In the lead-up to the Greek referendum on Sunday, Corinth made a solid showing in news articles, blogs, and commentary. The Guardian called the Corinthia a weather vane of Greek politics and a predictor for the outcome of the referendum, and archaeologist Stephen Miller suggested polling the customers of a local bar in Nemea to gage public opinion on the matter. MSN UK painted the Corinth Canal as a metaphor for the feeling of division in Greece (which, as the vote showed, was less divided on the European Commission agreement than initial polls predicted). Then there was a range of articles that interviewed Corinthians from different villages – to get some perspective outside of the Athens metropolitan area.
This piece (“How Greece Got to No”) yesterday in The Wall Street Journal caught my attention. Christopher Bakken reviews a new book by James Angelos on how the Greek crisis has affected ordinary people and why a “No” vote was so significant. Here’s a taste of the article:
As a Greek-American boy, James Angelos spent summers in his grandmother’s village in Greece. That village was Corinth, which he remembers as a “humble and largely agrarian” backwater that also happened to be situated across the road from the ruins of an ancient city. Push back the soil from any patch of Greek land and you’re likely to reveal something. Mr. Angelos’s timely book, “The Full Catastrophe,” does just that in famous and less well-known sites across the country.
Mr. Angelos, a former Journal correspondent, travels through Greece as a journalist first, and a native son second, to conduct a mostly unpleasant archaeology….
Mr. Angelos’s book allows us to see how these problems play out, sometimes farcically, in the lives of actual people.
Read the rest of the essay here.
Two other interesting pieces caught my eye :
- “The Greek Crisis” (Bill Caraher’s perspective from the Western Argolid Regional Project)
- “The Greek Crisis and the Church: Healing Wounds, Opening Wounds” (discussing the possible role of the Greek Orthodox church in reconciliation)
Corinthian Matters 