Theresa Maggio

Papier mache miniature rocking horses were given to children on I Morti, the Day of the Dead. Artisans Nunzio Venuta and his wife, Marina Mancuso, still make these beautiful, traditional toys at their store cum workshop, Il Laboratorio in Via 4 Aprile just off Piazza Marina. Il Laboratorio first opened in 1991.

Cristina Buccellatto, a jewelry maker, runs Europe's smallest store, a hole in the wall next to the Hotel Centrale just a few steps from the Quattro Canti, the intersection at the center of Old Palermo. The store is just over one meter wide and three meters deep. The name of the store is " U Pirtusu", Sicilian  Read More 

Funeral and burial today for Favour Nike Adekune, a 20-year-old victim of human trafficking from Nigeria. She was tricked into moving to Italy then forced into prostitution. Two years ago, a client picked her up, drove to the outskirts of town, and she was never seen alive again. The next day, her fiance was  Read More 

I need my Sicilian grandparents' birth records to start my quest for dual Italian-USA citizenship. I requested these documents of the Santa Margherita di Belice records office. My grandfather's birth record, I was told, if it still exists, is inaccessible in the archives, and my grandmother was apparently never born.
Here is the e-mail reply from an employee at the town records office, copied and pasted just as I received it:

Egregia sig.ra

dalle ricerche effettuate presso questo Ufficio di stato civile si comunica che:
- qualora esistesse (Terremoto e traslochi vari) il registro di nascita del 1879 si potrebbe trovare  Read More 

It was a beautiful day with cumulus clouds in a cerulean sky, the bees buzzed around the spring flowers, the cattle lowed and far off we could hear the tinkling of brass bells on sheep, but Favour could hear none of it. She was killed two years ago by a client who covered her  Read More 

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Found this shepherd upside down taking the sun today. I bought ten artichokes for two euro, about $3.80 at today's exchange rate.

I just spent four days in S. Margherita di Belice, my paternal grandparents' home town, with relatives. I was on a mission to get three documents from the town records office to aid me in my quest for Italian citizenship.

No, I was not able to get the documents, yet. The woman who was  Read More 

A beautiful sight. The landscape around S. Margherita is breathtaking.
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I need to take the AST bus to San Giueppe Jato today. The AST website, when it is working, gives the bus schedule but not the ticket price, nor the location of the ticket office, nor the location of the bus terminal, which could be in a side street somewhere. Naturally they do not answer  Read More