Month: April 2026

It’s all Greek to me. A visit to the Greek Orthodox festival at St. Mark in Boca Raton.

/ antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the great British Romantic poet (his wife Mary, also fairly famous) said it much better than I ever could:

“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”

― Percy Bysshe Shelley

You see,  pretty much all of our society is structured around a tiny country on the Mediterranean from 3000 years ago. Yes, our democracy, our schools, our art, and our humanism all derive from Greece.

I fell in love with Greece during my first visit in 1984, so it should not be a surprise that I am a fan of everything Greek, including the Greek Orthodox Church. When you are in the islands or remote areas of Greece on a Sunday, you go to the Greek Orthodox church.

On the occasion of the Greek festival at St. Mark Greek Orthodox Church in Boca Raton, we recently had the opportunity to take a group of students on a visit. We attended vespers, enjoyed a great Greek dinner, and then had a tour of the Church. I really felt at home. Fr. Mark was incredibly approachable, didactic, funny, and really made us feel at home. He answered even the stickiest theological questions with grace and wisdom.

The church is amazing, and their festival and food were equally great, but seeing the students learn about the Church before the Great Schism in 1054 CE, in person rather than from a book, was priceless!

Book the dates for next year’s Greek Festival at St. Mark in Boca. You are welcome!

Shelley

Eric Giroux’s foray into the short story (and the essay), Clare’s Boutique.

/ antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment
Clare’s Boutique by Eric Giroux

This is so commonplace, so threadbare that I am embarrassed, but Eric Giroux’s Clare’s Boutique proves that good things come in small packages. Yes, I’m unoriginal, sorry.

Clare’s Boutique is also Giroux’s third book, so I could also say that good things come in threes, but I won’t. Clare’s Boutique consists of three short stories and an essay, according to him, although it reads more like a brief memoir. The stories, like his previous novels, are set in North Massachusetts, the gritty, post-industrial town of Lowell. Like his previous novels, Giroux continues to explore coming-of-age stories, only this time in a more challenging short-story form.

I have written before about the challenge of the short story (here), the craftsmanship needed to develop characters and narrative in a condensed space. Bravo to Giroux for pulling it off, not an easy task, but he does it with apparent ease and panache!

The addition of an essay gives a “behind the scenes” aspect to the stories, like you have a backstage pass at a concert. The vulnerability and courage to allow us to glimpse “the making of” give the stories further depth and texture.

Full disclosure: Giroux and I taught together many years ago in an artsy, suburban New England prep school. The conversations I remember most with him involved his cinema class and the topics he covered. I remember recommending Un Chien Andalou for his unit on Surrealism!

If you want to read my other reviews of Eric’s work, click here and here.

Photo credit: Sister Mary

The human aspect of coaching

/ antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

Coaching soccer is one of my favorite things to do after school. You go out and work with the students outside the classroom. I love it so much, I have been coaching for about 20 years on and off. Although I have also coached tennis and even a season of fencing! Soccer, with its team dynamics, is the most difficult but also the most rewarding to coach.

The technical aspects are fairly easy; players have a “natural position” that they subconsciously tend to. Seeing players find this position is very fulfilling. Game plans and strategies are all easy enough. As usual, the human aspect is the most difficult, dealing with upset players who are not on the starting lineup, players who you pull off the field in a substitution, etc.

On game day, the players wear their jerseys to build up their confidence and feel proud of being on the team. Then we have lunch together to talk soccer, joke, and enjoy a meal together. I also make sure they are on the field to warm up at least 45 minutes before the game, so we are not rushing through the pre-game rituals, warm-ups, photos, chats, etc.

At the beginning of the season, we spend a lot of time building the team, making sure everybody knows everybody, making sure they are bonding through games, scrimmaging, and activities. I am convinced that the time spent doing these bonding activities pays off handsomely later in the season.

The most challenging bit is motivating a team after a loss. I find that talking individually to each of the players, encouraging them, supporting them, and talking through the game is an effective way of being there for them, of letting them vent and process the loss. Yes, it is time-consuming, but the players really appreciate your involvement and commitment. Remember, it is up to us to model behavior, to be fair and honest, to be frank, to explain things honestly but diplomatically. This was the case recently when we lost 0-1 to our archrival in Miami.