Theresa Maggio

Italian Navy ships rescued 731 immigrants this morning, Tuesday 23 Feb. 2016, according to La Repubblica. The ship Cigala Fulgosi picked up a total of 407 migrants including 4 dead bodies. The ship Bettica helped two imbarcations in trouble taking aboard 219 migrants. The ship Scirocco coordinated the rescue operations and picked up 105 migrants.
No sign of this story in the New York Times.  Read More 

For more info about the prizewinning film, the first time a full-length feature documentary has won top honors in Berlin, please cut and paste into your address line:
http://www.dw.com/en/berlinale-golden-bear-for-italian-refugee-documentary-fuocoammare/a-19063227

While documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi was celebrating his win in Berlin for his documentary Fuocoammare ( Fire at Sea) about the people of Lampedusa accepting and caring for African immigrants, nearly a thousand more immigrants were arriving on the island's shores.
It was a weekend of life saving at sea off the coast of Libya, according to La Repubblica  Read More 

Anthropology professor Carlo Di Franco leads me through the Ballaro` street market, his favorite place -- on our way to the church of Il Carmine in the Albergheria quarter of Palermo. Professor Di Franco, who teaches a class in symbols in architecture  Read More 

A 30-foot wooden craft containing thirty live immigrants presumably of North African origin arrived on the coast of Torre Salsa in the town of Siculiana in the province of Agrigento at nine this morning. The immigrants said when they left the coast of Libya, there were 40 people aboard, the rest drowned at sea. The  Read More 

From Linea Verde Orizzonti (Green Line Horizons) , a presentation of RAI -tv, a fifty-minute show in Italian highlighting the mixture of cultures that made and makes Palermo what it is. Here is the link in case the embed code did not work:
http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-2131e4ab-219a-465a-b12d-45c3404dc6a5.html#p=0 Read More 

From the Corriere del Mezzogiorno:
110 migrants mostly from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Ghana arrived in good shape at five this morning on the shores of Lampedusa, the Sicilian island closest to Africa. Among them were 10 women and 4 children.

From me: In the clamor over the plight of white Syrian immigrants who cross the Mediterranean from Turkey  Read More 

Well, the British blogger The Sicilian Housewife just a got a job as the CEO of a charitable organization and moved back to England with her Sicilian husband and their young son. But I wanted to show you this great post of hers. She is a wonderful writer and really hits the nail on the head, doing a good job of translating the culture into English. She is so sane!
Please click on the caption and you will be taken to her refreshing blog, The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife. Read More 

Silver heart by Palermo silversmith Antonino Amato.

I have watched this little heartfelt video several times and like it more each time.
 Read More 

This looks like fun. Palermo in the early 1900s, says the caption. Posted by Anna Maria Virzi.