We live in hope

September 2, 2021, On the death of the Greek composer, a member of the wartime resistance, his concert music, including seven symphonies, four operas, ballets (including Antigone, 1959), and more than 1,000 songs, will remain deeply engraved in our hearts and echo throughout the world as a sign of the resistance that is always necessary to continue living in freedom of expression.

A la muerte del compositor griego, miembro de la resistencia en tiempos de guerra, su música de concierto, que incluye siete sinfonías, cuatro óperas, ballets (entre ellos Antígona, de 1959) y más de 1.000 canciones, quedará profundamente grabada en nuestros corazones y resonará en todo el mundo como signo de la resistencia siempre necesaria para seguir viviendo en libertad de expresión.

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Related

1. New book showcases work of persecuted Greek musician
2. Mikis Theodorakis
3. Sun and Time • album cover • Ηλιος και Χρόνος
4. Who was Theodorakis’ ‘laughing boy’?
5. O compositor e activista político grego Mikis Theodorakis morre aos 96 anos
6. El gran músico griego Mikis Theodorakis muere a los 96 años
7. Muere Mikis Theodorakis, autor de “Zorba el griego”
8. Sep 2, 2021; Composer Mikis Theodorakis dies
9. Muere Mikis Theodorakis, el compositor de “Zorba el griego” a quien Grecia tenía en su propio Olimpo
10. Remembering a Great Greek Composer: Mikis Theodorakis
11. Vicky Leandros pays tribute to Mikis Theodorakis, who died today aged 96
12. Mikis Theodorakis, Composer of ‘Zorba the Greek’ and ‘Serpico,’ Dies at 96
13. Antifascisten, forfatteren, musikeren og komponisten Mikis Theodorakis er død
14. Eurostars from Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Serbia farewell Mikis Theodorakis
15. Let’s Dance!
16. Autumn 2021 playlists : A selection of Mikis Theodorakis’ principal film scores…
17. Note on Mikis Theodorakis death
18. Mikis Theodorakis and Greece
19. Mikis Theodorakis : The Day The Fish Came Out [1967] [reblog]
20. ΜΙΚΗΣ ΘΕΟΔΩΡΑΚΗΣ : ΤΑ ΕΞΗ ΕΛΥΑΡ / ΝΕΝΑ ΒΕΝΕΤΣΑΝΟΥ [2000]
21. Μίκης Θεοδωράκης / Mikis Theodorakis : Τα Εξη Ελυάρ / Νένα Βενετσάνου – The 6 Éluard / Nena Venetsanou [2000] [reblog]
22. Final Goodbye/Τελευταιο Αντιο
23. Ο δικός μου Μίκης
24. Monteverdi : Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Prologue [reblog]

CrippleCreak

A few days after hearing of the death of Theodorakis.

I lived in Evia, Greece, for a short time, in a small basic house on top of another building. It was on the edge of a town made rich by the lignite factory on its outskirts.

While my little house was on the outskirts the other way, it was convenient for long walks and a semi rural outlook.

The view from my house

I arrived in Greece a few years after the end of the junta, about which I knew next to nothing. I was extraordinarily lucky to discover that the second floor of ‘my’ building was used by a woman who taught after school mathematics. In those days, and perhaps still, Greek children who attended school between 8.30 and 2.30 (I think) also attended frontisterio – private schools like the one I taught at and my new friend owned.

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Streams caused by temperature differences

Andreas Kluth in The Day, a daily newspaper covering a 20-town region in eastern Connecticut, in his guest opinion piece writes about weather disasters spanning the globe this summer, looking at the many infernal fires in California and Greece, deadly floods from Germany to China, heat waves from Canada to Siberia that according to him

are really just nature’s shots across our bow.

That becomes clear if we absorb the recently published report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the United Nations that assesses the state of science on global warming. He writes:

No matter what policies we adopt − and obviously we should aim for good ones – the weather will keep getting more catastrophic more often.

A lot of people would agree with the fact that even when we are so progressed in science, there is still what we do not know.

Part of what makes the overall problem of climate change so psychologically daunting is that there’s so much we know, but so much more that we know only partially, and even more that we have yet to understand at all.

We know perfectly well, for example, how coal-fired power plants pump carbon dioxide into the air – bad. We only partially understand how the thawing permafrost could release enough methane on top of the greenhouse gases we’ve emitted to cause additional, sudden and terrifying spikes in warming – really bad. And we have yet to figure out exactly how all this would affect the earth system as a whole, and in particular the massive currents of air and water that have made the world a familiar habitat to us.

One current of particular concern is the polar jet stream, a group of winds that whips at enormous speeds around the Arctic from west to east (owing to the earth’s rotation) at a height of six-to-10 miles up in the atmosphere. Another is the Gulf Stream, a vast oceanic conveyor belt that makes warm water from the tropics flow northward on the surface until it cools and, around Iceland, sinks down and heads back south.

One thing these streams have in common, with each other and the many other currents all around the world, is that they’re caused by temperature differences between the hot tropics and the cold poles. Another thing they share is that, in their own ways, they protect or nurture us humans.

The complex swirls of the jet streams tend to blow away pressure systems that could otherwise kill us on the ground with storms and floods and heat. If these streams blow less hard, or more weirdly, or not at all, those meteorological danger domes just hover in place without moving, until they discharge their payloads on us. Although the details aren’t clear yet, scientists believe this partially explains why the floods in Germany, the heat waves in North America and forest fires in Greece and Turkey turned into such doozies.

Changes in the Gulf Stream work more slowly but are just as consequential. It’s already known that the current is at its weakest in a millennium. There are many reasons, including torrents of freshwater pouring in from melting ice and bloated rivers (freshwater is lighter than saltwater and prevents cooling water from sinking) and shrinking temperature differentials between south and north as the Artic heats up. A new study in Nature suggests that the whole Atlantic circulation and convection system may “collapse” altogether.

Read more about it: If jet or gulf streams collapse, we’re in for it

A woman throws away flood damaged rubbish July 19 in the center of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany. (Bram Janssen/AP Photo)

Grounded

Daily we are surrounded by bad news-stories via the media (television and social media). All those terrible stories can weaken us and manage to bring fear to many (for no obvious reason, because they live far away from the trouble).

Often it is better to detach because it is not possible to live day to day if you spiral into all in the grief in the world. We have to be conscious about it, but may not close our eyes and ears for the beauties that are around us. And for sure there can be found a lot of beauty, even in the smallest thing.

Each of us can help to give others a feeling of safety and comfort in their own surroundings, accepting the wide variety of cultures that can go together anyway.
A person can not love the others without loving himself first and without wanting to share with others.

Today we can see that the fear for the unknown brings many to choose for extreme right wing political groups, which make use of the fear for other people and cultures, and bring the immigration in a wrong exaggerated light. Immigration, by the way, has been there for ages. It is nothing new. Every generation has come to know about some migration.

When we are willing to learn more about the world we and others live in we shall understand the different positions better and come to accept certain things much easier.

When each person is willing to come closer to the other, and is willing to open his mind to come to understand the other better, by willingness of openness of mind and heart the little environment we live in can change, but like a domino falling can bring something bigger changing too.

Let us always remember that a spiritual shaking is always safer than a real earth shaking.

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To remember

All through life when times get tough, when things start to run away with us or when things start to get too much we often hear the advice

“stay grounded.”

• to balance us, to remind of something solid, something steady

how exactly do we stay grounded when we can’t even trust the ground we walk on?

• on a little Greek island = best + worst moments of humanity play out on a daily basis => difficult to stay grounded

Facebook safety check icon > pictures of Parliament + London Bridge > horrors + pictures of frantic families trying to trace their missing children

• a family connected by love
• memories of places we love
• distract ourselves from terrorism on our doorsteps with the escalating rhetoric of nuclear war between North Korea and the US?
• watch white supremacists march the streets
• ongoing refugee crisis on shores of Italy + Greece
• hundreds of lives still lost in the Mediterranean
• hundreds of lives trapped in camps + detention facilities > endless wait for asylum in Europe.

=> pretty hard to stay grounded

=> have become so desensitized

= not go to denial but keep our heads?

• most important thing = not buy into all the hate.
• majority of people = kind + loving
• fear + when we are really scared => ignorance can lead to some pretty extreme standpoints on issues we never really felt too strongly about before.

== to stay grounded we need to start learning more about the world we live in + we need to discover how we can make change.

Stand together, show love where you find hate and don’t let fear win.

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Preceding

Going on holiday is… silence in your head

Summer holiday time to knock and ask, and time to share

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Additional reading

1. Uncertainty, shame and no time for vacillation
2. What is life?
3. Immigration consternation
4. Would you run
5. Mountains of information, disinformation and breaking away
6. Fearmongering succeeded and got the bugaboo a victory
7. Fear of failure, and fear of the unknown
8. I Am Not Alone – By: Kari Jobe
9. Emotional pain and emotional deadness
10. The soul has no rainbow if the eyes have no tears
11. Not fear or dread or blind compulsion
12. Can We Pay The Price To Free Humanity?
13. The chosen ones to fear or not to fear
14. Whom Shall I Fear (God of Angel Armies) by Chris Tomlin
15. Prayer has comforted us in sorrow

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Further reading

1. What Makes Me Bern about Fear
2. Fear
3. “… Fears…”
4. Worry and Fear
5. Fear, Surprise, Relief, What’s Next?
6. Courage is not an absence of fear…
7. What Fear Can Do To You.
8. The Power Fear Holds Over Us
9. Overwhelmed
10. Anxious And Worried? Pray!
11. Celebrate Victories Daily
12. Change
13. Face Your Fears | Choose Joys
14. Italy: Migrants from Riace are to be resettled
15. Criminalization of aid puts migrant lives at further risk
16. Migration: 416,000 more people moved to Germany than emigrated
17. After the Crisis? Reflections on Migration Governance
18. Turkey slams developed nations over migration issue
19. The migration which is changing the demography of India : The illegal migrants of Bangladesh
20. The Year of Immigration theme seeks to create a renewed sense of community in College Park
21. Szijjarto rejects the UN Migration compact
22. Thousands flee due to crisis, Brazil deploys army to Venezuela border
23. Parliament condemns the Sargentini Report
24. Crosses Erected For Thousands Of Dead Immigrants Who Never Reached American Dream – Desert Graves

From Greece With Love

All through life when times get tough, when things start to run away with us or when things start to get too much we often hear the advice “stay grounded.” We are told to “keep our feet on the ground” to balance us, to remind of something solid, something steady that can help bring us down from those dizzying heights that challenging times can take us to. But what happens when that safety net fails, when you can no longer trust the earth to keep you steady?

Recently I experienced a rather nasty earthquake which has left this question playing on my mind. When we live in a world of such uncertainty, how exactly do we stay grounded when we can’t even trust the ground we walk on?

But this idea of losing trust in your surroundings goes further than a shift in tectonic plates, for me personally anyway. Over…

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Destinations need to think out of the box

Travelling Mystery Guest (Pty) Ltd is aware that whether you are a tourist or a traveller, you want your visit to a tourism establishment to be perfect. Still we cannot ignore that many establishments struggle to meet their guests’ needs whilst individual and private organisations try to play with the new and ongoing trends.

Travelling Mystery Guest (Pty) Ltd (TMG) has been registered as a company in October 2012 and offers tourist destinations a variety of services, including workshops and sending a mystery guest to establishments to assess their quality of service.

Business trip to Switzerland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TMG wants to assist tourism establishments to identify their market advantages to be able to walk the talk and can perhaps also help those who have plans for making an interesting holiday. All may find their website where lots of information is shared.

Hopefully or probably they are aware that the European travellers are not so pleased the last few years or got some nasty experiences with hotels, guesthouses and other travel destinations, in the southern continent of this globe. Internet created a new avenue for business travellers to plan their trip in advance and to check the venues where they are planning to stay. Professional travellers, if you may call them so, also got a little-bit bored by the cool ‘standard business hotels’ and we may find also some business travellers who love some places which stay ahead of the trends, so they also have something to tell about them when they return home

Our guestspeaker remarks:

The new business traveller’s needs have evolved; they are now looking for a temporary home-away-from-home paired with a fast, efficient and seamless experience that will enable them to work on-the-go. {The changing business traveller}

And shows us how this new trend goes hand in hand with certain needs.

Frequent business travellers will generally all agree that the average business trip is no fun. Business travel has little, if anything, in common with the typical holiday and, more often than not, business trips leave the traveller feeling exhausted and stressed out. Most corporate folk who regularly travel for work end up not even using all of their vacation days. There is, however, a solution to this predicament: Bleisure travel. {Bleisure – Combining Business with Leisure}

This is an ongoing trend that business travellers want again, like we saw this in the 1920ies, a lovely time when doing their job, and as such wanting some “Bleisure travel”.

This buzzword was created from the words “business” and “leisure” and refers to a business traveller who fits in some leisure time during a business trip. This is hardly a new thing, but it has only recently become newsworthy. In fact, for long there has been a segment of business travellers who have had the monetary means, as well as the professional flexibility, to include a few extra leisure days in their scheduled business trips. {Bleisure – Combining Business with Leisure}

To have some good climate to fulfil the business-talks assures a more successful business trip.

Not only the business manager is looking for resource optimisation. Today we also find people we cannot stay neutral in what happens in the world. They find we should play more an active role in the negative events of this world.

Digital photograph of Caminhos de Ferro de Mocambique, Railway Station in Maputo, Mozambique. Taken by myself, Justin K G Dumpleton, during business travel 12 March 2005. This is my own work and I release this image into the public domain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more we hear about people who want to go on vacation and at the same time want to do something positive or good for the local people. African voyages have become very popular in Belgium as well as the trips to the Greece islands to help the many refugees.

In Greece this may be working and not many locals are making mis-use of this situation. Differently in Africa we can see it has become a blooming business. Several Western organisations smelled money and are organising so called benevoluentary trips.

In any case certain people have become more aware of their possibility to enrich spiritually others at the same time as themselves and contributing economically to the needy population. Educational tourism or voluntourism are clearly in the lift and have a good future.

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Travelling Mystery

Highlight what makes you unique and tap into travellers’ expectations.

We recently wrote about business travellers and the growing trend of them looking for destinations that are unconventional and adventurous. Yes, the standard hotel room is still number one on the list for business travellers, but this is mainly because they know they will get what they expect. Hotel groups normally also make this easier, as they have a standard room types, which provide guests with exactly the same whether it is in South Africa or London.

With the bleisure travel trend becoming more and more popular, the demand for more adventurous and unique accommodation options will also increase. This means that destinations will need to start thinking out of the box and tap into travellers’ expectations, which is ever changing and could be quite challenging, yet very exciting!

Out of the box thinking. (Image from: writerswin.com)

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