March 2024
In 1608 Caravaggio was visiting Malta when word arrived that he had murdered Ranuccio Tomassoni shortly before in Rome and was actually on the run.
He was imprisoned, but escaped and fled to Siracusa, where he painted one of his masterpieces, The Burial of St. Lucy, which can still be seen today in the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolchro, in Ortigia.
Arriving in Siracusa he went to visit the latomie caves: the ancient limestone quarry for Siracusa, located in what is today inside the archeological site. The caves today look far less deep and impressive than they originally were: the ground level has risen due to the presence of the beautiful lemon groves just outside of them and sands washed in with centuries of rain.
One particularly infamous ruler of Siracusa at the time of the making of these caves was Dionysus, a violent, obsessive, cruel, intelligent and paranoid man even by the standards of his day.
According to legend, and as recounted to Caravaggio, this cave pictured here was carved in such a way as to direct the acoustics of those imprisoned inside directly to whom was outside, allowing them to hear every word and every whisper inside. Dionysus used this series of caves as places for imprisonment, for torture and for murder, so there may well be some truth in the story in connection also to its acoustics.
With his painterly eye, Caravaggio literally saw the giant edifice of stone mimicking and tracing the lines of a human ear and named it Dionysus’ Ear, which has remained its name ever since.
February 2024
Sicily has many native trees, and though they were introduced by the Greeks some 10,000 years ago (and so technically, are not autochthonous as a species), olive trees have been around for so long they really may as well fall into the same bracket.
The pruning, cleaning, harvesting and understanding of trees has traditionally been a knowledge passed down within families and small communities through generations: it is but one form of an intangible cultural heritage.
A healthy and well-cared for olive tree might last anything from ten to fifteen or more generations, each year giving back to the people that care for it with oil, fuel, shade and - dare I say it - companionship.
By default, the traditional ways of caring for native plant and tree species is a knowledge of how to enable nature to best withstand climate change and the stress that accompanies it.
Sicilians know very well that their traditional ways of working support ecological balance, rural employment, identity and pride and quite rightly they take great pride in this.
So when people ask why it matters so much to us that our trees are cared for by hand, when it is so much more expensive and time consuming than bringing in the big machinery to do the job for us, this is our response.
Thankfully we are not alone in this belief!
January 2024
I first came across the poetry of Ibn Hamdis while reading the book Pomp And Sustenance: Five Centuries of Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti.
Taylor Simeti’s descriptions and citings of Hamdis’ homesickness moved me deeply and I have never since forgotten his name.
Hamdis was born in either Noto or Siracusa around 1055 to an important family. Not wishing to succumb to the new governance of Guiscard’s rule and religion he left Sicily in his early 20s, soon after the Normans came to power, taking his entire family first to Andalusia and then to Seville.
From there he continued to wander through the Western Islamic world of that time: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Majorca (where he died in 1132), always in search of patrons for his poetry:
