An eventful weekend. Saturday evening was the annual Art Walk on Third Ave. Many cities have these once a month; Scottsdale, Arizona, has one once a week; Fort Lauderdale does it once a year.
The art didn't seem to have changed much over the last 12 months. But then, I'm usually more interested in the art lovers. ("Either there are too many people you can't see the paintings," Oscar Wilde complained about museums, "or there are too many paintings you can't see the people.") A few we passed had that studied bohemian look that you don't see every day at Publix. It helped that the weather was cool; it's hard to look artsy in shorts.
Then yesterday I went to the annual Greek Festival at St. Demetrios Church. I stood in a line between a young couple from Krakow and an Anglo-Indian woman from Pakistan. Forget Big Macs, the world craves gyros.
I walked over to the bar and got an ouzo. In my youth I spent a winter teaching English in Arta - a little-visited town in northern Greece - and each evening I'd sit in a cafe, writing, reading, nursing an ouzo. My room was too cold for anything but sleep. I'd be the only customer sitting alone. The only one who didn't speak Greek. But I had one thing in common with all the other patrons: I too was male.
The Greek Festival is much more social. People smile at each other in a way you don't see every day at Publix. Schoolkids do traditional dances, adolescent boys somehow looking cool in skirts while holding hands. Then, when the performance is over, the stage is open to the public and toddlers, teenagers, middle-aged parents, stocky grandmothers all dance in that beautiful Greek way that unites generations and, in this country at least, nationalities.
