Experience Sicily

Tag: Santa Flavia

  • Home Altars in Sant’Elia

    Live from Sicily! This morning on my walk near where I’m staying, I took note of the home altars dedicated to the veneration of Our Lady of the Sorrows (La Vergine di S.S. Addolorata). Home altars such as these, built into the facades of homes and dedicated to various saints, are common all over Sicily.

  • Capo Zafferano From Sant’Elia

    Evelina and Filippo at Sant’Elia with Capo Zafferano in the background

  • How To Catch Olives

    Yes, those are nets. He’s preparing them for the olive harvest. The farmers lay these nets on the ground below the olive trees and, if done in the traditional way with their hands and might, they shake the trees and with their fingers prompt the olives to fall to the ground, catching them in the…

  • The Squad (As My Father Likes To Say)

    In 1950, my father Peter (Pietro), uncle Stefano, and grandmother Lorenzina traveled to Sicily from Brooklyn for a 3-month visit. The five cousins standing on this hill overlooking Porticello and Bagheria–Pietro, Stefano, Franco, Pietro, and Mimmo–bonded that summer. I’m fortunate to have met them all. What a gang! Have you met your relatives in the…

  • Get Your Motor Runnin’ At The New York Times Travel Show This Weekend

    Experience Sicily will be in New York City at the Javits Center this Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 26 and 27 for the New York Times Travel Show. Come visit Booth 462 to talk Sicily with us! Full details and be our guest with free passes at https://experiencesicily.com/ny-times-travel-show/ (Limited number left!). Dance the tarantella with me…

  • Sicily Is Dusted With Snow

    Snow continues to cover the mountains, like San Calogero, pictured, over Termini Imerese. It’s put a damper on our plans today, to go southeast. Such weather is an anomaly in this semi-tropical climate, and the municipalities are not equipped to clean the roads of the ice and accumulation. We are all wrapped up, drinking hot…

  • The Sea At Zafferano

    “The sea at Zafferano flashes cross my mind… I come from a braver kind… I feel so alive, I feel so sure, with the sun on my path and the wind at my back…” Capo Zafferano, pictured, and my grandparents’ immigration from this area, inspired my song and performance, “Jump,” released ten years ago this…

  • Porticello’s Madonna del Lume Feast

    Currently, the village of Porticello, where my grandfather was born and raised, is celebrating the feast of its patroness, the Madonna del Lume (The Madonna of the Light). I’ve experienced the feast a couple of times, 2015, pictured here. Traditionally, on the Monday of the feast, the sacred painting of the Madonna is taken down…

  • Take Me To The Beach In Sicily

    Because I’m too tired to do anything but look at the sea. Wish I were here…