The Anniversary of the Bard
In this year of the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, imagine if we all talked to each other in Shakespearean verse? A few years ago I received a telephone call from the Roundabout Theater in New York, soliciting a donation, as I was having dinner. I professed to be shocked. I wrote: To the […]
Christmas 1974
Read an excerpt from Elias Kulukundis’ next book «Bold Coasts» Lucy and I spent our first Christmas together with Lucy’s parents in Chichester, a small Roman city, built slightly inland from where the Sussex coast is now. As we went in the Platt’s kitchen door, Lucy’s mother said “You’re very welcome.” The next moment, Lucy’s […]
A first-hand life with a second-hand car
First Passage – Chapter 35: The Next Steps As you can read here, Elias received an Alpha Romeo Giulietta Spider as a gift from his father, and seemed to always have trouble with it’s maintenance. […] Going north toward the New Hampshire border on I-95, there was a most horrendous noise which sounded like large […]
An autobiography of everything that did not happen to me
Excerpt from the afterword for the recent e-Edition of The Feasts of Memory by Dr. Eleftheria Arapoglou […] “Kulukundis journeys from America to Kasos to discover and connect with his roots, to reconstruct his past, to piece his life together and to connect with his ethnic identity. The act of travelling back to his […]
A call for attention
First Passage – Chapter 15: A Marriage for Cocktails […] “Elia! Elia!” I heard a voice behind me call, in Tata’s apartment on December 6, 1968. I turned and who should it be but Onassis. […] Taken aback, I said in Greek, “Hello, how are you?” And the next moment, I had another surprise –Onassis said […]
An outdated gift
As you can read here, Elias had always had trouble getting his father to actually listen to his real need, including buying him the car he wanted. First Passage – Chapter 23: An Improvement Then I had a surprise. One day, standing in the driveway under the sycamore trees at my parents’ home, was an […]
A nightingale sang on Russell Square
An excerpt from Elias’s book about the shipping business, «Bold Coasts» expected late 2016 early 2017. Yesterday I flew from Athens to New York via Zurich. My daughter lives in New York, and I flew here to be around for her birthday later this week. As the plane flew out across the North Atlantic, a […]
A Summer Memory – Meeting the Dream
I am writing this by the waterfront on the island of Patmos, while I wait for a ship to return to Syros. It is that sultry hour of the afternoon, when the cicadas compete with the motrscooters to see who can make the most noise. Sitting in a cafe nursing a peach-iced tea, a modern […]
We all live in a Yellow Cadillac, Yellow Cadillac, Yellow Cadillac
First Passage – Chapter 11: If You Don’t like It Here […] In my first year at Harvard, I vacillated between feeling I was a Greek shipping scion and a penniless writer, and the fact is, I was both. My cousin [Michael, Uncle Manuel’s son], who had been a senior at Exeter when I visited […]
A Visit at Uncle John’s
First Passage – Chapter 20: Who’s there? Elias, the Kulukundis? At the Athens airport, we met up with my cousin Miles, who had also come to Greece without his parents. Miles had flown via London whereas we flew directly from New York. We all arrived in Athens at roughly the same time, and we were […]
Mario Draghi and the Greek «accident»
In Greece’s negotiations with the eurozone, the man to watch is Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, not Tsipras or Merkel. Even if Greece should default on a payment to the creditors, it still cannot be expelled from the eurozone. The only way that could happen would be if its banks failed, and […]
Escape from Ideology
George Mylonas, who escaped from detention on Amorgos under the junta, remained a prisoner of his ideology. By refusing to join a coalition of national unity under former Prime Minister Karamanlis, he gave up an opportunity to help Greece shake free of the Junta five years early because he was afraid to be criticized by […]
