Maria Bonita and Maria Bethania (Agustin and Caetano)

The first time I heard this Agustin Lara song it was performed in our Maida Vale flat by Walter,a Venezuelan friend, a good singer and guitarist, and I really fell for the melody. Lara was a well-known Mexican composer.

 South American friends (Walter, Centre) 

The original Agustin Lara recording.

Maria Felix, Lara's inspiration

It  became a big hit in Greece, in various Greek language versions.
The first
The second

The English lyrics by Bobby Worth are hard to find.

Another favorite from the period when I listened to South American songs for the first time (beginning of the seventies) was Maria Bethania by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, who also sings Maria Bonita.

Veloso was living in self-exile in London at the time, and when I saw him live at the Portland Place International Students' Centre on  15 July, 1971; he delighted the audience by singing "London, London" , "In the hot sun of a Christmas Day" and "A little more blue" (if my memory serves me well). An unforgettable evening! He signed this album:

Food for the Eagle: Runic Stone, Gripsholm, Sweden

On the Gripsholm Stone


"They fared like men
far after gold
and in the east
gave the eagle food.
They died southward
in Serkland"

In memory of Harald, a member of  (his brother) Ingvar's unsuccessful Viking expedition.
"Give the eagle food" means to kill enemies, according to Sven Jansson, "Runes in Sweden" (1987)

Pictures of Swedish runic inscriptions

Tjelmar's ship grave, Gotland

Too Many Thinkers? Rodin's Blues

Rodin's The Thinker, San Francisco and Stockholm

The Poet contemplates the Gates of Hell

Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi ch'entrate!

Too many thinkers (multiple images)

Robin Williams and The Thinker (San Francisco)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9eee74/robin_williams_offering_a_toilet_roll_to_the/

Corfu versus Dorset

Maddie's blog, on being torn between the two places

Flood Warnings in Dorset

The Last Street Laterna (Greek Barrel Organ)

Some interesting documentaries in Greek

The Last Laterna

The Red Aristotle of Kallikrateia


My own take on the Greek laterna or barrel-organ

"Na ta poume?” Christmas Eve, 1983

Popular Market, Thessaloniki, Greece. 



Christmas Eve, a Saturday;

Children with triangles,

The traditional carol.

“Na ta poume?" " Na ta poume?”



Under the weight of a barrel-organ

From Constantinople

The refugee’s nephew stoops and wobbles,

The relic strapped like a cross to his back;

He staggers along from shop to shop:

“Na ta poume? Na ta poume?”

Not for him to turn the handle,

To sing the tune his uncle grinds:

He thumps and taps the tambourine,

Palms the membrane so it squeals and moans,

Does oriental dances by the butchers’ stalls,

In the coffee-shops and ouzeris;

The old refugee, long since retired,

Like the listening butcher, the backgammon players,

Still inhabits The City, still walks its streets,

Only stops staring into the middle distance,

Lets hand stop winding laterna handle,

When groups of young Thracian gypsies,

Magpie musicians, faster on their feet,

Always eager to steal a trick,

Sneak round in front, beat him to the best-filled shops,

Playing shrill shawms and beating drums, laughing

As they overtake him

To an audience with coins to throw, -

But they warm no hearts, nor steal the show.

Though the cumbersome barrel-organ must stand outside,

Greeks are glad to see it still alive,

Still decorated in the same old way:

The laterna with its Constantinople label.

It may be cumbersome, but it’s melodic;

The folk-songs have been harmonized:

Byzantine pins on a Roman cylinder.

The shawm-players may make much more noise,

Pied-pipers with their wooden oboes piercing through the din

Of the market-dealers’ Christmas cries:

But they can’t negotiate all the notes

Of “Kalyn imeran archontes”.

They have not walked his Calvary,

The Calvary of the Great Idea.



December 24, 1983.

Angelopoulos directs The Weeping Meadow

Shooting The Weeping Meadow

Part Two

Musical theme and scene from The Weeping Meadow

Opening scene of "Reconstruction" (Anaparastasis), filmed in the Zagori Villages (Vitsa, Monodendri)

Another film about Epirus to look out for, a documentary "Song for Epirus" by Panos Karkanevatos


Update: Landscape in the Mist