Blogging Again

Greetings friends! Yes its been a long time without blogging. I hope you are not all mad--some of you are. Sorry. (I have not been jogging either--I jammed my achilles tendon running over hill and dale and rocks in Greece. Does anyone have any advice before my first vist to a podiatrist?).

I'm not sure why I stopped for so long--part of this blog phenomenon I guess, but here I am. Part of the the problem is I did not fully admit to myself how upset I was that I lost my little travel diary in Santorini--such a great and thoughtful gift from my good friend Vivian. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I was running after a bus to be on time for lunch with my long-lost cousin Kostaki. And what a lunch! A huge pile of lamb chops and sweet Santorini wine.

The diary was filled with thoughts and feelings and musings and observations (all that good bloggy stuff) from EVERY moment of my trip. Well, a lot of wonderful moments. Many entries accompanied the pictures. Some told funny stories (well I thought they were funny) and one was a cool essay I was looking forward to publishing about the fantastic new Athens concert hall, the Megaron Mousikis. It started our with architectural and accoustic observations and I was surprised to find that I continued writing as I was listening to Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony (you spell his name your way, I'll spell it mine--like Hannukah) and kept weaving my feelings about the hall and the music in and out. I felt that his music began light and pretty, then turned military, and finally ended on a darker note. I was going to conclude with the great Leonard Bernstein quote "the twentieth century is the century of death and Mahler was its musical prophet." Pow! It would have been interesting, no?

I also thought of Bernstein because one of the 3 (or 4) halls in the magnificent Megaron complex is a fine recital hall dedicated to Dimitri Mitropoulos, the great Greek conductor who was music director of the New York Philharmonic in the 1950's. It was a glorious decade for New Yorkers in general, but especially for Greek Americans, just then coming into their own with substantial amounts of successful business persons and university graduates and most proud of the achievements of the spectacular and fiery Maria Callas, the aforementioned Mitropoulos and the brilliant but later controversial director (screen and Broadway stage) Elia Kazan. Berstein, equally brilliant but most impatient, could not wait for Mitropoulos to retire so he helped trash the reputation of that kind and dedicated man and forced him out. Sad, but who in New York, even among Greeks (shame!) remembers Dimitri Mitropoulos these days. We should do something about. In the meantime, when in Greece, visit the Megaron and go to his recital hall.