Greek to me

It’s been a rough few weeks for Bas Bleu—the strain of refraining from committing justifiable homicide several times over has laid me low.

But this story from NPR finally broke through my black fog: the Greeks have opened a museum of antiquities dedicated to the Acropolis.

With a great, huge gaping space for the marble friezes chiseled from the Parthenon 200 years ago by a Brit and sold to the British Museum. The BM has steadfastly refused ever since to repatriate the marbles, the reasons reinvented every time one is kneecapped by the Greeks.

I suppose the underlying cause for the intransigence is that imperial legacy that the Brits just can’t shake off. “We stole them righteously when we were the Big Boy on the Global Block; we’re keeping them because we can.”

Well, maybe. But I love the Greek approach—rather like one of my journalism professors, who was always threatening to publish an issue of the paper with a gaping hole of white space and marking it “this space courtesy of Reporter X, who missed deadlines”.

That’s one museum I’ve got on my must-do list. Almost makes me lose the thoughts of mayhem.