Response to Marianne, Zorba the greek and others

After a 15 minute posting disappearing when posting a comment over on marianne’s Virtual Saloon, I am going to put it here and link to it from her comments section.  let’s start to marianne’s response to me: Notes from the arboretum

Jenny, you live in one of the places I hope to visit someday.

Phil, I’m having a wonderful time fooling with specimen trees. One of these days, when spring is a little further along, I’ll post a few pictures as she requested. Did you ever see the movie “Zorba the Greek”? One of the main plot lines is about harvesting the monks’ pines from a hillside. If you’ve never seen it, you’ve missed a really fine commentary on what it means to be human, and fallible

We don’t have room for trees much in the 1/2 acre behind our place, being the location where I have grown up and lived for my 43 years so far, maybe it has fed my love of forests.  What we do have is an 80 year old Red Roller apple tree.  This is a rare species so we have some cuttings placed in various locations for backup purposes.

Nikos Kazantzakis the author of Zorba the Greek is a fascinating chap and far less inhibited than me.  If I could take a book to a desert island, as per the BBC Radio 4 series Desert Island Discs, it would be his Report to Greco – his (IMHO) semi mythical memoir. 

I cannot watch the film Zorba the Greek without tearing up in places.  [For a feel good film try Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.  The book is greater than the film (again IMHO) (even if it is considered by some to have played down the work of the resistance in Greece at the time of the film.