Theresa Maggio

Front-page headlines on 1 January 2015. Snow on the beach at Cefalu`. Snow on the palm trees. Dirty city snowmen. Only two snowplows in all of the Madonie mountains. Photos sent in to La Repubblica by its readers at this link:
http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2015/01/01/news/maltempo_ancora_disagi_in_provincia_le_foto_dei_lettori_raccontano_la_neve_in_sicilia-104146809/#gallery-slider=104142503 Read More 

For the autumn of 2012 I lived at the Palazzo Vannucci on the Cassaro, I had a third-floor bedroom that stretched from the facade of the palace to the back of the palace, plus the studio underneath that,  Read More 

An incredibly beautiful view of old Palermo from the sea at the bottom of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the city's first street, whose oldest part, near the top a, near Porta Nuova, was built by the Phoenicians 2700 years ago. There is a homeless encampment just out of sight of this photo, to the bottom right,where Mohammed lives with his friends in campers and cars and tents along the shore.  Read More 

Much of Palermo's historic center, the largest in Europe, is walled up like this window in what used to be a lovely art deco building above the heads of the market merchants. Some such buildings house newly-arrived clandestine immigrants.

Near the end of the Capo street market in the quarter behind the Palermo cathedral is a narrow lane called Street of the Flying Chairs where once these elegant travel booths were made. The cabs were carried on long poles on men's shoulders and seemed to fly above the crowds. Men and women of  Read More 

The tomatoes look just as good as the persimmons.

I ate my first persimmon in Palermo. You cut off the top and eat he flesh with a small spoon. So sweet, one does not talk while eating them. Friends will bring over a basket of them for dessert. They look like frosted tomatoes.

In the hundreds of episodes that make up one drama from the repertoire of the Siciilan puppet theater, there is one many-headed monster which appears only once onstage. This lifelike sculpture is a spoof on that monster, representing instead the now-deceased head of the Cuticchio family and his children, puppeteers all, growing from his head.

I found this nut and seed store while wandering the back streets of La Kalsa, the central Palermo neighborhood directly across the street from my palace rooms in Via Vittorio Emmanuele. I just liked the way it looked.

I was walking home from an event at the Santa Chiara urban mission in the ancient, low-income Albergheria neighborhood of Palermo when these boys who were kicking a soccer ball around in the street said, "Take my picture! We'll be on YouTube!"

So many stories in this little alley in a street parallel to Via Roma near the post office, and not all of them were in books. I got sucked into this vicolo by the books and I stayed for the bookseller, Pietro Tramonte. More on him tomorrow.