Now that we have prepared the field, the local residents are picking up the ball. In the Nemea area, some 30 families already have volunteered to house any participants under age 18 in their homes and at the local schoolhouse. A post-games party is being planned. Greek Minister of Culture Thanos Mikroutsikos, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Thomas Niles, state Sen. Nick Petris, D-Oakland, and Chancellor Tien already have joined the society's honorary committee. For Miller, the games are a creative way of letting the public experience and learn from what he has been excavating.
Scholarly publications are important, but so are making results available to the general public.
During his presentation Jan. 31, Miller showed two videotapes, one on the history of the Nemea project and the other on the opening of the stadium last year as an archaeological park. Some 1,500 spectators at the celebration watched barefoot children in white tunics run foot races on the ancient track. The San Francisco Boys Chorus sang Greek folk songs Jan. 31, just as they had at the stadium dedication in Greece last July. It was the first voluntary cessation of war in the recorded history of mankind. The American School of Classical Studies in Athens granted Berkeley the excavation rights, and Miller was hired in 1971 to lead the project.