A week for Greeks

My friend Jenny and I had planned to have lunch at Applebee’s Sunday before she helped with my grocery outing.

It’s been a week for Greeks, as I’ve thought about the athletes of ancient Olympia, their current counterparts and the right-wing pea-brains of our own fairly new civilization – and I use the term loosely – who don’t have a clue about their significance.

These are the intellectual heavyweights who thought America’s loss of the 2016 Olympics was really funny and might know Homer is a character on “The Simpsons” and Athens is a town in Georgia.

I also had followed the story this week of Grrece’s upcoming Sunday election with the Socialist party challenging the ruling center-right New Democracy party.

Socialist leader George Papandreou had campaigned on the promise of open and honest government and a proposed massive stimulus to jump start Greece’s weak economy

So, when Jenny arrived yesterday and wondered if there was any chance I might prefer the Greek Festival at our local Farmer’s Market to Applebee’s, I had one thing to say:

“Moussaka!”

Moussaka is a Greek meatloaf made with lamb and sweet spices and layered with sliced eggplant. It’s the single most difficult – and delicious - recipe I’ve ever prepared, so I welcomed the chance to sample the efforts of Greek chefs.

Apparently the local Greeks find the recipe a tad formidable, too, so we settled for gyros and baklava as we ate al fresco and enjoyed a live band and dancers from Atlanta. I couldn’t see the entertainers so I visualized Zorba’s happy dance and wondered whatever happened to my old Internet buddy, Greek warrior Ted Neros..

We had joined a group of Jenny’s friends, and I was surprised to hear these seventy-something steel magnolias turn the conversation to criticism of George W. Bush. All I could say was, “Don’t get me started.”

There was a time when, unhampered by needing someone to assist me, I would have grabbed a reporter’s notebook and granted our Greek hosts first-person opinions about the day’s events in their mother country. Their insight would have made this post far more informative.

On Sunday, the Socialist party won and will now control 160 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament (LINK).

I’m not promoting socialism over capitalism here as my acumen of economics is pretty scant. I am just trying to say to the yahoos who are lambasting Obama’s stimulus spending that some folks get it.

Especially the Greeks.