What Alice Forgot

The premise of this book is clever. A 39 year old woman hits her head and forgets the last ten years of her life. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is predictable and slow. The end.

Kefalonia

Today we flew to Kefalonia. We will be here one night then go to Ithaca for our one week yoga retreat.

Our flight was only 40 minutes. Propeller plane!

warm Ionian sea

restaurant on the beach

Greece

A while ago, I decided to go to Greece. Now that I am here, it feels like a strange decision. Greece is really, really far away -- 6160 miles. Last year, a yoga teacher mentioned that she ran a retreat on a remote Greek island. Without any investigation I decided I should go.  Earlier this year, I signed up for the retreat then realized that Greece is almost more middle east than western Europe.

I used to make a lot of my life decisions this way but my impulsive ways have been tempered by the reality of children. I tend to think through my decisions more as they effect many people.

So I am here and it is great but it also feels like I am living someone else's life.

I am traveling with a friend from my SU days. We decided to leave from Vancouver Canada as the flight was much cheaper even if we factored a night in a hotel in Vancouver. We stayed at the coolest airport hotel in the US.. it actually won an award. It's the Fairmont at Vancouver International Airport.

This is the view from our room! a runway. Plus you walk outside the hotel and you are in the airport. It would be exciting for the kids.

we ordered room service because we got to the hotel pretty late

We were delayed MANY hours in the Montreal Airport. I saw this Nintendo display and thought of Jack.

We finally boarded our plane and flew for 9 hours.

Our first full day, we took a mythology tour. We visited many ancient Greek historical sites including the Acropolis

Parthenon - dedicated to Athena

Every day, 25,000 people visit the Acropolis. 

Temple of Zeus

Temple of Hephaestus

It was very hot on our first day -- 100 degrees. So we spent a couple of hours at our AirBnB before leaving again for the Acropolis museum. It has many original piece of the Acropolis and a lot of the history. We were pretty tired though. My only picture is the LEGO replica of the Acropolis.

On our second day, we took an excellent tour called Culinary Back Streets of Athens. It was a 7 hour food tour. We learned so much about Greek culture, history and food. They have great food here.

31 million people visit Greece which has a population of 10 million.  To put that in perspective, in 2014, 75 million people visited the US. To have the proportional amount of tourists, we would need 1 billion people to visit the US every year. The central core of Athens which has existed for at least 2000 years seems to exist for tourists. I barely felt like a foreigner. There are a lot of English speakers, all the restaurants have English language menus. There are also a lot of people from other countries -- I heard lots of Spanish and Italian speakers. The center of Athens is very cool but it reminds me of the center of Florence or Amsterdam. It doesn't seem to be a place where people live. It's a place people visit. 

Half of the Greek population lives in Athens -- It is a sprawling city with only one tall building (20 stories).  We ventured outside the center looking for authentic Greek yogurt (made from sheep's milk -- I was not a fan) the city became much louder, grittier, and chaotic... like any big city.

Back to our tour: we ate all day. It was great fun.

pastries!

Byzantine church with hotel built around it

candied mandarins

greek coffee - different but good

the Greeks read the patterns of the coffee grounds to tell your future

lots of interesting graffiti.

Central coast of California

Every year around the 4th of July, we spend a week on the central coast of California. It is always lots of fun. We spend every day at a beach. The weather is beautiful. We visit with Ryan's parents and a great time is had by all.

loose seal!

Sand Dollar beach

building kyrons at Sand Dollar

We visited an art installation called Sensorio. Below is a picture of what happens when the sun sets

Sensorio after dark

Waves at Ryan's favorite beach near Hearst Castle

Can American Capitalism Survive?

I hope every Democratic candidate has read this book. It's essentially an economic analysis of all that ails our culture. Since the titans of our economic system now own our political system, the two systems are now one.

The author articulates 3 ideas about our economy that were born during the economic stagnation of the 1970's

1. The government was significantly responsible for the decline of American competitiveness.
2. The sole purpose of every business is to deliver the highest possible financial return to its investors,
3. No matter how unfair it might seem to cut taxes for the wealthy, no matter how ruthless a company might have to be in its dealings with workers and consumers, no matter how unequal the distribution of income and wealth might become, we must ignore and dismiss such moral concerns as naive and ultimately self-defeating.

There are many charts and footnotes citing economists, sociologists, psychologists, and government statistics that prove these ideas have led to massive income inequality which is ultimately going to kill economic growth and a destruction of social capital -- a fancy way to quantify good will and trust between humans of a culture.

He offers many excellent suggestions for ways to save ourselves .. It is possible Elizabeth Warren has already read the book -- In fact, I would not be surprised if some of her academic work can be found in the footnotes. She is the one candidate who seems to understand the ways in which our supply side economic policies have benefitted very few and hurt very many.

In summary, it turns out greed is not good.

Dinner with Penelope

Soon, I will travel to Greece. Months ago, I found a list of books about Greece recommended by Rick Steves. Dinner with Penelope sounded the most interesting --it's a memoir written by an American woman in her 20's about the year she spent in Greece. The book was published in 1996.

I have spent months trying to get through the book and ultimately, I failed. Given the fact that it's a memoir, we learn no personal details about the woman who writes it. I have no idea why she chose to spend the year in Greece. She speaks Greek but is not of Greek descent.. again who knows why? In spite of being in her twenties, she seems to approach life like someone in their 70s. She provides 10 million details about a vase inside an Orthodox church or some mundane facts about Byzantine history.

I did learn a few things about Greece that I feel could be summed up by this paragraph:

We are on our way to Mystras, the ghost town which gazes down on the Spartan plain, perhaps the most significant of the medieval sites on the Greek mainland, remnants which have the direct link to contemporary Greece that the classical sites do not -- in these settings the never-resolved struggle between Christianity and classical culture, between philosophy and theology, was engaged, the struggle which is powerfully present, both overtly and covertly, in the living Greece I am traveling in. The schizophrenia of modern Greek history, as well as thought, is demonstrated here, since this site, which became one of the last outposts of the Byzantine Empire, was built by enemies of the Byzantine Empire.

So the Greeks have a long, complicated history and they are complicated people. They are also grossly sexist.. the only personal details the author offers of her experience are the many times she is accosted by Greek men.. who are convinced of their superiority. Women are pleased when their husbands die and their value seems to be determined by keeping their children dependent on them.

2/3 of the way through the book, I had a hard time appreciating Greek culture, so I stopped reading. However one sentence stays with me -- today's Greece seems to know that "her face is her fortune." Greece is apparently such a beautiful place that in spite of a culture that seems to be stuck in many different centuries of the distant past, the country is still thriving because of its geography.

I look forward to having my own experience however brief it will be.. I am also grateful not to have been born into that culture.

No Walls and The Recurring Dream

Ani Di Franco was a musical pioneer when I was in my twenties. She is a folk singer who lived by her own rules which included the ideas the women are equal to men and capitalism is not a great system. Because of her disdain for the record industry, she created her own record label and followed zero rules around what kind of music she'd write and what kind of press she'd participate in.

What I love most about her is that while she suffered all the challenges of fame and self-reflection regarding who she was as a female artist in this world, she tells her tales as a joyful rather than bitter person. I remember watching a documentary about The Eagles years ago. Don Henley is probably the most successful person in that very successful group -- Their record the Eagles greatest hits is the best selling album of all time. I guarantee you know every word to every song of that album even if you can't think of one right now.

Don Henley, however, was so wounded by his experience that he just seems like a big whiner. He is worth $200 million dollars and has achieved more success than most in his field but all he did was complain. He was real dull that way.

Di Franco is his opposite. She suffered many of the same disappointments but seems to respect herself and not take herself too seriously at the same time.

Her book was quite a windy road of a tale but if you love her, you'll love the book.