It must have been late 1943 and I was about ten months old. A woman who hated my father told the Germans in the village that my father was hiding a pistol at his house. In the German-occupied Greece of World War II, this was an accusation that could lead to death, indeed the murder of my entire family.  The Germans surrounded our home. They ordered my mother, two of my sisters, and an aunt to stand against the wall. A couple of soldiers started searching the home for the banned weapon.  My family lived in the village Valsamata of the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. My peasant father had hidden a gun in the house.  My oldest sister, Reggina, who was holding me, knew where the gun was located in the second floor of the house. She passed me to my aunt and, unnoticed, she disappeared into the house where, despite the searching Germans, she went straight to the secret place, hid the gun in her clothes, and jumped through the window to freedom w

Olive trees in the village Metaxata, Cephalonia, Greece. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos City of Trees I live in Claremont, California. On May 20, 2019, I walked to Sprouts Farmers Market grocery store. On the southern corner of the streets Mountain and Foothill, I saw workers and giant machinery cutting down trees. These are trees the City of Claremont tried to eliminate in 2008.  The absurd reason then was that some California department had funded Claremont to modernize Foothill Blvd. This meant cutting down all trees at the edge of the street in order to widen a strip of cement for people on wheelchairs. I was then renting a house just behind this thin green zone of trees separating my house and those of my neighbors from the busy and dangerous Foothill Blvd, which resembles a highway. Cars zoom fast in both lanes and both directions day and night.  I talked to the neighbors and together we convinced the City Council to abandon that crazy project. Now, more than

Symposium The best conditions for genuine discussion, for me at least, is during a feast of good food and drink. Ancient Greeks called that symposium. The wisdom behind the tradition of symposium – millennia ago and today -- is simple. Friends and guests eating food and drinking wine feel good about themselves. Organic food well-cooked and excellent wine do that. They are medicines. In such euphoria, symposiasts are very likely to be honest, even eloquent, in their expression of their views or opinions. This is the reason Plato chose the dialogue for the spreading of his ideas. The dialogue comes from intimate symposium discussions. Today I often hear Americans speaking in radio or television saying this and that must be part of a “national conversation.” I wonder what they have in mind. Invisible civil war This is because in the second decade of the twenty-first century Americans are divided as never before. Republicans are embracing guns, perpetual wars, cor

The Pnyx: Hill of democracy near the Acropolis where the Ecclesia, Assembly of Athenian citizens, would debate political issues and legislate for Athens. Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia.  Several ancient Greek poleis (city-states) had democratic constitutions but evidence for democracy survived primarily in Syracuse and Athens. Democracy in Athens Homer, playwrights, eloquent political writers, historians and philosophers left comments, speeches and books about how Greeks governed themselves. In addition, thousands of inscriptions mention or describe persons, decisions, and institutions of political importance.  Most of the surviving evidence, including that from ostracism, the ten-year banishment of politicians voters perceived dangerous, comes from Athens. Tradition has it that in late sixth century BCE, a man named Kleisthenes, grandson of the tyrant Kleisthenes of Sicyon, a polis in Peloponnesos, founded Athenian democracy. He defeated the Athenian tyrant and disbanded

School of Athens by Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio, 1483-1520). Plato and Aristotle are at the center of the painting. Courtesy Wikipedia. Greek history Growing up in the 1940s in a Greek village was neither a baptism in Greek culture nor an indoctrination to nationalism. This was because “modern” Greece has been going through the suffering of centuries of foreign occupation and official neglect and often ignorance about the country’s unrivalled ancient civilization.  Greek history was interrupted by barbarian invasions. Hellas (the name ancient Greeks – Hellenes – called Greece) was remade, especially by its permanent Christian conquerors. Lots of deprivations defined my Greekness, including the terrible legacy of World War II and civil war. The so-called communists in the civil war killed two brothers of my father and a sister of my mother.  Despite that violence, my rural elementary and urban high school education taught me a few things about my ancient Greek ancesto