Theresa Maggio

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.  Read More 

Just look at it. The aristocrats who danced here probably had their shirts laundered in the Danissini stream (see post below.)

In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the women of Danissini, in downtown Palermo, were renowned launderers for the rich and aristocratic. They took in the counts' and dukes' soiled, frilly white shirts, washed them in the stream you see here and ironed them. Danissini is one of the poorest parts of Palermo.  Read More 

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.

Cala Rossa. Favignana

Two hundred arrivals at Pozzallo yesterday. Another 642 expected to land at Porto Empedocle today. The immigration center at the island of Lampedusa, which had been closed down because of the worst conditions, de-staffed and opened only for emergencies is now back in use, run by a non-profit. They have 250 beds but 1,215 people to house  Read More 

They risk everything to arrive with nothing as clandestine refugees who cross the Mediterranean, now become a graveyard for thousands like them.

More than 300 dead. The 29 bodies were just those that were recovered. There four gommoni, large rubber rafts, in the worst seas the Italian coast guard had ever seen. The survivors said they were forced to leave Libya at gunpoint. The 29 bodies were PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN RESCUED off the coast of Libya but died  Read More 

Twenty-nine people died of exposure to the cold on a rescue from the sea. They died while being rushed to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island closest to Africa. They were rescued from some of the worst conditions at sea, waves twenty feet high.

Update: here is the story in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/ Read More 

Voyages of desperation. The Mediterranean is a graveyard for people trying to escape, war, famine, cruel dictators and genocide at the hands of Boko Haram.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/luciano52/15097563993/


Photo slide show of Serpotta's white plaster sculptures at Palermo. Incredible.
Photos by Luciano Romeo. Excellent!!!! Open the slide show and use the zoom tool to see the incredible details.