The Drama Of My Life: Blogs, Cell Phones, and the End of Privacy

By Father Geoffrey Korz

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." - Matthew 6:24

As much as our southern cousins like to take credit for him, the inventor of the telephone was Canadian. Although born and raised in Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell's best years were spent on his family homestead outside Brantford, Ontario, where his early experimentation with sound and language flowered into detailed studies of the Mohawk language on the nearby Six Nations Reserve. It was also here that Bell invented the telephone, the device that would transform modern communications, and which would later branch out into the Internet technologies we know today.

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Marilyn Monroe and Dostoevsky

I wrote this on August 5th to commemorate the death of Marilyn Monroe, but had issues publishing anything to this site that needed to be resolved. So here it is, albeit late.

On my last night in Los Angeles in March of 2018, I decided to take a self-guided tour to about a dozen locations associated with the dark side of Hollywood, basically where famous murders or deaths took place. One of the locations I visited was where Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962 at the age of 35. It was her house at the time, in Brentwood.

I visited the location because I always had a great admiration for Marilyn Monroe, and have read a lot about her, and seen pretty much all her films. One thing most people don't know about her is how she was admired as somewhat of an intellectual and voracious reader by her peers, despite the media pushing her image as a dumb blonde and sex goddess, to her dismay, and to which she responded: "Maybe I’m a sexless sex goddess."

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Byzanfest 2019: An Orthodox Christian Online Short Film Festival

Established in 2014, Byzanfest is the world’s first and only online festival that screens short-films made by Eastern Orthodox Christian filmmakers. The Festival will go live from Sunday 21st July until 4th August 2019, running concurrently with live venue screenings which are hosted by Global Screening Partners.

As the world’s media and entertainment have become increasingly on-demand and interwoven with social media, Byzanfest saw the opportunity to venture into an emerging concept: the online festival. New and innovative, such an event is not limited by the physical constraints of traditional venue-based festivals. Byzanfest looked ahead towards the future of entertainment and wanted to engage globally with both Orthodox and non-Orthodox audiences. The Festival encourages interactivity where viewers can share through all social media platforms. The Festival showcases films which reflect Orthodox Christian themes, beliefs, culture and values, as well as being artistically creative. It is worth mentioning all funds raised from this Festival will go towards funding small individual Orthodox film and art projects.

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Giannis Antetokounmpo and His Orthodox Christian Faith

Much has been written about Giannis Antetokounmpo, the so-called "Greek Freak," from his humble beginnings in Greece to his enormous success as a professional basketball player in the United States. Little if anything however has been reported about the Orthodox Christian faith of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Though I cannot speak for his faith now, as it seems to not be reported on, though there are positive rumors (ex. he and his brother became godfathers in June 2018), below is some information from his background.

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Greek Pop Singer and Eurovision Contestant Baptized Orthodox

Josephine Wendel, better known as simply Josephine, is a Greek pop singer. She is mostly known for her participation in the Greek national final for the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 with the song "Dancing Night" where she got the 4th place.

Wendel was born on 22 August 1990 in Athens. Her mother is the Greek singer Margarita Venti, who is of Lebanese origin, and her father is German. She spent the first years of her life in the United States. Later, she moved for a while to Germany and then returned to Greece with her family. When she settled in Greece, she went to American-Greek School. While studying Marketing-Management at Deree College, she would upload on Facebook cover songs of famous artists, which helped her be discovered in 2013.

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