November 18, 2017
Tags:
amadou sumaila, mali, refugee, trouble, sea, mediteranean, rescue, escape, danger
Amadou Sumaila was one of 118 people rescued from an inflatable boat drifting 20 miles off the Libyan coast on a clear, calm morning in August last year. The kind of day for which people smugglers hope and their passengers pray.
The young Malian and more than 363,000 other migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to reachEurope in 2016. Like many of them, Sumaila had never seen the sea, never imagined that so many people could be crammed into a small boat and never thought it would be so hard to breathe.
They were starting to think about death when dawn came, followed by a boat from the German NGO Jugend Rettet. The crew of the Iuventa had come to save lives, but one of its passengers, the Spanish-Iranian photographer César Dezfuli, had come determined to preserve faces.
Once the 118 were safely aboard, Dezfuli asked if he could take their pictures.
June 29, 2017
Tags:
Kathleen Citrolo Gwinnett, sicily, watercolor, artist, paintings, love, colors, air, sun, churches, people, sea, gardens, wonderful, happy
Kathleen Citrolo Gwinnett is a prolific and wonderful watercolor artist of Sicilian descent living and painting in North Carolina. She recently returned from ten days in the center of Sicily, near Caltanisetta, where she painted the vistas she had from her house. I met Kathleen on one of my book tours but we have been exchanging e mails for years.
If you want to get happy despite so much heart-wrenching news please click on the caption and go to her Facebook gallery. Her paintings are full of the joy and color and light of springtime Sicily. They make you want to sing.
December 2, 2016
Tags:
mondello, palermo, december, beach, sand, sea
A beautiful day at the beach in Mondello in December.
May 24, 2016
Tags:
Aquarius, rescue ship, Germany, France, immigrants, shipwrecked, rescue, sea, Italy, sicily
In the past 24 hours more than 2,700 African immigrants have been plucked from the sea between Libya and Europe. The private non profit rescue ship Aquarius first picked up 132 shipwreck victims from a Zodiac rubber raft. Among them, 92 men, 38 women, of whom 7 were pregnant, 14 babies under five years of age and 19 minors unaccompanied by their
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October 28, 2015
Tags:
favignana, egadi, isole, island, tonnara, fishermen, beach, fun, blue, sea, sky, tuna, archeology, Clemente Ventrone, Cristina Torre, Theresa Maggio, tonnaroti, tradition, net, beauty, nature, sun, sea, Mediterranean, fun, world unto itself
Circa early- to mid-1990s. Here's the video link in case the embed code does not work:
http://vp.telvue.com/preview?id=T01304&video=61535
July 18, 2015
Tags:
syrian, baby, girl, dead, insulin, refugees, syria, sicily, Egyptian, traffickers, greed, murder, mediterranean, sea, graveyard
A ten-year-old diabetic girl escaping war in Syria boarded a wooden vessel with her father, who has a degree in economics, and her sisters, headed for the Italian coast. They were 320 people squashed together like sardines. The traffickers made more room by throwing the little girl's day pack into the sea. It contained vials of insulin
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May 17, 2015
Tags:
NPR, rescue, mediterranean, sea, immigrants, Malta, sicily, europe, MOAS, Phoenix, ship, couple, wealthy, help, humanitarian
May 4, 2015
Tags:
sicilia, sicily, recue, refugees, sea, birth, newborn, francesca marina, emergency, forever, immigration, wave, non stop
Nearly 4,000 boat people from Africa were saved over the weekend. The ships of the Italian navy were employed in the continuous, non-stop rescue operations in the Mediterranean, aiding boats and rafts in trouble in the waters of the Strait of Sicily, between Lampedusa and Libya, bringing the survivors to the ports of Augusta, Reggio
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April 14, 2015
Tags:
migration, illegal, clandestine, immigrants, Bossi-Fini law, pushback, deaths, mercy, change law, european union, mediterranean, refugees, africa, war, despots, massacres, religious freedom, escape, hope, scared, fear, danger, graveyard, water, sea, swim, bad boats, trafficking, human trafficking
Once again, there are now 1400 refugees and immigrants for whatever reason in an intake camp with only 250 beds. The Lampedusa holding center had been closed last year because of scandalous overcrowding, poor conditions, bad management and degrading treatment of arrivals (making people strip naked publicly to be sprayed for scabies and such). Volunteers --
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March 23, 2015
Tags:
realmonte, sicilia, scala dei turchi, white, cliff, editerranean, sea, blue, gypsum, beauty, sicily, sicilia, tourism, water, sun, colors
February 25, 2015
Tags:
scala dei turchi, agrigento, sicilia, sicily, white, blue, sea, mediterranean, beauty, bellezza, mare
We are deep into winter in Vermont and I am thinking about these blue and white places. Sicily is such a beautiful island. Scala dei Turchi is near the big town of Agrigento but actually in the smaller town of Realmonte, where I stayed for a few days in 2010. The white stone is hard-packed gypsum. Realmonte citizens are the happiest Sicilians I have yet found.
February 22, 2015
Tags:
scopello, blue, water, mediterranean, sea, sicily, sicilia, tonnara, scogli
Nice to think of these places during a Vermont winter. There used to be a tonnara here. The water is deep and cold because the seafloor drops off steeply just a few yards from shore.
February 20, 2015
Tags:
cala rossa, favignana, sicily, sicilia, egadi, island, mediterranean sea, sea, mare, azzurro, blue, tufa, scogli
April 4, 2014
Tags:
dusk, imbrunire, palermo, cala, port, twinkling, lights, palms, blue, sea, mountains, clouds, storm