Famous Ankles

Ah, the fifth and final post on the Greek Parade. I keep think how I could have made this shorter, but I really didn’t want to eliminate parts of the parade just to make it fit into a smaller size.

The next part of the parade was the “Karpathian Youth Organization”. I presume it’s named after the Carpathian Mountains, but I think they end before they reach Greece. Well, maybe they reach parts of Greece that don’t show up on maps.

The Kassian Benevolent Society had a small contingent of marchers.  (All I could find in Wikipedia is a woman named Kassia who, bear with me, was a 9th Century poet/hymnist and beauty and nun in Turkey, but her forebears appear to be…Irish.)

Ah, the Dodecanese arises again! This is the American-Lerian Association. That seems to be associated with the island of Leros, which is one of the Dodecanese that I talked about in the previous post.

And if there’s one Dodecanese, there’s bound to be others. The Nisyrian Society of New York marched. I think they are from Nisyros, another island in the Dodecanese.

And we’re out of the Dodecanese and onto the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George. Well, there are 162 or so islands in the Dodecanese…maybe there’s a St. George island.

And, back to the islands! The marchers below were proud of their home: Crete. It isn’t one of the Dodecanese, but is the largest island in Greece.

More Cretans from Crete. And despite coming from so far in the south of Greece, they are concerned with the north: they have a sign regarding Macedonia always being Greek.

Drexel University marched apart from the other universities showcased in the previous post, but this display was much bigger than any of the other universities.

Too-long-since-kids-in-native-costume-picture. Must-show-picture…

A nice float from the Cathedral of St. Paul in Hempstead, New York.

The below is a group called “Joy of St. Paul” from the Hempstead Greek Orthodox Church. I saw a few groups with the word “Joy”, so I presume it is an acronym. Probably the last two letters stand for “Orthodox Youth”, but I don’t know about the “J”. Of course, I may be reading too much into it (but I did eventually find that GOYA stood for “Greek Orthodox Youth Association” and I presume that something of the same holds for JOY.

The Greek Orthodox Church of the Ascension had a nice float and to the right back of it says “GOYA, JOY, & HOPE”. I presume all three are acronyms.

I loved this float for its politics…which I don’t have a clue to. This is the “Soccer Champions of Greece”. I didn’t see people who looked like professional soccer players, so I presume it was a youth group. They had the standard “Macedonia is Greece and only Greece” slogan. I’m aware that they have claims on it, although there is a separate country up there that calls itself Macedonia. But the sign I truly love says “Alexander the Great was Greek and Olympiakos! Never never never Scopianos.”

Well, his dad was Phillip II of Macedon. I don’t know what is meant by “Olympiakos”. And I’m a bit taken back by him never being Scopianos. I hadn’t heard about that one way or the other. I’m not part of the argument, so it is all the same to me, but there is a lot of bad blood about the part of (no longer existing) Yugoslavia that took on the name Macedonia.

Saint Paraskevi Church and Shrine of Greenlawn, New York had a nice little float.

And I thought the next group was pretty cool. They called themselves the St. Irene Chrysovalantou Orthodox Monastery in Astoria. Orthodox priests are allowed to marry, but I presume that Orthodox monks don’t have that right. But then, I really don’t know.

This was an interesting float. It was based on “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. With young ladies dressed as Grecian Urns. They had a small exerpt from the poem on the side of the float. The group sponsoring it was St. John Theologian Cathedral of Tenafly, New Jersey.

And every Greek Macedonian society group around seemed to be part of the next float, appropriately named the Pan Macedonian Society.

The next group was the Benevolent Society Ladies of Kastoria. I only got the last of the benevolent ladies in this picture. They were followed by the Society of Kastorians “Omonoia”. Well, Kastoria is a part of northern Greece, near Macedonia, but I’m at a loss on Omonoia.

The Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church of Roslyn Height, Long Island, had a nice little float.

Fighting for the human rights of northern Epiros. Epiros is an area in Greece and Albania.

I left before the parade was fully over, but I was tired and, as you can tell, the weather was a little cool. All in all, a pretty good parade and I enjoyed it.

-H

This entry was posted on April 14, 2008 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Events, Manhattan, Parades. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.