Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been raining pretty relentlessly for a couple of days. The Athens storm drain system is terrible, consequently the streets all fill up with water, and since it's a hilly-ish place, many of the streets are torrents. Down towards the sea, cars are being washed away.

We went to the Changing of the Guard on Sunday (every Sunday at 11am). Got some photos, but I forgot the cable today, so I can't share them. Later...

Since I work at an American institution, I have Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving. We will miss being with family!

Alex has class on Thursday and a field trip to Delphi on Friday. Maybe in the snow?

I was just reading Rose's article Self Esteem and The Effect of the Media in Dork Magazine. Well done Rosie! But brace yourself, if you think it's bad in the USA, wait till you see the way bodies - particularly women's bodies - are presented in the Greek media.

Here are some picture of the American School

This is a then and now pair of pix of the main building of the American School



In 2002 they had THE BIG SNOW in Athens. The top picture is the porch of the Davis Wing. The Blegen library uses everything above the ground floor of the Davis Wing. The Members like to sit in the stacks carrels in this wing - perhaps because it is in these stacks that we have the ancient authors and much of the archaeology.




The bottom picture is our sister library the Gennadius Library across the street, taken from the same spot as the other picture. The Gennadius Library is also part of the American School, and holds ca. 30000 rare books (first printed editions of ancient authors and so on) and a large research collection on late antique to modern Greek.


Both buildings are in the usual Athenian Neo-Classical style.

Busy

This has been a very busy couple of weeks. We had almost a whole week of meetings with visitors representing the Mellon Foundation. This of course took a lot of pre- and post-meeting time as well. This week I have been reading applications for the Associate Librarian position I hope to fill. Soon...? Please...?

Yesterday was November 17, and important day in modern Greek history. We were expecting a huge demonstration, and were on lock-down (more or
less) here after 2 PM. It was the anniversary of the Junta's suppression of
the student uprising in 1973, and the demonstrations are often raucous and
violent. This day is remembered also in the name of "Revolutionary
Organization 17 November" (Επαναστατική Οργάνωση 17 Νοέμβρη), a particularly
nasty band of assassins. In the end, torrential downpour all afternoon put a damper on the demonstrations, but it also kept us cooped up inside on an afternoon off.

So we taught Patrick to play Go Fish.