Pentecost

According to the apostle John, the Holy Spirit comes and goes like the wind ~ 
I suppose that this piece of wall art expresses that idea too.


From Sweetheart I received a piece of text what he's had published in the local paper of Chania; it's his account of a visit he and our friends recently payed to a tower, what's the remains of a castle, there in the West of Crete. 
I passed his text from Google Translate and will add it here as a "long read" for all who love to "hear" Sweetheart tell: 


"The tangle of legends, myths, history, and archaeology that was wrapped around the tower in Valsamakia began to unravel after our last visit to the nearby village of Vlatos to study its monuments and history. In this village we encountered many names, place names, and monuments from the period of Venetian rule that testify to the communication, mixing, and ultimately the merger of the two ethnicities of the Venetians and the Greeks who lived together and apart, and hated each other throughout the Venetian rule, from the 13th to the 17th century. The two communities, although they lived next to each other, were separated deeply by class, economic, chaos, and religious differences that often "undergroundly stirred up" and became explosive. The Venetians were the lords and feudal lords, and Christian Catholics by religion.
Opposite them were the poor serfs and Christian Orthodox by religion, the Greeks. The differences that separated the two communities found a permanent and often guided focus of friction, and this manifested itself in religion. Which always ended in the mutual undermining and mutual extermination of the two communities. The lord and feudal lord of Vlatos was Michelli Minotto. He controlled everything in the village. He owned thousands of olive trees, thousands of sheep, dozens of pack animals, factories, warehouses and large two-story mansions. And for his religious needs, both his own and his family's, he had built a Catholic Church dedicated to Saint George and the Lady of the Angels. This Church survives to this day as an Orthodox Church dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The priests who performed the services in the Catholic Church were Catholic in religion and served other Catholic churches in the surrounding villages (Venetian fiefdoms).
The center of the Catholic priests was located at a relatively short straight-line distance from the surrounding villages where they officiated. It was located near the unexplored village of Monoplatanos near the village of Sfinari. The monastery was built by the order of Franciscan monks in the 15th or 16th century and was dedicated to Saint Gregory. Today it survives under the new name of Valsamakia as an Orthodox church, in good condition, and is dedicated to Saint Demetrius. This location is located at a distance of about 10 kilometers N.E. from the village of Sfinari. Next to the temple there is a defensive tower that oversees the area. This tower belonged to the Venetian lord Grimanis. According to tradition, he was captured by Kantanaleon. Kantanaleon was the leader of the poor and oppressed farmers of the mountain villages (Vilanos as the Venetians contemptuously called them) who rebelled against the Venetians. Due to their living conditions, under the miserable conditions of forced labor and conscription. The cunning Venetians trapped him, killed both him and his son, and exiled everyone around him and others to Cyprus. Various legends describe that the unimaginable treasures of this period are located in the tower of Grimanis in Valsamakia, are haunted and are hidden in an unknown location. Other legends say that these treasures were found and stolen in the 1960-70s by Italians who had come to Valsamakia with special maps for this purpose. However, all these legends have a historical veracity that is based on the money managed by the revolutionaries of Kantanaleon and the money that the feudal lords hid fearing the looting of the revolutionaries.
These legends excite the imagination of many gold diggers and adventure hunters to reproduce myths that are spread to this day. Many have visited the tower and the monastery and the first of all was the great archaeologist G. Gerola who photographed it in 1903. And today many walkers and friends of nature and the mountain visit it. There are many photos of the Tower and the Church posted on the internet. So did my company after a nice meal we had in a fish tavern (thalami) in lower Sfinari and based on the information they gave us, we decided to visit the legendary tower. Relatively easily and near the village, we came across a wretched dirt road that, according to the information they gave us, would lead us to the tower in Valsamakia. This road looked like a torrential riverbed, full of stones and pits. However, the overall picture of the route was dreamy. The nature was lush green, the foliage of the plane trees almost touched the ground, thousands of red, pink and white flowers from the oleanders decorated the road right and left, and every twenty meters the head of a goat appeared among the bushes, it looked curiously, bleating at the car, as if saying what do they want here? Frightened birds fluttered among the branches, fleeing left and right, while thousands of bees from the surrounding hives in an unearthly buzz flew from flower to flower, collecting nectar. For a moment I forgot the miserable condition of the road and said yes, indeed, "this is the treasure of the tower that the legends say." After two kilometers of this magical journey, we encounter the first obstacle. A farm car, probably belonging to a livestock farmer, was parked in the middle of this miserable road, blocking our every move forward. We were forced to honk our horn, spoiling "for a moment" the peace and harmony of nature. Fortunately, the owner of the car came quickly. He informed us that we were in the right direction to the tower, which is about five more kilometers away. After we traveled another two kilometers of the miserable "for a car" road and dangerous route, the "stream road" branched off in three directions without any markings. The GPS did not work, and there was no signal on the mobile phone, if something unexpected happened, and we needed help, we would not be able to notify anyone. In addition, it was seven in the afternoon and it would soon get dark. "And the crows started circling above our heads!!!" All the conditions were difficult, and our return was inevitable.
Throughout our return journey to Chania, my mind was spinning in the uniquely beautiful and peaceful nature that we had just experienced for a while in this corner of the world. I was thinking about the pristine and untouched natural way of life that for thousands of years and countless centuries perpetuated life throughout the planet, and in this corner. It is today “for the digitally and industrially dependent man” a distant dream. Along with my existential questions, I was also trying to solve an enigma.
Why were the tower and the Catholic monastery built in this inaccessible spot? Far from the safety of the organized life of a city? The enigma became more insoluble when I thought that Catholic monasteries were built, organized, staffed “with monks”,  and financially supported by monastic orders. And all of them had a direct relationship and dependence both economically and spiritually on the Catholic Church. The existing hostility between Catholics and Orthodox was intensified especially in the countryside due to the living conditions of the "villains". If we take the version that the monastery was built by the feudal lord Grimanis, we must take into account that the maintenance of the monastery was very expensive, and this would imply that the fief that the feudal lord Grimanis defined must have been rich and spread over a large area around the monastery and the surrounding villages. Something that is not confirmed by the findings.
To solve the riddle, there is another version, perhaps the monastery was built by the Venetians as a "watchtower" to observe the actions of mainly pirates. And this view seems weak since the distance of the Tower from the sea is far and the visibility in the sea is limited. But the distance from an organized fortress that could mobilize a defensive army-guard was also very great. The study and operation of other individual towers and monasteries that existed in the prefecture of Chania. In Falasarna and Menies, may also provide an answer to the riddles we mentioned above. The residents of neighboring Sfinari and the municipality of Kissamos must also protect the area of the tower in Valsamakia by all means, from the desecration of mass tourism that occurs in two neighboring locations, Falaseirna and Elafonisi.
It would be good for the Municipality of Kissamos or some mountaineering club to put some elementary markings on the Sfinari-Valsamakia road for the sake of dreamy walkers, nature lovers. But also light-hearted gold hunters!!!
*Vassilis Knithakis is a mathematician"