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Keywords: Athens

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Agnostic prayers for an infirm infant

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 13 March 2013
    15 Comments

    Orestes was found to have a malformed oesophagus and, at the age of only 19 hours, underwent a two and a half hour operation. I'm what Patrick White might call a 'lapsed egotist agnostic pantheist occultist existentialist would-be though failed Christian Australian'. But if I have ever prayed, I prayed that night.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freewheeling fantasies of European citizenship

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 February 2013
    1 Comment

    Does citizenship need to be built upon close cultural, linguistic and historical ties, as in a national community? Or can a broader conception of citizenship be formed? In Brussels I spot a mural of a mosque on a garage door, surrounded by people from North Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, speaking French, Flemish, English and Arabic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Winter of Greece's discontent

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 16 January 2013
    6 Comments

    I have always felt safe in Athens, but recently, while travelling in a crowded train, I was jostled by several large young men. When I alighted, feeling more than a little shaken, I discovered that my wallet was missing from my bag. There have long been beggars in Greece, but now there are many more, and of a new type.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2012: Greek peasant's faithful fatalism

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 09 January 2013
    4 Comments

    Maria was born into poverty and did not have much luck in escaping it. Yet she was an unchallenged believer, who would say regularly, Oti thelei o Theos: Whatever God wants. This, while I would huff and puff and mutter that God helps those who help themselves. But part of me envied Maria her certainties. Wednesday 28 March 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Scene from an Athens newspaper office

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 16 October 2012
    6 Comments

    The pagemakers wear masks of chronic weariness, and stubbled cheeks: stoics conditioned by a heartless press ... Smoke rises from untidy desks as from a ship that's sinking fast, taking all hands on its burning deck ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After Greece's party ended

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 August 2012
    3 Comments

    Things were speeding up. Greece entered the European Community, banks were throwing money at every Tom, Dick and Spiro, credit cards seemed a form of modern magic. The party is over now, and the ones who have survived in the best shape are the older villagers who never expected a party and so did not join in the spree.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The politics of suicide

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 May 2012
    14 Comments

    Albert Camus said suicide was the one serious philosophical problem in that it poses the question as to whether life is worth living. Some suicides are a private solution to anger and despair, but others, such as suicide bombings and the recent suicide of retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas, are both public and coercive.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greek peasant's faithful fatalism

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 March 2012
    7 Comments

    Maria was born into poverty and did not have much luck in escaping it. Yet she was an unchallenged believer, who would say regularly, Oti thelei o Theos: Whatever God wants. This, while I would huff and puff and mutter that God helps those who help themselves. But part of me envied Maria her certainties.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Innocence lost in Greece and Australia

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 17 February 2012
    11 Comments

    The dismissal of Gough Whitlam by then Governor-General Sir John Kerr in 1975 has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. It seems pallid in comparison with what is now happening here in Greece. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2011: Greek crisis viewed from the corner store

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 January 2012
    2 Comments

    Panayiotis runs the mini-market he inherited from his father. I have known father and son for 30 years. 'How do you see things at this stage of the krisi?' I ask him, for I'm always asking people what they think of Greece's financial crisis. 'What crisis?' he grins. 'Greece has got a crisis; Greeks haven't.' Published 14 June 2011

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Confronting the beggar dilemma

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 14 December 2011
    10 Comments

    My father was disgusted by beggars. 'You know what that's all about? A bottle of metho to go with the boot polish.' These days I divide beggars into categories. The aged are in my in-group, and so are children. I give to amputees, but one day an 'amputee' got up and revealed himself to have two legs.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Reinventing Greece's paradise lost

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 09 November 2011
    7 Comments

    In their Greek travels, 20th century writers Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller tried to construct a sort of paradise for themselves. Most foreign inhabitants of Greece try to do the same. I certainly did. I hope now that there is a chance of Paradise being regained.

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