Article Selection

Carnival in modern Greece is celebrated in a great variety of ways. Its highly colorful customs derive from many sources, but some of its most interesting traditions can be traced back to antiquity.

The White Pelican, a scarce species declining in numbers, is a large impressive waterbird, with long thick beak, flesh-coloured, four-toed, webbed feet, and well-preened glittering white plummage. These birds swim gracefully in the water, then lift to fly in long lines, soaring at great heights and showing black beneath a wide wing. They are an enthralling sight, and one would travel far to see them.
The best — in fact almost the only—place to see them is in northern Greece. But it is a diminishing species, for it requires a specialized habitat less and less common in Europe: marshland, swamp, and delta. Obviously, strong conservational measures are called for if the White Pelican is to be preserved for the delight and education of succeeding generations. Such a movement is active in Greece, and one of its brightest lights is Byron Antipas.

The two or three weeks before the referendum on the monarchy provoked a great deal of enthusiasm and not a little rancour between people who had heretofore been the best of friends. Peaceful dinners were transformed into battlegrounds and even the sacred family unit in some cases was split asunder.

There survive a great number of icons, apart from those in the great tradition of the Eastern Church of the Medieval period which were executed during the Ottoman domination.

The Celebration of the Epiphany

There are many things I do not know, but one thing has bothered me: I

When the invitation postcard for this year’s ‘Natures Mortes’ exhibition arrived on my desk, I looked at the items portrayed thereon: an old phonograph, a mandolin, a violin and bow, a neoclassical box, a flute, a candle and, naturally, a komboloi, plus the monumental ‘Lights and Shadows’ and the blue magic of the ‘Window on the Sea’ record-cover—the everyday world of Spyros Vassiliou. An assortment? Far from it.

It is usually from up-stage — but if it isn’t it certainly looks that way. It is a/ways quick, it is always a deep sweep down to the footlights followed by a long ‘cross’. It is always an intimate recognition of the audience before even so much as a ‘how-do-you-do’ to the other actors. This is the Vouyouklaki ‘entrance’.

THE results of our first parliamentary elections in ten years came as a surprise to a great many people, not because they were won by the New Democracy party of Constantine Karamanlis but because of this party’s unprecedented majority.