Arcadia is home to many famous ideas and people. In modern times, anyone with a surname ending in -poulos is usually an entrepreneur extraordinaire. Both in Greece and as the Diaspora that flowed out of Greece to make a new life in the States, Australia and Africa. Arcadia is home to the uprising of the…
Conversations with Leon and Dervish
Dog names amongst the Greek immigrants were entertaining. They all had dogs, usually a pure black mongrel call Spotty. If they chose to be different from their cousins then they might get a white dog and call it Blackie. It was almost a universal constant in our lives, visiting various families and meeting Spotty or…
Conversations on Leap Year
29 February seems such an auspicious day. Yet is simply exists because when we developed our calendars in the civilised world we wanted to dice the years into equal parts except every fourth year when we add a day to the year to make up for accumulated time revolving around the sun that was not…
Conversations about Memory
My father had an excellent memory that he exercised often. He remembered dates, figures, names and faces, events and patterns. What was amazing was that he had an excellent memory of his visits to Greece, where he spent six or eight weeks a year. These memories filled his life. He was a good conversationalist and…
Conversations about Culture
As I look back at my writing about my father on this blog it is apparent he was very Greek. Many of the stories are set in Greece, or concern Greek tradition, or revolve around the local Greek community, the Greek Federations of Communities, or SAHETI and the Bank of Athens. It is amazing that…
Conversations with Hippocrates
Long before I had an inkling that I wanted to study medicine and then be a doctor, when becoming an orthopaedic surgeon was still occupied in that part of my brain by a desire to become a game ranger, I dislocated my right shoulder. The injury dated back from primary school and was recurrent, popping…
Conversations about Smoking
If you were caught smoking at school in our day, you were summarily expelled. My father would have whipped us and removed all privileges. Perhaps we would have ended up as labour in the building game. But we had no desire to smoke. I tried three Marlb oros at the end of my medical degree,…
Conversations about Choices
“It’s your choice,” my father would often say. Usually the issues at hand were important, and although there was freedom of choice, it was accompanied by responsibility for the outcome. So he never asked why. He just left the choice to us. There were times I made choices that he did not approve of, and…
Conversations about Dictation
“Dad, you know, you’ve done so much. You’ve been involved in so many things. You’ve met so many people. You’ve lived your life in two continents and spoken three languages.” That is what I was thinking, but could not say it. Instead, in 2006, when I visited my father in Greece I have him an…
Conversations about a Rocking Horse
“Kolisto! Kolisto! – Stick it together!” My father was only four years old but he was adamant. The legs of the rocking horse had to be stuck on to the body again. My grandmother had cut the legs off his favourite toy, a wooden rocking horse, to make it smaller so that it would fit…
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