Theresa Maggio

Sicilian police have jailed 15 Moslems accused of throwing more than ten Christians overboard into the open sea. They were a hundred moslems and Christians traveling together on a trafficker's rubber raft seeking to reach Sicily ( and Europe) when a fight over religion broke out.

A thousand refugees are expected to land in Sicily today.  Read More 

1,169 immigrants expected in Palermo alone by tomorrow morning. After the winter hiatus, immigrants are making the dangerous trip in unseaworthy boats and rafts again. More than ten rescue operations in the Canale di Sicilia today alone.

Five overloaded, unseaworthy ex-fishing boats loaded with would-be immigrants were saved from danger near the Libyan shores . The Italian Navy had received a distress call via satellite phone warning that three boats were in need of rescue. The ships sent found five boats full of people and rescued all of them, taking them to Lampedusa and Porto Empedocle in Sicily. Read More 

This votive altar was in the Albergheria quarter. A the end of this street are five steps down and you are right in front of the gated entrance to the cathedral. I loved the lights strung on in vertical stripes.

It is a tradition all over southern Italy to promise a thing of value to a saint in exchange for a "grazia ricevuta", a favor received, often a cure. Those who could afford it often bought silver miniature bas relief replicas of the body part which received the grace. They pin them to the  Read More 

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From La Repubblica/Palermo edition of 22 March 2015.
A restaurant owner has given up and decided to move out of the Vucciria market area and night life hub of Palermo after a bonfire on the Eve of Saint Joseph's Feast (March 19) practically destroyed his business and put his customers and staff in danger.  Read More 

From New York-based Karen La Rosa of LaRosaWorks.com:
"Draw each day with instruction, guidance, and handouts to deepen your understanding of drawing skills, your understanding of Sicily, and your own creative process, all done with an eye towards fun, exploration and discovery."

In 2006 I invited my sisters and a couple of close friends to join me in my Bue Marino rental house in a tufa mine on Favignana for the 20th anniversary  Read More 

Via Pannetiere 3. My neighbor, but no one was home. A friend of mine let me sleep in her guest cave for a couple of nights, a couple of times. By the second time, she had inherited a different one which her youngest son used as a kid's club house. Comes with a view of the  Read More 

This is an outdoor sirocco room where eighteenth -century grandees would go to cool off in the summer when the hot, humid wind blew up from the Sahara. The source of the cooling, flowing water is a qanat. It is located withing the Palermo city limits, in a southern, somewhat rural, quarter called Altarello  Read More