Our Town

The Battle of Rhodes

REPORT from Catherine Vanderpool: When the “Homer” sailed into Rhodes on the morning of July 16, it was greeted by a large crowd holding a giant sign which read, “We don’t want you.”

The Great “Havouza” Saga

THE history of the Athens sewage system is a long and, frankly, noxious one. Of its importance in antiquity, little has seeped down from ancient historians who foEowed the pleasant but now quite obsolete dictum, “If something smells, don’t put your nose in it.”

The New Prime Minister

AT 10:30 a.m. on May 8, the doors of the Senate Chamber in Parliament were closed, and the 172 deputies of the ruling New Democracy Party inside opened a caucus which would choose the party’s leader who would, thereby, become the country’s new Prime Minister.

The Squeezed-Out Lemon Prize

A journalist who writes a column in the weekly magazine Epikaira, Nikos Dimou, has proposed a new piece of legislation which he believes should be written into the Greek constitution and the violation of which should be considered a penal crime carrying appropriately heavy sentences.

The Onassis Legacy

WHAT with Odysseas Elytis winning the Nobel Prize in December; Prime Minister Karamanlis, the Robert Schuman prize on March 15; and President Tsatsos, the Cudenhove-Kallergi Prize on March 18, it was high time that non-Greeks be given a chance to win prizes, too, and that the prizes themselves be of Greek origin.

Greek Revival in London

WHILE it was snowing in Athens at the beginning of March, London was enjoying an early spring with trees blossoming in Chelsea, daffodils blooming in Kensington flower boxes, and patches of crocuses lending colour to many of the parks and squares.

Belt-Tightening

THERE has been a running debate in this country for more than two thousand years on the question of whether it is the people who are ungovernable or their statesmen who are incompetent in governing them.

1980: The Year of the Grown-up

In reply to a UNICEF-sponsored query as to what he thought of the International Year of the Child, a Turkish youngster wrote the following one-sentence response: “If we could have had the Year of the Parent before the Year of the Child, perhaps our problems would have been better understood.”