Dreams from Biancavilla

Today’s short post; the last one for a while. There is a family emergency back home; we fly back to the states in the morning. ********** Today, things were almost back to normal. I spent the morning with Ettore, and most of us had a nice pre-lunch swim. Vincenzo has been anxious to harvest the plum tree—they are perfect right now. Joe said, “I’ll do it!”, and he, like my grandparents and his, and all the grandparents before them, collected fruit from the orchard. Bounty of beauty  The migrant worker  He likes the pink ones Ettore is helping to harvest the prunes. The fruit cycle at la vigne is: cherries, apricots, plums, late plums, pears, grapes, apples. There is fruit on the table every day. Pear, Ettore, Etna

Nigra sum sed Formosa  – I am black and I am beautiful.   [Bible quotation in Latin, from the Song of Songs, inscribed at the altar below the Black Madonna] Better than I can describe it, is this excerpt about the Black Madonna, written by Eleonora Ruzzenenti on the website www.itinari.com: “Legends surround the cedar [which turns black over time] wood-carved  Black Madonna  and how she ended up in  Tindari .  Local tradition claims that the Byzantine statue was smuggled out of Constantinople in the eighth and ninth centuries and when a storm blew up, the sailors offloaded the Black Madonna into the port of Tindari.  There are also legends linked to her role in the creation of the tongue of sand and lagoon which lies in the shadow of the church.  Another beautiful legend tells about a woman pilgrim coming from a small village to ask for a grace for her daughter seriously ill. When she arrived in front of the Madonna she refused to pray because she was black. The woman accidentally drop

After a quick caffe and biscuits, we all loaded into the little Renault Cleo to go to Isola Bella. Tomaso religiously counted the number of steps on the descent to the island; I believe it was 634, which seems low, but sweating profusely makes me believe I’ve done more than I have. We got to the sandy isthmus and crossed to the island, famous for older Americans in that it’s where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ran away together after falling in love on the set of Cleopatra. The paparazzi snapped them sipping cocktails at the Wunderbar Cafe in Taormina, where we sat listening to music last night, when Simone returned because he thought the vocalist was pretty. The island was gifted to Taormina by King Ferdinand I in the early 1800s. Later that century, a man called Trevelyan bought the island from the town and built a house (gates were closed today; damn) facing the sea. He imported exotic plants, well suited to this climate. Subsequent owners kept up the island until the last one