Lessons from the Greek Crisis 5: There Will Be Oranges

This is a Western world country. This is a bag of oranges, part of farmers' association gifting of their products to the needy in protest for having their prices dropped while their costs have skyrocketed. These are not beggars, but normal, everyday people who have lost their jobs, seen their pensions cut down to nothing, lost their income and their livelihood and have become hopeless.
This is our dignity brought to its knees while the IMF is admitting their "wrong calculations" but isn't changing anything.

This is a 6 February 2013 exhibit.

For how much longer?

More pics: lifo.gr

Lessons from the Greek Crisis 4: Because there are people who are hungry

"We must both have been hungry because we constantly led the conversation round to food. "What is your favorite dish, grandad?" "All of them, my son. It's a great sin to say this is good and that is bad." "Why? Can't we make a choice?" "No, of course we can't." "Why not?" "Because there are people who are hungry." I was silent, ashamed. My heart had never been able to reach that height of nobility and compassion. "

 ~Nikos Kazantzakis, Life and Adventures of Alexis Zorbas

film still from Zorba, the Greek

Lessons from the Greek Crisis 3: We Shall Dance...the Day we Get a Chance

"We shall dance, we shall dance
The day we get a chance
To pay off all the violins of the ball
We shall dance, we shall dance
The day we get a chance
To get a dime to buy back our souls
We shall dance, we shall sing
My dear love, O my spring
My love good days will come"



Greek singer Demis Roussos from 1971 sings with his emotional, sweet voice "We Shall Dance" in a rare
recording.





Greek progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child (including later day music stars Vangelis on keyboards and Demis Roussos in vocals) perform "Rain and Tears" in 1969.

"Rain and tears are the same, but in the sun you've got to play the game"

Lessons from the Greek Crisis 2

Lilika Nakou/Nakos, novelist, writes in Land of Boeotia (1967): "Our people has greatly suffered. You can even see it in the vocabulary: When we refer to making love, we say 'to tear our eyes out'. When we refer to eating, we say 'to get ourselves poisoned'. And when we refer to sleeping, we say 'playing dead'... "

via http://www.flickriver.com/photos/hippohere/popular-interesting/

How many words can contain the despair that people, young and old, poor and less poor, are reduced to through no personal fault nowadays? How can language contain rage?

Lessons from the Greek Crisis 1

via playle.com

Sounds superficial and Coelho-like in its simplistic, humanist message, but spring will always come in the end. The sun always rises from the east. There's hope where people bask under the sun.
Imagine if this were the UK.