Family is an ideal. Both in the American and the Greek tradition family is up there, revered, respected, treasured and idealized. Being supportive to family members is a great trait. Being on each others face 24-7 is a Greek trait. It wasn’t accidental that the girl’s parents in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ bought a [...]
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Alites
I’ve been thinking of a word lately. I have been overcome with the manic-obsessive urge to translate the word in English. The word is no less complicated than the word ‘Alitis’ (as in Vissi’s latest hasapiko ‘Alitisa Psihi’). Oh please, lady, you may say. Bum, bugger, punk, trump or scumbag. True, each of those words [...]
Driving
I always believed driving is the one activity that tells all about a person. One’s personality, life perspective, emotional stability and clarity -or lack of-, it is all out there. If you believe in yourself you confidently hold the wheel with both hands and carefully examine the other drivers at the traffic lights. If single, [...]
Why Greek-Americans Are so ‘Churchy’ . . .
When visiting Greece, I am often asked by native-born Greeks why Greek-Americans are so ‘churchy’ – we sing in church choirs, attend church fairly regularly, wear our baptismal crosses, etc. By the same token, I have always been puzzled about why, during my visits to Greece, the only people I see at church in both [...]
Love matters
Falling in love is an international trade. It happens everywhere. We all crave falling in love, one way or another. How we handle it, though, does bring cultural handicaps in the picture. Greeks fall madly in love. And I don’t mean candlelit dinners and romantic outings at the movies. I mean drama, tears, shouting, blood [...]
Corrupting Two Languages at Once
Do you fit into the category of hyphenated Americans who (1) learned the foreign words for everyday objects before you learned the English words for them? (2) noticed that an entire collection of English words managed to creep into the foreign language your parents spoke? As Greek-American children, we heard our parents use words for [...]
Greek, Married and Political Opposites
The recent elections went by without a hitch in our household. And how can that happen, you may ask, when my husband and I are political polar opposites? First let me explain that we have been together for nine years and married for the past five. My new husband was a confirmed Greek-American bachelor (my [...]
Greeks Like Movies Realistic, Americans Like Movies with Happy Endings
In general, Hollywood movies always contain a seamfree transition from pain to happiness and from injustice to a fair resolution. There’s trouble in paradise but it somehow feels contained. A girl cries coming out of the hairdressing salon or in the nail salon, while the nail lady happily comforts her whispering philosophically sounding words. Greek movies like it [...]
Ancient Greek & Greek-American Thanksgiving Traditions
Thanksgiving day is celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Traditionally it has been a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. We give thanks not only for our wonderful provider mother earth, but also for our ancestors having found the new world. The holiday may have been religious in origin. Thanksgiving is [...]
Greeks Believe Money Shouldn’t Buy Safety, Safety Should be Equal for All
In the 1990′s there was a great difference between Athens and New York. Athens had no gang territories back then and one could safely assume they wouldn’t be killed for money in the capital. New York was pretty much the opposite. Anything could happen to you once in the wrong side of town. In New York there [...]
Designer lifestyles
I don’t remember ever looking at a co-worker, student or managing director, for that matter, in the U.S. and thinking ‘Wow! Isn’t she what designer fantasies are made of?’ It was more like ‘Those shoes(!) with that skirt(!)?Really?!’ And despite the fact that my fashion sense is, for Greek standards, pretty basic, in Washington I [...]
9/11 and the (Greek) American Identity Crisis
George Schira, a New Yorker and a former aide to President Carter, analyzes the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero memorial on the eve of 9/11′s ninth anniversary.
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02 / 10 US’ Oldest Continuously Published Greek Newspaper Gets a Makeover
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02 / 10 Greek Investor Anastasios Economou to Hold a Talk at IU’s Kelley School of Business
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02 / 10 Archangel Michael GOC Presents 2012 Greek Festival
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02 / 10 US Media Focus on Greek Financial Developments
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02 / 09 Tyne Daly as Maria Callas of “Master Class”
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07 / 23 St. Nicholas of Manhattan in Ruins while Mosque Rises
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08 / 03 George Demos Tells Fox News We Must Rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at Ground Zero
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11 / 27 Greek American Pihakis Busted by Feds for $5.8 Million
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12 / 27 Greek Orthodox Community of America Renounced Anti-Semitic Statements by Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus
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02 / 09 St. George Community of Lynn, Massachusetts, Refuses to Pay its Contribution to the Archdiocese
Culture Shock
- Sellout Artists Promote Greece with…Placemats and Disposable Cups Tanya Soumbasakis
- Cultures in crisis Anna Maria Delinasiou
- Two ways to be Greek? Anna Maria Delinasiou
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