Dion - The Sacred Sanctuary of Zeus.

H and I have just celebrated our birthdays – but who’s counting, right? Last night we went to a concert to celebrate the memory and musical legacy of lyricist, singer and writer, Manolis Rasoulis. He died in March 2011 but rather than be maudlin about his passing, it was clear that the large group of singers, composers and musicians involved- including his daughter and Agathonas Iakovidis, of Greek Eurovision song contest fame!- were hell-bent on making this an evening to remember. At 3am they struck up his famous ‘Pote Voudas, Pote Koudas’ and the place ignited. The night club may have had an audience that was in the older age-range than usual, but the energy and excitement were there. Everyone was up, gyrating to the beat, honouring at the same time, Nikos Papazoglou, a local singer/composer whom we lost in that same year and who was strongly identified with that song. Pictures of Manolis and Nikos being projected during the song made the experience all the more poignant. We left at 3.30 and things were still jumping. Since the hour had already changed, it was actually 5 am when we got home – not bad for two oldies!

You may remember we left me literally making a pig of myself at the Dimatis Guest House. What- wild boar? Me?! For most of our time in Aghios Dimitrios we had, what we call in the W. Highlands, smirr. This is atmospherically-suspended moisture, somewhere between a mist and a very fine rain. That is, fine in the sense of minute particles, not as in all is well and good.

 My brother and his wife, being in its proximity for the first time, were understandably keen to view Mount Olympus, but it kept eluding us among these vaporous shrouds. On the morning of our departure as we made our descent, the mighty mountain momentarily appeared for us in all its glory before retiring once more behind its mysterious cloud-cover. That was a really brief encounter but awesome in the fullest sense.

                       

 

 

The final leg of our journey was a visit to Dion, the sanctuary of Zeus, the greatest of the Olympian gods.

Incidentally, for keen linguists among you, the not-so-obvious connection is that Dion is the genitive form of Zeus.  There’s Greek for you!                                                                                                       

We decided to get there by smaller country roads, H fully confident that his sense of direction would steer us through. The road petered out at a local rubbish tip where a herd of goats were scavenging – I see no Dion!  :(

As we backtracked we spied a lone pedestrian and stopped to ask him the way. It was only as we were driving off that I noticed the orange word emblazoned on his deep-blue dungarees: ZEUS.                  

Had we, indeed, been given divine direction?  

In times of yore, the ancients tended to worship the earth goddess, Gaia being the archetypal one.  History has it that when the Olympian cult took over, Gaia was superseded by Demeter. But I guess male superiority prevailed for it was her brother, Zeus, who wielded real power!

 As times changed so did affiliations of a spiritual nature. Different cults paid respects to their respective gods. The female deity continued, too, in the forms of Aphrodite, then Artemis, whom the Ptolemies, with their Egyptian influence, transmuted into Isis. It does seem that politics and religion have always been intertwined. In the time of Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great, Dion served as a large military camp. Philip celebrated his many victories here while Alexander made sacrifices and generous offerings before setting off on his successful Persian campaign.

Teams from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki began excavations here in 1928 and they have made amazing finds: marble statues, architectural features, furnishings, graves, pottery, jewellery, mosaics, even water supplies and sewage systems. These all testify to the importance of Dion, politically, culturally and spiritually. Sadly, it seems to have been abandoned by the 5^th century AD due to a succession of natural disasters- earthquakes and flooding. But its sense of greatness remains.

Since Zeus’ spirit was believed to reside in trees and water, his shrine was in a spectacular setting. Mists had eventually lifted and we strolled around the site in hot sunshine. Here are Jacqui and Ali standing by a wall whose designs of shields and armour honour the brave Macedonian warriors.

 

 

                                

                                              

The area that I particularly liked was the sanctuary to Isis. This statue is dedicated to Isis-Tyche, the goddess of good fortune. In this sacred precinct there was a long paved corridor, said to represent the River Nile!

  

 

        

As well as sanctuaries, there was a stadium, baths and accommodation. In 1987 an excavation team unearthed a large 2^nd century AD villa with a wonderful floor mosaic of Dionysius emerging from the sea in his chariot. In that same place were found the statues of the four philosophers. This is a favourite of mine – I like to think of them mulling over some ticklish existential issue to the backdrop of water tinkling and bird song.

 

                  

And nature was an equally riveting focus. Here we see a frog keeping cool in the stream, a lizard cunningly camouflaged in the soil and dried leaves. A little derivational detour: the Greek word for lizard is savra, so now you see the lexical base of the names of these Jurassic Period monsters. That big dude was a King Tyrrant …….Lizard??  

                         

 

 Best of all here – spot the fresh-water crab amid the profusion of leaf colour. That could be made into a really challenging jig-saw puzzle!

                                

 

 

 Then it was time to head for home. Jacqui made sure that Mr Mischief got some extra attention after he’d been ‘abandoned’ for several days.  And before our guests pack their bags, it’s time for a meet-up with Tassos, a long-term family friend, and his family. Here we are round the table – now why do so many of our gallery shots feature glasses and plates – and empty ones at that ?!

 It was great to have Jacqui and Ali out to spend some time with us- we had surprisingly good autumn weather. All together we enjoyed a holiday that was great – in fact, in places, even divine!

PS Jacqui, I'd like to thank you for the use of some of your lovely photos here 

and to Maria-Amanda Ziller : thank you for becoming a follower - welcome !!

                                                                             

Political Correctness in Education and Mountain Tourism

For over 30 years I was an oral examiner for learners of English as a foreign language.

In that role

 I’ve seen normally confident, high-ranking military officials and civil servants reduced to the debased position of struggling to express themselves in an alien medium                                                                         

 I’ve seen children from remote mountain villages, where they had little or no communicative language practice, burst into tears in sheer terror on meeting a foreigner for the first time - never mind one about to examine them

I’ve been in drawing-blood-from-stone situations where anxiety kicked in, paralyzing the candidate into silence.

 And you learn from experience:

That a kind word and a warm smile can melt petrification

That a touch on the arm and an expression of humour can rapidly dispel crippling anxiety

That candidates who are confident and strong need help too – to be deftly guided to reach their ceiling, to operate at their level of full potential.

All of that is what it means to be an examiner.

 In recent years a well-known organization, operating internationally and broadly involved in offering English language services, however, has moved the goalposts in the interviewing game. The role now promoted is one of pure script-reading. Any candidate difficulties are to be dealt with solely by repetition, facial expression and gesture. The canon is one is given a rubric and one must not deviate from it.

So here we have it - reductio ad absurdum: one ‘interlocutes’ and adopts a quasi-robotic role. In such a context the Communicative Theory is of necessity eschewed. This, my dears, is neither interacting, nor communication and certainly not examining. This behavior is allegedly promoted so that all candidates are given ‘equal opportunities’. So it’s our old friend ‘political correctness’ rearing its ugly head; the reductio ad absurdum being that the examiner is permitted no real contact with the person before him, but is, nonetheless, expected to assess his language level.

 The reason I’m broaching this topic of examining in the first place is that recently I received several e-mails from another well-known organization, operating internationally, partly involved in organizing such exams. Now it was quite a surprise to see I was on their circulation lists since I haven’t examined in years - when I began to feel the pressure of examiner gag and strait-jacket, I decided to call it a day. But my second great surprise was that I was apparently required to provide them with my Criminal Record! The assumption - gasp! – was that I have a criminal past. Now presumably what they were asking for – had it been properly translated and expressed- was for a clean police record, the equivalent of a Criminal Record Check available from the Disclosure and Barring Service in GB. And here’s another strange thing: the required criminal record check in Greece was to   have been issued within the last month, whereas the equivalent British document issued within the last three years was deemed an acceptable alternative  : ( ?

I can understand why employers want to be sure that they are not inadvertently putting children in potentially dangerous situations, especially in cases like this where a good number of the clients involved are young learners. But British statistics show that such sexual predators constitute only 0.5% of the population. No one can condone such criminal  activity, yet is that statistically significant enough to generate such fear that PC - here ‘Professional Correctness’  – both in the British classroom and in language examining contexts generally, means that attempts to communicate, comfort and reassure are seen as unacceptable and unnatural behaviour?

 The original objective of Political Correctness was to ensure the inclusion of individuals into society. Nowadays some of its exponents have become inflexible, self-righteous and convinced that only their perspective is ‘the valid one’. The in loco parentis role of the educator should not be jettisoned. What one should be operating on is a policy of Moral Correctness: extending caring, nurturing, support and encouragement - the corner-stones of  family values – to those in our charge,  and feeling free to do so.

Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, Head of Scotland Yard’s Paedophile Unit, rightly says, ‘One of the main things in not to frighten parents to  death’. I believe that the measures being taken could well create such an atmosphere of fear.   But not to appear totally callous let me make a helpful suggestion: that the exam organizers reconsider their long-term habit of running such oral examinations in hotel bedrooms.  

Let’s move on to a cheerier subject – travel. This time you’re joining us on a trip we went on with my brother and his wife when they came out to see us towards the end of the year. In last year’s March blog we visited Elatohori and this time we are only 8 kilometres from there, again near Katerini and behind Mount Olympus. We had been enjoying really mild weather, but as we ascended the mountain escarpment, we gradually moved into autumn with leaves changing colour and the atmosphere becoming sharper.

 We were in the village of Aghios Dimitrios. Below you can see the church in the square with its brightly- coloured icon depicting this mighty warrior.

                              

Nearby is the school and even if your thirst for knowledge spiritual and educational has been sated, to cater for all your needs is a fresh-water spring, claiming that Macedonia is more Greek than Greece.

 

                                   

 Our accommodation is the stone-built guesthouse, Dimatis, bearing the name of the family who run it.

Here is Kyria Katia, the matriarch of the establishment, with her son, Thodoris, who handles the shop-front business. Katia, from a well-known line of skilled bakers and confectioners, is famous for her bread, pies and sweets. The cheese pies she had made for our breakfast were memorable.

                               

 

 

What is interesting is that there is a family-run farm with deer and wild boar. This cheeky chappie showed great curiosity towards my husband, the photographer. Clearly, the village hunters don’t carve knotches on their belts, but display their prowess otherwise- these are boar tails!         

            

 

 

 

                

Our stay at the guesthouse marked a special occasion – my brother and his wife had their wedding anniversary- so here we are at the table all set – both table and us – to celebrate! 

 

                                 

 The picture below shows two things:

the empty plates show that their grilled mushrooms and their salad of rocket, figs, walnuts, sundried tomatoes, parmesan, balsamic vinegar  and pomegranate seeds all went down a treat;

and that the farmer-son doubles as a waiter, serving us delicious venison in a red wine sauce with noodles.

This took me back to when we were kids in the West Highlands of Scotland and lucky enough to live next door to Johnnie MacArthur who worked for the Forestry Commission. He was in charge of occasional culls on the red deer to protect the young trees. Interestingly these culls often happened around Christmas and New Year, so our festive table had no turkey. There might be the odd pheasant – road-kill, of course! And our mother made a roast haunch of venison with rich black gravy like no one else.                             

                                  

     On our second night there we had wild boar with roast potatoes and rice with cinnamon chestnuts and raisins with a garnish of tomato jam, made by our waiter’s wife, the cook. Here she is preparing some of her many jams and preserves. 

                                               

              

                                     

As we took our leave it was with warm memories, loads of chestnuts we’d gathered on the mountain and several extra pounds.  A sign in the village commends the Dimatis for ‘good food’. To use a good Greek word that is a fine example of litotes!