Greece has been in the news off and on pretty steadily lately, more or less, due to the various economic and financial pecadillos and hijinks hereabouts. The German word for Greece is Griechenland which I sometimes misread as Gretchenland, (fair enough, as they’re both in italics) triggering images of a country homogenously populated by blonde girls similar to a girl who got on the schoolbus at the same busstop as I did when I was a boy, whose name was Gretchen. The girl’s name was Gretchen, that is, of course, not “when I was a boy whose name was Gretchen,” although now when I read the word Griechenland it will trigger an implanted false memory of how I was once a boy whose name was Gretchen. (How do you do?!)