News at Eleven: Some things seem to never change.

On Friday, the 2011 Gaza relief flotilla was thwarted near where [Mark] Twain's vessel was forced to anchor by police order, 144 years earlier. On board, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Alice Walker, was already writing out some of her Athenian impressions by hand, as she didn't have a laptop, sure that soon the Israelis would have stolen it from her.

Twain's Athens had been a sleepy city, seemingly archaic in its tranquility. The Athens Walker alluded to Friday in her new poem, is a different place altogether. Alice posted it on facebook late Friday evening:

Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece

from Firedoglake: Saturday Art: Alice Walker's Poem, "Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece"
then Facebook: U.S. Boat to Gaza: From Alice Walker, at sea on the Audacity of Hope

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