Celebrating Santa Rosalia and Human Rights

Preparations started well before I arrived in Palermo on the first of July - nightly fireworks, wiring her float for music, street cleaning. By the 13th of July, the city was hot with passion in preparation for the feast of Santa Rosalia... 

But, the celebration took a different turn this year. Projected onto the facade of the cathedral of Palermo were images of two men and two women symbolizing gay pride. 

I took a long stroll along via Victor Emanuelle toward the Cathedral of Palermo to take part in the festivities.  

Amy Boylan wrote to me from New Hampshire to ask about public reaction, but I missed the images in the midst of the dense crowds. The next morning, the papers registered a response from the Counselor for Culture, Francesco Giambrone to Don Fabrizio Moscato, secretary of Palermo Archbishop Paolo Romeo who wrote on a facebook page, "Shame! We are touching the bottom. The homosexual ideology projected on the noble southern portico of the Cathedral of Palermo for the Pastron Saint Rosalie! ... who can tell me this is not a dirty provocation?" 

"There was no provocation intended." wrote Giambrone. "The video was about love and human rights. The images were about love,not sex."     

   
Also registered in the papers were complaints that "Santuzza" a famous South Korean rap smash "Gangnam Style" and other American music was playing as 
Mayor Leoluca Orlando chanted "Viva Palermo and Santa Rosalia!"   

Macerie: An Art Exhibit in Ruins

Macerie, meaning rubble or ruins, is the name of an exhibit set in Palermo's Palazzo Constantino Di Napoli. The exhibit celebrates the Feast of Santa Rosalia, Palermo's beloved patron saint. Financed and curated by Roberto Bilotti Ruggi D'Aragona, Macerie  brings together a range of contemporary artists from the city who transformed the neoclassical spaces of decay and neglect into a strange space of beauty. 

It's dangerous to walk around. The place is in shambles - covered in dust, in crisis, subject to vandalism & left with no support from the state for renovation.

As people enter through the arched wooden door into the foyer of the palazzo, Roberto D'Aragona (who introduced himself to me as a prince) greets people with a sense of genuine warmth and extends an invitation to a private party that evening. I watched D'Aragona circulate with his wife among the installations built around themes of shadows, 
 

 childhood,

 and denial...

Later, at a cafe down the street,I overheard a couple talking about Andrea Mineo. Mineo created the concept for the exhibit. Born in Turin, having worked in Palermo for years, Mineo asked the artists joining the project to create art that provokes Palermo to address the state's  neglect of it's rich, Southern historical treasures.   

torta di fico...

I picked up too many figs the other day -  I couldn't resist... ripe, fleshy and with such a short season, it seemed wasteful not to.  

And so, I made a fig cake - inspired by Bill Granger  

rustic fig and hazelnut cake 
3/4 cup sifted flour
1 stick (1/2 cup)unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup ground hazelnuts 
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts
6 fresh figs, halved
2 Tablespoons of honey

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line a 9 " cake tin.  

1) Cream the butter and the sugar in a large mixing bowl with an electric hand-held mixer until pale and fluffy (3-5 minutes).
2) Sift together the flour and baking powder. Use a large metal spoon to fold the flour and eggs alternately into the creamed mixture. Fold in the ground hazelnuts and then the chopped hazelnuts.
3)Spoon the mixture into the tin. Arrange the figs, cut side up, in a neat layer on top of the cake. Bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour, or until a skewer poked in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
4) Leave to rest in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out. Drizzle honey over the top of the cake just before serving with a side of fresh whipped cream.   



Photo: Paola Bacchia,Italyonmymind (http://italyonmymind.com.au/2013/04/23/rustic-fig-and-hazelnut-cake)

The Garlic Truck

On Thursday afternoon, as Beatrice and I were waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Giuseppe in Corleone's Piazza Falcone and Borsellino, I noticed a red truck by the edge of the square filled with long braided bulbs of softneck garlic. This batch had creamy pink skin.  

If I were in my own kitchen, I'd make Sicilian pesto. Rather than the familiar green garlic and basil base that is inspired from Lugurian cuisine, (pesto alla Genovese), Pesto alla Sicilana has a tomato base. It takes about 20 minutes to make. I'm including two versions below. The second, Pesto alla Trapanese, is less strong. 



Ingredients:

2 ounces (50 g) pinoli nuts
3 small heads of garlic
2 large sun-ripened tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded, and chopped
A small bunch of basil
A small bunch of parsley
The leaves of a stalk of celery
Olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste
 
Preparation: Mince the herbs. Remove the skins from the garlic cloves. Grind the pine nuts and garlic in a mortar with the tomatoes, work in the herbs, and continue grinding until you have a smooth paste. Check seasoning, work enough olive oil into the mixture to transform it into a smooth sauce for pasta or with broiled or grilled meats or fish. 

Pesto alla Trapanese 
6 cloves garlic
6 ripe plum tomatoes
1/4 pound (100 g) blanched, peeled almonds
A bunch of basil
Olive oil, salt, and pepper
 
Grind the garlic, basil and slat to obtain a paste, then work the tomatoes and almonds into it, grinding until the mixture is homogenous. Add pepper to taste and enough olive oil to produce a sauce.

on the road to the other Corleone...

Beatrice picked me up around 2 pm in Palermo. We drove north along a narrow, undulating stretch of highway lit up in technicolor to Corleone's recently named Piazza Falcone and Borsellino in the center of town. 

Our plan was to meet with Giuseppe Crapisi, the President of Corleone Dialogos, Cosimo Lo Sciuto and listen to a talk given by  German journalist Petra Reski about her book, "The Honored Society" at the Associazione Laboratorio Della Legalita.

Photo Credit, Antonella Lombardi, Ansa, 2013

 The 'pizzo free' Pasticceria in the newly named Piazza Falcone and Borsellino

Petra Reski and Giuseppe Crapisi speaking with students at the Laboratorio della Legalita

Reski was in town to speak with a group of students from northern Italy interning at the vineyards of Centopassi (One Hundred Steps). The vineyard,named after a film dedicated to Giuseppe "Peppino" Impastato, a Sicilian radio broadcaster and anti-Mafia labor organizer who was murdered in 1978 by the Mafia, is part of the Libera Terra project. Founded in 1995 by Father Luigi Ciotti, a Catholic priest from Turin, Libera Terra (Free Land) is an organization that coordinates the efforts of a range of projects throughout Italy dedicated to fighting organized crime. Under Libera's sponsorship, students throughout the world regularly visit Corleone to work and to learn about a history rarely spoken about in the formal school curriculum. 
  

Giuseppe Impastato, 1948-1978

Corleone once had the highest murder rate in the world - 153 violent deaths between 1944 and 1948,inspiring novelist Mario Puzo to adapt its name for his famous fictional crime family in The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola perpetuated Corleone's notoriety with his Godfather Triology. But today, Cosa Nostra is certainly not a way of life and any kind of Godfather tours are felt to be in bad taste by the Corleonesi. Since 2002, activists have re-branded Corleone, a project that emerged from their initial protest of the Afghanistan war and Corleone's crumbling infrastructure in 2002.  

In my interview with Cosimo, he described one of the exercises he does with first-time visitors to Corleone. "What are the first words that come to mind," he asks, "when I say the word Corleone?" "Inevitably," Cosimo explains, "people say things like, the Godfather, Vito Corleone, Toto Riina, mobsters and corruption. It is as if there is nothing dignified about where we live. It is as if our history is nothing but shameful." These responses led Cosimo and his colleagues at Corleone Dialogos to begin telling stories of another Corleone, tracing its very real history to, for example, socialist syndicalist, consumer cooperative leader and politician, Berdardino Verro. 

Sitting in the lobby of the Laboratorio, Cosimo told us the story of  Verro. Beatrice, who is Italian and went to public schools in Palermo, knew nothing about him. An innovative labor organizer, Verro served as Corleone's first socialist mayor in 1914. In 1893, Verro hosted a conference in Corleone to draft model agrarian contracts for laborers, sharecroppers and tenants and deliver them to landowners. Under Verro's leadership, Corleone became the strategic center of the peasant movement and the strike wave. While Verro initially  formed an  alliance  with some prominent Mafiosi in outlying towns, he did so in an effort to secure the strike effort among laborers. Eventually, he too became a member of the Fratuzzi (Little Brothers)a Mafia group in Corleone.But, during the strike of the peasants in September of 1893, when the Fratuzzi boycotted it by providing the necessary labor to work the land that peasants refused to cultivate, Verro broke with the Mafia and became their most hated enemy. 

Verro was killed by the Mafia on November 3, 1915.   
There is more to Verro's story, but I won't go on here. Most striking is the way in which Corleone Dialogos reaches for existing stories, builds in fact, on preexisting political legacies to re-categorize central events from their past in much the same way nations working through the process of transitional democracy do (see Rothberg, 2013). Verro offers one story to Corleone,  but there are others. There is the  story of union leader, Placido Rizzoto and  Rosario Livatino and a long history of innovative agricultural cooperatives and labor organizing.  

Sicilian 'Crimes of Style'

I spent a long day at my desk. So, late this afternoon, I took a walk down Palermo's Via Vittorio Emanuele to spend some time at the Modern and Contemporary Museum in the Palazzo Belmonte Riso. On the way, I stumbled into some of what Jeff Ferrell calls "crimes of style"  - casual and not so casual graffiti. I felt as if the city was in chorus with the disenfranchised majority standing up to global corporate corruption and abusive government power. Except for Tano - he's ten and told me he just wanted to paint his name on the door.   
  

Reading Soueif's Cairo: My City, Our Revolution

Egypt was reported to be a bloodbath this morning...I ate dinner close to the window so I could get a strong signal while I listened to Democracy Now! The children across the alley were playing soccer on their balcony while Sharif Abdel Kouddous reported that after Morsi's ouster, Egypt's unity is more fragile than ever. The death toll continues to rise to 51 as clashes escalate between the Egyptian army and pro-Morsi protesters. 

When I was in Palermo in March, 2011, my friends and I ate dinner by this window, listening to reports of Egypt celebrating the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's long and cruel reign. Cairo's revolutionary narrative cannot be contained by a chronological or straightforward idea of progress. Egypt's democracy continues to be written and we are all implicated. After dinner, I return to Ahdaf Soueif's Cairo: My City,Our Revolution, a diary, a testimony, a journal of Cairo's 18 day revolution in 2011 that defies ordinary conventions for telling a story and remembering a past. If you read it, you'll see.  

Plums

I picked up too many plums at the Capo market on Friday... and too many beans and berries, too much garlic, mint and basil, certainly too much for one person. If I had shopped at the grocery store, I wouldn't have gotten so carried away. So I made a cake... an Italian plum cake to share. The recipe is inspired from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis. 

 

Ingredients

1 cup unblanched, whole almonds

¾ cup sugar, divided

⅓ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon cinnamon

⅛ teaspoon ginger

pinch of nutmeg

½ cup whole milk

2 large eggs

¼ teaspoon almond extract

4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly

12-14 Italian plums, pitted and sliced in half

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottom of a 10-inch springform pan.

2. Place almonds in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade along with ½ cup of the sugar. Process until almonds are finely ground. Add flour, salt and spices and pulse a few more times to combine. Transfer to a medium bowl.

3. In a measuring cup, combine milk with eggs, almond extract and melted butter, whisk to combine. Add liquids to dry ingredients and stir together until just combined.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan. Place plum halves over the top in roughly concentric circles so they are just about touching. You may have one or two halves left over. Sprinkle top with remaining 1/4 cup sugar.

5. Bake for 45-50 minutes until top is golden and fruit is soft. Let cool for about 10 minutes, then use a paring knife alongside the edges of pan to loosen. Remove sides and cool completely on a rack. This cake is best eaten the day it is made. If you have some left over, it will keep at room temperature, covered, for up to 2 days.

 

 

Mornings in Palermo

My secret weapon

  on the balcony
in the morning in Palermo

 

Sconzajuoco: Messing with the Mafia

On July 5, I joined Addiopizzo, a grassroots anti-extortion organization in Sicily, to celebrate the opening of a new stretch of beach in Capaci, about twenty-five minutes from Palermo. Previously abandoned to waste and difficult to access, the new beach, named "Sconzajuoco," has been returned to the public. All the beach furnishings are made with recycled garbage found along the coastline.   Beach services include a special wheelchair for people who need support accessing the water and sand, as well as childcare.
Music is scheduled all summer as well as volleyball,kayaking,  windsurfing lessons and a range of cultural events. 

Like it's Sicilian name, "Sconzajuoco," which describes someone who likes to mess up a game or ruin plans,the intention of Addiopizzo is to create a sustainable cultural revolution that disrupts the business of the Cosa Nostra. Partners joining Addiopizzo include Greenpeace, Legambiente, Free Gay Pride as well as over 800 merchants and social entrepreneurs who refuse to pay extortion money.  

The name Sconzajuoco was inspired by the name of Libero Grassi's boat. Grassi,an anti Mafia factory owner,was murdered by the Cosa Nostra in Palermo in 1991. Last night, Grassi's son Davide and his grandson Alfredo cut the celebratory ribbon. Davide spoke on behalf of his father's dream to create and sustain public spaces for the common good and to imagine a history free from Mafia violence.