I want you to do me a favor. To yourselves a favor.

Pour out a glass of Uzo, just a small one, or maybe a glass of red wine, and lift it

to the Greek people on March 25th. You know, we've celebrated St. Patrick's Day

in their Cinco de Mayo and Pulaski Day, and of course, our great American

Independence Day, and so on. In media reinforce all these, but does media

reinforce March 25th? Greek Independence Day? Ecosypepti Martio, March 25th.

As an American and son of immigrants, I can tell you this. The unfortunate

stereotype of Greeks in this country is about happy plate breaking people.

The people eager to please, inviting you into their shops and stores and restaurants

with a smile. Come on in, offendi. How may I serve you, offendi?

You don't see our other heart in the places where the tourists don't go.

In the mountain, the heart from the Rocky Peloponisus, from Arcadia in the south,

Arcavia, and that heart broods darkly, like the clarinets.

And in 1821, as they came running down their mountains, from their mountain

villages with guns and knives, with fire and sword, they weren't smiling.

They weren't eager to please. They weren't signaling their famous sense of hospitality.

They weren't signaling their filotimia. They weren't done.

They were done with kissing the hand of the Turkish Pasha.

March 25th is Greek Independence Day, and you can hear the pain of all

those 400 years of occupation of Turkish oppression in the mournful clarinets

of my people. Like great grandfather's and their fathers came down to cleanse their land,

400 years of Turkish occupation. It started with the elites in the upper middle class

...