Learning from a Living Cretan Tradition There are some things about Crete that reveal themselves immediately: the mountains, the sea, the light, the olive groves and the villages set into the folds of the landscape. Others take longer to understand. For me, the mandináda was one of those. Over the past two years I have…

In My View Crete has produced extraordinary people. Some are known throughout Greece and far beyond it. Others are remembered principally in the part of the island from which they came, their names carried through families, villages, songs and local history. Influence here has never depended entirely upon office, title or recognition. It has also…

I have lived in Crete long enough to know that there is no single Cretan landscape. The ground changes continually, not merely from place to place but from month to month, sometimes from one week to the next. A track ridden in February is not quite the same track in August. The stones are the…

Synchronicity, curiosity and a journey that began in 1968 There are occasions when the past does not return gradually. It arrives complete. I was rummaging through a local book exchange here in Crete when a familiar cover appeared among the shelves. From the Silent Earth: The Greek Bronze Age, by Joseph Alsop. I picked it…