[MGSA-L] In Greece, books beat rocks

June Samaras june.samaras at gmail.com
Sun Apr 15 21:02:06 PDT 2012


In Greece, books beat rocks

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0406-20120406,0,5070331.column

Ideas fill bookstore, but bring your own coffee

April 6, 2012
ATHENS, Greece — It is easy to throw a rock, and there have been
plenty thrown here lately, a common ritual, almost not newsworthy,
with the anarchists and hooligans smashing big pieces of marble and
throwing the chunks at police, at the government, at each other.

They live in a beautiful country struggling with economic chaos, the
result of decades of fiscal insanity and huge bureaucracy, the
political left having bribed the public with the public's own money
until all the money was gone.

In America, we're not at the rock-throwing stage yet, but our
politicians are working overtime to make Greeks of us, also bribing us
with our own money, borrowing and borrowing, using the federal, state
and local bureaucracies to reward themselves and their friends while
setting groups against each other to maintain power.

Rocks are thrown by only a powerless few. A rock is a thing of anger
in the hands of a stupid man. But there is something that stupid men
can't hope to pick up: solutions.

And to find some I went to an amazing bookstore in Athens.

Free Thinking Zone.

"I'm really not trying to push books, I'm trying to push ideas," said
Areti Georgili, who opened her bookstore several months ago as an
experiment.

What ideas?

"Freedom," she said. "You're American. You've heard of this concept,
'freedom'? There is this thing there, called freedom?"

She smiled and I liked her immediately. She didn't have to tell me
that irony is a Greek word.

There are bookstores all over the city, and I mean books on paper,
with people browsing and reading and talking about ideas. I didn't
want to think about all the bookstores that have vanished in Chicago.

But here, where the rock throwers make news, the booksellers are busy
without making headlines. Walk along any street downtown and you'll
see books sold on outdoor tables, books with no pictures, and of
course the bookstores. Some are huge. And others are just right.

People flock to Areti's store to talk of ideas, of developing new and
constructive ways to cope with the economic crisis. They don't waste
time shrieking epithets at the Germans or the Turks, or blaming the
immigrants who flood the country almost unchecked. These are goads
used by cynical men to incite the mob.

Instead, at Free Thinking Zone, folks talk about challenging the
corrupt bureaucracy and nepotism, to push for meritocracy.

The discussions are quite animated, but not frivolous, because what's
happening here — and what could happen in America — isn't frivolous.

When I visited the bookstore the other day, I noticed titles by
Friedrich Hayek and John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin and Pyotr
Kropotkin. On the wall outside her store is a small poster of
Dionysios Solomos, who wrote the "Hymn to Liberty," which was used for
the Greek National Anthem.

"But you're not here to talk of books alone," she said. "You're here
to talk about freedom. Would you like some coffee?"

Yes. Greek coffee. Medium sweet.

She sent out a clerk for the coffee.

=========================================

-- 
June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com



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