Dec 15, 2006

"Wishes" from Demosthenes Agrafiotis

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi John,

This requires an admission that I read Vanity Fair, but there's an article in the new issue about November 17 and how/why the Greeks finally nabbed them just before the Olympics. It's sort of a curious micro-history of contemp. Greece--thought of you, & wondered if you'd dig it.

John Sakkis said...

i'll have to check that out. you know, wiki's entry about nov 17 is damn good. if i'm not mistaken the head of the group was an economics prof at an athenian university. i wonder if the vanity fair article went into the november 17's origins...? WWII to Greek Civil War to Junta etc...anyway, thanks for the heads up rodney...come back to the Bay soon, yeah?

Anonymous said...

I love Wikipedia! The VF article really falls short in explaining why Greece tolerated N17 for so long, totally swerves around US support for the Junta, the nature of N17’s targets, the reasons for their apparent popularity. Seems it was the threat of losing the Olympic bid, plus (this barely touched on in VF) the new political climate after 9/11, that finally spurred the crackdown. Acc. to the article, once they caught them, it turned out to be like 8 guys, one of them an icon painter from the islands.

Just saw that documentary on the Weather Underground, which had a sort of parallel history.

Fair warning: the long-term plan is to convince the Bay Area to move up here!

John Sakkis said...

okay wow! all of this covered in vanity fair? i'll definitly have to grab that issue...

you've been to athens yeah? you've seen the N17 graffiti all over town?

i think jared hayes is in portland...look out for him locally, good guy, studied at naropa together...

and thanks again for the copy musee mechanique...don't know if you realized but you gave me your reader's copy replete with awesomely frenzied reading notes/ set list...

Hayes said...

hey, what, who, poet, portl, land?!?! what who where me?

Anonymous said...

Hi John,

Missed the N17 graffiti the one time we were in Athens, but we stayed on Samos, in that chain of easternmost isles where they exiled all these Communists in the '70s, and we saw red hammer-and-sickles dripsprayed all over. Esp. striking on those "tourist white" walls.

Ja, red, hay-what? Going to Jules Boykoff's reading tomorrow? If so, say hi. I look just like the cartoon at right.

Hayes said...

rodney, I was at jules and kaia's apparently 5 minutes fter you left...bummer we missed each other...but er, uh yeah, i'll do my best to be at is reding tomorrow, so i'll look out for ya!

john sakkis i love you!
boomboom, boomboom!