Etna Unveiled

On Saturday we introduced some friends to Hawaiian food -- 7 dishes from lomi lomi salmon to kalua pork to tako poke. What a delight it was to see them enjoy a taste of our homeland!

Over mai tais and an Italian card game called Scopa, an idea was hatched for all of us around the table to collaborate on a poem via email with each writing a stanza in sequence. Within less than 24 hours since our parting, we gave verbal birth to "Etna Unveiled."




Etna Unveiled

I played hide and seek
with towering Etna today
behind clouds, or trees

She hid herself
beneath a shawl
of silken snow

And, slowly, slowly
revealed her passive beauty
from my balcony below

Taunting, teasing
her surrealistic image
loomed, then disappeared.

Uncloaked, peaceful
and insignificant
before the fiery goddess I stand.

- S. Jonas, E. Chisari, P. Novak, J. LeBlanc & R. LeBlanc

Lamenting Lent!

Moms and dads, you will be pleased. This week marks the beginning of Lent. Rob and I have both given up fried food and pizza.

So I've let his coworkers and friends know that if they find him behind a building shoving french fries in his face that they are to remind him that little, precious baby Jesus is watching!

Carnevale Misterbianco 2008!

Carnevale in Misterbianco is less about the mayhem and all about the costumes. Rob, Nolan and me enjoyed a Saturday nite stroll through the town and the parade.

Carnevale Misterbianco 2008!

Carnevale in Misterbianco 2008!

St. Agatha's Festival 2008

There's nothing worse than a woman scorned, right? WRONG!

When Agatha, Catania's patron saint, rejected the marriage proposal of a Roman government guy, she paid dearly.

Sent to work in a whore house. Stretched on rack. Slow roasted. And had her breasts cut off.

Rather than die like most would have... this young woman inspired miracles with each excruciating step down the path of martyrdom.



Here's the gang including our new friends Chad and Amy.




These sugary confections are called Agatha's olives.

St. Agatha's Festival 2008

St. Agatha's Festival 2008

Here we are along with at least 100,000 of our closest friends in the main piazza of Catania. It was a mob scene. This is the shrine bearing Agatha's bones.




Saint Agatha, a martyr who died in 252 at age 15, is the patron saint of Catania, Sicily, and an exciting festival is held in her honor in Catania. The 2-day procession, said to be the second largest religious procession in the world, begins February 4. Following a mass at dawn, the statue of St. Agatha that houses her relics is placed on a fercolo, a 40,000 pound silver carriage that will be pulled up Monte Sangiuliano by 5,000 men. The huge festival lasts for two days and two nights and as with most Italian festivals, there is also plenty of eating and drinking and a huge fireworks display at the end.



And as it emerged from the cathedral...cheers rang up to the heavens and thousands of white gloved hands waved their handkerchiefs in the brisk winter air.



It was like nothing I've ever experienced before - a mass of this magnitude in utter adoration for a woman violently slain in the second century who inspires hope and prayers and miracles for an entire city of Catholics!!

St. Agatha's Festival 2008