• George Marcus, Greek-American Philanthropist & Entrepreneur
• “New Shoes!” American postwar humanitarianism in the papers of Anna Howell Hayward (1908–2001)
• ΘΕΙΑ ΦΩΤΩ (AUNT PHOTO) AND HER OXI
• Demi Lovato finds her inner ‘Child Star’ voice with new Hulu documentary
• Hellenic Film Society Closes Out a Successful Run of NY Greek Film Expo 2024

All posts by Alexander Billinis

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  The Case for Cultural Literacy

  On Sunday, October 29, 2017 I had the singular pleasure of addressing members of the Hellenic Cultural Association of Salt Lake City, Utah. For a Utah Greek boy long away from his home community, this was a...

  • Posted December 14, 2017
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  Could Greece become the Linchpin of a Balkan-East Mediterranean Alliance?

  Even in asking the question, I feel a wave of doubt and skepticism. The region is dysfunctional and poor, full of failing states and weak institutions. I know the rot of Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia first hand,...

  • Posted July 11, 2017
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  Nostalgia for My Favorite Athens

  I am not the greatest fan of Athens.  Having lived and worked there for two years, I believe that my impression is based on the hard facts of daily life there. And yet, the city possesses a...

  • Posted April 22, 2017
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  A Letter to Deputy Foreign Minister Terence Quick

  Dear Readers, please forgive the digression from my normal column “Hellenes without Borders” wherein I usually discuss Greece, the larger Balkan area, and our Diaspora, but I feel that comments made by Deputy Foreign Minister Terence Quick,...

  • Posted March 17, 2017
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  Erik Bruns, a Dutch Rhodian

  I have known Erik Bruns for many years, meeting, as one often does these days, over the ubiquitous medium of Facebook. In our case, a shared affection for the works of Patrick Leigh Fermor was the initial...

  • Posted October 27, 2016
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  Byzantium: Hidden in Plain Sight

  Today, when I am writing this, is May 29. For many Greeks, and other successors of Byzantium, the date’s significance is self evident. The seismic event, the final fall of Constantinople to the Turks, on this day...

  • Posted June 26, 2016
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  Mystra: Byzantium’s Indian Summer

  Mystra figures less prominently in historical commentary and touristic itineraries than other Greek sites, but for profundity and for a true taste of sublime, understated beauty, it is peerless.  Here is where Byzantium expired, yet with its...

  • Posted April 30, 2016
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  The Athenian: Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, an American-Greek

  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...

  • Posted March 24, 2016
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  For a Generation of Greeks, is Cyberspace the new “Thalassa”?

  My readers will know that I have not been particularly bullish about Greece in the past few years.  Who has, really, and in contrast to some, I have not pointed the finger outwards at others, but rather...

  • Posted January 10, 2016
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  Hello Anatolia: a belated review, and a chat…

  In the world of digital information bombardment, I somehow missed it. It was only after doing research on my next book, set in Izmir and parts of Greece, that another Greek writer friend insisted that see Hello...

  • Posted October 26, 2015
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  Homeland: The Greeks of Utah

  After visiting Greek communities in so many parts of the world, it only makes sense for me to “come home” to my own community. The Greek Community of Utah is both typical of Greek communities in the...

  • Posted September 25, 2015
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  Book Review: “The Great Fire”, by Lou Ureneck

  Smyrna’s (Izmir’s) destruction by fire and sword during the horrible month of September 1922, in the wake of the retreating Greek Army has been the subject of many a book.  While many are the heroes and many...

  • Posted June 28, 2015
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  Hydra: Summers on my Father’s Isle

  For this month’s column, I wanted to avoid discussing the existential situation in Greece and instead walk down the road of nostalgia, recalling my late father, John Alexander Billinis, and his island, our beloved Hydra.  I wrote...

  • Posted May 18, 2015
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  Another Lesson from 1821

  Once again this year I listened as my daughter’s Greek School here in the Northside of Chicago extolled the bravery and the unity of the “Heroes of 1821.” While my wife and son, knowing just a wee...

  • Posted April 11, 2015
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  Greece: Where the Sidewalk Ends …and the IDs Look Fake

  I pondered a great deal as to what to write in my monthly column. Given the events of January 25 (Greek election), there is certainly much to talk about. I prefer not to. Instead, I offer a...

  • Posted February 18, 2015
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  The Eloquence of Humble Architecture: Homes Lost …and Refuge Gained

  Stone by stone we built, A poor corner. Our lives we enclosed, in Kokkinia (Pireaus) . . . . . . But the evening, when it came, It brought the dreams. It brought us to Pergamum ,...

  • Posted December 24, 2014
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  Modern Greece and Greeks …In Whose Image?

  Many Greeks and foreigners consider today’s Hellas to be the resurrection of a lost ancient polity, Classical Greece. The Greece that emerged from Ottoman rule after a chaotic, heroic yet haphazard war of independence received a measure...

  • Posted November 14, 2014
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  Should “Hellenes without Borders” be allowed to vote in Greece?

  My vote on this, for what it’s worth, is “No.” I am not making light of this desire of many Diaspora Greeks to vote and to participate politically in the affairs of the homeland. Not at all....

  • Posted October 19, 2014
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  Rhodes Riches: An NGO Model for Greece

  In the course of living and writing in Serbia, I had the great fortune to be invited by Rhodes International Culture and Heritage Society (Rhodes RICHES), a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Rhodes, to the lovely island...

  • Posted September 13, 2014
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  My Favorite Greek Road Trips: Athens to Nauplion

  When we lived in Athens several years ago, just before the cracks in the Greek pavement were beginning to appear, one of our favorite things to do on the weekends was to get out of the city....

  • Posted June 6, 2014
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  Unofficial Histories: 1821

  This past weekend we celebrated our ancestors’ Revolution against the Ottoman Empire with a parade down Halstead Street, in Chicago’s Greektown. The last time we were there, it was just my wife and I, but this year,...

  • Posted April 16, 2014
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  Skopje (FYROM) 2014

  In choosing the title, “Skopje 2014,” I am referring not to the costly, kitsch Vegas-on-the-Vardar reconstruction of downtown Skopje, but rather the state of the Slav Macedonian state in 2014.  This country is in existential peril and...

  • Posted February 16, 2014
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  Edifice Complex: Erdogan and Agia Sophia

  Memo To: “Sultan“ Erdogan From: Emperor Justinian Subject: Agia Sophia YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT! It was not three months ago, when writing to express my outrage at the conversion of Trabzon’s Agia Sophia Cathedral-Museum into...

  • Posted December 14, 2013
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  Rigas Pheraios: My Kind of Hero

  I “met” him rather early in life, through his immortal words of the Thourios Ymnos, drummed into our heads by our Greek School Teacher in anticipation of the March 25th Celebration. In the Pantheon of Modern Greek...

  • Posted November 13, 2013
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  A Partisan Chat: Alexis Parnis

  “You see, I still live like a partisan,” as he showed me his house on the slopes of Mt. Hymnetus, in the rapidly suburbanized and gentrified suburb of Peania, outside Athens. The modest house with an attached...

  • Posted October 10, 2013
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