The last time I was in the Athens-Kalamata bus I happened to sit next to an older woman, a widow, who was very excited to be returning to her patritha. Having married a German, she had been away from the scenes of her youth for a long time, so that she gasped and sighed over familiar sights, and at the changes time had wrought.
As the bus neared its terminus, she clutched my arm, pointed, and said, 'There it is: that's my work; that's why I'm here.' I saw nothing but a large white plinth. But a few days later, I observed a Statue of Liberty in place, and the name inscribed on the plinth made it obvious the statue had been donated by my travelling companion.
The bronze edifice follows convention: Liberty/Eleftheria is a female usually swathed in flowing robes: she holds aloft either a sword or a flame. Beneath this particular statue is a relief that shows the events of 23 March 1821, when the Greek War of Independence started, two days ahead of schedule, right here in Kalamata. The scene of priests and warriors bears the legend: With one voice, we have decided to live or die for our freedom.
The problem is that the town already has two similar statues. Did it need another? Statues are, of course, a very Greek thing. Busts of military heroes and departed civic dignitaries are all over Kalamata, while rows of long-gone bishops grace the forecourt of the Cathedral. Predictably, my foreign friends and I rumbled and grumbled. All that money. What about the hospital? What about the poor and unemployed? What about children going hungry?
I was in a state of doubt. As usual. Perhaps people will feel encouraged and uplifted, I ventured, but subsided when my ex-Sydney friend came forth with a scathing Oh, come on!
In Jessica Anderson's fine novel Tirra Lirra by the River, narrator Nora Porteous, reflecting in a series of seamless flashbacks on her difficult life, tells the reader that she is in love with beauty. She becomes a dressmaker who also does exquisite embroidery. Much of her life, during which she moves from Brisbane to Sydney to London and back again, is spent in an often unconscious search for sensibilities that match her