Back in February the New York landscape had consisted of garbage, tons upon tons of garbage, its collection waiting upon the settlement of the sanitation workers’ strike. Somebody is always on strike in New York, and this time it was the garbage men. The city was hip-deep in potato peelings and empty plastic containers, and packs of rats left sinking tenements to forage in the streets. It is perhaps illustrative of the current state of New York that the strike was three days old before anyone noticed the difference.

In any case, a group of prominent Greek-Americans, including one actress and twelve restauranteurs, took it upon themselves to organize the Garbage for Greece operation. It was conceived as a sort of viable alternative to Care packages; for five dollars one could send ten pounds of garbage to Athens, thus helping clean up New York and expressing one’s feelings toward the Greek military junta in one swell foop.

Well. In ten days the strike was settled, with the result that the program never got off the ground (although the garbage did, finally). I don’t think much more would have happened anyway. The main idea had been to garner a little newspaper space – very little, sad to say. But the group had retained its esprit de corps, and the night before Easter the group was throwing a party to celebrate the end of winter. And the party itself was an unqualified success. The membership of the New York chapter of the Pan-Hellenic Friendship Society was present in full force. The founders of the committee bankrupted their respective restaurants to provide food and drink. There was lamb roasted in every possible fashion, pilafs of rice and pine nuts and currants, fluffy and gooey confections of dough and walnuts and honey. And there was wine.

Lord, was there wine! Case upon case of retsina and rhoditys and mavrodaphne, wine to sip along with the food, wine to swallow along with the fiery speeches, wine to swill while George Pappas plucked his oud and Stavros Melchos pounded his copper drum and Kitty Bazerian offered up a furious dance as tribute to the cause of Hellenic (and sexual) freedom.