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1970
He was once in a room
And a character from some cartoon
Was strumming Mr. Tambourine Man with the blues
(A Mister by the name of Magoo
Stood in the corner amused)
He was shooting for the moon
He shot too soon
Some called him insane
Some called him a loon
Tho' the song was bland
With guitar in hand
He got the girl in the end
2020
there is a beast inside
with no form and no name
one seek his fortune
another his fame
one stumbles blindly
from fear into fright
emerging from darkness
in to bright light
and when the women come out
to cut up what remains
a shot rings out
shattering tooth and brain
HEART
With the wings of the heartlong fire
I think that I would die
And with heart at rest within my breast
To your own soul I would fly
With the wings of the heartlong fire
It would be to where you lie
A weary heartlong traveller
And a lonely last goodbye
DAN 2:34 STATEMENT
the existence of God can be proved
by a prophecy in the old testament
a specific bible prophecy
is graphically depicted in the earth's geography
the book of daniel predicts the roman empire
and portrays it as the leg of a statue
the roman empire was located in italy
the italian peninsular has the shape of a human leg
the prophecy predicts that the roman empire will be destroyed by the kingdom of God
at the coming of the messiah
this is depicted as a rock smashing the statue at it's feet
the island of sicily, representing this rock, points to the foot of the italian peninsular
this geographical feature not only proves the existence of God
but specifically the truth of the judeo-christian bible
A COLLECTION OF FUNNY NAMES & THEIR CONNECTIONS
Book on veterinary medicine (author: Blood)
Book on food law (author: Gerkins)
Expert on mental health services in NSW: Leanne Craze (I kid you not!!)
Heard on the radio: a Countrywide pig report presented by Roger Bacon.
Radio report on recent snowfalls quoting someone by the name of Flake
OBSERVATIONS
When a child dies it makes a little hole in the universe
and nothing ever quite fills it up
They were like a cross between Sony and Cher and George and Martha. An irresistible force meets an immovable object ... there are people with millions of dollars in the bank who could not buy what they had. ... Their relationship had arisen from who knows where. Heaven had decreed it. Fate had decreed it, but he was so easy to defeat, so easy to destroy, and she was so smart and strong she could destroy it - so she did! The ultimate hubris - she thought she could bring it back to life again if needs be. But by the time she realised she couldn't, it was too late.
She was smart, attractive and popular. Like him, she was from the other side of the tracks with lower working class backgrounds, but in a way, she had led a charmed life. Things had always gone her way. If anything went wrong there was always someone around to pick her up and tell her everything was alright. But in him she ran into a brick wall, and there was not a thing she could do about it.
But in the end, he would always be part of her and she would always be part of him, and nothing would ever change that.
Breaking the sheep's back with political correctness (SMH May 23, 2013)Nicolle Flint -- To the intelligentsia, cultural wealth is a new world order. World-renowned American political scientist Ronald Inglehart would describe the bunyip alumni as ''postmaterialists'', products of the historically unprecedented wealth, stability and food security achieved in Western democracies following World War II. Such privilege has enabled people to place greater value on self-expression and concern for others (postmaterial considerations) than self-preservation (material considerations such as food, economic and physical security).
I especially liked this one from some TV programme. "Someone had to drive a wooden stake through the heart of Soviet communism, and that man was Boris Yeltsin" (himself a former head of the Moscow Communist Party).
Of the second son of Joseph the Bible says 'He shall be the father of many peoples' (Gen. 48:19)
Immanuel Kant - the most boring famous person who ever lived.
... young love hidden in hallways and secret doorways
Dimitri ... a timeless story of longing and love which opens up like a flower in the sun after the rain
A KITCHEN SCENE
She was preparing a meal.
She carved slices of tomato, onion and eggplant.
She laid them out slice by slice, layer by layer in the dish with the lamb until the mixture was ready.
She had done all this as a religious ritual of love and sacrifice.
These are the things of a wife and mother.
She noticed him looking at her.
She smiled.
He said "I love you so much".
1. Someone I was attracted to
2. Someone who shared my philosophical view of the world
3. Someone who shared my religious beliefs
4. Someone who wanted children
5. Someone who could have children
6. Someone who wanted a lot of children
7. Someone young enough to have a lot of children
He was a simple man who wanted a wife and a life like any other.
He wasn't a lady's man. He had no way with women at all. No small talk, no preliminaries, no advertising, just what you see is what is what you get. He also had a rather rustic sense of humour. He was waiting for someone who could see through the rough exterior to the real person within.
Although he was not the most romantic man, for him it would have to be a famous love story where they would lived happily ever after, or one which would end tragically.
He was romantically involved with someone he variously referred to as Miss Muffet, Thingy, or just plain 'uuuh'. How long? Too long! - about six months too long. At any rate he was romantically involved with her for about six months, but she was romantically involved with him for about five minutes (or maybe ten) all up.
ISMS
You know, something is supposed to be true according to my system of reasoning, but its not really eg. if we abolish private property people will stop being greedy, the old Democratic Peoples Republic of East Germany - it's supposed to be democratic but it's not really, Pol Pot exterminating people who wore glasses, who were supposed to be murderous enemies of the people, but they weren't really. The list goes on ...
To an overwhelming degree, in most fields of human endeavour, most men outperform most women most of the time. This state of affairs cannot be changed through political action. It's an insult to the human mind to claim that it can, and only idiot feminism would do so. They will claim that things have changed. But things haven't changed enough, and have changed as much as they ever will.
"It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" -- Luke 13:33
I Visited Jerusalem in 1975. As soon as my feet touched the ground a miracle occured which I think about to this day.
A man appeared before me, a Jew, he took me to his home and I stayed with him for several days.
He lived through the British protectorate and all he could talk about was the time when the British ruled Palestine.
To him this was the best of times.
To hear all this coming from a Jew in Israel was remarkable to me as I had only recently confirmed the Israelitish origins of the British people while living in Oxford.
COLLINGWOOD PREMIERSHIPS
When Collingwood lost the 1960 Grand Final I was behind the goals at the city end. When they lost the 1964 GF I was at the half-back flank city end. When they lost the 1966 GF I was on the half-forward flank Jolimont end. When they lost the 1970 GF I was behind the goals again at the Jolimont end. When they won the GF in 1990 I was in Canberra
THE URVAN
The side door of our old urvan kept coming off. In order to fix the door I had to get to the toobox at the back of the van, but the back door didn't work, so I had to climb over the middle seat and open it manually using the inside handle. Unfortunately the middle seat mechanism didn't work. In order to get the middle seat down I had to grab hold of both levers on each side of the seat and use my head to push the back of the seat down, so I could get to the handle of the back door so I could open it to get to the toolbox to get a screwdriver to fix the side door which kept falling off.
The original sin was an inter-racial relationship which should never have been. So I should not be. The Hopi Indian expression is Koyaanis Katsi - life out of balance - and her name was Kerani Katsoris - so there can be no resolution there. Something which is not dead but which cannot be born. If you take the middle part out of her name it becomes Keri Karis - sounds like my Greek grandfather - Harry Harris. If you take the middle part out of Molai - where she was born - it becomes Moe - where I was born.
I don't want a funeral but if anyone wants to mark my passing it can be to the accompaniment of Mahler's 9th Symphony (second last and last movements).
A life full of fights and struggles, always deeply psychological, but enduring all and prevailing in the end, and like that old soldier of General MacArthur's famous speech, who just fades away, so too I ... just fade ... fade ... away.
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SEARCHING FOR DIMITRI
A racial love story
by
Dale Heslin-Argirakis
(2007)
Epigraph:
'KoyaanisQatsi'
A Hopi Indian expression which means life out of balance
1.
The Call of the Blood
Early on in life he decided for no particular reason that he was Greek. A Greek brain in an Anglo-Saxon body was how he put it. Not that he ever thought he was ethnically Greek. He would have laughed at that proposition, simply that his brain had been constituted in a certain way, that he was some kind of freak of nature. He would drag his uncomprehending parents now to a Greek movie, now to a Greek restaurant. His penchant for Ouzo was part of the family folklore. When he was at high school he fell deeply in love with a Greek girl and he never forgot her. From that point on she was like an elephant in his living room. Her name was Keri Karis. He told his father about her. "Greek girls! Huh! They're a bit of an unknown quantity!" was his uncertain reply - and he was himself Greek! though he didn't know it yet. A few years later he became quite friendly with her sister - that was Nia. And a few years after that he discovered that he himself was of Greek descent. He felt there was a message in there somewhere.
This is a story that's eternal because it is about the consequences of sin, about how we suffer for our own sins and for the sins of others. It is a sad story, one of terrible unfulfilled longing ... but it is also a story of hope. It is not just about dwelling on the past but about the here and now.
That last year of high school in 1968 a whole lot of new kids appeared from a neighbouring school where they didn't offer matric. They wore their own school uniforms. Among the new ones was this dark-haired obviously foreign girl. For some reason her family had moved out his way and she was doing a final year of high school at Oakleigh High School. She was so small and dark he thought she might be Indonesian! One day in an English class they were discussing the problems between immigrants and their children in a new society. The teacher - Miss Edmondson - asked Keri what her nationality was. She answered 'Greek'. She seemed a little defensive. When he heard that, his ears pricked up. Later on, it would always be a question-mark for hime, was he interested in Keri because of his Greekness? Or was he interested in his Greekness because of Keri? It says in the Bible 'Behold, you had arrived at the age of love'. Well, he had long before reached puberty, but at the age of 17 it was a time when one might realistically expect to find the love of one's life.
One day he was waiting for a class. She was standing just opposite him. She was in his vision just out of the corner of his eye. He thought 'We're supposed to be here learning maths and history and all that, but all I'm doing is thinking about you like mad. Are you thinking about me? She was standing next to the spunkiest girl in school, Caroline Hamilton. She was taller with honey blond hair - seriously beautiful. But when he looked at her nothing much happened. When he looked at Keri all the sensors went crazy. Another time he was waiting for a class in one of the outside classrooms. Where he was standing he had nowhere else to look but down the stairs. Keri came along straight into his field of vision. He had no particular desire to look away. She must have known then what he felt for her.
He thought she was an angel from heaven. She would come down each day and return at night. He worshipped the ground she walked on. One day he noticed she had a bandaid on her finger. He thought, how did she do that? What was she doing? He would often look across and see this alluring, withdrawn Greek girl on the other side of the classroom who was the female version of himself. He wished they could go off to a desert island somewhere and forget the world.
He didn't really know Keri, but he could tell what kind of person she was from her eyes. He could see that she was intelligent, warm, and kind. She was a dark, still, pond of water. She was inaccessible. It was as if they dwelt in different universes. He could reach out but he couldn't touch her. Once they did a physics experiment together. They were (together with a friend, Darryl W.) like the leftovers when they pick a football team. She was Greek. He was part-Greek and Darryl looked like a Greek God. He later learnt that she was engaged at this time. No doubt this explains her aloofness. After all, what would a girl who was about to be married have to gain by socialising with school-kids. Any romantic involvement for someone in her situation would be totally pointless. One day in an English class they were discussing arranged marriages. He always kind of assumed that her marriage was arranged since she came from a traditional rural village in Peloponnesos. The books they studied were all about men who possessed a hopeless love for some woman (Far from the Madding Crowd, etc.) It seemed so symbolic.
Besides all that, they were both about the same age, but women usually idealise marrying someone two or three years older than themselves. At this time he was still just a boy, but she was becoming a woman - or maybe had already become one.
The last time he saw her was at the end of year speech night. The matric students all went up to get their bits of paper. Keri's turn came. She shuffled across the stage, obviously hugely embarrassed. His heart was going through the roof of his mouth!
The end of the school year came and he thought 'I'll never see her again. I can't just let someone like her get away without contacting her.'
He rang her. She told him she was already engaged. He wished her good luck. She knew he liked her. Now she might have thought he had somewhat deeper feelings. But there was a lot more to it than just that. This was more than just an adolescent infatuation. A great moral drama was being played out and it had something to do with her being Greek. A cleansing and purifying process was at work which he had to go through. Her inaccessibility to him was fundamental to the process, and the cleansing could only take place if that were so. He would like her to have known all this. He would like her to know how deep his feelings were.
He neglected to say 'Well, I'll never forget you anyway.' He always wondered if he should have ...
One more thing from that episode. He thought he would say 'if she aks me if I'm Greek or anything like that I'll just say something like "Well I think my father had a fish and chip shop in Collingwood, ho, ho, ho". It's just something that popped into his head (its happened like that many times in his life). The truth was, totally unknown to him at the time [a secret not revealed till 1974!], that his Grandfather had a Greek restaurant in Prahran!
One night, many years later, he was watching a documentary on Sparta. He knew that�s where she came from because Nia used to tell him about her family. She commented once on how 'horny' her sister's husband was, which curiously made him happy. She would tell him about Greek culture, and Peloponnesos. She must have noticed his interest. When they first met, in 1972, he told her he went to Oakleigh High in 1968. She asked if he knew Keri. He told her that he knew her and that she was in his class. He didn't let on anything more. He remembered Nia from there too. He had noticed this girl walking across the linkway. She was in a grey uniform. She had long, lank, fair hair and wore gloves. He did not know then who she was, but for some reason her face stuck in his mind.
There he was, many years later, watching that programme on Sparta. As he watched images of the Taygetus Mountains he thought 'That is where Keri came from' and then ... 'Is that where I came from?' He had often thought about his Greek origins, but rarely on the level of real names, dates and places. But now the thought occured, 'What if he came from there ... '. At any rate, there was a part of him somewhere in Greece and he wouldn't rest until he found it. The call of the blood!
The thing that struck him about the 300 Spartans was that they knew that in sacrificing themselves they were grasping at immortality. It was awe-inspiring to him that they knew what was at stake. As he watched the programme and the narrator read out an inscription at Thermopylae from thousands of years ago, you could see how they had understood that a glorious death would live on after them in the annals of history - and that was immortality for them. That is something timeless and enduring. That is the heritage of those who show courage in this world. It was all the more ironic that King Xerxes was a living god (immortal!) and he threw against the Spartans elite troops labelled 'the immortals'. The Persians sought immortality, but they were trumped in death by the 300 Spartans. Even though we know hardly any of them personally by name, it was their name which lives on to this day, prevailing, for most people, even over the name of King Xerxes.
And so that is how he came to be talking with Nia about 'eternal' things ... He liked Nia. She was a nice person, and he was attracted to her. But was he interested in Nia because of Keri? Did she like him? He thought so. How ironic it was. He didn't think that there could be anything between him and Nia because he could not bear to think of being close to Keri without her being his. Besides that would not have been fair on anyone involved...
The last time he saw Nia, she came up the stairs of the university library, and he was going down in a hurry to get somewhere. ... She told him she had asked Keri about him. He thought, why did she do that? Keri told her about the phone call. So she knew how he felt about Keri.
If she could not be his he might as well go for the brass ring. 'So Keri, you're Italian?', he says. 'Greek', she answers coldly. 'Greek!!'. Well, you know my father's father's family was the first Greek family in Australia. 'Does that make you some kind of Greek royalty?' 'Yes, a kind of Greek prince', he answers. Hugh Gilchrist in his majesterial history 'Australians and Greeks' identifies him as Peter Argyros. He became James Harris.
Surprising though it may sound, he never thought about Keri in a sexual way, so the big question of his life is : 'Was she my sister then?'
But one thing he knows is that if it were not for a sexual sin HE WOULD NOT EXIST!
In September 1967 he experienced a great darkness of the soul when he discovered some things about himself he didn't like but which were true. Keri was the first big thing in his life where, it didn't matter what he did, he couldn't change something. She was the personification of everything he wanted but couldn't have - not just the girl he couldn't have - but academic achievement, being a good footballer, growing roses or whatever. She was simply the summation of all that. Although she was in a way out of reach, she was nevertheless part of his human scale. She was not totally beyond the bounds of possibility - circumstances, the hand of God - might easily have brought them together, but it was it was like she had a 'forbidden' sign stuck on her.
So in the end he is caught, as they say, between something which is not dead but which cannot be born. While most people come to God in search of an answer, he come to him in search of the question!
He doesn't fantasize about some unfulfilled sexual encounter. Instead, he imagines a quiet chat in the 'restaurant at the end of the universe' where he might tell Keri the story of Dimitri and Athena and Spinore and George and all the others in his Greek past ...
Helen of Troy was actually Helen of Sparta. From the island of Psara you can almost see Turkey on a clear day. This was where Troy was. Even from the grave she draws me back there - to the faraway island of Psara. This story will end at the battle of Jerusalem.
2.
Zorba Comes to Clayton
Looking back on it, it surprises me how much the story of Keri had to do with the whole experience of living in Melbourne where everything was so coloured by post-war mass migration. When we first moved to Melbourne from Moe in 1956 we lived right near a migrant hostel in Holmesglen, so half the kids in my school were migrants. I always viewed the whole migrant experience as something terribly romantic. These migrants were Germans, Greeks and Italians, which as a European you could identify with, and government policy was one of assimilation. The trade off was that in return for a bright future in a new country these people were expected to learn English and fit in with the Australian way of life. Everybody knew that wasn't going to happen - not really! Ultimately the allegiances would always be to the old country - but there was a sense of innocence there that is totally lacking today. (Today we have a muscular, aggressive ideology of multiculturalism aimed at populating Australia with every exotic ethnic group you can think of so as to get rid of silly, boring Anglo-Saxon culture as quickly as possible. The result is a hodge-podge of ethnic enclaves as alien from each other as they are from the native population.)
So, with Keri - the eternal question - was she Greek or Australian? My own Greek family came here to make a life for their children. Originally they were totally Greek, but the children married Australians and their children became more or less fully Australian. Only Athena steadfastly married, cohabited with or had business partnerships with Greek men.
Sometime in the early 60s I saw the film Zorba the Greek. I played the music. On one occasion I was playing the music, and there were workmen out the back putting in sewerage pipes. I wondered if they were Greeks. Were they responding to the music?
I took my mum and dad to see it. In this movie a dark, beautiful widow in a rural village is the focus of attention. A simpering young man makes a weak-kneed attempt to attract her interest by way of a letter. His father intercepts the letter, and humiliates him. He commits suicide. The foreigner, Basil - the hero - is half-English and half-Greek. The widow is attracted to him but he is too shy to respond. Zorba is outraged by his inaction. It is Xmas Eve and Basil, walking past the widow's house, declares that he has always wanted to see a Greek Xmas. He is assailed by Zorba. 'Oh Boss, did not God go to Mary?' otherwise Jesus would not have been born! Later, consumed by the feelings awakened in him, Basil eventually visits the widow. This seemed like a parable for what was happening to me at the time. I related to the wimpish young guy with his letter and his pathetic moves towards the widow. I related to the Englishman - the xenos. Were they both me?
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There is another love story here. Another one full of ghosts and angels. It began in 1882 on the island of Psara in the Aegean. There was born Demetrius Argirakis.. The story of my grandfather, this dark-skinned Greek man, Harry Harris, must for now await further research, but he is a part of who I am. The search goes on ... This page is dedicated to him.
I leave the above reflections for posterity. Anyone of the 6.5 billion people in the world from Anchorage to Ulan Bator, from Birmingham to Botswana, anyone with a computer and an internet connection, have access to these, my innermost thoughts, if they are interested enough to do so... and they can, among other things, read the story of Ker..i Ka...ris and how one human being can have an effect on another human being. This page I dedicate to her memory also.
DECISION TO STUDY HEBREW
I started by wanting to learn the alphabet. Because of the many similarities to Arabic that might make a lot of Hebrew understandable without having to put much effort into it.
I had resisted learning Hebrew based on the idea that eg. everyone in Israel speaks English - but then realized that there was still something to be said for being able to understand what Hebrew speakers were saying even if I didn't have to use the language myself.
(30Mar2001)
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FAVOURITE ACTORS ('Their movie' - number of movies, level of performance)
1. CHARLTON HESTON (Secret of the Incas, Naked Jungle, Ben Hur, El Cid, Agony & the Ecstasy, Omega Man, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green)
2. ANTHONY QUINN (Savage Innocents, Ulysses, Lawrence of Arabia, Barabbas, Zorba the Greek, Shoes of the Fisherman, The Magus)
3. CLINT EASTWARD (Coogans Bluff, Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, Gauntlet)
4. SEAN CONNERY** (6 Bond movies but only one role!!)
5. JACK HAWKINS (Cruel Sea, Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia)
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
James Mason, Max Von Sydow, Gregory Peck, Irene Pappas, Silvana Mangano
ASH WEDNESDAY REFLECTIONS
16.2.83 fires devastated parts of the country including the coastal town of a deadly enemy news of which I happened to overhear in a TV news report absent which I might never have been the wiser
In this place the 'bushfire' was described as a 'firestorm' similar to a nuclear explosion - beach sand was turned to glass!
On 23.2.83 I returned to Canberra after an ill-conceived sojourn in Melbourne where I had been laid waste by people and circumstance - the Jews in exile and then redemption
the fire devastation seemed just retribution
I reflected on these events often, imagining that my exodus from torment had coincided with the very day of the enemy's destruction
so the years passed as I pondered this date - how to calculate it?
were the demons of my exile constrained at the borders of my former estate - were they now free to turn their fierce hatred and wrath - no longer against me but now against my nemesis!
the years passed - the answer always out of reach
I knew it was only a matter of days - but a vast gulf of symbolic meaning
I searched my memories and then my meticulously preserved records
If only I had a credit card back then - to trace my every movement
My supposed year of redemption the seven times six years of Leviticus since 76/77 had already come and gone - but did I have the start date right?
THE YEAR 2021
I had often googled the event coming up with largely the same information - then I got a brilliant idea - go straight to Youtube for documentary footage - and a possible new 'angle' - and I got it!
Ash Wednesday! - ash, bushfires, lots of smoke and ash - get it, get it! - nudge, nudge, wink wink! Yeah, I think the population at large including myself got that a long time ago, but this was different. The narrator said something that hit me like a ton a bricks!
"Ash Wednesday was in the Bible." I guffawed that - 'no it wasn't'! But wait, this was something that had never occured to me - as in, just WHAT IS this Ash Wednesday?
The penny had dropped! Turns out to be a day of deep REPENTANCE and ATONEMENT! Whilst I rejected Christian Holy days - usually recycled pagan days. But this was the closest thing to a Christian DAY OF ATONEMENT. It was the first day of Lent, forty something days before Easter (I didn't accept Easter either! - really Passover, but not a bad effort nevertheless)
It seems my flight from Melbourne was more portentious than I thought - Oh and by the way, what's the date today? - 16TH OF FEBRUARY!!
I think a supreme intelligence is trying to tell me something!
But what about the date of my exodus from Egypt (or was that Assyria?).
As much of a mystery as ever.
But wait! - an idea! I dug out the records once again - seized with a brilliant strategy
I had always kept bank records - and there it was - my old bank book - in the quaint days before tele-banking!
Alas an entry shows a withdrawal of the last of my funds and the closing of the account on 23RD FEBRUARY 1983. All hopes of an extraordinary coincident set of events, all of it ordained by an overarching divine intelligence - seemingly dashed!
But wait.
Curious entry.
Withdrawal from a branch in - where?? - SURFER'S PARADISE??!
ON THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY 1983!!
So I was not present in Melbourne that day after all.
Now I recalled - I had gone up to Queensland for a few days of days of recuperation before my return to Canberra.
Oh and by the way, what's the date today?
Nah, couldn't be! - or ... just could it?
Yep! Sure enough 23RD OF FEBRUARY!
Now I KNOW a supreme intelligence is trying to tell me something!
The demons 'had had their day and had had their way' in my absence after all, wreaking havoc on those who had authored my own downfall - havoc that had been my lot was now theirs.
ARMSTRONGS RESTORATION OF THE TRUTH - A MIRACLE!
Ten Truths taught by the Armstrongs which corrected foundational errors in Christian theology.
Things Christian theology didn't know about, didn't care about or didn't understand:
1. Israel's modern identity
2. the Kingdom of God ON EARTH
3. Daniel's image of the four kingdoms
4. Sabbath & holy days
5. God's law (Torah)
Teachings of traditional mainstream Christianity which were plainly wrong and/or totally unscriptural:
6. Trinity
7. Nature of God & man (ie. the spirit of God in man)
8. Immortality of the soul
9. Heaven, hell and the hereafter
10. Faith & works
Many of these things overlap but deserve to be categorised separately
Athena Argyropoulos
Athena Constantinos
Athena Chionas
