by Joanna Mercuri*

Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, is well known for his prolific writing and acute insight into human psychology. Less known about the Russian novelist is his fascination—as well as his criticism—of Catholicism.

Elizabeth Blake lectures on her book, “Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground” – PHOTO BY JOANNA MERCURI

At a recent lecture sponsored by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, in New York, Dostoevsky scholar Elizabeth Blake, PhD, assistant professor of Russian at Saint Louis University, spoke with undergraduates and faculty at the Rose Hill campus about Dostoevsky’s strong opinions about religion. The author, who yesterday would have celebrated his 194th birthday, was deeply critical of Catholics and especially of the Society of Jesus.

In her book Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground (Northwestern University Press, 2014), Blake traces Dostoevsky’s disapproval back to his experience as a political prisoner in Siberia. For four years he was imprisoned with a group of Polish Catholic political activists and revolutionaries.

Besides resenting the Poles for their contempt of the Russian prisoners, Dostoevsky, a Russian Orthodox Christian, was wary of the Poles’ allegiance to the Jesuits, whose organizational structure was likened by Dostoevsky’s co-conspirators to communism. It didn’t help matters that the Jesuits vowed obedience to the pope—Pius IX at the time—whom Dostoevsky considered to be a spiritually manipulative figure.

Dostoevsky continued to harbor this mistrust when, decades later, as a member of the Society for Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment (OLDP), he participated in discussions regarding the possibility of reuniting the long-divided Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church and the Western Catholic Church.

Needless to say, he was not in favor of the union.

“[He] indicates that such a union requires coercion, which Dostoevsky finds at the heart of the ‘Roman idea’ of ‘forced unity of humanity,’” Blake said. Dostoevsky described this coercion on the part of the Catholic Church with the sentiment: “Be my brother, or off with your head.”

This obsession with Catholicism, which Blake said vacillated between fascination and repulsion, inevitably colored Dostoevsky’s writings. According to Blake, it underlies one of the best-known passages in literature, the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, told by the character Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov.

“It reinforces [the church’s] image as a feudal institution,” Blake said. “The Grand Inquisitor’s theological justification for the use of the auto-da-fé [a type of punitive torture used during the Inquisition] on his flock for their own protection . . . [and his] manipulation of the sacred mysteries to maintain control over his flock, parallels the measures of political repression . . . adopted by the Catholic Church.”

Indeed, Blake said, Dostoevsky could be bold in his characterization of Catholicism.

Then again, “If he were cautious, he wouldn’t have written these great novels,” she said.

Founded in 2012, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center is the first university-based center for Orthodox Christian Studies in the western hemisphere. The center supports scholarship and teaching that is critical to the ecclesial community, public discourse, and the promotion of Christian unity.

The article appeared firstly at the Fordham News.

by Markos Kounalakis

by Markos Kounalakis

America rightfully continues to object to Russia’s Crimean annexation and unwavering support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Despite this reality, the Obama administration seems prepared to work with Russia toward a more important and immediate goal: Jointly fighting and defeating ISIS.

Achieving a real Russian-American anti-ISIS fight is tough enough in this environment, and there is added pressure for collaboration following the Paris, Sharm el Sheikh and San Bernardino terror attacks.

Despite the poisoned political climate, Russia and the United States were making diplomatic progress … until America’s NATO ally Turkey shot down a transgressing Russian fighter jet. As a result, Turkey derailed talks and temporarily killed any Russo-American deal.

Even worse, when Turkey downed the Russian Su-24, it could have triggered immediate Russian retaliation. Tensions between NATO and Russia reached a post-Cold War peak. Some analysts suggested Turkey’s hair-trigger action brought us to the brink of World War III.

Why would any American ally take such risks and put NATO’s military alliance in such a tough confrontational position? After all, allies like Turkey are supposed to help, not entrap their partners. Economists and political scientists call this behavior “moral hazard” – the act of taking extraordinary risks and letting others pay the price.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan engages in moral hazard. He knows that any retaliatory Russian military attack on Turkey for the downed jet could be interpreted as an attack against all of NATO. The NATO alliance treaty’s Article 5 could press the military alliance into fighting Ankara’s war.

NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked only once, following the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Article 5 justifies NATO’s ongoing war in Afghanistan – America’s longest war.

Russia’s arrogant and stupid 17 seconds over Turkish territory gave Erdogan the legal basis for shooting down the fighter jet. It also forces NATO members to face an excruciatingly difficult question if pressed by Ankara: Is NATO ready and willing to defend Turkey and militarily confront Russia?

Whether “yes” or “no,” Erdogan has likely calculated that either response is an upside for him and a costly mess for everyone else.

NATO appropriately does not want this fight. France, Germany and the United States moved quickly to de-escalate tensions – but it was an expensive move. In return for holstering his gun and tightening his borders, Erdogan’s allies recently gave him money, European Union visa concessions, military assurances and an unarticulated promise to look the other way regarding his iron-fisted rule at home and adventures in Kurdistan.

He shot down an errant warplane and effectively blackmailed his NATO partners and EU member states. What they got in return was a halfhearted and grudging stand-down with the Russians and a slowdown of the refugee flow from Turkey.

Erdogan’s unchallenged power in Turkey has whetted his appetite for a greater regional role. He bristles at and wants to counter Russia’s aligning and allying with Turkish adversaries in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Erdogan likely believes that if the United States and its allies could start a war in 2003 and, ultimately, win Iraq for the Shiites and Iranians, then the Western alliance should win the Sunni world for him and his vision for regional leadership.

Money or power will be Turkey’s payoff for downing the Russian jet. From Erdogan’s perspective it’s all political upside. He can act recklessly and the costs get passed to others.

NATO allies have no good options today, but Turkey should not be an added and active wedge between Russia and America. The two must try to work together to fight ISIS, stop the bloodshed and stanch the refugee flow. Sometimes it is better to hold our nose than pull our trigger.

Markos Kounalakis is a research fellow at Central European University and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Contact him at markos@ stanford.edu. Follow him on Twitter @KounalakisM.

This article was first published in The Sacramento Bee.

Astronaut, Senator and American hero John Glenn, and the husband of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, joined other world leaders lauding the people of Greece in their courageous fight against Hitler’s Axis Forces and the Holocaust and celebrating those who today exhibit the same kind of Oxi Day valor. This was all part of the Washington Oxi Day Foundation’s Fifth Annual Celebration on October 28, the 75^th anniversary of that historic moment that changed the trajectory of the Second World War.

Michael Psaros, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

Khalil al-Dakhi, who risks his life daily rescuing women and children held captive by ISIS as sex slaves, was the recipient of the 2015 Oxi Day Award. His introduction, featuring video clips from the nationally televised FRONTLINE program that followed him on the ground in Iraq, brought a prolonged standing ovation from an audience filled with many high-level US government officials.

Jim Chanos presents H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh with the 2015 Metropolitan Chrysostomos Award at Buckingham Palace, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

The world-renowned musician and humanitarian Bono, who issued impassioned pleas at his concerts for the release of 2015 Battle of Crete Award recipient Leyla Yunus, spoke at the Oxi Day gala via video about the plight of the human rights advocate who remains imprisoned in Azerbaijan. Ms. Yunus’ daughter, Dinara, who was introduced by the highest-ranking woman in American history, Nancy Pelosi, accepted the Award on her mother’s behalf and further detailed her fight for justice.

Bill Hunter and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who accepted the 2015 Greatest Generation Award on behalf of Senator John Glenn, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

During their time in DC, the Washington Oxi Day Foundation also brought Khalil al-Dakhi and Dinara Yunus, two exemplars of the Oxi Day spirit today, together with senior US government officials. These meetings are adjusting US policy and helping their efforts and as a resulty a couple of weeks later her parents were set free.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Andy Manatos present Dinara Yunus, daughter of Leyla Yunus, with the 2015 Battle of Crete Award, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

Princess Alice, the mother of Prince Philip, was awarded posthumously with the 2015 Metropolitan Chrysostomos Award.  President and Founder of Kynikos Associates LP and Washington Oxi Day Foundation Advisory Board Member, Jim Chanos, spoke at the gala about his presentation of the Award to Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace days before the celebration. Princess Alice saved a Jewish family and other members of the Jewish community from Hitler’s concentration camps during the Holocaust. Remarkably, she lived across the street from Gestapo headquarters in Nazi-occupied Athens.

Also presented at the October 28 gala was the Second Annual Stavros Niarchos Foundation Philotimo Award. Given to an individual or organization in Greece, this Award recognizes extraordinary acts of philotimo that have helped society keep its cohesion during Greece’s current socio-economic crisis. Stavros Niarchos Foundation Executive Board Member, Ambassador Vassilis Kaskarelis, and Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives, Stelios Vasilakis, presented the Award to PRAKSIS and ChairmanTzanetos Antypas.

Khalil al-Dakhi receives the 2015 Oxi Day Award from Washington Oxi Day Foundation Founder and President Andy Manatos, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

PRAKSIS (Programs Of Development, Social Support And Medical Cooperation) is an independent Non-Governmental Organization in Greece whose main mission is the design, application and implementation of humanitarian programs and medical interventions.

Others participating in the gala program included: Chairman of Marcus & Millichap, Founder of the National Hellenic Society and Oxi Day Foundation Advisory Board Member, George Marcus; Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Oxi Day Foundation Board Member, Father Alexander Karloutsos; Chairman and CEO of the Libra Group,George Logothetis, who delivered the keynote address, which was received with a standing ovation.

Father Alexander Karloutsos. Photo by Paul Morse

The 2015 Greatest Generation Awards honored three distinguished World War II veterans — Greek-American James Moshovitis, Greek General George Douratsos and American John Glenn.  Senator Glenn, who was unable to travel to Washington for the occasion, was introduced by his personal friend of many years Bill Hunter. Astronaut and head of NASA, Administrator Charles Bolden, accepted the Award on Glenn’s behalf.

Accepting the Award posthumously on behalf of General Douratsos was his niece Themis Douratsou-Paleologou. In addition, the keynote address was delivered by Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of KPS Capital Partners, LP, Michael Psaros.

George Logothetis. Photo by Paul Morse

Leaders who have joined in the advocacy of Oxi Day courage over the first four years of the Oxi Day Foundation include: Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Shimon Peres; Vice President Joe Biden; Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Then-Chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees Bob Menendez and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; Noble Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Elie Wiesel; Senator Marco Rubio and former Senator Bob Dole; Former record-setting Congressmen John Dingell and Ralph Hall; and many other distinguished individuals

James Moshovitis, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

This year’s Washington Oxi Day Foundation video entitled “World Leaders Praise Greek Courage” is already approaching hundreds of thousands of views and, thus, on target to match the success of last year’s Foundation video about Philotimo entitled “The Greek Secret.”

Themis Douratsou-Paleologou and Sophia Paleologou accept the 2015 Greatest Generation Award on behalf of General George Douratsos from Greek Defense Attaché Panagiotis Kavidopoulos, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

The 75^th anniversary celebration began in Washington, DC with a reception at the residence of the Ambassador of Greece to the US Christos Panagopoulos, co-hosted by the National Hellenic Society (NHS). Guests made a champagne toast at the exact moment 75 years ago that the Prime Minister of Greece said “OXI!”

The celebration ended with a poignant wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Oxi Day Foundation at Arlington National Cemetery, PHOTO BY: BILL PETROS

Continuing for the tenth consecutive year, “FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism” will once again sponsor a series of financial aid travel grants this summer to campers participating in the Ionian Village Summer Camp program. FAITH provides full and partial scholarships to those participants that qualify.

The travel grants are primarily need-based financial aid; however, each applicant’s academic performance will also be weighed into the evaluation review process. Priority is given to older applicants.

Ionian Village participants will travel across Greece visiting significant sites of Greek history and culture. At the end of each program, the campers return home with strengthened faith, life-long friendships and an expanded appreciation for the Orthodox Church and Greek culture.

Mrs. Elaine Jaharis, a Founder of the FAITH Endowment, Ionian Village Alumna and Chair of the Committee spoke on behalf of the Founders, “We (the Founders of FAITH) are proud to support young people wishing to participate in Ionian Village. The Camp provides a truly transformative and enriching experience for intellectual and spiritual growth and life-long friendships as these young people connect to their Hellenic roots. For over 40 years, Ionian Village has been and still is the premiere program for the young Greek Americans to understand their Hellenic heritage and identity and we are very pleased to offer this financial aid opportunity through our program.”

“The Camp provides a truly transformative and enriching experience for intellectual and spiritual growth and life-long friendships as these young people connect to their Hellenic roots. For over 40 years, Ionian Village has been and still is the premiere program for the young Greek Americans to understand their Hellenic heritage and identity and we are very pleased to offer this financial aid opportunity through our program.” Elaine Jaharis

In 2015, FAITH underwrote 63 full and partial financial aid travel grants for young people to attend the Ionian Village Summer Camp.  Eva T., who received a 2015 FAITH Travel Grant to Ionian Village, recalled her experience as a camper, “There are absolutely no words to express my sincere gratitude towards FAITH. I learned so much about our rich and beautiful motherland, the others around me, myself and our Orthodox Faith.”

Each year, FAITH also funds a series of several scholarship programs including many merit-based scholarships for the FAITH Scholarships for Academic Excellence program to high school students graduating from public, parochial and private high schools across the country.

FAITH – Ionian Village Travel Grant applications are NOW available for participants of Session One and Session Two, ages 16-18: www.thefaithendowment.org.  Completed applications must be received by February 5, 2016.

FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism supports the development of innovative educational, cultural, and scholarship programs for young people that promote an understanding of the Orthodox faith, Hellenism, and the relationship of the two to America’s history and multicultural landscape. For more information, their phone number is 212-644-6960.

The 25th Annual Leadership 100 Conference will convene at The Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 18-21, 2016. The Opening Forum, on Thursday, February 18, will be led by the V. Rev. Fr. Christopher T. Metropulos, the new President of Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, the major beneficiary of Leadership 100 grants, and will be followed by the traditional Bible Study of His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios. The Thursday afternoon Hellenism Forum will feature a presentation by Pavlos Yeroulanos, Greece’s former Minister for Culture and Tourism, along with exhibits from the Benaki Museum of Athens. Yeroulanos is the great-grandson of the museum’s founder, Antonis Benaki. The Benaki Museum exhibits, mounted at the Museum’s expense prior to a United States tour, will comprise 40-50 exact replicas from the museum illustrating Greek art from the pre-historic to the contemporary period, a replica of the notable St. Nicholas Icon, and the original album of photographs from the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896.

Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis

The official opening of the exhibits with an Agiasmos (blessing) by the Archbishop, will follow a “Symphony at Sunset” conducted by Peter Tiboris. The day’s events will close with the Welcome Reception.

The program on Friday, February 19, will begin with a lecture by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, followed by the General Assembly. There will be a Business Forum in the afternoon, with the speaker to be announced. Also scheduled for later Friday afternoon is the Orientation for new members. The evening will include both a Leadership 100 Partners reception and the Hellenic Glendi.

The Saturday, February 20 events will include a Special Forum in the morning conducted by Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, who has published a book on her experiences in that post. Golf and Tennis Tournaments and Awards, and a Walk/Run will fill out the day’s activities. A program of youth activities will be organized by Maria Behrakis and Elaine Cotronakis.

Pavlos Yeroulanos, Photo by Υπουργείο Εξωτερικών

At the Grand Banquet on Saturday evening, the Archbishop lakovos Leadership 100 Award for Excellence will be presented to the worthy recipients. Prior to the Banquet, new and fulfilled members will be recognized with the presentation of Icons and Obelisks.

At 9 a.m. on Sunday, February 21, the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy will be celebrated at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix.

Spyros Louis, first Olympic Marathon winner.

Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, a longtime member of Leadership 100, will address the Saturday Forum on the subject of her recently published memoir, Madame Ambassador: Three Years of Diplomacy, Dinner Parties, and Democracy in Budapest. She served as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary from January 7, 2010 to July 20, 2013.

The memoir, released on May 5, 2015, recounts her experiences being vetted for the position with no background in diplomacy, attending an ambassador “charm school” and an intensive training session. However, in taking up her assignment in the former Soviet satellite, she feels that nothing could have prepared her for the realities of life in Hungary.

A property developer, Kounalakis is faced with organizing dinners and diplomatic meetings while her husband, Markos, a journalist, is discouraged from attending diplomats’ spouses’ gatherings. Her children, meanwhile, are faced with unexpected challenges at a new school.

Politically active, Kounalakis served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention four times. She and her husband founded two university chairs in Hellenic Studies, at Georgetown and Stanford Universities, and a lecture series at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has been awarded the Medal of St. Paul by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

by Rik Villarial and Elias Neofytides

Mercenary, weapons dealer, smuggler, and real estate tycoon are descriptions used, throughout a dozen history books, when obscurely referring to Theodoros Kiriacopulos.

Mystery and intrigue surrounds the life of Theodoros Kiriacopulos who was born on October 18th, 1874 in Kalamata Greece. It is rumored that Theodore may have sought adventure and fortune when venturing to South Africa prior to his emigration to Mexico where he would invest in manufacturing before moving to the United States.

On June 12th, 1908 Theodor immigrated to EL Paso Texas. He married Antonina Triolo who was an American citizen of Sicilian decent, and a resident of EL Paso Texas. His father in-law, Chaz Triolo owned many business properties in and around El Paso Texas. As a wedding present he gave his daughter and Theodor the Emporium Bar, which was connected to the Roma Hotel, another of Triolo’s properties. On the American side of the border, Theodor Kiriacopulos quickly became connected with the Constitutionalist Movement that was sweeping Mexico, and soon revolution would erupt.

Theodor and Antonina Kiriacopulos

Kiriakopulos proceeded in building a small empire and powerful network going into a variety of businesses that would span distances from California to Louisiana. He was a very close friend of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and became a major benefactor to the success of the rebellion during the Mexican Revolution. In overthrowing the oligarchy of Mexico he supplied weapons, tactical intelligence, and manpower in clandestine operations. It is noted, while being spied upon by U. S. federal agents, Theodor’s house was one of the very few, in the upscale El Paso neighborhood where he lived, that had an automobile. What’s more, it was a Packard limousine!

He was a very close friend of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and became a major benefactor to the success of the Mexican Revolution. In overthrowing the oligarchy of Mexico he supplied weapons, tactical intelligence, and manpower in clandestine operations.

Kiriacopulos operated in El Paso with impunity as it was commonly known that he was a businessman and leader of the rebel Junta in El Paso, who overtly operated under the shadow of U. S. Neutrality Law. During the days that Pancho Villa and his wife, Luz Corral, lived in Theodor’ house, on 510 Prospect Street in El Paso, Texas U. S. agents and Texas Rangers would observe that Hipolito, Pancho’s brother, would often be in the presence of the Kiriacopulos family.

The home Kiriacopulos built still stands at 510 Prospect Street in El Paso’s famed historic neighborhood, Sunset Heights

Publications written over the last 100 years, in English and Spanish, allude to a gravely different outcome had Kiriacopulos’ role during the Mexican Revolution gone uncalled upon. One could declare with confidence that Theodor Kiriakopulos is the forgotten hero of the Mexican Revolution.

Theodor held administrative positions within El Paso’s Hellenic society and the Greek Orthodox Church and would often sponsor community events during the days after the revolution. American journalists sought Theodor’s comments and perspective following the assassination of Pancho Villa. Antonina mentions how deeply sadden her husband had become upon hearing the news.

Mystery and speculation continued to follow Theodor Kiriacopulos, even during his final years. December 31, 1954 Theodor was struck by a hit-and-run automobile while crossing the street in front of Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas. He and his wife are buried at Saint Francis Cemetery in Maricopa County, Phoenix, Arizona. Theodor and Antonina had two children, Rebecca and John.

Today, living descendants of Kiriakopulos’ business partners, his nieces, and remaining members of the Triolo family share outrageously curious stories of Theodor during the days when his fortune was made and the adventures (and new fortunes) that followed him after the Mexican revolution.

The home that he built still stands at 510 Prospect Street in El Paso’s famed historic neighborhood, Sunset Heights. The house is currently owned by Rik and Donna Villareal who have done extensive research to honor the history of Theodoros and Antonina Kiriacopulos.

For his latest project, noted composer/music producer Eric Alexandrakis has teamed up with actor John Malkovich and photographer Sandro to create Like a Puppet Show, a 12-track vinyl-only album that was released on Record Store Day in the United States. Record Store Day is an event designed to raise awareness and drum up business for independent record stores, and falls on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  The album features Malkovich reciting Plato’s Allegory of the Cave over original soundscapes composed by artists such as Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan, and the Cars’ Ric Ocasek, to name a few.

Alexandrakis says the idea for the project came to him a couple of years ago while he was working on “cinematic tunes with a revolving door of high profile musicians.” He explains, “I was creating this ambient piece called Cryogenia X and it was really meant to be kind of like a dreamy subconscious thing where somebody is lying there in a cryogenic state and the world around them is changing over the years. Death, war, different seasons, peace, all these different things happening in fast motion. And then I said, ‘how cool would it be if maybe we could get John Malkovich to recite Plato’s Allegory of the Cave over it?’ Almost like a subconscious voice speaking while you’re in the dream state. So I talked to Sandro about it. He’s been working with John for like 20 years and he thought it was a cool idea. He talked to John and John said yes and that’s how we all got in touch.”

The idea would further take shape when the three met up at a photoshoot in the spring of 2014. Sandro and Malkovich were working on pieces for Sandro’s “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters” series, which recreates famous photos with Malkovich as the subject. Says Alexandrakis, “I got to watch the whole process and it was amazing. They did old photos with exactly the same light, the same clothes, the same makeup, but with John Malkovich doing the pose. John as Muhammed Ali or John as Marilyn Monroe or John as Einstein sticking his tongue out. The attention to detail and watching Sandro create and direct and reproduce everything without Photoshop, and then watching John get into character as the hair and makeup guys transformed him, it was unbelievable. It was literally a master class in everything from wardrobe to makeup to photography to direction. So, as I’m watching this and watching the photos pop up on the screen as Sandro shoots them, I start thinking, ‘oh man, these look like picture disc photos. These would be so cool as vinyl picture discs’. Then the wheels started to turn and I thought to myself, ‘how about we give this version of the Allegory dialogue that I put together to some major artists and ask them to just create their own soundscapes around it, kind of like art school on steroids’.”

Alexandrakis made a “big list of specific people who had a certain creative edge to them,” sent them Malkovich’s dialogue, and, 12 tracks later, Like a Puppet Show was born. The album’s release will tie in with Sandro’s exhibit, which is currently on a world tour, and a documentary the three are making about the album’s creative process. They also created their own record label to release Like a Puppet Show, along with any future endeavors. “We have full PR and we’re planning on putting out several different versions of the album with some of the same people and then some brand new people over the course of the next year or two,” he adds. Vinyl only, for now. Says Alexandrakis, “one of the reasons for this is to show that art is not disposable. Intellectual property has been abused so much. We want to create appreciation. A lot of people scoff at that and say we can’t avoid mp3s and all that, but in Japan a big part of the music there is still CD sales. And that’s because the industry there made a conscious decision to hold on to the format. Whereas here they tried to fight Napster by giving everything for free to Spotify. It’s just absurd. We need to invest in technology and not just make everything free free free. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean people are going to want it. You make it valueless and it becomes valueless. For us, this record is something you could put on a wall, it’s beautiful. It’s art, whether you’re playing it or not. It’s a statement and it’s going to speak to people who appreciate that stuff. It’s not for everybody and we kinda don’t care. If you want to hear it, you have to buy it and you have to put it on a turntable and if you don’t have a turntable, we don’t care. It’s almost a punk ethic. We’re going to do it our way.”

During his stay in the hospital for cancer treatments, Alexandrakis would write and record his second album IV Catatonia. He explains, “it was totally medical themed and I recorded it the first week I started my treatment and then finished it my last week so it was like a window into that time. I put my nurse on the cover and there’s a box set with medical products and fake blood and tourniquets and a postcard of the hospital saying ‘wish you were here’. I really like taking it to the extreme.

Alexandrakis has been doing it his way from the beginning. Born in Coral Gables, Florida to doctorate-holding, non-musical parents, he says he was drawn to music and the arts from a very early age.  “It was pretty obvious that the arts were me,” he says. “I could make music out of pretty much anything. I’d do plays in school and always got the lead. In elementary school we’d have to pick an instrument in the beginning of the year to study and I’d pick all of them. Then during school concerts I’d bounce from instrument to instrument.”

As a pre-teen and teen, Alexandrakis set his sights on acting after being inspired by the film Back to the Future. “When I got into college I wanted to be a theater major and my parents sat me down and convinced me to try something else,” he laughs. He would end up double majoring in Public Relations and English Literature while still dabbling in music and acting. Alexandrakis recorded his first album 9 Demos on a 4 Track in his 20s “just for the hell of it. Just as an expression. I’d been doing music on and off for years but I didn’t think I could make a living out of it,” he says. The album was created in what Alexandrakis describes as a “bad time” where he was suffering from a persistent pain. After the album’s release, then-25 year old Alexandrakis would find out he had cancer and that the pain was coming from a fist sized tumor in his chest. “So that kind of threw things into a loop,” he says. Nevertheless, 9 Demos was out and the feedback was positive. “People were telling me it was really good. And it was from people who had no obligation. It’s not like with your parents who say everything is good because they want to encourage you. Musicians usually don’t compliment other musicians, but industry people were complimenting me so I thought that maybe I was on to something.”

During his stay in the hospital for cancer treatments, Alexandrakis would write and record his second album IV Catatonia. He explains, “it was totally medical themed and I recorded it the first week I started my treatment and then finished it my last week so it was like a window into that time. I put my nurse on the cover and there’s a box set with medical products and fake blood and tourniquets and a postcard of the hospital saying ‘wish you were here’. I really like taking it to the extreme.”

Looking for an outlet for his music, as well as an opportunity to get away from the “freeloading” Florida-based label he was signed to, Alexandrakis launched Minoan Music, named for the ancient Cretan civilization. During his childhood, Alexandrakis’s family relocated to Crete for his father’s job. The young music lover would become obsessed with the Minoans and their palace at Knossos. “The Minoans, they’re from Crete and they made music. It made sense. And who could resist the Minotaur, right?” he says, referring to the label’s logo. “Crete is my favorite place. Everything about it fascinates me.”

Alexandrakis launched Minoan Music, named for the ancient Cretan civilization. During his childhood, his family relocated to Crete for his father’s job. The young music lover would become obsessed with the Minoans and their palace at Knossos. “The Minoans, they’re from Crete and they made music. It made sense. And who could resist the Minotaur, right?” he says, referring to the label’s logo. “Crete is my favorite place. Everything about it fascinates me.

Though Alexandrakis has plans to release more of his own work through Minoan Music, right now his focus is on Like a Puppet Show and future projects with Sandro and Malkovich. “The plan is to keep making more. Right now I’m talking to artists for the next one. We have Record Store Day and then we have one coming out the day after which is a shorter version and then that same one with different artwork in January.” When asked if he has a favorite track from the album, Alexandrakis says, “I do but they’re all so different and so cool that I’d do them an injustice if I just picked one.”  And as for the next new release, he says, “we’re going to do samples instead of full dialogue. We have a really interesting variety of different people joining us, but unfortunately I can’t tell you who yet.” Though Alexandrakis is tight-lipped about his current collaborators, he names John Williams, Mozart, and, most interestingly, Thomas Edison as part of his dream roster. “It would be cool to have Thomas Edison email me sounds of his light bulbs smashing on the floor and then putting those around the dialogue and having the sounds of machines and things like that.”

Alexandrakis also hints at another “really big” future project with Malkovich and Sandro but adds, “I can’t say what it is yet but I think we’re starting that in January. There’s all kinds of things floating around right now.”

To learn more about Eric Alexandrakis, click here: https://www.facebook.com/ERICSGALEXANDRAKIS

To learn more about Sandro’s Malkovich exhibit, click here: http://www.sandrofilm.com/main/index.php

To learn more about Record Store Day, click here: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home

The MacArthur Foundation announced recently the recipients of the 2015 MacArthur Fellowiship, commonly known as the “genius grants,” including classicist Dimitri Nakassis. He and 23 other exceptionally creative Fellows will receive a no-strings-attached $625,000 grant for their cutting-edge work that is transforming their fields. Nakassis is a classicist transforming our understanding of prehistoric Greek societies. His rare intellectual breadth, comprising philology, archaeology, and contemporary social and economic theory, has equipped him to challenge the long-held view that Late Bronze Age Mycenaean palatial society (1400–1200 BC) was a highly centralized oligarchy, quite distinct from the democratic city-states of classical Greece. Instead, he proposes that power and resources were more broadly shared. This thesis, developed in his first book, Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos (2013), is derived from a meticulous reinterpretation of Pylos’s administrative and accounting records (found on clay tablets and written in the early Greek script, Linear B).

Dimitri Nakassis

Standard interpretations of the tablets suppose a rigid political structure in which a small group of palace elites controlled and distributed all resources. Nakassis re-examined this model using a traditional method, prosopography, but through the lens of contemporary theoretical discussions of agency and structure. He determined that some recurrences of a personal name refer to the same individual playing multiple, sometimes competing, roles. This insight offers an alternative picture of the Mycenaean world as a more open society with a dynamic and competitive economic structure that displays some similarities to the democratic polis of classical Greece.

Nakassis is testing his hypothesis through an archaeological survey, the Western Argolid Regional Project that will reconstruct the settlement history of a core region of the Mycenaean world from prehistory to modern times and clarify how Mycenaean states mobilized labor, incorporated peripheral communities, and expressed power over many centuries. He is also co-directing a new study of the Linear B tablets from Pylos that includes the use of digital imaging technologies (three-dimensional scanning and Reflectance Transformation Imaging, a kind of computational photography) to produce high-quality print and digital editions of these important documents for the first time. Nakassis’s multifaceted approach to the study of Bronze Age Greece is redefining the methodologies and frameworks of the field, and his nuanced picture of political authority and modes of economic exchange in Mycenaean Greece is illuminating the prehistoric underpinnings of Western civilization.

Dimitri Nakassis received a B.A. (1997) from the University of Michigan and an M.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2006) from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 2008, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Classics, and he has been a visiting professor at the University of Colorado Boulder (2014­–2015), the Florida State University (2007–2008), and Trinity University (2006–2007). His articles and essays have appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, and Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, among others.

Source, MacArthur Foundation.

By Chip Gibbons

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Defending Dissent Foundation has the immense honor to bestow the January 2016 Patriot Award on John Kiriakou. In 2007, Kiriakou appeared on ABC when he told the world three things that would change both our national discourse and his life forever—the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had tortured prisoners, torture was the official policy of the United States, and the President had approved and signed off on the use of torture.

John Kiriakou, Photo by Troy Page / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

After this former CIA employee blew the whistle on U.S. torture, the CIA immediately filed a crimes report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the close of the Bush Administration, the FBI closed their investigation of Kiriakou concluding he had committed no crime. Yet, after Obama assumed the Presidency Attorney General Eric Holder, at the request of the CIA, reopened the investigation into Kiriakou and ultimately brought five charges against him, including three counts under the Espionage Act.

Amazingly, during discovery a memo was uncovered in which the CIA specifically requested the Justice Department charge Kiriakou with Espionage. The Justice Department wrote back that there was no evidence that what Kiriakou did—telling the world on ABC News about torture—constituted espionage, to which the CIA responded that they should charge Kiriakou with espionage anyways and make him defend himself against the charges. Eventually Kiriakou pled guilty to one charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and served 30 months in federal prison.

Today, Kiriakou continues his fight for justice as a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he works on issues concerning torture, intelligence reform, and prison reform.

My Only Regret—Staying Silent So Long

Given the consequences of telling the U.S. people the truth about their government—the lengthy legal battle, the prison sentence, and an eventual bankruptcy—some might wonder if Kiriakou has any regrets about his decision. When speaking to BORDC/DDF, he stated, “I have only regret—that I stayed silent for so long.” While Kiriakou went public in 2007, he had known about CIA torture since 2002.

In 2002, Kiriakou participated in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, believed at the time to be al-Qaeda’s “number 3” in command. After his capture, a senior operative asked Kiriakou if he wanted to be trained in “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Kiriakou had never heard this term before, so he inquired about what it entailed. The operative became “very excited” as he told Kiriakou that “we are going to start getting rough with these guys.” The operative went onto describe ten “enhanced interrogation” techniques, to which Kiriakou exclaimed “that sounds like torture.” Afterwards, he visited a friend on the executive floor asking for advice. He was told, “Let’s call a spade a spade, it’s torture and torture is a slippery slope.” He was advised not to participate, since it was only a matter of time before someone dies, which would lead to a Congressional investigation, and finally someone going to jail. Kiriakou’s friend asked him, “do you want to go jail?” Kiriakou most certainly did not. He certainly could not have foreseen that his opposition to torture would cause him to be the only person to go jail in connection with the CIA’s illegal torture program.

Five and half years latter, and after Kiriakou had resigned from the CIA, he received a call from ABC reporter Brian Ross. Ross told Kiriakou that he had a source who was willing to say that Kiriakou had been the one to torture Abu Zubaydah. He told Ross that he was one of the only people to oppose torture. Ross told him he could come on the program and defend himself.

In the intermediate period of time, George W. Bush came on TV and told the nation that the United States did not torture. Kiriakou was appalled that the President could go on TV and “looking us right in the eye and lying.” At this point, Kiriakou resolved that no matter what Brian Ross asked him he was going to tell the truth. 

Solitary Confinement is Torture

After serving thirty months in federal prison, Kiriakou’s advocacy has expanded to examine prison reform. While in prison, Kiriakou discovered that torture was not just something the CIA did overseas, it happens every day in the U.S.’s prisons.

Near the end of his prison term, Kiriakou got a new cellmate—Jim. Jim had been in prison for eight years previously before being released on parole. Post-prison Jim, who was homeless, lived in a cardboard box under a bridge in Pittsburg. Desperate to escape the cold Jim broke the terms of his parole just so he could be inside for the winter. Jim was also a paranoid schizophrenic. As he explained to Kiriakou, he was fine when he took his medication, but when he didn’t things could get very bad very quickly.

The prison denied Jim his medication on the grounds that it was too expensive and gave him Tylenol, an over the counter painkiller that in no way treats mental illness. Additionally, Jim developed a bleeding hemorrhoid, which the prison refused to treat. Denied medical treatment, Jim began filing grievances against the prison. The prison put him in solitary confinement on the grounds that he was “harassing” the prison officials by filing grievances.

In solitary confinement, once a day the medical unit goes cell to cell making sure everyone is ok. However, because Jim had “harassed” the prison medical staff they purposefully skipped his cell. Without his medication, Jim’s mental state deteriorated further and further, until eventually he stood on his bunk and hit the sprinkler with a slipper, causing all of the sprinklers in all of the cells to go off. Prison guards wearing all black and equipped with helmets “extracted” Jim from his cell tasering, pepper spraying, and beating him in the process.

After they “extracted” Jim from his cell, prison guards stripped him and put him outside in a fenced area reserved for recreation. Its tiny nature—10 by 12 feet—makes it resemble something more like a cage than a recreational space. It was winter and thus cold outside. Jim pleaded to be let in, after an hour breaking down into tears, before finally fainting. When he was brought back to his cell he was babbling incoherently.

As Kiriakou points out solitary confinement, much like the CIA’s own program of torture, make the U.S. government immensely hypocritical in way that it deals with the world. Kiriakou said to BORDC/DDF, “How can we tell Saudi Arabia not to behead people, when we execute people all the time, when we keep people in solitary confinements for decades, something the UN says is torture?”

To read the entire article, go to: http://bordc.org/news/john-kiriakou-named-january-2016-patriot-award-winner/

Learn more about John Kiriakou’s work at his website: johnkiriakou.com

by Dimitri C. Michalakis

George Tsandikos is the son of a priest who never felt the calling himself but as chairman of Leadership 100 he helps young men join the priesthood and after working with Leadership for years and becoming chairman in 2014 he has served the church faithfully in his own  way. “I grew up in the Church and the Church has been a critical part of who I am,” he says. Before becoming chairman of Leadership he was vice president under three of its presidents, a past treasurer, an audit committee chairman, and a longtime archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. “It is all about the people and their faith and the ministries of the Church and their effectiveness,” says the 55-year-old managing director of Rockefeller & Company since 2003 and before that J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “It’s about working under the guidance of His Eminence Geron Archbishop Demetrios. His intellect is astounding. It’s about the honor of serving the Church under his spiritual leadership.” Tsandikos was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and grew up with sisters Kathryn and Stephanie in Worcester, the son of Reverend Solon Tsandikos and Presvytera Joanna and he graduated Brown University and Boston College Law School.

George Tsandikos – PHOTO: DIMITRIOS PANAGOS

What are the goals for Leadership this year?

Our main goals are to get the message out that Leadership 100 is a nonprofit 501(c) (3) which supports the National Ministries of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, advances Orthodoxy and Hellenism and recruits new members committed to the Orthodox Faith and Hellenic Heritage Presently we have 979 members. Our goal is to reach and hopefully surpass 1,000 members in 2016.

How do you get there from here?

By communication through our own publications, website, Facebook and YouTube and in the Greek press and other media and in reaching out to individuals through one to one personal contact and by organizing various recruitment events throughout the Metropolises.

What’s your biggest challenge?

To strive to increase our membership and our Endowment portfolio so that we may provide additional grant funding for the ministries of the Church.

How has Leadership changed in your tenure?

Living in New York, I have the additional benefit of attending numerous events together with the Executive Director and reaching out to individuals who are in a position to join. We have established new committees and I have asked every member of the Board to serve on a Standing Committee.

George S. Tsandikos with mother, Presvytera Joanna, Archbishop Iakovos and father, Fr. Solon S. Tsandikos

Why did you want to be Chairman?

To be honest with you, I did not seek the position but I was honored when John Payiavlas as Chairman of the Nominating Committee approached me and asked if I wish to be nominated. My election by the Board of Trustees was one of the greatest honors in my life.

As a money man, is it all about the money?

No, quite the opposite! It is all about the people and their faith and the ministries of the Church and their effectiveness. It’s about working under the guidance of His Eminence Geron Archbishop Demetrios. His intellect is astounding. It’s about the honor of serving the Church under his spiritual leadership. Money is, of course, necessary to accomplish our goals but it is a byproduct of these efforts.

How do you transfer the money to good deeds?

We have supported the theological school, provided scholarships to seminarians, seeded and nurtured Archdiocese ministries, supported Metropolis camps, the Clergy, IOCC and humanitarian needs. In all, since the beginning we have made grants totaling over $42 million, I think of it as 42 million good deeds.

What are the most pressing needs in the church and in the Greek community?

To keep our people united in the Church, keep our youth safe during this most critical time in our Nation and in the world, and to serve the faithful and welcome the stranger.

George S. Tsandikos and Paulette Poulos accept award of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox National Shrine from His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios in acknowledgement of Leadership 100 support in October of 2014.

How do you get the young people involved? What is your outreach to them?

Leadership 100 established a young professionals program known today as the Leadership 100 Partners. The purpose of this was to encourage young people to join Leadership 100, participate in programs and events and to make their $100,000 commitment payments on a lower scale. Our annual conferences bring together over 100 young people who benefit from meeting prominent men and women who are successful in their professions. It also gives them an opportunity to meet other Greek American young people and, in some cases, to meet their partner in marriage.

My father was a principal of Greek parochial schools and their survival was dependent on the local church (on its many travels as the neighborhood changed). How can Leadership help the church and the schools?

The Grant Committee is presently reviewing a grant proposal which was submitted by the Archdiocese Department of Greek Education to provide funding for educational materials for Greek parochial schools. We are a national organization and are restricted from supporting local entities but we can support Greek education in general through this Department.

Are our parochial schools now permanently endangered?

With the downturn in the economy, all parochial schools have faced difficulties. We recently witnessed the Catholic Archdiocese’s decision to close several parochial schools in New York. Another factor is that many of our families are changing parishes and neighborhoods which result in a decline in enrollment. Still, there is a critical need for this type of special education. I believe and pray they will survive. Perhaps the Church should study the successful schools as a model to replicate elsewhere.

George S. Tsandikos with United States Vice President Joseph R. Biden, recipient of Athenagoras Human Rights Award at Order of Saint Andrew, Archons of Ecumenical Patriarchate Grand Banquet in October of 2015 (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

Are our churches becoming imperiled and our rate of attendance becoming an issue?

Our lives today are so very fast. Studies show church attendance is declining across all faiths. Still, our Holy Trinity Archdiocesan Cathedral is packed on Sundays and with young families as are many other churches in urban centers throughout the country The Church will survive and thrive as it stands for a faith and values that transforms lives for the better and combats pessimism and despair.

How do we attract priests into the church?

The Priesthood is a special calling from God and all you have to do is walk on the grounds of our Theological School in Brookline to see the commitment of these young men who have been chosen to serve the Church. Vocations, in fact, are on the increase.

What is your sales pitch when you are trying to recruit new members into Leadership?

Rather than using the word, “sales pitch”, I would say our message is to make people aware of how our support for the scholarship program offered to seminarians has helped educate and train these young men for the Priesthood. Many of them have approached us to thank us and to assure us that if it were not for Leadership 100, they would not be able to study at Holy Cross. Likewise, many young people have thanked us for our annual support of Church summer camps. Fundamentally, all the National Ministries are dependent on Leadership 100 in order to grow and innovate their programs.

George S. Tsandikos Addresses 73rd Commencement at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in May of 2015
PHOTO:© DIMITRIOS PANAGOS-GANP/ΔΗΜΗΤΡΗΣ ΠΑΝΑΓΟΣ

How do you get them to participate besides offering their money?

By serving on our Board and committees and by attending our annual conferences and participating in regional and Metropolis events. Most build friendships through these activities and events which, in turn, creates a cohesive organization that perpetuates itself through future generations. We are one big family of faith.

How generous are Greeks?

Greeks are known to be very generous, hospitable and full of filotimo and one can witness that firsthand whenever Leadership 100 members gather, whether in small groups or at big events and our conferences.

How many miles do you travel a year on behalf of Leadership?

I do not have a precise number but I have been across the country more than half a dozen times since my election and to local events several times each month. I think the number would be surprising and significant. Our annual conferences alone require two or so site visits and the actual events and there is always something going on at the Schole. Honestly, I really do not keep count. Every step is so fulfilling.

How do you balance that with your day job?

Fortunately, I am in an executive position and my company supports charitable work and community activities. I enjoy my day job and my responsibilities as Chairman of Leadership 100. Some days can be long but they are always rewarding.

How would you describe your relationship with (Leadership Executive Director) Paulette Poulos?

Paulette and I have a long standing relationship which dates back to our beloved Archbishop Iakovos of blessed memory. We are friends who share a mutual respect and admiration for each other. Paulette is tireless, faithful and loyal. She is a very special person.

Who does what?

Paulette handles the administrative work of the Office as well as the day to day responsibilities. Paulette and I travel together to conference sites and events and she keeps me informed of all pertinent matters. We participate regularly on conference calls with our Committees and with individuals.

Will the team ever be broken?

I can honestly say I hope the team will never be broken. I will be completing two years in February and the Nominating Committee has nominated me for another term.

What was it like growing up in Fitchburg and Worcester?

I was born in Fitchburg and moved to Worcester when I was very young. My father was assigned to serve St. Spyridon Church there. It was idyllic in many ways. Worcester in those days was booming. The Greek community was extremely active and life very much centered around the Church.

Parents born here?

Both my parents were born here – my mom in Worcester, MA and my dad in Lowell, MA. Shortly after they married, they moved to Athens for a few years while my father studied at the University of Athens. Their love for Greece was contagious. Even though I am a third generation Greek American, I, too love, Greece.

Their families are from what part of Greece?

Mainland. My mother’s family was from the Peleponissos region. My father’s father was born in Kalambaka; his mom in Evia.

Which parish did you grow up in?

My dad served the Worcester parish from 1963 until 1974. I left for college in 1978 so I consider St. Spyridon in Worcester to be my childhood parish.

What was it like being the son of a priest?

Wonderful yet at times challenging. I had to be good. On the other hand I was exposed early on to all of life’s many challenges and sacrifices. But I grew up in the Church and the Church has been a critical part of who I am since then.

Alexander Billinis

We met the way most people do these days, digitally, due to common interest in all things Greek. After reading her work, our friendship deepened via online correspondence and her patient mentoring of my midlife attempts to turn writing from a passion into a side vocation.

I am sure we had “met” in print before, decades earlier, through her writing. My parents, on our annual family trip home to Hydra, would often stop for a couple days of “jet lag therapy” at the Athens Hilton. In every room, “The Athenian: Greece’s Engish Language Monthly” was propped up in a place of honor on the coffee table, and my American-born Greek mother, happy for once not to struggle with reading Greek, would often lift a copy to take with her. As Deputy Editor of the magazine (now, like so much media of substance, defunct), Elizabeth Boleman-Herring’s non-fiction musings on Greek reality would put my mother in stitches. Hers was a language and mentality my mother readily understood.

Today, as I read her book Greek Unorthodox: Bande à Part & A Farewell To Ikaros, I relish the time capsule of a Greece I knew in my youth. The author’s experiences of day-to-day life in Athens (which she calls her Greek chorio or hometown), though separated from my own by nearly three decades, make me nod in agreement, amusement, and break into a nostalgic smile or, often enough, despair.

Elizabeth on Hydra (c. 1961, photo by F. Jack Herring)

Boleman-Herring describes her work as “a portfolio of snapshots and ‘group-selfies’” taken from within her Athenian parea. She calls herself “a minor Jane Austenopoulou sitting in a Monastiraki kafeneion, musing privately.” Having lived in Athens, and stolen moments from the reality of life and work in the quiet cool of identical Athenian kafeneia, I think, “She wrote this book for me.”

For the author, always writing in English shot through with highly idiomatic Greek phrases, Greece is the consuming passion, her greatest love.

Her introduction to the country came very early, at age ten, when her father, a psychiatric social worker and academic from Southern California, moved the family to Greece on a Fulbright grant. After the upscale bubble of early-60s Pasadena, the jarring realities of post-war Greece marked the author for life. For many expats at the time, Greece was exotic, still barely post-colonial, and cheap.

“At ACS [The American Community Schools], in Halandri,” Boleman-Herring says, “where I attended 6th and 7th grades, I represented a third class of students. The ruling class was made up of the children of US military personnel, and the ‘untouchable’ class comprised those with Greek surnames. Since my family, unaligned with the US embassy or the bases, lacked ‘colonial privileges,’ and since my educated parents identified with their Greek colleagues and students, I was in free fall, neither one nor the other. In Athens, I learned what it was to live in the shadow of a colonial power, and what it was to be colonized–as a grade school student. It was a lesson I could never unlearn, an ugly reality I could never un-see.”

For the Herring family, their three-year stay in the country necessitated a deep dive into the real Greece, a deeply hospitable yet socially shredded country still reeling from the recent civil wars, World War Two, and the Asia Minor Disaster, all events too close—both chronologically and societally—for anyone’s comfort.

Elizabeth with Kevin Andrews, Athens (Photo by Emil Moriannidis)

As her father conducted interviews with women survivors of the two-part Civil War, Elizabeth had no choice but to digest it all, and found “she could never go back” to a sheltered American reality afterwards. Her Greek reality was and is “visceral, not romantic,” she says, and after her stint in Greece as a child, no matter what her passport said, she would self-identify as Greek. Like other Greeks, either in Greece or throughout the vast Diaspora, she feels that her Greek identity was less about choice than about experience and, somehow, inevitable.

The 1970s found her returning to Greece with an MA in Literature, working, writing, and living in Athens and on Mykonos as a local. Her early childhood intimacy with Greece and Greeks broadened, and she married Diaspora Greeks (twice: from Istanbul; then, Rhodesia), lived all of the trials and triumphs of an Athens expanding at an unhealthy and dysfunctional pace, and a Mykonian village still caught in the previous century as the island itself throttled towards becoming the world capital of chic and hedonism. Her writing embodies, without guile, a time capsule of a culture undergoing momentous change.

Boleman-Herring is part of the rarefied tribe of mid-20th-century Anglophone Philhellenes which thrived in an era that began just before World War Two. It was then that a brooding American expat named Henry Miller spent a few transformative months in the country, writing of its beauty, history, landscapes, and one Olympic personality in The Colossus of Maroussi, a memoir dedicated to the Greek literary giant Yorgos Katsimbalis. Then the war came and Greece’s heroic role in war and resistance sealed an emotional—though not political—bond between the Philhellenic Allied officers who fought with the Greek resistance and their counterparts. Patrick Leigh Fermor immediately comes to mind as the British don of this group, and Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese and Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece are easily two of the best accounts of life in Greece during that era on the heels of the war.

Elizabeth, who knew and published Leigh Fermor, experienced the Greece he describes when she was a child, and then again as a woman in her 20s and 30s. The two writers met, and collaborated when she founded “The Southeastern Review: A Journal of The Humanities in the Southeastern Mediterranean.” While Leigh Fermor was an important mentor, in both style and spirit, Boleman-Herring’s work is more like that of another American turned Greek, Kevin Andrews.

Like Elizabeth’s father, Andrews came to Greece via a Fulbright grant, in his case to study at the American School of Classical Studies, where he produced an exemplary piece of literature and scholarship, The Castles of the Morea, a lovingly erudite work describing the many fortresses of the Peloponnese.

Elizabeth with Patrick Leigh Fermor, Athens (Photo by Emil Moriannidis)

It was, however, more typical of Andrews to focus, in his prose, on the myriad working parts of Greek culture as opposed to the monuments of just one era. Written in roughly the same period, The Flight of Ikaros: Travels in Greece During the Civil War recounts the fully bilingual author’s travels and relationships in Greece in the throes of the Civil War. No work captures the horrors of the conflict and the simmering tensions better than this book, which is as relevant today as when it was written almost 70 years ago.

While Leigh Fermor’s love for Greece is undoubted, he remained a Briton with a British, almost colonial, attitude towards his Greek home and subject matter. Such an attitude was common among many expats in Greece, but Andrews is exceptional in that he integrated into Greek life and culture, becoming a Greek citizen in 1975 and a tireless campaigner against the Junta. He railed against all modernization on an American model, and lamented the watering-down of Greek culture.

In this, Elizabeth resembles him, herself taking Greek nationality in 1982 and her work standing as a sharp riposte to American “colonial voices” as she calls them. In books such as Vanishing Greece, she documents the loss of the traditional Greece that she loves. The coffee table book, a collaboration with Patrick Leigh Fermor and photographer Clay Perry, was translated into many languages, and remained in print for decades, touching a raw nerve of shared loss. But it was in Andrews that Boleman-Herring found her greatest inspiration—and literary love. It was almost fated that two such Philhellenes would meet hard and fall in love, but fate also cut the relationship short when Andrews died in a swimming accident. In her memoir, A Farewell To Ikaros, Boleman-Herring provides a fitting tribute to her late fiancé, and her writing reflects that love as she preserves his legacy.

While Leigh Fermor’s writing is better known by Greek-Americans, in large part because of his famous war exploits on Crete, the work of fellow Greek-Americans (or American-Greeks) Boleman-Herring and Andrews should be required reading.

They speak our unique language, came of age in America and, using the tools available in two languages, as outsiders turned insiders, describe the reality of our shared motherland, in all its Classical, Byzantine, and Modern variety. They write with love and orexi—but “love,” as Fermor once wrote when praising Andrews’ work—“has not made [them] blind. Shallow Philhellenism gets it in the neck.” Their depictions of reality in Greece may be jarring at times and, at other times, radiant, but they are always authentic.

Take their books with you to Greece and, in an Athenian kafeneion, surrounded by the capital’s polyglot babble, you will find yourself nodding, smiling, and, occasionally, tearing up.

Selected Books by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring:

Greek Unorthodox: Bande à Part & A Farewell To Ikaros. Rivervale, NJ: Cosmos Publishing, 2005.

Vanishing Greece. Photo. Clay Perry. Intro. Patrick Leigh Fermor. London: Conran Octopus, 1991. Coffee-table book. In multiple translations and editions, 1993-present.

Dr. Nicholas Kaloudis

Concerns are growing over the mosquito-borne illness known as Zika virus, which has been spreading through Central and South America and is believed to be linked to a surge in serious birth defects in Brazil.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a travel advisory urging pregnant women to consider postponing travel to more than two dozen countries and territories, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Zika virus is present. Because of the possible link to birth defects, pregnant women who must travel to affected areas should talk to their doctor or other health care provider first and strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites during the trip, the CDC said.

The virus reached Mexico in November and Puerto Rico in December, and the CDC has confirmed more than 30 cases of Zika in the US. in travelers who recently returned from trips to Latin America.

What is Zika virus?

Zika virus is an illness transmitted to people through bites from mosquitoes of the Aedes species — the same mosquitoes that spread dengue and chikungunya viruses. It not communicable from person to person but can be transmitted when a mosquito bites someone who’s infected and then bites someone else.

The virus was first discovered in Uganda in 1947 and named after the forest in which it was found.

Officials say the current Zika outbreak in Brazil began last May. Authorities there estimate that since then, between 440,000 and 1.3 million people have caught it. Zika has spread to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras and Mexico. Puerto Rico reported its first case of locally transmitted Zika virus in December.

What are the symptoms?

According to the CDC, the most common symptoms of Zika virus are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. Other symptoms can include muscle pain, headache, pain behind the eyes, and vomiting.

Symptoms are usually mild, lasting from a few days to a week. Many people infected with the virus experience no symptoms at all. In rare cases, symptoms can become severe and require hospitalization.

A number of Zika patients in Brazil have also gone on to develop a rare autoimmune condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome which can cause at least temporary paralysis. Health officials are investigating the possible connection.

Is there a vaccine or cure?

There is no vaccine to prevent Zika virus. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is ramping up efforts to develop one, but the process will take time.

There is no specific treatment for Zika except to try to ease the symptoms.

What do we know about its possible link to birth defects?

Health officials in Brazil say they’ve found strong evidence that Zika has been linked to a sudden rise in the number of babies being born with abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly, which often results in mental retardation.

Brazil’s government reports more than 4,000 babies have been born with microcephaly since the Zika outbreak began there, up from fewer than 150 in 2014.

While more research is needed to confirm true cause and effect, and experts acknowledge other factors may be at play, researchers say the evidence to support the link is strong. In response, authorities in Brazil, El Salvador and some other affected areas have told women to put off pregnancy if they can.

I’m traveling to an affected region. Should I be concerned?

Currently, the CDC recommends that all travelers to areas where Zika is spreading — mostly in South America, Central America, the Caribbean — take steps to protect themselves from mosquitoes.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” the CDC said it’s advising pregnant women in any trimester to avoid travel to areas where Zika is spreading, if possible, or to take extra precautions to avoid mosquito bites if they must be there. Women trying to become pregnant or who are thinking about becoming pregnant should consult with their health care provider before traveling to these areas and take care to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

The countries named in the CDC travel alert are:

• In Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela.
• In the Caribbean: Barbados, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, St. Martin, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa.
• Samoa and American Samoa in the South Pacific.

What can I do to protect myself?

The CDC recommends the following steps to avoid mosquito bites:

• Cover exposed skin by wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
• Use an insect repellent approved by the Environmental Protection Agency as directed.
• Higher percentages of active ingredients provide longer protection. Use products with the following active ingredients: DEET, Picaridin, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), IR3535.
• Use permethrin-treated clothing and gear, such as boots, pants, socks, and tents. You can buy pre-treated clothing and gear or treat them yourself.
• Stay and sleep in screened-in or air-conditioned rooms.
• Use a bed net if the area where you are sleeping is exposed to the outdoors.

Will Zika virus become a problem in the U.S.?

Though no locally acquired cases have been reported in the U.S., Zika has been reported in American travelers who recently visited affected locations. Experts believe it is inevitable that we will see more cases in the US.

The mosquitoes are here. They’re certainly not as abundant in the winter months as they are in the spring, but there are probably a fair number of people here who have visited the Caribbean or Latin America who are already infected with Zika virus. Our mosquitoes are going to bite those individuals, pick up the virus, and transmit it to another person.

We’re seeing rapid spread of the virus and we need to act now. The first thing is to undertake a program of active surveillance throughout the Western Hemisphere, not only where it is right now, but in places it could soon rise, including the Caribbean, and the Gulf Coast of the U.S. Then if we start seeing transmission in these areas, we should  provide appropriate advisories, and education materials to women of reproductive age, who are pregnant or are planning on getting pregnant.

Members of HALC and the AJC flew in from around the country to promote an advocacy initiative encouraging members of Congress to assert their views on the Cyprus negotiations.  HALC and AJC members met with over 50 congressional offices, encouraging Senators and Representatives to sign onto a letter to Vice President Joe Biden led by Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey in the Senate and the co-chairmen of the Congressional Hellenic-Israel Alliance caucus (CHIA), Gus Bilirakis and Ted Deutch of Florida, in the House of Representatives.

The Advocacy Day was punctuated by the third anniversary celebration of CHIA, which was over 300 people — members of HALC and AJC, congressional staffers, members of the press and think tanks, 30 Members of Congress, officials from the Embassies of Greece, Cyprus and Israel including the Ambassadors of Greece and Israel. The attendance, especially the amount of high level attendees, underscored how far the trilateral relationship between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel has come, and what role the Greek-American and American Jewish communities have played in this partnership.

Congressmen Bilirakis and Deutch presided over an impressive showing by members of Congress – including both the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce and Elliot Engel; the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, former House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Deutch himself; several members of the House Appropriations and Foreign Affairs Committee; and Greek-American members of Congress and champions of the community, Gus Bilirakis, John Sarbanes and Dina Titus. The participation of so many senior members of Congress in the reception and Advocacy Day – including Senators Menendez, Kirk, Jack Reid (Rhode Island), Joe Donnelly (Indiana), Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Gary Peters (Michigan), Martin Heinrich (New Mexico), and the staffs of Senators Bob Corker (Tennessee; chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), Ben Cardin (Maryland; ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), John McCain (Arizona), Marco Rubio (Florida), Ted Cruz (Texas), James Inhofe (Oklahoma), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Dan Coats (Indiana), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Chris Murphy (Connecticut), Corey Booker (New Jersey), underscored the growing reach of the HALC/AJC partnership and effectiveness of the CHIA caucus.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, Greek Ambassador Christos Panagopoulos, AJC Chief Executive Officer David Harris and HALC Executive Director Endy Zemenides all offered remarks stressing the importance of the partnerships between the states of Greece, Israel, and Cyprus, and the Hellenic and Jewish diasporas world-wide.

NEO interviewed HALC Executive Director Endy Zemenides regarding the importance of the CHIA caucus and the annual Advocacy Day:

NEO: Three years ago, HALC and AJC partnered to support Congressmen Bilirakis and Deutch in setting up the CHIA caucus.  Are you satisfied with the progress in the last three years?

EZ: It has been said that 80 percent of success is just showing up.  For three years, hundreds of HALC members have kept showing up in person, and tens of thousands have been showing up by sending letters to Congress online.  Philhellenes at the American Jewish Committee and in Congress have kept showing up.  And now we see the results.  We are affecting policy in the United States and overseas, we have made our issues bi-partisan issues, and we have motivated more Hellenes to be involved in a more substantive manner than ever before. This is still just a beginning, and HALC is excited to work with its membership, its allies at the AJC, and its friends in Congress to take the next step.

NEO: What was the major achievement of this year’s Advocacy Day?

EZ: First of all, securing a letter to Vice President Biden from our allies in the Senate and House of Representatives laying out their opinion on key elements of an enduring settlement in Cyprus is very significant. We have learned from the experience of the Annan Plan in 2004 and more recently from the Iran deal in the U.S. Congress. One cannot wait until the last minute, be presented with a deal and then argue a better deal is possible. In this case, the community, its key allies in Congress, and the AJC have made it clear that a solution that includes guarantees, foreign armies, and items like derogations from EU law will not only fail to earn our support, but will most likely be rejected by the people of Cyprus. Second, we demonstrated that the cause of Cyprus is a bi-partisan cause. Both the House letter and Senate letter were led by one Democrat and one Republican. The top three Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and top three Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee signed onto the letter. We were received warmly by Congressmen and Senators of both parties and from the various wings of both parties. Finally, the support of the AJC and the comments of Ambassador Dermer showed that Cyprus and Greece are more crucial than ever in a regional context. We have gained a bigger audience than we have ever had, and if we can keep making the spotlight bigger, it is more likely that people will focus on how to reach a just and enduring settlement rather than just reach any solution in Cyprus.

NEO: What’s next?

EZ: The letters will be delivered to the Administration, publicized throughout the community and in Cyprus.  We have to make sure that Greek Cypriots are not pressured under false pretenses to agree to conditions that are not only unjust, but will ultimately prevent the successful reunification of Cyprus.  We will be presenting these letters to every member of Congress and every candidate for office we meet with through November, and seek commitments to back these positions.

Demetrios Rhompotis

This time Perixscope is devoted to the newest member of our NEO team, Stefanos-Jason Papagermanos who was delivered to the happy parents by three(!) women head doctors plus the “Muses of modern times” (a.k.a the experienced nurses of the Bellevue Hospital neonatal ward in New York City) that took upon themselves to introduce the newborn boy of Fotis, ΝΕΟ’s official photographer, and his wife Iris immediately after the on time arrival of the stork on March 1, Tuesday that coincided with “Super Tuesday”, laying the foundations for him to reclaim a future for the presidential nomination!

As for the two parents, they were sailing in a sea of happiness hours before the arrival of the stork, though they seemed to be surprised by the estimates of the midwife that their son is at a stage equivalent to one month aged newborn. Indeed, Stefanos-Jason weighed 4kg and looked ready for business upon arrival!

The happy parents, Fotis and Iris, would like to express their heartfelt thanks to all the nursing staff of the hospital who made sure that the baby came to this world as painlessly as possible and especially to the head doctors who delivered him Mrs. Olivia Richardson, Mrs. Caroline Brandon and Mrs. Ashley Tiegs.

We at NEO are thrilled to welcome Stefanos-Jason to the world and to our team and wish him all the best with a life full of happiness and creative challenges! To his parents we extend our most heartfelt congratulations for a job very well done! Keep up the good work, friends!

Of course we have to talk about what’s happening to America in this current presidential election cycle. And it’s not unfathomable. (That doesn’t mean I support him—orange is not my new black.)
When you don’t give people what they want, when you give them a government that doesn’t govern, when you give them a political landscape where the two major parties are as far apart as the chasms of the Grand Canyon and refuse to bridge the gap, when people can’t rely on their elected officials to help them in their daily lives (despite the taxes they pay) but have to cope alone with concerns about their health (Flint, Michigan, where politicians, simply, were trying to shave money at the expense of their own people and are now busy covering their ass; or the continuing health care debate, where the richest country in the world is still debating over whether it should insure its own people, a right afforded to its citizens by some Third World countries); when the best and the brightest policy makers (with impressive Ivy League degrees and an iPad attached to their wrists) can’t figure out how to help people keep their jobs– trickle-down economics or trickle-up—which is it?; when you pontificate on every world crisis but have no definite policy and your lines in the sand are nothing more than shifting sands on Russia, Syria, ISIS, the doughy antics of North Korea’s eternally-prepubescent crown prince—except he keeps hundreds of thousands of his own helpless people in perpetuity in gulags and one of these days might launch one of those missiles—when your politics can’t provide answers and can only provide noise this is what you get: you get the proverbial man on the white horse who’s supposed to ride into town to cut through the brambles of the political system and chart a firm course for the welfare of the people.

You might get a Cincinnatus. You might get a Plastiras. Or you might get a reality show host with a bad spray tan and hair like a celestial Elvis who can’t distinguish reality from a reality show and espouses hate and bigotry as his rallying cry.

People will flock to extremists because they make their intentions clear from the start (their main appeal) and the followers of extremists make the most noise about their candidate so their candidate in this age of viral media gets the most attention.

But in the general election it’s about time reasonable people step up and make sure the process comes back to its senses and that we take responsibility for this process and the government that we elect into office. Let’s not get suckered into partisan politics so virulent that we paralyze the government and drive this presidential election into the perfect storm that it has become.

John Calamos, Sr.

John Calamos, Sr. was honored recently by American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) Midwest, District 13. The award was conveyed at the group’s annual Gala, which centered around the theme of family. His daughter, Dr. Laura Calamos Nasir, accepted the honor on his behalf.  John’s father, Peter, joined AHEPA in 1928.

Calamos is the Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Naperville-based Calamos Investments, a global asset manager (calamos.com). AHEPA presented him with the Aristotle Award, for his contributions to the business community over the past 46 years. John Calamos along with his wife, Mae, and the John P. Calamos Foundation were the generous underwriters of the current exhibition The Greeks—Agamemnon to Alexander the Great at The Field Museum, co-presented by the National Hellenic Museum (NHM) with companion programs and exhibitions at the NHM. He is also a member of The Hellenic Initiative and a supporter of a variety of Greek organizations and causes. A strong supporter of education, Mr. and Mrs. Calamos recently endowed two chairs at the Illinois Institute of Technology, his alma mater, one in business and one in philosophy.

The AHEPA gala is held annually to honor such outstanding contributors to the community. AHEPA has over 400 active chapters in the United States, Canada, and Europe that promote the message of responsibility, family, education, and community. The AHEPA family annually grants over $1.8 million dollars in scholarships and sponsors the Journey to Greece program for college students to study Hellenic culture while earning college credit. The AHEPA Housing program operates 92 housing units with over 5,000 apartments for the elderly. The AHEPA family has provided over $7.5 million in Greek relief with food and medical supplies while supporting Greek Orthodox institutions such as the rebuilding of St. Nicholas at Ground Zero, St. Basil’s Academy, and St. Michael’s Home for the Aged.

Dr. Laura Calamos Nasir accepting the Aristotle Award on behalf of her father, John Calamos, Sr.

Annually, AHEPA presents issues of Hellenic-American concern to political decision makers in Washington, state capitals, and local governments, including the annual Capitol Hill Day in Washington, DC.

The event also honored Rev. Dn. Chris Avramopoulos, philanthropist Eleni Bousis, Northern District of Illinois Judge Honorable Charles P. Korcoras, and U.S. Representative Peter Visclosky (First Congressional District of Indiana).

On February 29, 2016 “FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism” awarded 45 full and partial financial aid travel grants to young people registering to participate in the 2016 Ionian Village Summer Camp program.

Grant recipients represent all metropolises across the nation and include some of the most promising young people in the Greek and Hellenic-American community who may not otherwise have the opportunity to travel to Greece. The grants were awarded on a primarily need-based financial aid basis; however, each applicant’s academic performance was weighed in the evaluation review process.

“The FAITH Travel Grant to Ionian Village is much more than just a grant; it is a way to get in touch with my spiritual side and experience my heritage. I thank FAITH for this opportunity, and I will not let it go to waste,” said Zoe G., a 2016 grant recipient from Minnesota.

Over the last eight years, FAITH has sponsored over 370 grants for young people to attend Ionian Village Summer Camp.

Nikolas K. from New York received the FAITH Travel Grant to Ionian Village in summer of 2015 and said, “FAITH gave me the most memorable three weeks of my life. In Greece, I grew spiritually, explored my family’s culture and made relationships that will last a lifetime.” He continued, “No words justify the gratitude I have to FAITH for awarding me this incredible blessing. I will never forget the first time I visited Greece, thanks to FAITH’s generous grant.”

“There absolutely aren’t enough words to express my sincere gratitude towards the FAITH Endowment for the amazing summer and experiences that Ionian Village has given me,” said Evangelia T., a 2015 grant recipient from South Carolina.

Mrs. Elaine Jaharis, a Founder of The FAITH Endowment, Ionian Village Alumna and Chair of the Committee spoke on behalf of the Founders of FAITH, “We are sincerely pleased to offer this transformative and spiritually enriching experience to young people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to connect to their Hellenic roots and Orthodox faith through Ionian Village.”
FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism supports the development of innovative educational, cultural, and scholarship programs for young people that promote an understanding of the Orthodox faith, Hellenism, and the relationship of the two to America’s history and multicultural landscape.

FAITH announced it will once again sponsor a series of merit-based scholarships for high school seniors entering college in the fall through its prestigious “FAITH Scholarships for Academic Excellence” program. The application, along with a complete list of applicant criteria, can be downloaded from the FAITH website: thefaithendowment.org/FSAE. The deadline is June 30, 2016.

Each summer, Ionian Village participants travel across Greece visiting significant sites of Greek history. At the end of each program, the campers return home with strengthened faith, lifelong friendships and an expanded appreciation for the Orthodox Church and Greek culture.

For more information, please call: 212-644-6960 or visit thefaithendowment.org.

Greek legendary singer/songwriter Lavrentis Machairitsas accompanied by yet another legendary singer/songwriter Miltos Paschalidis and their band comprised by some of the finest musicians gave a memorable performance during AKTINA’s Greek Music Journey concert series at New York’s historic theater the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.  This benefit concert for public service media AKTINA FM and AKTINA TV was co-presented by the cultural non-profit organizations AKTINA Productions and CYPRECO of America.

From left: Steve Tesser, Miltos Paschalidis, Philippos Spyropoulos, Lavrentis Machairitsas, Photo Anastassios Mentis

Machairitsas who was AKTINA’s guest two years ago, returned to New York fully charged and with a new program capturing the hearts of all in attendance once again.  The concert which was crowned with huge success has also been the main talk on social media with people sharing their positive reactions, photos and videos terming it one of the most captivating performances thus far. A full house of guests comprised AKTINA’s and CYPRECO’s fans and supporters Greek and non-Greek of all walks of life and ages enjoyed an unforgettable performance that lasted for 2 ½ hours filled with exceptional songs. Lavrentis Machairitsas and Miltos Paschalidis were accompanied by the soloists Steve Tesser, electric guitar/vocals, Mirela Pachou, keyboards/accordion/vocals, Akis Amprazis, base and Philippos Spyropoulos drums.

Referring to the success of this latest musical performance, Elena Maroulleti, the concert’s Executive Producer and President of AKTINA and CYPRECO stressed that, “everyone had an amazing time and this is our greatest reward.  Everyone was engaged from beginning to end. Seeing the joy and happiness on people’s faces and then receiving their warm congratulations is indeed the greatest reward! We are fully committed to continue our cultural mission of bringing only the finest artists and promote the most representative aspects of our rich musical inheritance. We look forward to seeing all of our friends again on April 22^nd when we bring to New York yet another amazing performer, Eleni Tsaligopoulou and her band Bogaz Musique”.

Machairitsas who stands out for his humility and unique character embraced the audience with exceptional warmth engaging them from beginning to end. He related unique stories about each song he presented and throughout the performance he was showered with applause and cheers, while everyone participated in singing and clapping along. Referring to his new performance in New York, he expressed exceptional thanks to AKTINA and to the concert’s executive producer Elena Maroulleti for bringing him back, for promoting his music and more importantly for their commitment of always producing very worthy concerts featuring the different aspects of the representative music of Greece and the artists who serve it.

From left: Philippos Spyropoulos, Panos Vlahos, Akis Amprazis, Mirela Pachou, Miltos Paschalidis, Photo Anastassios Mentis

Miltos Paschalidis who made his debut performance in the U.S., was equally captivating. With an impressive career spanning over 30 years as a singer/songwriter, Paschalidis stands out for his dynamic and engaging stage presence. He won the audience from the very first moment he stepped on stage. “When someone is 16 or 17 years old and starts writing songs thinks that if one day I go to New York, most certainly I must play this one, it’s so funny it’s been 30 years since then but I am here,” he said and then opened his program with Paul Simon’s classic “The Boxer” earning him non-stop applause and cheers from the audience

The evening revived loved songs from the rich discography of both Machairitsas and Paschalidis, as well as songs by other great songwriters and composers which the two artists performed together.

The multi-talented Mirela Pachou on the keyboards, accordion and vocals who further enthused the audience as she eloquently circled the stage playing the accordion as he accompanied the artists, had an even more exceptional moment when she performed her hit “Mirela” from her recently released personal album.

Other exceptional moments included the impromptu performance of Panos Vlachos, a renowned actor/singer/songwriter from Greece who was present and who was invited on stage by Miltos Paschalidis to perform together “Agnantepsa”, a song from the recently released album by Vlahos which was recorded by Paschalidis.

From left, Vlasis Anastasiou, Polys Kyriacou, Miltos Paschalidis, Council Member Costa Constantinides, Lavrentis Machairitsas, Elena Maroulleti, Concert Executive Producer and President AKTINA & CYPRECO, Photo Anastassios Mentis

Miltos Paschalidis and Mirela Pachou also presented a very moving rendition of the hit song “Diodia”, as a tribute to AKTINA’s and CYPRECO’s member, Polys Kyriacou who wrote the lyrics based on music by Stavros Siolas.

Council Member Costa Constantinides an avid supporter of AKTINA and CYPRECO honored the organizations with his presence and also the lead artist Lavrentis Machairitsas with a Citation on behalf of the New York City Council.

As it was announced during the concert and in the printed Playbill, AKTINA’s next concert from its acclaimed series Greek Music Journey brings to New York Greek singing sensation Eleni Tsaligopoulou in her debut personal performance in the U.S accompanied by her band Bogaz Musique in a one of a kind concert that will revive her hit songs from her personal discography including everlasting rembetika and laika.  Tickets are on sale.  To charge tickets call AKTINA at 718-545-1151 and for more information visit aktina.org.

Angelo Katopodis, Vice President of The Manhasset Hellenic Club, Dr. Thanos Catsambas and Evangelia Frankis, President of the Manhasset Hellenic Club.

The Manhasset High School Hellenic Club hosted recently guest speaker, Dr. Thanos Catsambas, former alternate Executive Director of the IMF Board of Directors.
President, and co-founder, Evangelia Frankis, a junior in Manhasset High School, saw the need to understand the Greek economic crisis after her family visit to Greece this past summer.
“I felt an obligation to gain a deeper perspective into this issue”, Evangelia said. After contacting Dr. Thanos Catsambas, and inviting him to Manhasset H.S., he accepted. “We were very fortunate to have such an insightful and qualified presenter on this topic. Dr. Catsambas truly inspired me, as well as the audience in attendance. He was able to take a complicated situation and have us understand it,” said Frankis.

Mr. Christopher Keen, Manhasset H.S. Hellenic Club advisor, Evangelia Frankis, Angelo Katopodis, Dr. Thanos Catsambas, Dr. Dean Schlanger, Principal, and Mara Steindam, District Coordinator for Social Studies.

The Manhasset Hellenic Club aims to promote an understanding of the principles of the Hellenic culture to the community of Manhasset. These principles include a commitment to humanity, freedom and democracy.

Over 75 people were in attendance, including students, parents and Manhasset High School faculty.

Forty seven Greek-Americans and Philhellenes were initiated into the historic Delphi Chapter 25 of the Order of AHEPA at Gallagher’s Steakhouse in Manhattan this past January, signaling the revival of one of the most storied chapters in the history of the international fraternal organization. The Delphi Chapter 25 was founAHEPA’s Historic Delphi Chapter Welcomes 47 New Members [New York, NY] — Forty seven Greek-Americans and Philhellenes were initiated into the historic Delphi Chapter 25 of the Order of AHEPA at Gallagher’s Steakhouse in Manhattan on January 19, 2016 signaling the revival of one of the most storied chapters in the history of the international fraternal organization.

The Delphi Chapter 25 was founded in NYC in 1923. The Chapter’s renewal was spearheaded by its new President, Argyris S. Argitakos and Vice President Louis Katsos, as well as the dynamic team that comprises the Board of Directors, Michael Papaphotes as Executive Secretary, Jimmy Douloumbakas as Secretary, Chris Karis as Treasurer, as well as board members George A. Meintassis, Nick Moustakis, and George Eliopoulos; with the unanimous support of the Board of Governors comprised of Past Presidents Harilaos A. Zouvelos, as Chairman, Hon. Judge Nicholas Tsoucalas, Dr. Marinos Petratos, Khristos Karastathis, and Richard Duignant.

Befitting this historical event was the attendance of Supreme President John Galanis, Supreme Vice President Andrew C. Zachariades, Past Supreme President and current Chairman of the Board Nicholas Karacostas, Supreme Governor for Region 3 Christopher Gallis, Sons of Pericles Supreme President Andreas Christou, Sons’ Advisor Jimmy Kokotas, and District 6 Governor Peter Vasilakos, as well as many other current and past members of AHEPA’s hierarchy and several presidents from other local chapters.

Guests were surrounded by banners and placards presenting the historical figures of Delphi 25 and the Hellenic and American values of the organization, which were reflected in the oath they took, the Greek and American national anthems, and the invocation offered by Fr. John Vlahos, Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral and Chapter Chaplain. Speakers expounded on some of AHEPA’s programs, including its scholarships, and its AHEPA Journey to Greece educational and cultural program for youth.

Delphi Chapter President Argyris S. Argitakos with members of the board

The initiation was presided by Supreme Vice President Andrew Zachariades, Supreme Governor of Region 3 Chris Gallis, District 6 Lt. Governor Ted Stamas, and Captain of the Guard was James Zafiros, Director of Membership for District 6, with support in the Sentinel positions from several members of New Rochelle Chapter 405 including Past District Governor Tom Dushas. At the appointed time the new members were called to the front of the room, they were then asked to place their left hands on the shoulders of their fellow inductees and to raise their right hands and were administered the oath of the Order of AHEPA by the Supreme President John Galanis.

The evening was dedicated to the memory of the late James A. Poll (1920-2013), who had served the Order in many capacities most notably Past Supreme Secretary, Past Chairman of AHEPA’s Saint Basil Academy (In its 90+ year history, the AHEPA Family has donated more than $1.75 million to the Saint Basil Academy for the construction and ongoing maintenance of its facilities) as well as Past President of Delphi Chapter 25. Dean Poll, son of James Poll, serves as President of the Board of Holy Trinity Cathedral and is the owner of Gallagher’s NYC which hosted the event.ded in NYC in 1923. The Chapter’s renewal was spearheaded by its new President, Argyris S. Argitakos and Vice President Louis Katsos, as well as the dynamic team that comprises the Board of Directors, Michael Papaphotes as Executive Secretary, Jimmy Douloumbakas as Secretary, Chris Karis as Treasurer, as well as board members George A. Meintassis, Nick Moustakis, and George Eliopoulos; with the unanimous support of the Board of Governors comprised of Past Presidents Harilaos A. Zouvelos, as Chairman, Judge Nicholas Tsoucalas, Dr. Marinos Petratos, Khristos Karastathis, and Richard Duignant.

New members taking the AHEPA oath administered by Supreme President John Galanis

Befitting this historical event was the attendance of Supreme President John Galanis, Supreme Vice President Andrew C. Zachariades, Past Supreme President and current Chairman of the Board Nicholas Karacostas, Supreme Governor for Region 3 Christopher Gallis, Sons of Pericles Supreme President Andreas Christou, Sons’ Advisor Jimmy Kokotas, and District 6 Governor Peter Vasilakos, as well as many other current and past members of AHEPA’s hierarchy and several presidents from other local chapters. Guests were surrounded by banners and placards presenting the historical figures of Delphi 25 and the Hellenic and American values of the organization, which were reflected in the oath they took, the Greek and American national anthems, and the invocation offered by Fr. John Vlahos, Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral and Chapter Chaplain.

Former Delphi Chapter Presidents, Judge Nicholas Tsoucalas, Dr. Marinos Petratos, Khristos Karastathis and Richard Duignant

Speakers expounded on some of AHEPA’s programs, including its scholarships, and its AHEPA Journey to Greece educational and cultural program for youth. The initiation was presided by Supreme Vice President Andrew Zachariades, Supreme Governor of Region 3 Chris Gallis, District 6 Lt. Governor Ted Stamas, and Captain of the Guard was James Zafiros, Director of Membership for District 6, with support in the Sentinel positions from several members of New Rochelle Chapter 405 including Past District Governor Tom Dushas. At the appointed time the new members were called to the front of the room, they were then asked to place their left hands on the shoulders of their fellow inductees and to raise their right hands and were administered the oath of the Order of AHEPA by the Supreme President John Galanis.

The evening was dedicated to the memory of the late James A. Poll (1920-2013), who had served the Order in many capacities most notably Past Supreme Secretary, Past Chairman of AHEPA’s Saint Basil Academy (In its 90+ year history, the AHEPA Family has donated more than $1.75 million to the Saint Basil Academy for the construction and ongoing maintenance of its facilities) as well as Past President of Delphi Chapter 25. Dean Poll, son of James Poll, serves as President of the Board of Holy Trinity Cathedral and is the owner of Gallagher’s NYC which hosted the event.