Vignettes of Greece and America
My Grandfather’s Hand-forged Shears These hand-forged shears were made by my grandfather some 150 years ago, making them the oldest Vlach artifact we have in our home here in Providence, Rhode Island. These shears, an icon, and a few Turkish gold coins were the only things we brought with us when we came to the ...
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Election Week in Albania 1992
In March of this year I spent a week in Albania. The experience was so overpowering that I started writing this account the day after I returned, while it was all fresh in my mind. I have never spent such an extraordinary week before and probably never shall again. It was partly like another planet, ...
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Touring the Vlach Villages of Greece
Seventy-eight years after the publication of Wace & Thompson’s Nomads of the Balkans, the Vlachs and their villages have suddenly inspired cultural interest and academic inquiry. Indeed, we owe a debt of gratitude to those two British scholars who, to our good fortune, left an archaeological dig in Thessaly to study our people. As one who ...
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“Instant Modernization” in America
A prime concern of modern historians and social scientists has been the huge change in the qualities of human life between what are called “traditional” and “modern” societies. Whereas our relationships were once largely face-to-face and conducted with people whom we knew, nowadays many of the people with whom we come into contact remain anonymous; ...
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