Calipso’s Heirs
More Othonians live in America than on the island itself. Othonoi - the western edge of Greece, counts fewer than four hundred residents through winter, yet hundreds of descendants in New York, Pennsylvania, and Alabama. Many families left in the 1960s, founded the Othonian Society of USA, and kept ties with summer returns, reopened houses, parish gifts, and ferry crossings from Corfu. Calypso’s cave and cypress scent anchor memory, and the island still teaches that belonging can span the Ionian and a Brooklyn block.
Read the Greek Reporter feature
Katechis303, Calypso’s Cave at Othonoi Island. CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons.