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Keywords: Gillian Bouras

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  • RELIGION

    New year epiphany in a burning world

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 January 2020
    7 Comments

    This New Year saw me becoming a Twitter tragic so that I could keep up with the news of disastrous fires in Australia, and fires of a different sort in the Middle East. It all seemed too much. On the day after Epiphany, a major feast day in the Orthodox Church, I found myself outside Kalamata's Church of the Archangels, and went in to light a candle.

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  • MEDIA

    Editors' Picks: Best of the Decade

    • The Editors
    • 20 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Our team of editors have dug through the past ten years' worth of Eureka Street articles to nominate their favourite pieces published between the start of 2010 and today. Check out our list and then jump into the comments to tell us what are your picks of the decade and why.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dickens and Christmas as we grow older

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 13 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dickens was a prolific writer, and one of patchy quality: the threat of sentimentality was never far away, so that this brief work is not one of his best. But in this consumer age it is salutary to have his definition of the Christmas spirit, which is one 'of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance'.

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  • EDUCATION

    Teachers earn and deserve their holidays

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 December 2019
    9 Comments

    It's that time again, when exhausted teachers are wondering whether they'll make the distance and finish the school year with their sanity more or less intact. It's also the time when they have to endure snide remarks about 'a really cushy job' and 'all those holidays'. But it's not a cushy job. I know: my brother and I were third-generation teachers.

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  • RELIGION

    The light in John Henry Newman's darkness

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 November 2019
    6 Comments

    Dad is out watering the garden, but all the front windows are open, so he can hear the piano and his wife and two daughters singing. He often hums along to our repertoire, which is a mixture of Anglo-Celtic songs, Australian numbers — and, memorably, 'Lead, Kindly Light', written by the recently canonised St John Henry Newman.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Nazi fable's modern resonance

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 22 October 2019
    9 Comments

    A major part of Martin's so-called patriotism is anti-Semitism, and Martin soon uses the well-worn trope in which the prejudiced person makes an exception of an individual. After declaring that the Jewish race is 'a sore spot', Martin tells Max he has loved him not because of his race but in spite of it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Conscientious capitalists

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 24 September 2019
    6 Comments

    Raised by Politically Pink Parents, I was in my youth rather wary and suspicious of capitalism and capitalists. Eventually I realised that the only thing wrong with money is that not everyone has enough of it. We hear too much about arch-capitalists like the Trumps and the Koch brothers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Swearing? Won't have a bar of it

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 September 2019
    9 Comments

    Those were the days when children could expect to have their mouths washed out with soap and water if they uttered certain words. Fast forward quite a few years: once I got the hang of Greek swear words and realised my children were using them, I rejected the idea of soap and water, but began a system of fines.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The saga of zany Granny's memory box

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 31 July 2019
    6 Comments

    While this saga was going on, I read an alarming piece about the transient nature of the digital world. Mobile phones get stolen and photos not backed up are irrevocably lost; flash drives and their capacities do not last forever. 'Print out' was the author's advice. Who would have thought?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Fool Britannia: On bad mannered Brexiteers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 July 2019
    31 Comments

    As a celebratory anthem, Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', was played, the Brexit MEPs, all 29 of them, turned their backs, thus insulting the Parliament, the young and talented musicians, and Beethoven himself. They clearly did not realise they were demeaning themselves by acting in this fashion.

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  • RELIGION

    Reflections of a church tourist

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 05 June 2019
    16 Comments

    Architecture is not my strong suit, but I admire the beauty of walls and ceilings, the decorations, and the idiosyncrasies such as little sculptures invisible to congregations and visitors, but made in faith that God could see them. The history, the thought of generations of worshippers, the numerous associations: these are other things that fascinate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beware the election campaign hobgoblins

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 11 April 2019
    7 Comments

    The American writer H. L. Mencken said the aim of politics is 'to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary'. Over the years there have been many hobgoblins of varying sizes and shapes, and this election campaign promsies to be no different.

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