The Quattro Canti, officially Piazza Vigliena, the four-way intersection at the center of the historic city, in an 1865 photo by Robert Rive. Clean, no traffic, no trash on the ground. No products came prepackaged so there was no packaging to discard. The piazza was named for the Spanish Viceroy Villena who commissioned the showpiece. Read More
Sicily
LaRosa Works offers tours to Sicily, more
February 27, 2015
Karen LaRosa is Sicily's biggest booster, and she takes some excellent photos of the island. Share her enthusiasm at her site: http://larosaworks.com/
Demeter art deco mosaic in the Capo Market years ago
February 26, 2015
Here is a shot of the art deco mosaic of Demeter, the goddess of grain, outside a bread bakery in the Capo market of Palermo. The mosaic is still there. The bakery recently closed. People are forming Facebook groups to save the mosaic, have it put in a museum.
Vermont
February 25, 2015
We've had more than seven feet of snow this winter, and no rain to ruin it.
White world.
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Scala dei Turchi
February 25, 2015
We are deep into winter in Vermont and I am thinking about these blue and white places. Sicily is such a beautiful island. Scala dei Turchi is near the big town of Agrigento but actually in the smaller town of Realmonte, where I stayed for a few days in 2010. The white stone is hard-packed gypsum. Realmonte citizens are the happiest Sicilians I have yet found. Read More
Palazzo Valguanera Gangi
February 24, 2015
Just look at it. The aristocrats who danced here probably had their shirts laundered in the Danissini stream (see post below.)
Washerwomen of Danissini, Palermo, early 1900s
February 24, 2015
In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the women of Danissini, in downtown Palermo, were renowned launderers for the rich and aristocratic. They took in the counts' and dukes' soiled, frilly white shirts, washed them in the stream you see here and ironed them. Danissini is one of the poorest parts of Palermo. Read More
Scopello, yesterday
February 22, 2015
Nice to think of these places during a Vermont winter. There used to be a tonnara here. The water is deep and cold because the seafloor drops off steeply just a few yards from shore.
"It is a delirium," says mayor of Lampedusa
February 17, 2015
Two hundred arrivals at Pozzallo yesterday. Another 642 expected to land at Porto Empedocle today. The immigration center at the island of Lampedusa, which had been closed down because of the worst conditions, de-staffed and opened only for emergencies is now back in use, run by a non-profit. They have 250 beds but 1,215 people to house Read More
The Immigrants who Risk Their Lives to Get to Sicily
February 16, 2015
They risk everything to arrive with nothing as clandestine refugees who cross the Mediterranean, now become a graveyard for thousands like them.