Theresa Maggio

Palermo from AlbertoLupo on Vimeo.

An unknown person, presumably of Palermo, single-handedly created this detailed map of Palermo's 3,000+ monuments.

The mountain town of Troina in Enna Province is paralyzed by more than three feet of snow. More than 200 head of livestock have died. This is the city that Ruggero used as his base during his 36-year conquest of Sicily from the Arabs. The streets are so steep that they instituted a free bus  Read More 

A large wooden boat loaded with migrants shipwrecked about thirty miles north of the Libyan coast. Eight cadavers and four survivors were collected. They said there had been 107 on board. Frontex ( European Union border police ) have dispatched an airplane and a rescue helicopter to the disaster scene, and some merchant ships are headed there to offer help, according to ANSA. Read More 

Yesterday three immigrants died off the coast of Lampedusa and 550 were saved in various rescue operations. One of the survivors was found hiding from the cold under two cadavers on a trafficker's boat. Three survivors, including one pregnant woman, were in grave condition.

Last night I learned that Vincenzo Sercia had died. I wrote about him in Mattanza. He was the former Prima Voce, the soloist, of the ciurma, the team of 100, then 80, tuna fisherman working under their supreme commander, the rais. He was already retired when I knew him in the early 1990s. I would follow him with a tape recorder begging him to sing the words of the cialome, the traditional, mystical work songs of the Favignana tonnara, but he always slipped through my fingers. These were not songs to be sung on land. It was taboo.
But one spring day in 1993, when documentary filmmaker Luciano Bovina was gathering material for a film about the tonnara, I learned that Vincenzo Sercia and a portion of the current ciurma would sing the cialome near Punta Lunga, in a rocky seaside cove for Luciano's benefit. I was invited, too, and in the pink dusk I recorded Vincenzo Sercia singing the songs. The most haunting is Ai-a-mola. Read More 

Sicily got hit with up to three feet of snow in the mountain towns. Today in La Repubblica I found this video by a video artist in Gangi in the Madonie Mountains who sent his camera up on a drone to film the snow-covered red rooftops. What a wonderful job he did. It is so gorgeous I sent him a fan letter on Twitter. Video by Ivan Mocciaro of Gangi. Click on the caption to see the short video. PLEASE watch it full screen. Read More 

Sicily was hit with an unusual snowstorm that closed schools especially in the steep mountain towns. Because it rarely snows there, communities are not equipped with snowplows or snow tires and they just have to wait for it to melt. Some mayors told their towns to shelter in place, stay indoors and called in  Read More 

114 people from Senegal, Guinea, Uganda, Mali and the Ivory Coast were saved by the crew of the NGO ship Aquarius, staffed by doctors without borders, during the night between 1 and 2 January 2017. They were 108 males and six females. 22 of them were minors, and 16 of those were unaccompanied minors, including three children, one under four years old, according to La Repubblica. Read More 

2017: "Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst" -- Mel Brooks

It's a nice feeling to be on a safe boat, when the sea is that bad. Our guests are having some rest on their way to a safe port in Italy. pic.twitter.com/6zStbo4gOX

— MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) December 29, 2016

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