On Christos's Blog About Barack Obama

A few months back I received an e-mail of introduction from a young gentleman in his early 30s who lives in Patras which is a small city in the northern Peloponnese of Greece. Patras is equal in population to my town of Athens. When I visited Greece in 2003 and our tour group traveled from Athens to Corinth we were only 83 miles from Patras. I did not know this until I checked a map to see the exact location of Patras.

Christos Moissidis is a Greek blogger whose family’s roots lie in Turkey. His family had enjoyed a good life under the Ottomans until Mustafa Kemal, later Ataturk, started consolidating his hold over the crashing and burning remnant of the Ottoman Empire. It was time for the Greeks and others to go. Christos grandfather’s stepfather was a Turkish bey whose brother was an officer in the Sultan’s guard. The Greek nationalist army that invaded did not help either in the plight of Greeks who had for centuries lived side by side with the Turks and were there before the first Turks set foot on the peninsula.

Louis de Bernieres’ terribly beautiful and sad novel Birds Without Wings was about a community of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians who lived and loved in a small town in Turkey until politics and war severed everything they held dear. It was the fault of the Turkish and Greek politicians and nationalists which in the end caused the Turkish people of that town to see first their Armenian neighbors sent on a death march to the Syrian Desert and then to later see their Greek neighbors told to get their belongings so they could head on to a land their did not know or want to go to, Greece.

When I was in Turkey last summer, I actually visited a beautiful abandoned village near Fethiye where Greeks lived nearly a century ago. All the common Turkish people who lived in de Bernieres’ fictional town feel the Greeks and Armenians were their best friends and without them, their lives would be less beautiful and colorful. The “smart guys,” the politicians and nationalists, laid the first bricks and mortar which caused people to start categorizing people by ethnicity and religion.

Perhaps de Berniere’s novel mirrors some of the experiences of Christos’ family once they were forced to leave Turkey. He has only given me a very brief summary of his family’s story, and he is not bitter about what happened. He understands why politicians and leaders feel they have to sometimes take draconian measures. He has also lived and worked in Istanbul.

Like I keep drumming into my reader's heads, I am not a political blogger. I would define myself as an observer, among other things. Those like me who have a strong dislike for politics need not worry that I am changing anything here. I am only being eclectic. After this post I am going to give politics a rest for awhile.

Christos asked me a little over a week ago to write a post for his political blog which is in Greek and on my blogroll. He respects my decision to not get too political, so therefore, I was willing to write for him because I feel he is a nice person. We have the highest respect for one another, so I was delighted to write for him on the daunting subject of what Barack Obama’s slogan “Change” means. Christos is a huge admirer of Barack Obama. Here is my unwieldy post, Barack Obama's "Change".

I found an excellent Greek to English translator this morning, and I encourage you to use it read what Christos has to say. It can be accessed here. Christos has a blog with poems written by him also in Greek, but he has removed public access to it to prevent anyone from using the poems without his permission. Its’ location is also on my blogroll.

In a political ending here, one of the two most recent controversies about Barack Obama has involved once again accusations that he would try to appease America’s enemies if he were elected. But we have heard this early on. The more intriguingly ludicrous one has been “sweetiegate.” I learned about this from American Dreams’ blog Shallow Nation last Friday. Read about “sweetiegate” here.

I was astonished that the word “sweetie” can now be perceived as negative. Maybe I am just too much of an old fogey for my own good, but I am often called “sweetie” by both men and women I do not even know. I do not see the men as chauvinistic, sexist, or paternalistic. I don’t see the women as being lesbian or my mother or grandmother. I am a positive person and hope to continue to be. Instead of taking a paranoid outlook on why they call me sweetie, I just think, “Hey! Maybe I am sweet!” :)