Breakfast with Pandora

Indie and traditional publishing: a view before 2013

If you are contemplating indie (self-) publishing your book, Dean Wesley Smith's blog (linked below) is a must-read. His latest post on trends in the indie publishing field contains much food for thought, much of it encouraging for the writer, not so much for traditional publishing.

If you agree with Smith, you're probably going to end up publishing on your own. But is there a time when you are better off trying the traditional route, querying agents who will shepherd your book through the submission process to mainstream publishers?

My sense is now no. As Smith points out, publishers are very keen on having writers sign restrictive contracts. When a friend of mine sold his book to a big publisher for a large advance, for example, they required that he work on that book exclusively until it was out on the market. No matter that my friend also had another book looking for a publisher with another agent. You can wait a long time for a book to come out, and be required to sit on any other work.

Another reason not to publish traditionally is long-term cash flow. If you sell to a big house, they restrict your royalties and often keep rights (such as to e-books) for themselves. You may get money up front, but if your book doesn't sell, that's pretty much it. Your book goes into mothballs forever.

But there is one good reason left to try for a traditional publisher. That is when you believe you have That One Big Novel in you, and after you write it, that's it, you've got nothing else to give. If you value the idea of your Baby, your Magnum Opus, getting the royal treatment from the people who have, for decades and decades, been the ones deciding Who Are the Real Authors, then I would try my hardest to get that one novel published, and to have myself be validated as a Published Author.

If you are someone who, like Dean Wesley Smith, loves to write, loves to tell stories, has a million words inside you bursting to get out, then I'd go the indie route. You can build your own publishing empire the way you want. You don't have to be validated by someone else, and you don't mind if your books don't sell 100,000 copies in the first month. You're in it for the long haul.

Me? I like to think I've got a dozen books in me. I'd like to think Breakfast with Pandora books will become a place that readers look to for good reads. Then again, I've got that Magnum Opus on my computer, too, and that desire to join The Club.

Who knows. Maybe eventually I can do both.

Etwart says: stay tuned for my self-published middle-grade novel about Pygmy hippos in Cyprus.

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There are no small things

 That's the title of a short story I heard while a writer-in-residence at a local college several years ago. It was about an older couple who were downsizing their home and had to figure out what to do with their accumulation of possessions. After they went through a list of everything and couldn't see their way to tossing anything, one of them said, "There are no small things."

Photo: Goats in Cyprus.

That's my position and my weakness. I have t-shirts in my dresser drawer from almost all eras of my life. I could do a memoir based on t-shirts. The oldest is from the late 70's or early 80's. It's black with a white silkscreen of cuffed hands, one of them holding a conductor's baton. The message says, "Back to the Classics."

"Small things" have been on my mind this weekend as we completed the move of a house and I had to confront the thousands of small articles I hold on to both in heart and hands. This weekend I finally acknowledged I would not need all of the graded final exams from one of my university posts, the oldest from 1993. But I was tempted to keep all the ones with names on them that I recognized.

Memory, for me, is tied up in physical things, and memory crowds my mind and heart, perhaps too much.

My beloved wants to help me to live more in the present. She sees the importance of memory, but thinks brooding on the past makes no sense. This weekend we had a discussion over a pint liquor bottle. It is clear, has no label, but the screw cap says "Matthew Gloag & Sons. Perth."

She wanted me to give it a decent burial in the trash. It's an ugly little thing, truth be told.

What she doesn't understand is the deep, rich story behind that bottle.

In 2005 I went to Cyprus on a Fulbright Seminar. Of course I fell in love with the place. It is indescribable, both magical and mundane, a place fully loaded with 7000 years of continuous habitation, an hour's plane ride from Jerusalem or Cairo, about a millimeter away from the ancient world.

One day our Fulbright hosts took us on a tour of the Troodos mountains. They are not much on the absolute scale, but they are a world away from the tourist-filled beaches of Limassol and the politics of the capital, Nicosia. Under spreading cedar trees we walked through the main street of a town that was asleep like an old dog in the sun. A wrinkled woman who had no English sat us down in an empty taverna and gave us a syrupy lemonade-like concoction for a drink for guests. From her I bought a jar of pickled wild capers and a pint of Cypriot liquor, zivania, in that Matthew Gloag and Sons bottle.

It was Cypriot moonshine. No tax stamp, no bottle with fancy label. It tasted like old socks. But I will never forget that day, and I will never throw away that bottle.

It's quite possible I hold myself back from something better by holding on to possessions and memories, many of them not as pleasant as that day in Cyprus. But for me remembering is like breathing. There is no past, present or future for me. On my best days, all time is one, and all time is joy.

Ledra Street reopened in Nicosia, Cyprus

Cyprus, the beautiful, politically divided island in the Eastern Mediterranean (and ancestral home of Etwart the South Cypriot Pygmy Hippopotamus) had some good news today.

The entire length of Ledra Street, historic main thoroughfare through the capitol of Cyprus, Nicosia (Lefkosia), has become readily accessible to both Greek and Turkish Cypriots after decades of closure.

In 1974, the Turkish army invaded the Republic of Cyprus and carved out an area in the north of the island that would end up administered by the Turkish Cypriots under the protection of the invading army. The legitimate government held the south of the nation.

Nicosia was cut right through the middle, like East and West Berlin, and the border between, with a small no-man's land, was called the Green Line. The UN still maintains a presence in Cyprus along this demarcation.

Ledra Street was cut off.

When I visited Cyprus in 2005, one could walk from south to north Nicosia, but through a tightly-controlled checkpoint on the western end of downtown.

Greek Cypriot Ledra Street, in central Nicosia, now a lively pedestrianized shopping area, ended with a wall, a wooden platform with stairs that looked over the no-man's land, and a sign that said in Greek and English, "Freedom cannot be won without blood."

I hoped the fresh-faced soldiers, teenage heroes or near that age,  patrolling the platform with automatic weapons, didn't have to back up that slogan with their lives.

There was no sense of danger-- far from it-- but there was a palpable current of grief and regret, somewhat like the feeling I got in a restaurant in Little Italy in New York City in 2002, months after 9/11. A spirit can pervade a place.

Now I can imagine that minatory platform replaced by a kiosk with officials checking passports and other ID's.  (Check out the British newspaper The Guardian's photo gallery).

The reopening is a welcome development in a saga that has seemed to have no possible positive outcome. I leave it to the Cypriots themselves to determine how much significance this event has for their lives. I applaud it in any case.

Map courtesy of BBC, photo of platform here.

Marinahdes and Homer

Last year on the Fulbright trip to Greece and Cyprus, I found out that no one in the world except me pronounces the word "marinade" with the second "a" as in "father."

I was talking to Pam about it, and she laughed uproariously at my usage. I then went to every other participant in the seminar and asked how they pronounce it. Everyone said "Mayr-ih-NAYYYYD," as in parade, lemonade, and made-in-the-shade. So does dictionary.com, for that matter.

Maybe this is a product of my French-Swiss grandmother, for whom English was a second language, and who always pronounced "mayonnaise" as "My-oh-NEZ." But I never pronounced marinade with a long second a. Is there anyone out there who says it the way I do?

Regardless of the pronunciation, the book Marinades by Jim Tarantino is my favorite cookbook and has just been reissued by Ten Speed Press in a new, expanded edition.

I am a griller from way back. As a newlywed I marched out to the back porch of our apartment and began my education with hamburgers on a Weber charcoal grill. One tip: don't use pine straw as a starter for the coals. Three reasons: the smoke, the smell, and the bad taste on the food afterwards.

I soon graduated to barbecued chicken, and made the mistake of letting it sit on a hot grill covered in sugary, tomatoey barbecue sauce. Burned to a crisp.

But that first Easter we tried a family recipe for marinated leg of lamb, and it was magical. Rosemary, brown sugar, olive oil, and most importantly, aged wine vinegar went into that graceful brew. It has never failed to amaze guests at Easter dinner. 

During the early part of my education we acquired the first Marinades, which was published in 1992. The greatest virtue of this edition was a thumbnail guide for which marinades went with which kind of meat or fish, and-- most importantly-- for how long the grill food would have to soak. I love coming home from work a little early and throwing together a spontaneous meal, so I scoured the book for 2-3 hour marinades, and eventually had more and more grilling success.

This book is bigger, longer, with smaller print, more recipes, and added sections on things called "brines," "cures," "rubs," and "glazes." Brines are salty solutions for dunking meat, cures and rubs are mixtures of ingredients rubbed on to the meat, and glazes are (often sweet) sauces brushed on at the end of grilling.

There are also out-and-out recipes, such as Grilled Iberian Pork Tenderloin with Blood-Orange Sherry Sauce.

Tarantino is a purist and a perfectionist. He minutely dissects his subject, getting into the chemistry of meat tenderization and freezer burn. He is the king of the specialty ingredient; if you want to run with the big dogs of grilling, you have to be willing to find and buy such things as juniper berries, banana leaves, and Coco Lopez cream of coconut.

But if you just want to grill some chicken legs on the back deck and sip wine at sunset, Jim Tarantino is still your man. There are simple recipes, and you don't have to add every single ingredient for a marinade to make its object taste good. Plus, it is such a high to create your own barbecue sauce (now we must call it "glaze") instead of relying on the bottled stuff that is so expensive and yet consists mostly of corn syrup, tomato goop, and MSG.

Tarantino is also a student of history, which pleases this student of history. He reports that sauerkraut comes from the Mongols, who invaded the West with crocks of pickled cabbage in their saddle bags. Reading Marinades puts me in the mood to share conversation and Grilled Beef Tenderloins with Ancho Chile Sauce with a food historian.

As Tarantino accurately points out, grilling is the oldest form of meat cooking technique; when first one of our ancestors stuck a piece of meat on a stick and held it over a campfire, grilling was born.

In ancient Greece, grilling was done kebab style, by cutting meat into chunks, spearing the chunks on skewers, and suspending them over a fire. Here's one of Homer's many descriptions of the ancient grill-out:

They slaughtered and flayed the oxen,
Jointed the thighbones and wrapped them
In a layer of fat with cuts of meat on top.
The old man roasted them over charcoal
And doused them with wine. Younger men
stood by with five-tined forks in their hands.
When the thighpieces were charred and they had
Tasted the tripe, they cut the rest into strips,
Skewered it on spits and roasted it skillfully.

(From Book I, Lombardo translation. Buy the newly released audio book)

Homer describes the essential elements of a marinade, fat and acid (wine): the fat melts on the fire and keeps moist the meat lying on top of it. The wine flavors the meat and tenderizes it. The marinated meat is then finished on kebabs.

We tend not to eat organs anymore, but the ancient Greeks had a meat-poor diet, and so tripe was considered a delicacy.

Homer also accurately depicts the scene around the grill. If there are men at a cook-out, they are all there with five-tined forks, putting in their two cents' worth.

Happy summer and happy grilling, everyone. You are engaged in an age-old pleasure.

 

The minotaur in the museum

Last year at this time I was on a plane heading for Athens, Greece, to start the main leg of the 2005 Fulbright-Hays Seminar to Greece and Cyprus. The participants of the group have been emailing each other and reminiscing, experiencing literal nostalgia, which for the ancient Greeks meant a painful yearning for a return. I don't know when I'll get back to Greece, so for now, remembering is the best way to assuage the yearning.

Towards the end of our time in Greece, we got to tour the National Archeological Museum in Athens, an extremely not to be missed thing if you are there. The government of Greece, quite understandably, protects the jobs of its licensed guides by prohibiting anyone unlicensed from conducting tours or explicating the museum exhibits, no matter how qualified said person is.

Our guide was an intelligent young woman who nevertheless got a few things wrong, in my opinion. Everyone in the group laughed uproariously afterwards remembering the difficult time I had holding my tongue while she was speaking.

The photo below reproduces a piece about which I thought our guide was most off-base. It is a silver drinking vessel called a rhyton, in the shape of a bull's head, with gilt horns and a gold rosette in the middle of its forehead. It is from the Bronze Age (pre-classical) Mycenaean Greek civilization and dates from the 16th c. BC, or about 800 years before the spread of Homer's Iliad.

Our guide walked us up to this piece and declared that it was a representation of the Minotaur. She then launched into the story of Pasiphae (Puh-SIFF-uh-ee), daughter of Minos king of Crete. Goaded by a divinity or on her own, she conceived a passion for mating with a bull, instructed Daedalus, the master technology guru, invent a machine by which she could mate with the bull (I don't want to know the details), and became pregnant by the bull.

The resulting monstrous offspring had a bull's head and a human's body. It is called the Minotaur because it is the bull (Latin taur- = bull) of Minos' (Mino-) daughter. It spent its time in the basement of King Minos' palace, in a maze designed (again) by Daedalus, and was fed people until the hero Theseus came and killed it, with the help of princess Ariadne.

I almost had a fit-- though it makes sense to mention the story to a group of people who know little or nothing about ancient Greece. The Minotaur story is well known, and it would give a general audience something familiar to associate with an otherwise unfamiliar object.

The fact is that we have no idea how far back the Minotaur story goes. There is no Greek mythology written down before Homer, and the earliest recognizable pictorial depictions from Greek mythology only go back a hundred or so years before Homer. The writing in Mycenaean times is not narrative; it records almost exclusively lists of stuff in palace storehouses. And the art, though beautiful and containing many pictures of what looks like gods, heroes, and beasts, cannot be conclusively proved to depict anything from the popular Greek stories we know.

The bull was all-important to Mycenaean and especially Minoan (Bronze Age Crete) religion. Bulls were the supreme animal of sacrifice, and depictions of bulls and especially their horns abound in every sacred space. It makes perfect sense to tell a story about a Cretan princess, Pasiphae, being interested in a bull, because the Bronze Age people of Crete were so preoccupied with bulls in their religion.

The bull-man in mythology, however, did not have to be invented from native religion. The Greeks adapted many stories and religious figures from the ancient Near East when assembling their own story culture. The so-called Succession Myth in Hesiod's Theogony is the most famous of these adaptations.

At this time in Bronze Age Turkey, the Hittites had an advanced civilization with bull-men as prominent, established mythological figures.

Hurri and Sherri, a pair of divine twins, the sons of the thunder god Teshub, were known as the "bulls of Teshub" and depicted as bull-headed bipeds who supported their father by holding up the sky. Teshub himself, like his counterpart Zeus, is sometimes depicted as a bull himself.

When stories cross cultures, details change to suit the needs and concerns of the new culture. I would not be surprised if Greeks and Cretans heard stories of these bull-men divinities, didn't want their own divinities to be bulls (all the time at least), but liked the idea of a composite creature. Thus the divinity became a monster-- because what is unusual either is unusual in a wonderful way, a terrible way, or both at the same time.

What about the rosette on the forehead?  Our guide thought it was a sun, but it could be just about anything. Before sacrificing a bull, the Greeks used to throw barleycorns at the animal's forehead, right in the location of the rosette, to make it nod "yes" to being killed. Maybe that rosette is the first "bull's eye."

Etwart, the search for his roots - VI and last

Etwart has a good life as the only pygmy Cypriot hippopotamus in the world-famous San Diego Zoo. But every day he wakes up with a hole in his heart.  He wants to know the story of his family and the deeds of his forehippos-- maybe even find some of his relatives. So with his friend junior zookeeper Katterly Meadows he sets out on a journey of discovery.

Read the whole story from I-VI in order.

Katterly Meadows lay awake in her bed, missing her family.
The light of the rising moon, nearly full, lit the curtains in her room. Kat got up for the tenth time that night and swept the curtains aside. A glowing summer face smiled down on her.
She and Etwart had been in Cyprus for a week. They'd researched hippo habitat and learned about the history of the island. They'd traveled from river beds to mountains and met a bunch of people. When she got back home, she would be able to say to all her friends that Cyprus was awesome-- that it really changed her.
But at the moment, she was hungry for a PB and J and a hug from her mom.
The Mountain Lady, who made tasty lemonade and scary prophecies, had told Kat, Etwart, and Ioli, their Cypriot guide, that Kat would be the one to unravel the mystery about Etwart's parents-- where they came from, and why they'd left Etwart as a baby in a basket on a beach in south Cyprus.
"She says, you are the key, Kat," Ioli said. "She says you have the gift of far sight and friendship of animals. She says you will be able to see Atlantis at the time of the next full moon. We must go to Aphrodite's Rock after midnight, and from there you will be able to see Atlantis. Only you. And you may be able to speak with Etwart's parents."
Atlantis. Too weird to think about. Problem was, she was too wired to sleep.
In the bathroom, Etwart shifted in the tub, and water splashed. Kat tiptoed to the door. "You awake, Et?"
"Dad and Mom," Etwart mumbled. He was talking in his sleep.
Kat lay down again. This time, she could feel herself sinking into the softness of the bed. As her eyelids grew heavy, this thought came: Whatever happens, I'm doing it for my friend Etwart, so it's going to be okay.
The next day, Marios the minibus driver took them west, to Paphos.
"We are in the southwest corner of Cyprus," Ioli explained. "Some think this is the most beautiful place on the island. So it is fitting that we are to see the home of the Greek goddess of beauty."
"Are the Greek gods real?" Etwart asked. "Has anyone ever seen them?"
"A long time ago, people thought they saw them," Ioli said. "Most Greeks are Christian now, and they believe in one god."
"But I almost feel as if I can see them," Kat said. "Look there!"
She pointed out the window of the bus.
"What?" asked Etwart.
"I don't know, something..." Kat said. "Maybe it was just the sun on the water. I thought I saw a face."
Ioli said, "This is what the Lady meant by far sight."
"My dad says I just have a vivid imagination," said Kat.
"That is one way of putting it," Ioli said, turning again towards the front of the bus. "But that is not all it means."
Aphrodite's Rock was a big promontory, sticking out into the dark sea. But there were smaller rocks everywhere.
"We wait till nightfall," Ioli said. "Have a swim now, and then we go to dinner. When the moon rises, Kat, we'll see what happens."
After dinner they returned, and they met an old man with a small motor boat. "He will take you out to  a place where you can stand on the rock. We'll be close by. Call if you see anything."
It was dead calm, and the wake of the boat made almost no noise. The moon was rising far, far out on the horizon, a lump of gold.
"You not scare," said the man, helping her onto an outcropping. And then he turned to Ioli and said something with a smile.
"He's a joker," said Ioli. "He said you look like Andromeda."
"Who's that?" asked Kat, who wasn't in the mood for jokes.
"The princess of Ethiopia. Her family was forced to tie her to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea-monster. But then the hero Perseus came and saved her, and killed the monster."
"I'll save her," said Etwart.
Kat laughed. It was just the thing to put her at ease. "I don't need saving," she said. "This is research."
The man pushed off from the barnacle-covered rock and the boat drifted away. After some grunting on Etwart's part, there was silence, and Kat concentrated on the moon, which was now up and much bigger and flatter than usual. She thought maybe she would have to see something in the moon, or in the light of it reflecting on the water. But in a few minutes, she realized it was going to be much simpler than that.
She heard splashing-- two splashes, side by side, and not quite saw two dark forms making their way towards her. They were Etwart-sized, and when they came close enough, Kat heard an Etwart-like "mrrff."
"Can you see anything?" Ioli called from what seemed like a long way away.
Kat said nothing. She was fixed on the two dark forms, gliding towards her, now completely silent.
The bigger form came all the way up to the rock. "Get on," it whispered.
Kat's heart beat wildly, but she knelt. She was wearing her swimsuit under her shorts and t-shirt. She straddled the back of the form and felt wet hippo skin. Underneath her, four legs churned away.
"Where are we going?" Kat asked. "Are you Etwart's parents?"
No answer, just splashing, as the two hippos swam away from Aphrodite's rock. In no time she could not look over her shoulder and see the rock, only the lights of Paphos far away. She knew that Ioli, Etwart, and the man would be worried about her. But it didn't seem to matter somehow. The water was cool, the rhythm of the hippo paddling regular and soothing. She hugged the neck of the hippo she was riding, and waited.
Not long afterward, the hippos stopped swimming. She could see lights in the distance, a kind of mirror image of the lights in Paphos, a semi-circle of them, as if they were ringing a beach.
"Is that Atlantis?" asked Kat. "Or is it another island that we..." She stopped. Ioli had already told them there were no islands nearby the coast of Cyprus.
Kat heard a new splash now, and the groaning of wood against metal. It was a rowboat, coming towards her. Voices were saying something she couldn't understand. It wasn't Greek. It wasn't like any language she'd ever heard.
The hippos submerged. Kat's legs lost their grip on her carrier's side. In a second, she was underwater.
Kat kicked her way up to the surface, her mouth burning with salt. The voices and the rowboat were approaching. A light hung from a hook in the stern, an oil lamp held by a chain. There were three men in the boat. One had a tooth missing. They looked to her like pirates.
"Glump!" she cried. She had been trying to call for help, but a wave came and filled her open mouth. She went under again.
Now she knew that she was getting tired. Those men could easily fish her out of the water, put her in the boat, and take her to Atlantis. Or they could pass by, and her friends would never find her.
"Help!" she called now, her hand in the air. She figured that it would be better to be alive in Atlantis than drowned on the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The oars in the locks strained and whined, and the wake of the boat grew louder. Kat's legs felt like rubber. She couldn't tread water much longer.
In the moonlight, Kat saw the boat with the lantern. And then she went under again, and remembered nothing more.
"You okay, honey?" someone asked.
She was on a rocky beach, wrapped in towels. A light was shining in her face.
"Okay?" she said. "Is this Atlantis?"
"No," said a voice she recognized as Ioli's. "You're back in Paphos. You never left Cyprus. But you swam a long way, child. If you were my Louisa, I would have to punish you."
Kat said, "I didn't swim. I rode. I rode."
"What do you mean, road? There was a road out to where you almost drowned?"
"No, no." Kat shivered. She remembered it all, and would all her life, but she couldn't speak just at that moment. It would have to wait.
"Just lie back," said Etwart. "You've had a big night, Katterly."
"I saw them," Kat said. "Your folks, Et. I saw them."
"Of course you did, honey."
"No, I did. And I saw a boat. It was from Atlantis."
"You saw our boat," Ioli said. "We were lucky Etwart heard your cry. He has the best ears of anyone around here."

"But it was a rowboat, not a motor boat," Kat protested. "I heard the oars."
Ioli said, "Your father is right. You do have a vivid imagination."
Kat said, "Etwart, your parents are alive."
Etwart grunted. He breathed warm cabbage-breath on Kat's face. "Thank you, sweetheart," he whispered. "For being such a good friend."

Etwart, the search for his roots - V

Etwart has a good life as the only pygmy Cypriot hippopotamus in the world-famous San Diego Zoo. But every day he wakes up with a hole in his heart.  He wants to know the story of his family and the deeds of his forehippos-- maybe even find some of his relatives. So with his friend junior zookeeper Katterly Meadows he sets out on a journey of discovery.

Read the whole story from I-VI in order.

Marios, the minibus driver, whistled as he drove Kat, Ioli (their Cypriot guide), and Etwart into the Troodos mountains.

"Marios is happy whenever he gets to visit the mountains," Ioli explained.

They were passing in between hills covered in tawny grass. Etwart said, "I don't see any mountains. I thought you said Cyprus was a small island."

"It is," Ioli said. "You'll see in a moment. The mountains come up fast. And they are high enough that in the winter we can ski on their slopes."

"How tall is the tallest mountain?" Kat asked.
"Almost two thousand meters. That's over six thousand feet."
"Wow!"

Etwart grunted with surprise and pleasure. He liked being from Cyprus. There was something new to discover every day.

In a few minutes they were winding up a steep grade, and the hills had become near-cliffs, clad in tall live oak, cypress, and pine trees. In the deep-cut valleys, plum, almond and walnut trees luxuriated in the sun.

"It's so much greener up here," Kate said.
"Look at the river," Etwart said as they passed over a narrow stone bridge. He smudged the window glass with his humid snout.
"And there are beautiful cascades," said Ioli. "But we're not here for that. Soon, we'll be at the home of the Mountain Lady."
When they reached the village of Galata, Marios parked in a gravel lot, and they passed in deep shade through the downtown district. It was warm, and quiet, and a few children came out to greet Etwart, who grunted to them with his mouth wide open. They screamed in mock terror, then came back to give him hugs.

They made a right turn onto a narrow street with two- and three-story buildings on each side. About halfway down, a sidewalk café had jars of wild capers for sale, and bottles of a liquid as clear as water.
"What is this? Mountain water?" Etwart asked.
"Zivania," said Ioli. "It's a strong drink made from grape stems. Almost totally alcohol."
An old lady was serving an older gentleman at a table. When she looked up, her weathered face brightened, and she cried out in delight.
"Geia sou, Ioli! Ti kaneis!" Which meant, hello, how are you, Ioli.
"This is the Mountain Lady," Ioli said. "She doesn't speak much English. I will try and interpret for you."
When the Mountain Lady caught sight of Etwart, she crossed herself.
"She can't believe she's seeing you," Ioli said.
"Has she seen any more of my type?" Etwart asked.
Ioli said, "We'll find out soon enough. Let's sit down. She wants to give us some lemonade."
The old man couldn't speak English either, but he was happy for the company, and he patted Etwart's snout.
The Lady poured lemon sugar syrup into glasses, then topped them off with spring water from the mountains. Etwart wanted to try Zivania, but the lady said it would make him crazy.
Kat said, "Mmmm, just right."
Ioli said, "It's a little sweet for me."
Etwart said, "More, please.
The Lady laughed.
Then they got down to business. Ioli explained that the Mountain Lady was a keeper of ancient lore. The Lady's mother had learned the ancient knowledge from her mother, and so on, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Most of the lore involved how to do things properly, such as making lemon sugar syrup, or canning wild capers. But some of it had to do with mysteries, and the secrets of the island.

Ioli explained Etwart's story-- how, as a baby hippo, he had been left on the beach in a basket, and must have come from pygmy hippopotamus parents, though there weren't any left on the island. Could Etwart's parents have come from a shadowy place like Atlantis?
The old lady nodded her head gravely, then told Ioli something.
"She says you are a sign of things to come," Ioli said. "St. John of Patmos wrote the Biblical book of Revelation, a prophecy of the future, on the Greek island of Patmos. There are many talking animals in that book."
The Lady then asked Kat a question in Greek, and pointed to Etwart.
"She wants to know if he is your animal," Ioli said.
"Well, he's more my friend," Kat replied, shrugging her shoulders.
Ioli laughed when she heard the Lady's answer to that. "She thinks you are an incarnation of the goddess Artemis, the mistress of animals."
Etwart snorted. "Incar-- what?"
"She thinks I'm a goddess?" Kat said. "That's kind of wild."
Ioli argued with the lady for a moment, who kept pointing to Kat.
"She says, you are the key, Kat," Ioli said. "She says you have the gift of far sight and friendship of animals. She says you will be able to see Atlantis at the time of the next full moon. We must go to Aphrodite's Rock after midnight, and from there you will be able to see Atlantis. Only you. And you may be able to speak with Etwart's parents."
"When is the next full moon?"
"It'll be full in a few days," said Ioli.

(Troodos image here)

Etwart, the search for his roots - IV

Etwart has a good life as the only pygmy Cypriot hippopotamus in the world-famous San Diego Zoo. But every day he wakes up with a hole in his heart.  He wants to know the story of his family and the deeds of his forehippos-- maybe even find some of his relatives. So with his friend junior zookeeper Katterly Meadows he sets out on a journey of discovery.

Read the whole story from I-VI in order.

That night, after their trek in the ancient hippo habitat, Kat, Etwart and Ioli sat out on the balcony of the hotel sipping orangeade. The full moon hung in the east, a shade lighter than their drinks.
"Mmmf..." Etwart took a big sip. "I don't understand. If there are no more hippos on Cyprus, where can my parents have come from? Some hidden place on the island?"
"Maybe," Ioli, their Cypriot guide, said. "It's a small island, but there are many mysteries still to be solved."
Kat said, "But Etwart was found washed up on a beach in a basket. Maybe his parents were never on Cyprus. Hippos are good swimmers. Maybe they were swimming by."
"Could they have come from a nearby island?" Etwart asked.
"There aren't any, I'm afraid," said Ioli.

Marios drove them north next morning to a border checkpoint. Tour buses lined up in front of them.
"What's this?" Etwart asked.
Ioli said, "We are entering the Turkish-controlled area of Cyprus. Today we are visiting Professor Gul Atsur at a university in Northern Cyprus. She is an authority on Neolithic Cyprus."
"Neolithic. You mean the last time they say hippos on the island," Kat said.
"Ten thousands years ago," said Ioli.
Etwart groaned.
Marios moved forward. A police officer met them, and Ioli and Kat gave their passports to be checked. He eyed Etwart warily, then went into his office and came back with an orange.
"They know how to treat you around here," said Etwart, munching.
"Someday we hope to unify the whole island," said Ioli. "But at least now we can go back and forth between the two communities, Greek and Turkish. Between 1974-2003, no crossing was allowed."

Professor Atsur was a young, friendly woman who had plenty to say about Cyprus of ancient times. She told them that the earliest known instance of a domesticated cat was found on Cyprus, dating to 9,000 BC.
Before long, the subject came around to the pygmy hippopotamus, and Etwart explained his situation. "They found me on a beach in a basket. Do you have any idea where could my parents have come from?"
"Hmm..." Professor Atsur said. "Turkey is very close to the north coast of Cyprus-- only 40 kilometers. But there are no hippos there. The only islands even remotely close are the Greek islands-- Rhodes, Crete, Karpathos, Thera." She laughed. "I guess they could always have sent you from Atlantis."
Etwart snorted. "Atlantis? Where's that? In Georgia?"
"No, hippopotamaki mou," said Ioli with a smile. "It is a mythical land, invented by the philosopher Plato. He said this was a great island in the Atlantic ocean that ruled over much of the Western Mediterranean long before his time. Then there was a great earthquake and the island sank beneath the waves. Nothing of it is left."
"The Atlantic Ocean isn't close," said Kat.
"Yes," said Professor Atsur. "I was referring to another theory-- that Atlantis was really the island Thera, which had a huge volcanic eruption about 3500 years ago. Much of that island fell into the sea. It had been host to a beautiful and advanced civilization."
"So maybe it was in two places at once?" The hippo's ears twirled.
"No. Just two different theories about the location of the same island."
Kat said, "But wait a minute. Isn't there a story about an island that used to travel around?"
"Yes," said Ioli. "The island of Delos. It was a wandering island until the goddess Leto gave birth there to her two children, Apollo and Artemis. From then on it was rooted, and is there today."
Kat frowned.
"What is it, child?" Ioli asked.
"Maybe..." Kat rubbed her forehead. "I know it sounds crazy, but is it possible that when the first humans came to Cyprus ten thousand years ago, some of the hippos recognized it wasn't healthy anymore to stay there, and so they swam away to Atlantis?"
"But then they would've died, just like everyone, in the earthquake."
"What if it wasn't an earthquake? What if it just disappeared-- you know, wandered away?"
"Kat, there has to be a simpler explanation," Ioli said.
"She's right, though. It would explain things," said Professor Atsur. "Quantum physics has shown that we don't quite understand time and space. Atlantis has never been found-- maybe because it disappeared, and only comes back now and then, in a shadowy way."

"Not a very scientific view, Professor," said Ioli.
"A scientist studies what she can see and verify," said Professor Atsur. "But that doesn't mean that's all there is."
Etwart's ears twirled a little more. "Is there anyone on Cyprus that knows about this... Quantum whatsits?"
Kat rubbed Etwart's eyebrows. "I think we'd have to go to a big university in a big city," she said with a sigh.
"No," said Ioli. "If there's anyone who knows about quantum physics, it's the Mountain Lady."
Etwart said, "The Mountain Lady? Who's that?"
Someone..." Ioli looked away and up, as if in the direction of  mountains. "...who knows about shadows."

Etwart, the search for his roots - III

Etwart has a good life as the only pygmy Cypriot hippopotamus in the world-famous San Diego Zoo. But every day he wakes up with a hole in his heart.  He wants to know the story of his family and the deeds of his forehippos-- maybe even find some of his relatives. So with his friend junior zookeeper Katterly Meadows he sets out on a journey of discovery.

Read the whole story from I-VI in order.

After an excellent rest, Katterly found Etwart in the hotel pool, happily swimming with children.
"Good morning, Kat!" He bellowed over the laughter of the kids. "I think I could live on these Cyprus oranges."
Ioli sat on a deck chair next to the pool. "Come now, Louisa," she said. "We have to be going soon."
Louisa turned out to be Ioli's daughter, a curly-headed seven-year old.

Ioli said, "Today we are going to the salt lake of Akrotiri and the Khouris River. In ancient times this was a major wetland. Now it is the home of thousands of migratory birds."

They all piled into a minibus that was being driven by a man named Marios. He greeted them all with a hearty "Kalimera!" which means good morning in Greek.

On the way to the salt lake, Louisa taught Kat and Etwart how to count to twenty in Greek. Etwart was just beginning to remember, ena, thio, tria, one, two, three, when he caught sight of orange groves on the side of the highway.

"Look at them all," Etwart said. Marios pointed at a particularly beautiful grove, and Etwart leaned over his shoulder to see.

"Reminds me of San Diego," said Kat. Cyprus and San Diego had very similar climates.

They stopped at a roadside stand, where Kat bought Etwart a bag of oranges, and they descended to an almost-dry river bed. In the distance, over acres of low bushes, the salt lake stretched, white-blue.

"What is this plant?" Etwart asked, motioning with his big head towards a tall, dry stick-like plant.
"It's called fennel," Ioli said. "It grows all over the island, and the bulb is good to eat."
"My ancestors probably ate a lot of fennel," said Etwart proudly. He snapped off a length of fennel in his mouth. "Look-- it has sections."
Kat took the fennel in her hand. Each section was a cylinder about a foot long, with fibrous walls on each side. She poked a hole in one wall and peeped inside the hollow stalk.

"Yes! Do you know the story of Prometheus, Etwart?" Ioli asked.
"Pro-meef-eh-oos?"
"Long ago, the great god Zeus decided to punish men because their benefactor, Prometheus, had fooled Zeus. Zeus took away fire from men. But Prometheus stole it back, and hide it inside a fennel stalk."
"How did he do that?"
"Just look at the sections," Ioli said. "Prometheus took the spark of fire and hid it in one of those. It was a perfect hiding place."
"But didn't the spark burn the dry fennel?"
"With the stalk closed, there was little air for the spark, so it couldn't flame up," Ioli explained. "And there is a pith inside like a wick. The spark fed on the pith with the air that it had, and didn't die. A long time ago, that is how men carried fire from place to place."
They walked along the river bed, and Kat took notes about what she saw. She made a sketch of dry and living fennel in her notebook.
"There must have been many pygmy hippopotami in the old days," said Ioli. "In a place called Aetokremnos, a cliff dwelling of the Neolithic age, they found many bones of pygmy hippotami in addition to evidence of human occupation."
"How long ago was that?" Etwart asked.
"We think this was the first human habitation of the island, about 12,000 years ago."
"12,000?" Etwart snorted. "How many is that?"
Kat sighed. "A very long time."
"And we are fairly sure that pygmy hippopotami on Cyprus went extinct not long after humans came to the island."
"Then where did I come from?" Etwart asked.
"My boss, Vikhram Singh, said they found you as a baby hippo near here," Kat said. "You were in a basket and there was a note in it that said, please take care of my child."
"So my parents did live here!"
"We don't know," said Kat. "They found you on the beach. You may have washed up on the shore somehow."
"Can we find out more about me?"
"We'll try," said Kat.

Map of salt lake area here.

Etwart, the search for his roots - II

Etwart has a good life as the only pygmy Cypriot hippopotamus in the world-famous San Diego Zoo. But every day he wakes up with a hole in his heart.  He wants to know the story of his family and the deeds of his forehippos-- maybe even find some of his relatives. So with his friend junior zookeeper Katterly Meadows he sets out on a journey of discovery.

Read the whole story from I-VI in order.

"We will soon be touching down in Cyprus," said the captain of Cyprus Airways Flight 337, "the home of the last divided capitol in the world, Nicosia. Turkish troops still occupy more than one-third of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, and..."
Katterly Meadows, 13-year old Mediterranean Small Mammal Care Summer Intern I, would have listened more closely to the history lesson-- the first one she'd ever heard from an airline pilot-- but she was more concerned about Etwart.
Getting the grant to come to Cyprus and study wetlands habitat had been a cinch compared to the logistics of moving a pygmy hippopotamus 6,000 miles from the San Diego Zoo to the eastern Mediterranean. The less said about that, the better. Now they were almost to their destination, and Etwart was in a cage in the pressurized cargo area.
The cage was specially designed to mist Etwart every twenty minutes or so in order to keep his tender skin from dehydrating. But when they'd touched down in Athens to change planes, Kat had noticed the device was malfunctioning. The water gauge showed the mister was only working about half the time.
"How do you feel?" Kat asked Etwart.
"Thwoat dwy," he managed. She misted him by hand and fed him a jug of cabbage water, but that was all she had time for before he was loaded on to the Cyprus flight.
"Don't worry," said a baggage handler. "Cyprus has the best-paid pilots in the world. No problems for you."
On the tarmac it was sunny and breezy and the Mediterranean stretched out on three sides, silver-blue. Kat breathed in sea air along with jet fuel fumes as they brought Etwart down a conveyer.
"Gonna be oh-kay," he told her, but she could tell he wasn't right.

A pretty woman in her thirties hustled across the tarmac in sandals and a fashionable dress. It was Ioli, the representative from the Full Bite Biology Commission. She had wise eyes and a welcoming smile. "So glad to see you!" she cried, and hugged Katterly just like her mom would've. "Where is your guardian?"
Kat pointed at Etwart.
"A hippo?" Ioli stared in disbelief, then glanced at her clipboard. "Now I see. Etwart Hippopotamaki. And I thought you were bringing someone Greek."

"AM Gweek," Etwart mumbled. "Cypweeot hippo."
"Can we get him to the hotel?" Kat asked. "He's really dehydrated."
Ioli took charge. She cancelled the taxi waiting for them and ordered a mini-bus. Etwart clambered in with the last of his strength, and they whisked him to the city of Limassol, where they were staying in a beachfront hotel.
Kat didn't have time to admire the view from her bedroom window. They got Etwart into a bathtub and ran cool water all over him. As a pygmy hippopotamus, he was just small enough for the tub.
Ioli said, "I have just the thing for him."
She was gone just ten minutes, and when she came back she had a bag of oranges. They peeled these and fed them by hand to Etwart.
After a little snout-stroking, he was as good as new.

"Don't you think we should begin our research, Kat?" Etwart said. "Where's the nearest river bottom?"
"You've had a big day," Kat said. "Rest now."
"Yes, rest, hippopotamaki mou," Ioli said. "You have to have your strength to take care of this little one. You're her guardian, you know."
Etwart bellowed with hippo-laughter. "Can we have a pancake breakfast tomorrow, Miss Ee-oh-lee? With more of that good orange juice?"
"Of course," said Ioli. "This is Cyprus. You can have whatever you want."