Guest Blogger, Irma Havlicek: Moseying Around Mykonos

This guest blog reminds me of one of those nests of Russian dolls.  You know the kind, where each doll contains yet another, leaving you to choose whether to play with one that piques your interest or delve deeper.  Google Alerts steered me to a blog written by Australian web producer Irma Havlicek, who’d taken a weekend off from her work at an archaeological dig on the Aegean Cycladic island of Andros to visit neighboring Mykonos with two colleagues.

I loved her take and photographs of my island and asked permission to post it all here.  Irma’s only request was that I provide a link to her archeological project’s website, ZAGORA Archaeological Project.  And am I ever happy that she did.  What a site.  And the brief film clip there is not to be missed by archaeology buffs.  

The Zagora Project is a partnership between the Powerhouse Museum of Sydney, the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, the University of Sydney, and the Archeological Society of Athens, and made possible by a grant from the Australian Research Council.  The project picked up this past October where excavations conducted during the late 1960s and early 1970s by another Australian team led by Sydney University Archaeology Professor Alexander Cambitoglou (under the auspices of the Archaeology Society at Athens) left off.  Planning is underway for the project to continue in 2013 and 2014.

Excavations center on the 3000 year-old settlement of Zagora (900-700 BCE) on an island that today is home to some of Greece’s wealthiest ship-owning families and but a quarter mile from the holy island of Tinos (of “Target: Tinos” fame:)).  Zagora is virtually intact, having not suffered from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or war, nor was it disturbed by subsequent settlements.  In other words, everything is where it was back then.  What is yet to be answered is why in 700 BCE (just as Greece was coming out of its dark ages) its population simply vanished? 

Hmm, a mystery.  And if we toss in the enticing tidbit that those earlier Australian excavations corresponded with the period of Greece’s Junta dictatorship (1967-1974)… But wait, this is not about my idea for a new book, it’s about Irma’s moseying about Mykonos. 

All photographs are by Irma Havlicek and © PHM. 

I was in two minds about writing a post on Mykonos…. I’ve heard from several sources that it seemed from this blog as if we are all holidaying and partying and having the time of our lives on the Zagora Archaeological Project.

Well, we are having the time of our lives, that is true. But most of the time, we are working very, very hard. Sometimes we feel so exhausted, it is difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Last weekend we had the only full weekend we will have off during the six weeks of this field season. All the other weeks, we work all day Monday to Friday and a half-day on Saturday.

So, as I mentioned in the previous post here, two colleagues, Rudy Alagich and Paul Donnelly, and I decided to visit the archaeological site of Delos.  It is not possible to stay overnight there, so we went to Mykonos in order to visit Delos from there by ferry.

So, to Mykonos we went from Andros on Friday night, 16 November 2012, and made a trip to Delos on Saturday. There was only one ferry to Delos from Mykonos on Saturday at 10am, and it returned at 1pm. So the rest of the time, we moseyed around Mykonos.

I’d heard Mykonos was a busy, bustling, thriving tourist destination with a raging night-life – which is very attractive to others but not so to me.

However, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the island. The architecture of the whitewashed houses with their brightly coloured doors and stair rails, and festooned with vivid bougainvillea, was charming and lovely. We enjoyed meandering around the narrow curving paved streets (even if we kept curving back on ourselves, not knowing quite where we were….) We found Mykonos remarkably unspoiled, with little discernible development to mar the charming village nature of the place.

There were very few tourists about now that the weather is getting cooler. Much of the time we felt we had the island to ourselves. But maybe that was because we went out early each morning and it seems most of the rest of the people didn’t venture out till 10 or 11am.

Also, being off-season, we were able to book excellent, reasonably priced rooms at the Leto Hotel from the ferry, while on our way to Mykonos.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures to give you a taste of the island. Well, more than a few. For someone who wasn’t too keen originally to visit Mykonos, I sure went overboard with the number of photos I took.

Thank you Irma Havlicek and the Zagora Archaeological Project.  And yes, Mykonos does have a tendency to send its visitors overboard.:)

Jeff—Saturday

Flash For Ever

This post has been more than heavily influenced by Tim's wonderful little blog about P.G Wodehouse the week before last. Currently, I'm in book finishing hell (a little non-fiction number I will tell you about anon) which has involved a) writing it very quickly and b) then doing a major rewrite because of a). I've been working seven days a week, 15 hours a day for the past few weeks, and as any writer knows when they're faced with that kind of work load you need to dangle yourself one almighty carrot at the end to help get you through the slog.

I have two carrots. One is researching another book, which involves cricket (yay! you all cry) and I can't wait to start. The second is a promise to escape into the world of a fiction, and specifically the world of one of English literature's greatest comic creations, Flashman.

I first read the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser when I was a teenager and loved them. I've re-read a few since then and still loved them. Now, or at least in a week or so time, as a treat I'm going to read them all from start to glorious finish, and I can't wait.

I should hate Flashman. He is a sexist, racist, empire-loving coward. I once read an interview with Fraser and it was clear that Flashman's opinion were not that much of a caricature of his own. But Fraser wrote like a dream, he knew his history backwards and inside out, and in Flashman he created a character for the ages. Or re-created him. Flashman first turns up as the school bully in the very dreary Tom Brown's Schooldays. Fraser had the wonderful idea to take Flashman, still have him as a bully, but make him an incorrigible shagger and carouser who would turn and run at the first hint of trouble, putting the safety of his own skin above that of all others, and then place him at the scene of some of  the 19th century's most famous and infamous events.

So, we have Flashman at Little Big Horn (his Native American - though Flashy would laugh uproariously at such politically correct pussyfooting - name: He Who Rides So Fast He Breaks the Wind, or Windbreaker for short) at Harper's Ferry, the first Anglo-Afghan War, The Charge of the Light Brigade, the Indian Mutiny, taking the first hat-trick in cricket history; and meeting Queen Victoria (who fancies him obviously) Custer (a psychotic), Abraham Lincoln (cool and collected), John Brown (another psychotic), Otto Von Bismarck (see Custer and Brown), Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar and Oscar Wilde ('an overfed trout in a toupé') and countless others. If they're female, he beds them. If they're warlike and brave, he hates them. If they're craven and cowardly like him, he gets the hell away from them before they rumble him as another wuss.

The central conceit is that wherever he goes he ends up hiding and crying and whimpering, but inevitably ends up being crowned the hero despite himself. Despite this predictability, the books are so much fun and so funny that you don't care. They also work as good introductions to history. They're so accurate and well researched that the occasional dopey historian was known to write to Fraser asking if they could have a look at the papers that Fraser draws the stories from (the basis for the books is that Fraser 'found' the memoirs in 1965 in an antique tea-chest in an antique salesroom 'wrapped in oilskin.')

Rather annoyingly, one of the insults hurled at our Prime Minister, the posh, arrogant and short-tempered David Cameron, is that he's like Flashman. Perhaps in Tom Brown's Schooldays, but Flashy fans know their hero is funny, self-deprecating and charming, despite being an obvious cad and a bounder (or because of it.) About the only trait he shares with our horrible PM is cowardice, though the crucial difference is that Flashman admits his.

So, after these past mad few weeks, I'm looking forward to Flash for Sanity!

cheers

Dan - Friday

One of history’s finest no-results

Cricket

Dan has waxed lyrical on several occasions about the greatest of sports – cricket.  I share his love for this amazing game.  I will leave it to him to give you a brief description of how it is played.

However, there are two basic facts that you need to know to appreciate what I am going to write.  First, at the pinnacle of all the various forms of cricket is the Test Match.  It takes place between two countries and lasts five days of 6 hours play a day.  Elapsed time per day is a little longer to accommodate drinks, tea, and lunch.  

Second, a fundamental difference between cricket and baseball is that a Test Match ends at a particular time on the last day, say 6:00 PM.  If the side that is batting last is not all out, the match is a draw.  That means it is possible for two sides to play for 5 days and end with no result.

As with any sporting contest, there are matches that live in history for one team beating another in difficult circumstances or because a player has been so outstanding that he (or she in today’s cricket world) has singlehanded changed the course of the game.  These are the games where one team has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.  Of course, the flip side of the same coin is that the other team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Please don’t yawn – here’s a chance to learn a little about what may be the world’s second most popular ball game.]

Last week, a Test Match ended in a draw that will be remembered for years to come.  I think it was one of the most memorable no-results since I have been watching cricket – ie for the last 60 years.  (I am sure Dan will remember another no-result of similar historic proportions where England saved themselves from defeat.)

South Africa and Australia are ferocious competitors – South Africans support any side playing against Australia, and vice versa.

Last week the second Test Match of this year’s series took place between SA and Oz at Adelaide.  The first Test had been drawn, with Oz having the upper hand.  (The series is very important because if it wins the series, Australia will knock South Africa off its #1 perch.)

In the first innings (each side has two in cricket), Australia totally dominated South Africa’s bowling (equivalent of pitching) attack, setting numerous records for high scores for individual batsmen (OZ captain Michael Clarke scored his fourth innings over 200 runs this year), as well as accumulating an enormous score for the first day (455 with only 5 of the ten batsmen out).  We South African supporters were down in the dumps.  On the second day, Australia continued to bat and were eventually all out for 550 runs – a huge total.  South Africa started its first innings well, but later collapsed and were all out for 387. In the middle of the third day.

[Come!  Stick with it!  Only a few more paragraphs to read!]

It is at this stage of a cricket match that the rule that the game must end at 6:00 PM on the fifth day plays a huge strategic role.  For Australia to win, it had to amass more runs than it thought South Africa could get, but at the same time, leave itself enough time to get all of South Africa’s ten wickets (that is, batsmen out).  
If all ten wickets have not been taken, the game is a draw.

Australia batted a second time and declared at 248 for 8 wickets. (This is another fundamental difference between cricket and baseball – because of the fixed end time, a side can end any innings whenever it wants, even if all ten players have not been dismissed.)  This is how a team can try to achieve the balance explained above – having enough runs versus leaving enough time to get the other side out.

When Australia ended its second innings, South Africa had to get 429 runs to win, but had to stay in the game for about 9 hours to prevent defeat – a highly unlikely task.  In reality, South Africa had no chance of winning, and little chance of forcing a draw.

But dogged determination, a dream debut by a South African, and a gutsy two hours’ batting by a stalwart, kept everything that Australia could muster at bay.  The clock reached 6 PM with South Africa having two players still not out.  The match was drawn.  Faf du Plessis, playing in his first Test Match and in the side only because of an injury to a regular player, became the first South African to score over 50 runs in one innings and over 100 runs in the second.  Jacques Kallis, whose been around for a long time, had a pain-filled (from a strained hamstring) innings of nearly two hours.

Kallis (left) congratulates Du Plessis on his century

But what makes a match like this memorable is not only the determination of the South African players to stave off defeat, but more so because of the unbelievable tension that grew and grew throughout the last day.  It is no exaggeration to say that the last hour of this match that ended with no result was as tension-filled as any match that was won or lost.  I’m sure the crowd in Adelaide was ecstatic when a South African player was out, and white-knuckled and seat-edged for the remaining time.  People would have sat with eyes glued on the action, invoking every superstition they could muster to cause South Africa to succumb.  

Australia desperately appeal for Du Plessis' wicket. To no avail!

Six hours batting can take a toll.  Du Plessis is treated for cramps.

There is no doubt in my mind, because of the time span involved, that the tension in cricket reaches peaks not experienced in other sports.

I am always happy to take someone to a cricket match, even one that lasts half a day, to introduce the delights of the game.  I am sure Dan will do the same. 

But only if you have the time.

Stan - Thursday

Empty headed (beats beheaded)

I was googling to see if I had previously blogged about the Icelandic Santa Clauses, i.e. the naughty Yule lads. I started typing: Murder is e…. The suggestions that appeared once the “e” was in place were the following:

Murder is easy

Murder is everywhere

Murder is evil

So we are sandwiched between easy and evil. And easy murder is more popular than evil. Which sort of makes sense if you are a murderer but less so if you are a reader of mysteries.

December is almost upon us here as elsewhere. In the southern regions of Iceland we have yet to see much snow and if I was to be consulted I would ask that it stay that way until the holiday season. It can remain until New Year’s Day as it is as much needed as a receptor for fireworks sticks as it is for festive atmosphere. After that it can go bye-bye as long as it is not replaced by cold rain, which is unfortunately the only likely alternative.

Weather is of great interest to us here in Iceland. It is a subject of discussion that never depletes and quite frequently used as a fallback topic in awkward situations. “I did not know your wife died. I am so sorry to hear that. Was it raining at the funeral? It feels as if it has rained constantly for months now. Someone mentioned that we are close to breaking the rain record from 1983.” And so on.

Since my mind is still depleted of any original thoughts since wrapping up my book – which is now on the shelves here and hopefully able to fend for itself – I could revert to discussing the weather. I am too wrung out to tell you about the Santa Clauses this week but promise to do so next Wednesday. But discuss the weather I will not. You have probably stopped reading anyway at the mere hint of me doing so.

For those that have endured I must sadly notify that it was not worth your while. At all. So to make it up to you I have decided to add a few photos that will hopefully make up for my lack of ingenuity tonight.

And for those of you who left messages last week regarding my little dog – thank you for your kind words. The stitches have now been removed and new ones put in. Stitches rev. 2 are a lot better that rev. 1 since they are no longer used to sew the eye shut, leaving him looking like some sort of voodoo doll. Now they are used to realign the upper and lower eyelid - separately  We are told it remains to be seen if he has lost sight in the eye. All I now care about is that he keeps it and does not need to have it removed. I don't think the zombie look of an exposed eye socket will suit him any better than the voodoo look he just got rid of. 

You see I know he is blind in the mangled eye. I got out of bed during the night and passed him fast asleep and snoring. Good eye shut. Hurt eye wide open.

Light obviously bothers this eye as much as it would bother an ear.

Yrsa - Wednesday

photos originate from www.icelandtouristboard.com

Coluche - restaurants des Coeur

Coluche - a French comedian and actor - infamous for his ireverent 'everyman' routine passed away in 1985 in a motorcycle accident.  This 'mec' who wore overalls and a yellow Tshirt in his act lived life in the fast lane and broke a world speed motorbike record of 252 km an hour.  He was 41 when he died in 1986. But his legacy lives on in the foundation he began, Les Restaurants du Coeur. In a famous radio interview Coluche gave less than a year before his death he said "I have a little idea..." which gave way into a charity that helps more than 600,000 people a day providing food and clothing for the needy and homeless. 

Coluche, in his act, left no establishment or person safe from his  barbed comments. He once said, "Your father doesn't work, like mine, so he's a Fonctionaire right?' meaning those government employees hired for life in the French system who basically do nothing and can't be fired. Coluche, to many, was the voice for the forgotten and the ignored in the system. His novel idea, for the Socialist government, of this private foundation recruited 40,000 volunteers who help in almost 2,500 Restos. Every year there's a gala fundraiser,  with a group of famous celebrities known as les Enfoires, the assholes, who keep true to Coluche's humor and raise tons of money for les restaurants des Coeur. 

The cold weather in Paris makes life hard for the SDF, sans domicile fixe, or homeless. I took this shot in Place des Vosges in the Marais, one of the most exclusive addresses in the City of Light. I hope this SDF got to one of Coluche's resto's that night.

Cara - Tuesday

About Lefties

No more than 10 % (and perhaps as little as 5%) of the world’s population is left-handed.

I’m one of them.

Most of us have terrible handwriting.

In my case, it’s partly because the school desks of my youth looked like this:

Notice where the arm-support is? Notice that it’s fixed?

When we, the left-handed kids, were developing our penmanship we had to twist around in our seats to get support on a corner of our desks.

And not only that.

Did you notice this thing in the upper right-hand corner?

It was a place into which an inkwell was inserted.

Back then, we were taught to write with nibbed pens.

And left-handers, as they wrote, invariably “blotted their copybooks” (ever wonder where that phrase came from?) as their hands passed over the wet ink unless they positioned their hand, as they wrote forward, so that the heel passed over the top of the line. (Yes, it is possible. All left-handers, back then, did it.)

But it came at a cost.

I got terrible grades in penmanship.

And my cursive handwriting, to this day, is so difficult to decipher, that I usually write notes to other people in block letters.

Leonardo da Vinci was a “lefty”.

And his famous “mirror writing” was a practical solution to a real problem.

By composing from right to left, he could allow his hand to precede what he was writing – just like a right-hander does naturally. And that hand never ran over wet ink.

I tried to talk my third-grade teacher into letting me do it.

But she wouldn’t go for it.

We left-handers are also challenged by scissors (generally contoured to be used in one’s right hand), checkbooks (that open on the left, leaving us no place to rest the heel of our hands when we’re writing a check) and all sorts of other stuff like manual pencil sharpeners and cheese grinders.

There are other disadvantages, too:

On the average, we live nine years less than right-handed people.

And we’re three times as likely to become alcoholics. (This, because we make more use of the right-brain than right-handers do, and the right-brain has a lower tolerance to alcohol.)

The trade-off for writers, painters and musicians is that creativity is a right-brain function.

Artists in our ranks, in addition to Leonardo, include Raphael, Michelangelo, Holbein, Dürer, Klee and Escher.

We also have a few world conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Cesar.

Some football (soccer) greats like Cruyff, Pelé and Maradona.

 And the all-time Olympic great Mark Spitz.

And, yeah, okay, I admit it, such famous criminals as John Dillinger, The Boston Strangler and Jack-the -Ripper.

How about some of you other lefties reading this contribute a comment and be counted?

Leighton – Monday

Political Gas

We had riots here in Bangkok this week.  They were held by a "royalist" opposition party, Pitak Siam, dedicated to the overthrow of the current democratically elected prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra; her party, PheuThai; and all things Shinawatra.  Pitak Siam announced several weeks ago that they were going to bring down the Evil (Democratically Elected) Regime by massing a million protesters and, essentially, striking a decisive blow for the freedom of the very rich traditional ruling elite.

Well . . .

Even the most flattering estimates of the size of the crowd put it at 20,000, or about two percent of the target.  Most of them had it at roughly 12,000, which means that the demonstrators were literally outnumbered by the cops and soldiers on hand.

So the demonstrators listened to speeches from the stage that had been set up and generally stood around drinking bottled water.  The police, in a common-sense move, had limited access to what was supposed to have been the riot's authorized site by putting concrete blockades across all but two of the major streets that provided access.  This outraged the protesters.  The cops and army had also set up checkpoints at many of the main entry points into Bangkok proper.  This outraged the protesters.

Forget that Thailand is currently suffering almost daily attacks by Muslim extremists in the South and that there have been a couple in Bangkok as well.  Forget what an enticing target a closely-packed crowd of one million people (or even a sparse little cocktail party of 12,000) would have been.  Forget the howls from Pitak Siam if a terrorist (or several) had been allowed to penetrate the crowd and set off explosive devices.  I mean, imagine the outrage.

But forget all that.  That's future outrage. What mattered to the Pitak Siam leaders was current outrage.

So there's the crowd, milling around and probably telling each other jokes, and there are the cops, resolutely declining to put their snipers into action or to get the army to roll tanks over a few protesters as a photo op.  So the Pitak Siam leaders order their hapless followers to storm the barricades, and they do, and the cops fire some tear gas and whack a couple of people with nightsticks and everybody runs away.  The Pitak Siam leader, in a paroxysm of self-pity (It's not about the country, it's about me.), said, “I have already died.”

We should be so lucky.

But, of course, the TV news channels enlivened the permanent IQ sink they inhabit with extensive footage of the tear gas, and many newspapers, following the 21st-century journalism precept, “If it bleeds, it leads,” did the same.

And, of course, this debacle crowned an amazing couple of weeks for Yingluck, in which she represented Thailand at a Southeast Asian leadership conference, looking, in the lineup of her neighboring heads of state, like a rose in a bowl of artichokes, and then held a joint press conference with President Obama, answering, in English, questions posed in English—something the opposition said she'd never dare to do.

And just to avoid charges of my being infatuated with Yingluck's womanly charms (the opposition press ran cartoons that Thailand's first female prime minister seducing the U.S. President like a bar girl), let's focus for a moment on the often-neglected concept of majority rule.  Remember majority rule?

Her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, was elected Prime Minister twice, the second time by the only absolute majority in the history of Thai politics and was then thrown out of office in a coup by the power elite.  They held an election, and Thaksin's deputy was elected.  He was thrown out of office, and the elite put one of their own in the prime minister's chair and suspended elections until they absolutely had to hold one, at which time Yingluck was elected by the second absolute majority in the history of Thai politics.

I don't actually believe that Pheu Thai, Yingluck's party, has the people's interest much closer to their hearts than the power elite does—they're certainly doing nothing about the ongoing seizure of rice farms in the poverty-stricken Northeast—but listen up, you boneheads in the power elite. The people elected her.  They're probably going to elect her again.  Get used to it.

Oh, yeah, she faces censure hearings this week.  Maybe they'll fire tear gas at the opposition leaders.  That would be nice.

Tim -- Sunday