Theresa Maggio

If you die young in Ballaro` someone will immortalize you with a giant mural of your face and maybe a garden, tended like an altar, that no one will defile. Pasquale Ferrara and Giuseppe Giufridda were two youths of Ballaro` and this mural of them was near the Mercato del Usato, the used items market, otherwise  Read More 

Call it street art, call it grafitti. I like it. The three eyes are a recurring theme of this anonymous artist.

Archeogeologist Francesca Mercadante, of Partanna Mondello, photographs an opium poppy growing in someone's driveway garden in Sferracavallo, a fishing village quartiere on the north side of Palermo. Dr. Mercadante said that a vase found at a Greek temple in Sicily had vegetation depicted on it. One decorative illustration, for many years, had been misinterpreted  Read More 

I am back in Vermont but I still have plenty to show and tell from my most recent three-month sojourn in Palermo. Read More 

And I spent the morning in Mondello and Sferracavallo, by the sea. In Sferracavallo to see a complete, intact, protohistoric Bronze Age megalithic village, and in Mondello on the slopes of Monte Gallo to visit a panoramic, historic garden planted in the early 1900's, with archeological treasures from 10,000 years ago. Read More 

I went out on the Danza delle Ombre meals- on-wheels run for the homeless with Chiara and Irene Campagna this evening, for the last time.
You see the strangest things. Drunken Europunks sleeping on the cold hard sidewalk where they urinate, surrounded by a pack of large mongrel dogs, one of which just had seven puppies. Across the street was this forlorn, lonely roosting hen on a leash, tied to a garbage can, waiting for her homeless master to get back from whatever it was he was doing. Different kind of pet.
When we ran out of food to deliver, the sisters, who volunteer to deliver food every week, asked me what food I liked. Pizza, crostini, cannolicchi. Then they talked about their favorite arancine, which are fried rice balls containing, traditionally, either butter  Read More 

Loved this house. Found it in 2012 and went back this week to see it again. Behind the cathedral. Would love to meet the artist. Read More 

Fra Biagio Conte, a layman, a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, houses and feeds more than a thousand people in his four urban shelters and communities in Palermo. His guests are Sicilians, Italians, Europeans, Asians, and Africans, men, women and children. Recently his prayers have been answered. He always wanted to  Read More 

These two girls were waiting for the Dead Christ and Sorrowful Madonna to come out of the church on Good Friday. I thought they were extremely cute. They were not posing for me, but showing solidarity in the face of another, older girl, who was jealous of something they had, and who claimed, loudly and repeatedly, to have TEN of same. Read More 

Dr. Marina Scardavi founded a non-profit called Shadow Dance to aid the homeless in body and soul. She got to know Palermo's homeless people through her homeless friend, Mohammed, an Iranian immigrant who earned a degree in architecture at the University of Palermo, but who prefers to be a vagabond who cares for other street people.  Read More 

The Sicilians have a disconcerting custom of clapping for people in coffins. People they like.  Read More