Author Archives: mourningdove

…which is not at all in Athens, prompting some raised eyebrows from the guy at the Europcar rental counter: “You’re driving to Delphi and back? Today?” Yup. There was no way I was coming to Greece for the first time in my life and not going to Delphi. I knew only the basic Wikipedia factsContinue reading “Athens Day Five: Delphi”

If reincarnation were a thing, and you got a choice about how you wanted to come back in your next life, I would seriously consider being a cat who lives in a fish market. I mean, choice #1 would be being a sea otter, floating around all day cracking open oysters on my chest andContinue reading “Athens Day Four: Aegina”

Technically this was Day Four of Athens, but we spent Day Three almost entirely at the conference. The presentations were interesting overall: my favorite was by Kent Chan, who works on Euro-American ideas of “The Tropics” and considers stereotypes about heat in his video installation for Weather Engines, “Heat Waves.” Sightseeing Day Three started offContinue reading “Athens Day Three: Aristotle, Dough Balls, and Lots of Vases”

After a quick breakfast at our corner taverna, Taia, we hopped on the tram for a winding trip from Kassomouli to Syntagma through the National Botanical Garden. From there, we walked through Plaka–both really touristy and really beautiful, with jewel-box Byzantine chapels and crumbling villas tucked at the end of alleys–to the Roman Agora. WeContinue reading “Day Two in Athens: The Agora and Ancient Greek Technology”

I’m here in Athens tagging along with my colleague Birgit, who’s presenting at a really cool project called Weather Engines at the Onassis Stegi art center. The exhibition collects various interpretations by multimedia artists of the factors that drive weather–human and nonhuman, and Birgit is one of the scholars making presentations that help put theContinue reading “First Day in Athens: Anchovies and the Acropolis”