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WREATH WRAITHS
The wild olive wreath is said to have been introduced to the Olympic Games by demi-god Heracles as a prize for the victor of the running race to honour Zeus. Just how coveted the wreath became is...
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ANTIPODEAN PALETTE: TRAILING ART
If Greek Australian culture is going to survive, then it needs to be neither reactionary, that, is responding solely to stimuli emanating from Greece or the mainstream, nor mimetic. Instead, it must...
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JIM CLAVEN'S GRECIAN ADVENTURE
When I was young, memories of the Second World War in Greece were still fresh and most of the people I knew had either experienced it, or its aftermath. Their memories, extremely traumatic as they...
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MAGIC ΜΑΝΙΤΕΣ
“I have some saffron milk-cap mushrooms,” the irrepressible John Rerakis of Philhellene’s fame announced. “Freshly picked. Would you like some?” Within the hour, I presented myself at his place of...
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GREEK WOMEN OF INFLUENCE
GREEK WOMEN OF INFLUENCE Peter Andrinopoulos’ recently released book “Greek Women of Influence,” is an example of how community resources can best be harnessed in order to contribute to the formation...
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ON SWASTIKAS, STARS AND CRESCENTS.
I remember the first and only time I ever drew a swastika clearly. I was six years old and had recently watched the Greek classic film «Οι Γερμανοί Ξανάρχονται» (The Nazis Return) with my family....
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THE THINGS WE DON'T TALK ABOUT
“When Tasia came to Australia in the mid-sixties, it was at the invitation of her newly married sister. The plan was for Tasia to help her sister with her baby that was on the way, settle, and then...
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METIS, HOLY WISDOM AND THE UNBEARABLE OLYMPIANS
If there is one Olympian deity of which there exists no statue, then surely it is that of the goddess Metis, Zeus’ first wife. A daughter of the primordial water titans Oceanus and Tethys, Metis was...
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THE HOUSE OF DREAMING BOOKS
The garden presented as visibly more unkempt than in my previous visits. Here and there, a few wildflowers broke the hegemony of green within the lawn, a presumption that would not have been tolerated...
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ΠΑΠΟΥΤΣΑΚΙΑ
“Seriously? Can you stop that!” my mother exclaims indignantly, waving away my hand. My mouth is stuffed too full of raw eggplant to respond. “Still eating raw eggplant at the age of 45?” she...
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IN THE MIRROR'S IMAGE
It is that time of year when an icy wind blasts itself through Oakleigh, hurtling tumbleweeds down a desolate Eaton Mall. On the other side of Melbourne, a few lonely patrons of Northcote Plaza shiver...
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WINTER RUMINATIONS
Ignatios, who goes among the populace under the soubriquet of Nate, is a proud Peloponnesian. His ancestors hail, has he tells me, from one of the many villages in which, the claim goes, the Greek...
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WHEN HOMER SERENADED STALIN
If you want to really roast someone these days, social media offers ample opportunity to do so in a multitude of ways. If you want to do so without the recipient necessarily knowing that you are doing...
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ΙΩΝΙΚΟΝ
In 1911, eleven years prior to the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Alexandrine poet Constantine Cavafy penned the hauntingly beautiful poem «Ιωνικόν» or Ionian. At that time, it would have impossible to...
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WHEN MIGRANT SWALLOWS RETURN
Kyra Koula and her daughter Anastasia have recently returned to our antipodean climes after their long-hoped for summer sojourn in the motherland. Separated from her own mother in the village due to...
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TEMPLE OF BOOM
It is a natural Austro-Hellenic knee-jerk reaction to cry appropriation, with regard to the National Gallery of Victoria’s latest projected installation of its Architecture Commission series, in this...
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SMYRNA: DEATH OF A METAPHOR
“A world ends when its metaphor has died. An age becomes an age, all else beside, When sensuous poets in their pride invent Emblems for the soul’s consent That speak the meanings men will never know…...
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SMYRNA: THE LAST WORD
Whenever I miss my grandparents, I re-read Dido Sotiriou's classic novel «Ματωμένα Χώματα» (Bloodied Earth), not only because she provides a harrowing and all too human account of an Asia Minor...
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GREEKS FOR MAHSA
“Woman is a ray of God” Jelaleddin al Rumi “Sex is great but have you ever been f….d by the Islamic Republic of Iran?” Placard at Federation Square. Twenty two year old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini is...
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IN A TOWN OF OSROENE
My passionate Armenian friends are wincing. I am relating to them the story of a half Iranian, half Armenian friend who, being of mixed ethnic and religious heritage, was ostracised by both communities...
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