
islands or the mainland, were too few to work the fields or take care of the
animals. That’s when the Church induced
immigrants from islands such as Crete, Naxos, Santorini, and Folegandros to
move to Mykonos, offering the promise of a new start for them and the hope of a
new beginning for the island.
A flicker of promise appeared after World War I that tourism
might take root, but World War II crushed it.
The German army’s program of taking everything for themselves and
leaving nothing for the occupied people brought devastating famine and death to
Mykonians on a scale greater than almost anywhere else in Greece.
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| All old Mykonos photographs courtesy of Dimitris Koutsoukos |
After World War II came war on the mainland between the left
and the right, and in the fifties and early sixties a mass exodus of the
island’s youth to Athens and far off lands in search of a better life.
Against that six thousand years of struggle it is amazing
indeed how in little more than a single generation Mykonos was transformed into
its present day wonder and the long-impoverished Mykonians became among the
wealthiest per capita people in Greece.
So, what does all that history portend for the future of the
island? Some may think it presumptuous
of me to offer an opinion, but since I have one, why not give it? Besides, I’m safely out of the country.:)
Almost forever, Mykonians were an overlooked people living
in poverty under a range of different foreign occupiers, some good, some
not. They saw their families
slaughtered, carried off as slaves, die from strange diseases brought to their
island from foreign lands, and starve to death.
Mykonians also witnessed the rise of the greatest civilization
of its time within a mile of their island, a place one twenty-fifth their size,
where hundreds of years before the birth of Christ more than twice as many
people lived as do now on their island.
In its day Delos was the place to be and to party, filled with lavish
homes, temples, theaters, athletic facilities and places of commerce far
outstripping any comparable lifestyle on Mykonos today.
But in the blink of an eye all of it was gone. Leveled, destroyed, wiped off the face of the
earth for having made an unwise political choice.
Mykonians live amid constant reminders of that precipitous
past. The marble and much of the carved
stone that embellishes their homes and churches today came from Delos’ razed
civilization of two thousand years ago.
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| Delos |
Today, in the midst of Greece’s deepening financial crisis, Mykonians
still prosper far beyond anything they could have imagined two decades ago, let
alone two centuries. But they have not forgotten what it was like in the bad
days, and their stories are passed along in cafenions and around family dinner
tables everyday. It is a part of their cultural
history, demonstrating the strength of will and resilience of which they are
justly proud.
All of which leads me to one inevitable conclusion: Fame is
fleeting, all glory fades. In time, change
will come to the island. When that will occur and whether the transition will be
glorious or not, who can say? But it will
happen. Always has, always will, and
when it does Mykonians will persevere as they have for six thousand years. They will because it is their nature, as
expressed in the adage used to describe their relationship with the magical
place on which they’re blessed to live: Our
rocky island is not made up of its people; our people are made up of its rock.
God bless you, my friends (including Steven and Kelsey).
Jeff—Saturday
